Military needs more public transparency

The American military has plenty of competent public relations people who understand well what to do when something bad happens:

Figure out how much the public is going to know later, after all of the questions and inquiries have petered out. Then go ahead and release that information, all of it, right away, up front.

But the PR types work for higher-ups who often feel, as sure as they’re born, that public openness is bad policy. Time after time the choice is for secrecy, only to watch the full story get dragged out bit by bit, hurting careers unnecessarily in the process.

The abrupt reassignment and now talk of possible criminal charges against the commander of the nuclear attack submarine USS Greeneville suggest a reason for the military’s distaste for openness.

We’ve been watching this syndrome locally in recent weeks on the more mundane issue of live-fire training in Makua Valley. The Wai‘anae Coast community wants to know the complete story on the effects of that mission on the ‘aina. The Army has been resisting.

The smart money says a full environmental impact statement on Makua is just a matter of time, depending on how long it takes the Army to realize it won’t have support for Makua training until it gives in — and perhaps not even then, because a lot of fair-minded civilians have been angered by the foot-dragging.

In more tragic circumstances, it took two days for the Army to disclose that the Black Hawk helicopter in which six men died Monday near Kahuku had been dangling a Humvee vehicle below it when the crash occurred.

We have no idea, so far, whether that load contributed to the accident. But why is it so hard for military minds to see that their withholding of that fact now gives it great importance — perhaps greater than it deserves — in the minds of the media and the public?

Similarly, the Navy raised suspicions when it became especially close-mouthed about the presence of 16 civilian visitors aboard the Greeneville, which rammed and sank a Japanese training vessel off O‘ahu Friday, leaving nine people aboard missing and presumed dead.

After the Navy went to great lengths to keep the press from talking to those visitors, why was it not so surprising to learn that some of them had sat at control stations on the sub?

It seems unlikely, but in the absence of complete disclosure, it is understandable why some are speculating that some amateur mistake — pushing the wrong button, throwing the wrong lever — might have caused the tragic accident.

The Navy continues to suggest the visitors were not a factor. But why doesn’t it see that its earlier reticence on the subject now drains that assurance of credibility?

Tragedies in military training settings are inevitable, but there is no excuse to allow their repetition due to failure to learn what caused them. And it doesn’t help when the military plants doubts and compounds grief by failing to share what it knows, as completely as possible, right from the start.

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