By William Cole
Advertiser Staff Writer

Even before Sept. 11, reporters who covered the military were complaining that their access to battlefield troops was severely limited, and that the Gulf War had shown that military officials were largely successful in exaggerating the positive and downplaying the negative in news coverage.

The military — as effectively demonstrated in a "Saturday Night Live" sketch in which reporters repeatedly asked generals for the details of upcoming battle plans — complained that the media wanted to know too much.

Such antagonism is nothing new. In the Civil War, Thomas Knox's critical reporting of the Union's Vicksburg campaign so irritated Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman that he tried to court-martial the civilian newsman as a spy.

The rules of military engagement for reporters, often frustrating and continually changing, changed again after Sept. 11.

Reporters complain that the public is being kept in the dark to a new and unprecedented degree, though the public is largely unsympathetic. In mid-October, a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that six in 10 felt the military, not the news media, should exert more control over news of the war.

The result in Hawai'i, home of Pacific Command headquarters, with about 45,000 military people and 55,000 military dependents, has been some less than clear-cut rules and some frustrating situations for me as I try to cover the issues that involve service people, their families and the larger community.

Ships have returned to Pearl Harbor from the Arabian Sea, but crew members are prohibited from talking about missions. Rather, they've been limited to offering generic information — morale is high, they worked hard and gave it their best.

Here, as elsewhere, a hodgepodge of restrictions on the use of names led to some awkward "Sgt. Bob" or "Lt. Bill" references in stories. Some didn't want to be identified at all. Others would tell me, "Oh, just go ahead and use my name."

Presumably, the first-names-only rule would keep last names out of the hands of terrorists.

Public affairs officers would not reveal the "force protection" level of the day at the same time big sandwich boards visible for all to see advertised "Threat Condition Charlie in effect today" at base entrances. Routine information — like the kind of aircraft used by the Pacific forces commander — was withheld in the months after Sept. 11.

It's been confusing for reporters and public affairs officers alike, with the latter playing it extra safe.

"We just don't want to help the bad guys out," one base spokesman told me a couple of months ago.

I don't want to help the bad guys out, either. But I sometimes feel like "not helping out the bad guys" becomes an excuse to block access.

The clampdown prompted a letter last October to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from the leaders of several journalism and First Amendment organizations asking for a reaffirmation of the 1992 Pentagon commitment to provide journalists with access to all major military units and to special forces where feasible.

In the letter, the group does not deny secrecy has a place in anti-terrorism operations involving significant covert action.

"The government should protect information as necessary — but only for as long as necessary — to protect national security," the letter says, adding that, "Journalistic scrutiny of the war on terrorism and publication of dissenting viewpoints are not signs of disloyalty to the nation, but rather expressions of confidence in democratic self-government."

Reporters need military cooperation to gain access to a base or battlefield, and the military has always tried to prevent its people from going directly to reporters and telling their stories. Service people are required to go through a public affairs officer whose job it is to deflect controversy, push "positive" news stories, and keep the base commander from being embarrassed.

When The Advertiser sent a reporter to talk to service people lined up in their cars outside a base on Sept. 11 — without the knowledge of the public affairs folks — that prompted an angry diatribe from a military spokesman, who told me the reporter was a "knucklehead" and ostensibly created a traffic safety hazard. The reporter was only trying to get some unfiltered, from-the-gut comments from military people and their families without a public affairs officer hovering nearby.

It's not unusual for me to set up an interview with an Army official, then find I'm meeting with the official, a couple of subordinates and a couple of public affairs representatives.

Attempts by the military to control the flow of information routinely lead to service people contacting me directly, often with the request that I do not use their names. To say that makes the public affairs people unhappy is an understatement. One public affairs officer asked me to let him know whenever I was going to be writing about the command he works for. I indicated I wouldn't do that.

And after Sept. 11, some military folks e-mailed me directly from ships: another no-no.

While I repeatedly argue that service people enjoy the same First Amendment rights that they fight to protect, public affairs people argue that going behind their backs creates a big hullabaloo, and rightly or wrongly, puts careers at risk. I'm also conscious of putting sources at risk — not from terrorists, but from superior officers. The newspaper even decided not to publish a compelling interview with a Hawai'i serviceman returning from a mission. We weren't going to name him, but because his outfit was so small and his job so specific, we were afraid that his officers might wind up blaming him or someone in a similar position.

Where the information debate will end up is unclear.

The whole thing leaves many heroes in the war on terrorism just itching to tell their stories.