U.S. Press Curbs in Grenada May Affect International Debate

By JONATHAN FRIENDLY
Some American reporters and press
organizations say the Reagan Adminis-
tration's restrictions on the press in
covering the invasion of Grenada may
damage Washington's position in a con-
tinuing international debate over. con-
trols on the gathering and dissemina-
tion of news.

Western news organizations and
most Western countries, including the
United States, have been fighting
proposals for press controls proposed
ing countries. Those proposals, ad-
by the Soviet Union and many develop
vanced in the last decade in forums of
tific and Cultural Organization, include
the United Nations Educational, Scien-
giving governments a right to force the
as a way to protect them in war zones."
ment actions and licensing journalists
press to report positively about govern
Ima move broadly criticized by press,
groups, the Defense Department
barred reporters from covering the
first two days of fighting in Grenada
and then provided limited guided tours
of some parts of the island for two more
days. The Pentagon said the limita-
tions were initially needed to prevent
advance disclosure of the operation
and were later retained because the
correspondents.
military could not assure the safety of

On Sunday, the man who approved
the news restrictions, Gen. John W.
Vessey Jr., chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said he would create a
panel of officers and journalists to re-
view the restrictions in the first days of
the invasion..

strictive than those routinely imposed world information order" that has re-national Press Institute, said the idea'
by other nations and that they were fi- peatedly been proposed by third-world of protecting journalists was an insult
nally lifted after an "uproar in the and Soviet bloc nations in Unesco meet- to the memory of war correspondents
press of the kind that only happens in aings. By coincidence, on the first day killed "so that the American public
free society." He said the issue would American marines landed in Grenada, could have an accurate accounting" of
be raised "more as a matter of rhetoric Mr. Reagan repeated his stand that the progress of fighting.
by countries that are year-round cen- "accurate, objective information is
sors themselves."
necessary to the preservation of
democracy and freedom.'

"

Unesco Conference in Paris
Leonard R. Sussman, executive of di-
'Prejudices the Position'.
In a message congratulating the For-
organization that has fought against of The New York Times, said, “The ex-
rector of Freedom House, a New York Seymour Topping, managing 'editor eign Press Association on its 65th anni-
versary, Mr. Reagan noted his opposi-
press restrictions, said he anticipated traordinary restriction imposed on the tion to "restrictions on the right of jour-
the news controls in Grenada would be press in the coverage of the Grenada nalists to report events and informa-
cited this week at the Unesco confer- invasion prejudices the position the tion as they see fit, free of authoritar-
ber of the United States delegation to tional forums on freedom of the press."
ence in Paris. Mr. Sussman is a mem- United States has taken in interna-ian restrictions and official or ideologi-
cal guidelines."
that meeting, which is scheduled to dis-Mr. Topping is chairman of the inter-
a range of communications national communications committee of
proposals, including a Soviet resolution the American Society of Newspaper
right of governments to control some protested the controls.
that among other things affirms the Editors, which, like other press groups,

cuss

kinds of news.

Office of Communications and Unesco
An official in the State Department's
Affairs said the delegation to the Paris
meeting had been instructed on the
Grenada news-control question be
cause "it is likely some mention will be
made" of the issue. He declined to say
what the instructions were.

Mr. Sussman said that although hè
thought the controls were wrong, he in-
tended to respond to any criticism by
noting that the controls were less re-

He said the Western arguments to be
made in Paris "inevitably will suffer
the Defense Department in denying ac-
as a consequence of the example set by
of the Grenada operation."
cess to correspondents in the coverage

"

dom of the press abroad unless we
"We cannot effectively preach free
practice it at home," Mr. Topping said.

Resistance to Information Order
The Reagan Administration, like its
predecessors, has resisted the "new

"

Dana R. Bullen, executive director of
the World Press Freedom Committe,
based in Washington, said the Grenada
invasion was a reminder that press
curbs "are bad whether its our Govern-
ment or Zimbabwe."

The restrictions surprised the West-
ern press because in other situations
the press has had almost totally free
access to scenes of fighting. In the bat-
tles around Beirut, for example,
American correspondents have been
able to reach both sides. Some report-
ers interviewed Druse militiamen
under fire from American warships.

Journalists were particularly critical
of the Defense Department's reasoning
that reporters should not be allowed in
Grenada until their safety could be as-
sured. Unesco has debated the issue of
In Grenada, however, almost all for-
identification cards to journalists as aeign reporters, were expelled after
way to protect them in combat zones, Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was
but the Western press has said, as it did overthrown a week before the invasion.
in Grenada, that reporters are respon-
proposed cards could easily turn into a
sible for their own security and that the
journalists.
system for governmental licensing of

An Insult, Publisher Says
R. M. White 2d, publisher of The
Mexico (Mo.) Ledger and chairman of
the American Committee of the Inter-

NYT

Dwight Whylie, a Canadian Broad-
casting Corporation reporter, filed re-
ports until he was expelled the day be-
fore the invasion. He was in St.
George's helping train the staff of the
Government-run Radio Free Grenada
under a program sponsored by Unesco.

Look for Science Times on Tuesday

11-8-83 p. A10

Information Blackout Revives Old Issues

By David Maraniss

Washington Post Staff Writer

The U.S. military had just com-
pleted a high-stakes operation in the
Caribbean. During its crucial early
days no American journalists were
allowed near the action.

"Do not talk to me about what we
will lose; we already have lost," a
defense industry journalist said. "A
dramatic chapter in history has gone
unrecorded by objective newsmen
because this administration chose a
course that never was undertaken in
the Civil War, World War I, World
War II and Korea. It kept reporters
out of the action. This is an act of
shame."

Many considered the news media
blackout part of a widespread and in
some respects unprecedented peace-
time effort by the government to
manipulate the news and stifle the
free flow of information. In one year
alone, polygraph operators admin-
istered 19,122 lie-detector tests to
federal employes for security clear-
ances and investigations of security
leaks. Defense Department workers
were instructed to report to their
superiors every contact they had
with the press. Pentagon spokesmen
said they had a duty to manipulate
some information as
a weapon
against communist enemies. One
said the government had, under
some circumstances, an inherent and
basic right to lie to the public.

All this happened two decades ago
during the Kennedy administration,
beginning with the Cuban missile
crisis. Today, in the aftermath of the
Reagan administration's invasion of
Grenada, the conflict between gov-
ernment information control and the
media's assertion of the public right
know is strikingly familiar.

Again a decision to keep reporters
and cameramen away from an un-
folding military operation in the
Caribbean provoked condemnation
from the news media. Once again it
was linked to what some perceive as
a widespread and systematic at-
tempt by the executive, branch to
control and manipulate the flow of
information.

In the cause of making America
secure against public disclosure of
sensitive information, the Reagan
administration has imposed new or-
ders making it easier to classify more
documents as secret and to keep
more unclassified documents out of
reach of the Freedom of Information
Act. It has instructed all employes
who deal with intelligence matters to
get approval from senior officials
before talking with the press.

It has issued directives, temporar-
ily stalled by Congress, requiring
112,000 federal officials with security
clearances to submit to lie-detector
tests if asked and to sign contracts
making anything they ever write
about government intelligence sub-
ject to prepublication review and
censorship. It has prevented univer-
sity scientists in several high-tech-
nology fields from releasing papers
on their unclassified research and
from associating freely with col-
leagues from Marxist countries.

"It is a pattern of activities," said
Bruce W. Sanford, a prominent First
Amendment lawyer in Washington,
"that has given the Reagan admin-
istration easily the worst record of
any modern presidency on the issue
of openness in government."

When asked to respond to such
charges, administration officials
tended not to rebut them directly,
but rather challenged the premise

that the free flow of information in
government is inherently good.

"We went through a period where
we were seeing more and more open-
ness in government. And we think it
went too far," said Richard K. Wil-
lard, the deputy assistant attorney
general who drafted several of the
administration's new directives.

"Certainly there was great disil-
lusionment about the government's
national security apparatus in con-
nection with Vietnam and Water-
gate, and this concern produced
some good reforms, but also some
serious problems. There arose a dan-
gerous degree of laxity about real
security concerns."

When asked by a Los Angeles
Times reporter about the press
blackout on Grenada, White House
chief of staff James A. Baker III said
that "a large majority of the Amer-
ican people support it." A Pentagon
spokesman said essentially the same
thing in sharper words when re-
sponding to a query from a Wash-
ington Post reporter: "I guess most
of the people think I don't have to
tell you a damn thing."

"A startling lesson of the Grenada
invasion episode is that the news
media, arguing the public's right to
know, found themselves without
general public support," said Cable
News Network's Daniel Schorr, who
noted that four-fifths of the respon-
dents to his network's call-in shows
supported Pentagon restrictions on
Grenada news coverage.

The findings of a Washington
Post/ABC News poll conducted Nov.
3-7 revealed something quite differ-
ent, however. It asked, "Would you
say the U.S.government has tried to

control news reports out of Grenada
more than it should, or not?"

Nearly half-48 percent-of the
1,505 respondents nationwide said
yes, that government had tried to
control reports more than it should
have, 38 percent said no and 15 per-
cent had no opinion. A sociological
and demographic breakdown of the
responses indicated that every
grouping except two-Republicans
and persons over age 45-thought
the government controlled the news
coverage from Grenada too much.

The poll was conducted more
than a week after the Oct. 25 inva-
sion, during a period when govern-
ment officials were revising and in
some cases retracting early reports
on, among other things, the number
of Cubans on the island, the resis-
tance American forces met from
Grenadians, the casualty estimates
and the ability of American students
to leave Grenada the day before the
invasion.

There were two elements to the
Reagan administration's explanation
for keeping the news media out of
Grenada during the early fighting: it
was a military decision, not a civilian
one, and it was based on safety con-

they were not able to guarantee any
kind of safety to anyone, including
of course anybody participating, and
that you have to maintain some kind
of awareness of the problems going
into areas where we don't know what
kind of conditions totally will be en-
countered.

"The airport was obviously heavily
overloaded with all kinds of activity
and we just didn't have the condi-
tions under which we thought we
would be able to detach enough peo-
ple to protect all the newsmen, ca-
meramen, gripmen, all of that."

His explanation struck several for-
mer Pentagon officials as flawed.

"Senior government officials must
remember that for years professional
journalists and professional public
officials have been able to find ways
to provide both troop security and
the flow of information which an
open society demands," said Jerry
W. Friedheim, the assistant secre-
tary of defense for public affairs dur-
ing the most contentious days of the
Vietnam war.

Friedheim, who now serves as ex-
ecutive vice president of the Amer-
ican Newspaper Publishers Associ
ation, added: "One need only recall
the actions of Gen. Creighton Ab-
rams in personally assuring press-
pool access to his troops during the
troubled days when controversial
combat actions were under way
across the South Vietnam border in
Cambodia. Gen. Abrams understood
that he and his troops were working
within and for a constitutional, free
society. He saw it as his duty to help
a free press serve a free society. He
was right. Today's officials are
wrong."

Another former public affairs otficial in the Defense Department

during the Vietnam era, Daniel Z.
Henkin, questioned the wisdom of
leaving such a decision entirely in
the hands of the military.

"I think in our form of govern-
ment there is a responsibility that
civilians participate in such deci-
sions," he said. "And I do have the
sense that, if not with the initial
landing, there were ways that could
have been devised to handle the
press very early on."

One White House official said the
top military brass, including Gen.
John W. Vessey Jr., chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, held the view
that "If you get the news people into
this you lose support of public opin-

thority. This was the case when he
was governor of California and the
police battled students on the Uni-
versity of California campus at
Berkeley, and has held true during
his presidency with the military and
intelligence agencies. One of his self-
proclaimed missions has been to re-
verse what he has called the "Viet-
nam syndrome," a lack of confidence
in the armed forces and the CIA.

In a March, 1982, interview in TV
Guide, Reagan criticized the media
for covering the Vietnam war from
the perspective "that the war was
wrong. Had that been done in World
War II, in behalf of the enemy that
was killing American military men, I
think there would have been a rev-
olution in America."

Reagan similarly criticized media
coverage of the American role in El

Salvador. "There has been a kind of
editorial slant that has something,
almost, of the Vietnam syndrome,
which challenges what we're doing
there," he said. "I could say to the
press, 'Look, I will trust you by tell-
ing you what we're trying to accom-
plish. If you use that story, it will
result in harm to our nation, and
probably make it impossible to do
what we're trying to do.' But they
just go with the story."

It is from this perspective that
Reagan, from the first days of his
administration, has been consumed
by efforts to keep what he considers
to be sensitive information from
being leaked to the media and dis-
seminated to the public. There is a
long and rich history of presidents
being upset about news leaks and
uttering variations of Reagan's "up
to my keister" lament.

There also is an equally long tra-
dition, carried forward in the Reagan
White House, of senior officials pub-
licly embracing their president's ef-
forts to control leaks while slipping
selected information to the reporters
of their choice. Only recently, for
example, one mid-level official was
lectured sternly by one of Reagan's
senior aides for leaking information.
When his knuckles were white and
he expected to be fired, the others
broke into laughter and told him not
to worry, they do it all the time.

But many in the media and the
law who serve as watchguards of the
public's right to know assert that
never before has an administration
made such a sustained and multidi-
mensional effort to restrict the flow
of information.

"There is a very major Big Broth-
er complex in the Reagan adminis-
tration. 'We know best'-that seems
to be the underlying theme," said
John Moss, a former congressman,

from California who authored the
original freedom of information leg-
islation and chaired the House hear-
ings on government information pol-
icies during the Kennedy era. "That
sort of feeling emerges early in many
administrations, but usually there is
an action to say, in effect, 'You can't
go on that way.' They've been able
to get by with it to a large extent
this time."

"ISN'T THIS BETTER THAN ALL THOSE NEWS STORIES YOU GET FROM THE PRESS?