By PHIL GAILEY

Special to The New York Times WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 For the last two days, the Reagan Administration has barred reporters from Grenada and imposed extraordinary restrictions on news coverage of the military invasion of that Caribbean island.

As the military operation by United States and Caribbean forces continued for a second day, President Reagan said through a spokesman that reporters would be allowed onto the island when American military commanders determined that conditions were safe for them. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said he hoped the island could be opened to reporters as early as Thursday.

Until late this afternoon, when Secretary Weinberger and Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided the first detailed briefing of the operation at a news conference, reporters here and elsewhere had found themselves relying heavily on ham radio operators and Radio Havana for reports on conditions on the island.

It was ham radio operators who reported today that six journalists, including four Americans, had landed on the island in a chartered fishing boat. First reports said the journalists had been taken to the St. James Hotel in St. George's, the capital, but later reports said at least four of them had been taken from the island by American forces to the carrier U.S S. Guam.

Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission moved to clamp down on ham operators, who have been providing much of the information to the press and the public about the situa tion in Grenada. William Russell, a spokesman for the commission, said some of the operators had been using unauthorized frequencies to pick up broadcasts from the island, and that the commission had started monitoring operators for such violations.

Defense Department officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named, said that Britain's tight control over press coverage of its war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands last year had made an impression on some American military commanders, particularly General Vessey. He has told reporters in the past that he be lieves there is too much news coverage of the military.

"The President and Secretary Weinberger are backing their commanders on this thing," one Defense Department official said.

During the war over the Falklands, British reporters were allowed aboard British ships and were allowed onto the islands with the invasion force. Their reports, however, were censored by British authorities.

There was no United States censorhip in the Vietnam War To get credentials from U.S. military authorities, reporters had to sign a pledge not to disclose in advance troop moverpents, exact casualty totals and certain aspects of military operations.

At today's news conference, Mr. Weinberger said the operation's miltary commanders had decided they did not want reporters along, and he added that he "wouldn't ever dream of overriding a commander's decision."

He added, "Their conclusion was that they were not able to guarantee any kind of safety of anyone" because of uncertainty over what kind of conditions they might encounter.

'Need for Surprise'

Asked if there was concern about how the public might react to television coverage of the fighting, the Secretary said: "I think one of the most important reasons that we didn't is the need for surprise in this operation. We were going in there very quickly and we needed to have surprise in order to have it successful."

Some of the country's major news or ganizations, including most of the television networks and wire services, had protested the news coverage restric tions in letters to President Reagan and other Administration officials.

In a letter to Mr. Weinberger, Ed. ward M. Joyce, president of CBS News, wrote, "I would like to protest the attitude expressed by your Public Affairs office as indicated in the statement to our correspondent Bill Lynch that we learned a lesson from the British in the Falklands."

"I'm screaming about it because writing letters takes too long," said Howard Simons, managing editor of The Washington Post. "I think a secret war, like secret government, is antithetical to an open society. It's abso lutely outrageous."

Mr. Simons said one of his newspaper's reporters, Edward Cody, was I among the six journalists who reached Grenada by boat. He said he had been told that Mr. Cody had been taken off

Television news organizations this week made the events in Grenada and Lebanon the subjects of instant foreign policy analysis. Page C31.

the island to the carrier Guam. Also reported to be on board the carrier were Don Bohning of The Miami Herald, Morris Thompson of Newsday and Bernard Diederich of Time magazine. The identities and whereabouts of the other two journalists in the group could not be established.

Strenuous Protests Seymour Topping, managing editor of The New York Times, said, "We have strenuously protested to the White House and the Defense Department about the lack of access to the story in Grenada by our correspondents who are waiting on Barbados. We also are disturbed by the paucity of details about the operation released by the Pentagon at a time when the American people require all the facts to make judgments about the actions of our Government."

President Reagan said reporters will be allowed on Grenada as soon as conditions there are calm enough to be "consistent with safety requirements agreed to be the Defense Department," according to Larry Speakes, the chief White House spokesman. Mr. Speakes relayed that word this afternoon, after he had agreed to take a request directly to the President from the White House press corps that reporters be permitted into Grenada.

Mr. Speakes said that another concern had been that "the presence of media there could distract commanders." That view was echoed by a senior Defense Department official who said that the invasion was a commandotype operation that does not lend itself to what he called "the tender loving care and feeding of the press."

Acrimonious Briefing

Mr. Speakes' afternoon briefing was no less acrimonious than the morning session, as reporters asked for details on the invasion and were referred to the Pentagon. In particular, the reporters were frustrated in their attempts to track details of the Administration's reported eleventh-hour diplomatic re sponse to possible attempts by the revolutionary council on Grenada to discuss safeguarding the Americans there.

Confusing and fragmentary information was offered, and Mr. Speakes, complaining about the accuracy of some news reports, ultimately refused to take additional questions from one reporter he considered annoying "I'm tired of dealing with you," he said

"You're carrying your manage ment's water on this thing." he said to another reporter, who had asked why reporters could not go to the island.

News reporters were concerned at having been misled by the White House's flat denials of initial invasion reports, a situation Mr. Speakes said was not intentional. He was asked whether the Administration policy was to be selective in telling the truth. "The policy of the White House is to tell the truth," Mr. Speakes replied.

Jerry W. Friedheim, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, said "there are damn few precedents" for continuing the news restrictions beyond today Mr. Friedheim, who is now executive director of the American Society of Newspa per Editors, said news coverage of the invasion would make it easier to the Administration to win public and Congressional support for the operation.

A former senior Defense Department official in the Carter Administration, who spoke on the condition he not be named, said, "I can't recall an overt military operation of this sort not in volving some sort of press coverage, at least a press pool. This is very upusual.**

N.Y. TIMES

1027-83

A16

The Washington Post

By Edward Cody

Wuhington Pall Foreign Service

ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada, Oct. 27-A group of seven journalists, including reporters for four American news organizations who arrived here Tuesday morning as US invasion forces landed. tried unsuccessfully until today to report what was happening on Grenada. But their efforts were thwarted, first by technical communications blackouts on the island and later by the invading force itself.

We had left Barbados Monday by chartered aircraft to Union Island, north of Grenada, traveled by boat to Carriacou, another island that is a Grenadan possession, and arrived on a separately rented small boat in Grenada just after the landing

Initially detained by Grenadan forces, by the time we reached telephone and telex facilities in the town, the lines were dead.

It was early yesterday when, while wandering through the relatively peaceful Grenadan capital, three of us-myself and correspondents for The Miami Herald and Newsday-made our first contact with US troops. By 2 pm, a good-hearted marine colonel who had listened to our pleas to allow us to use American communications facilities to reach our home offices, arranged to have us flown to the USS Guam offshore on one of a number of helicopters ferrying back and forth to his position.

But by 10 am today, we three reporters, who had been joined by a British colleague in the meantime, were being helicoptered back to the same landing zone we had left 18 hours earBer-still without getting our stories back to our newspapers

The intervening time was a series of frustrations, pleasant conversations with sailors and marines aboard this helicopter carrier and repeated pleas to be allowed to use shipboard communications or to be transported to Barbados to use commercial telephone service from there. It was also a period in which we were constantly watched, even as we slept in crewmen's bunks with a sailor detailed to stay awake sitting beside us

Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf III-Second Fleet commander running the Grenada oper. ation-first dispatched Cmdr. Tony Hilton to announce that the task force's communications were so busy with military traffic that we reporters had no chance of using them. After a request, be said he would do his best to get a message to at least one newspaper with a list of those of us who had landed on Grenada-including we four and the two reporters and one photographer who remained on the island.

Disappointed, we then suggested that we be carried on one of the frequent military flights between Grenada and Barbados to use the telephone there. Hilton, the fleet public affairs officer, said he would do his best.

A short while later, we were led aboard a helicopter and flown down from Point Salines, the Grenadan peninsula where a Cuban-built airport was being used by the US invasion force. But just before the helicopter was due to take off from the busy flight deck, we were ordered to get out and were led back inside the ship to the commodore's wardroom.

Metcalf then came to greet us, apologizing for the switch and explaining it was because he was reluctant to risk sending civilians into a high-risk area. It was not clear whether he meant Grenada as a whole, where we had just spent two days, or Point Salines specifically, where the US military was landing and taking off regularly.

In any case, we said we needed to file our dispatches and wanted to use shipboard facilities-the reason we had first come aboard-or go to Barbados. Metcalf replied he had to have the request cleared with Washington. By the time darkness fell, when Hilton said civilians could no longer fly on belicopters, the clearance had not yet come and dinner was served.

Reinforced by fried ham and a promise that we would be flown to Point Salines for a flight to Barbados at the first light, we bunked down for the night. Up at dawn, we were told we would depart at 8:30 am. At 7:30 am, we were told we would leave at 10a.m.

At 9.30 am, Metcalf appeared again to say

we reporters could accompany marines on to Fort Frederick, where he said "an operation was due to take place against remaining Grenadan defenders, then fly to Barbados. Or, we could fly immediately to Barbados.

Seeking to complete our stories, we opted to accompany the Marines in the hope of catching a later flight to Barbados. On arrival back in Grenada, however, we met the Time magazine cor. respondent we had left on the island along with a photographer and another British reporter, who told us the fort had been undefended since the previous afternoon. At this point, we insisted on continuing to Barbados, where we arrived shortly after 2 p.m. today.

[The Washington Post made repeated inqui ries for information about the whereabouts of the journalists-who had last been heard from when they departed Barbados Mondaythroughout Tuesday and Wednesday to the Pentagon, State Department and White House. [At about 2 pm. Wednesday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Desver told Post publisher Donald E. Graham, in response to a request from Graham for any information US. forces might have about Cody's whereabouts and safety, that the four newsmen were safe, aboard the Guam

[Half an hour later, White House Director of Communications David Gergen telephoned The Post to say that he had been asked by other news organizations if a Post reporter was missing in Grenada.

[At-9:30 pm Wednesday-eight hours after the journalists had arrived on the Guam-Col Robert O'Brien of the Pentagon said in response to inquiries from The Post that the newsmen had been evacuated on Tuesday af ternoon by the local commander for their own safety because they had wandered into a fire fight. A sketchier version of this erroneous report also had been relayed to a Post reporter by Deaver earlier in the day and was repeated to another Post reporter by a senior Pentagon of fical at midday yesterday. During this time the correspondents were not permitted to have direct communications with their offices.)

A 22

The Washington Post

AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER

Censoring the Invasion

TWAS inexcusable of the Reagan administra. tion not to permit firsthand American media coverage of the Grenada invasion until yesterday. the third day, and then only by brief and escorted ool reporters. We say this out of more than mere pique at the theft of our journalistic function dur ng the interval by the Pentagon, Radio Havana and the island's ham radio community. If the American media can be excluded by their own government from direct coverage of events of great importance to the American people, the whole character of the relationship between gov ernors and governed is affected. It should not have to be left to the press to issue what inevita bly sound like self-serving complaints about offi ial censorship.

This is an administration already well known for ta tendency to use the national security label to imit the flow of information to the public in various ways. So it is perhaps not so surprising that the convenience of the military-or its insistence on the primacy of its convenience-triumphed over good sense, healthy democratic practice and the strong

standing tradition of press-government cooperation in coverage of unfolding military events.

In this operation, the military had valid consider ations of surprise, the security of vital information, the efficiency of fast-developing operations and the safety of journalists. The press knows, however—as do plenty of experienced Pentagon hands-that these are all things that can be worked out.

Some in the administration are said to have envied and hoped to emulate the way the British military held off the British press during the Falklands war last year. Actually, what the British did was worNE they brought the reporters along and used them for strategic deception, feeding them bed information. Notwithstanding some early official confusion, no deception of this sort is being alleged here.

What happened is bad enough. The government set aside tried and true rules for ensuring that the media and through them the people would see, know and understand in the most timely and credible way how it was exercising military power in their name. This was done in an excess of cautionand with a trace of arrogance.

Acknowledging that he was kept in the dark about what had been planne

Robert J. McCloskey M Speake doesn't charge wilful die

Invasion

And Evasion

It ought to be an iron law that govern ment spokesmen be there, as it was once mid at the takeoff as well as the landing Regrettably it in and too often those preparing the sakente the takeoffs stubbornly more the extent to which govemment) credibality rides on how the guy out front responds to press inquiries.

sembling by him source Which ingre open, not by much, the quest whether that persce was bad to Mr. Speaker says he unwisely acted on the basis of "narrow question." negat ing to pursue the obs next one of it ant happening now all it tomorro CBS correspondent & Pans tends that question was was denied Obwxshy chins are bed when reportem know more about what' on inside than authored worker Sume who cover the White House sa this is the cane all too frequently and that policy-makers appear obircices b I've been there. If one can unwillfully the consecumom. The notion which Se, that's what I once did to the Statewidently runs in the upper reaches of Department press corps in response to the White House that the preffica specific question is to to whether some CIA who don't know on't get you journey then had attempted to subvert of trouble discredited king The need to know should include the spokes man, and if the que demands that ha

of another government. The charge inc came from no less than the prime min ter. I trusted those who assured me in writing that the allegation could be derand, and did so I shortly learned than that let it be it may

response to an unformed inquiry be "1

come momentary decomfort, but de

a kit for credibility. I've been there, to Another deemed that created controversy was the admansetration's pro hittion against

dadin kw what they said they did. The anly one at the time who knew the truth was Dean Rink, but he was not available to me that day. He later showed tea bet ter of apoy over the affair from Jokes to neda Tha has been overtaken, but out Kennedy to the prime minust. I apolo before another blunder in which we 1 jurnalista nohtud on The Pat's Edward Cadly, were hanghaied out to Nam st having made the way whore indepen dently The argument that the mut

Ombudsman

ged to the prem corp and after doing a established procedures insuring that I wouldn't be humiliated nor would the goverarent's credibility be tarnished Buch inodents again. And they worked

The came to mind while I was read ing about White Home spokesman Larry Speake problem the other after reporters asked about rumo that American forces had gone ashore

recemery to ensure the element "surprise" and safety for news los was prior restraint from Ford nd werpointy t with be rely on

hard radio contourations, the press has been calling the "+ raten

traints

ants exceed by Great Bran during tion of the Falkland Islands.

in Grenada He flatly denied it barelyndebe men in an e

Preserving "surprise" ever be undef

12 hours before the landing took place who interior for Lanking that we of

The anatomy

what occurred ide

the White House wounds dotreched The smart move whit encar What occling tinged once for persona walety a familiar and has been recounted in stories

by Pust Hofman Described

the Reagan administration

reporters Low Cannon and David the action, mak! have been "furious," Mr the pres that arrangement cover d be able shorth, there Speakes complained in a memo to serice White House staff that "the credibility of directly or by communque cetinues to of So, while the story, whether reportal stake" subordinate what the Marines in beind now call "Sunday Booty Sunday," t detate will rage on about whether My Regan acted wesely in Grenada He not helped by the way it was played with, the press.

One hopen it reached the president
Earlier, Mr. Speaker was told by a
National
Security Council official whe
said he had already "knocked down

the report in response to a separate inquiry, that it could be denied "Prepos terous" is the way it was described. Mr, Speaks' source claimed he was given the denial by his superior on the NSC