AFGHANISTAN AND BEYOND
Q&A with Victoria Clarke
Victoria Clarke, assistant secretary of defense for public
affairs, is the Pentagon's chief spokesperson. She spoke with
Neil Hickey on December 12. Excerpts from that conversation follow.
As you know, there's been a great deal of dissatisfaction
among the press about restrictions on their access to military
forces in Afghanistan.
We said from the very beginning, and it's been borne out, that
this is a very unconventional war. We are up against people who
don't have armies and navies and air forces. We encouraged journalists
to disabuse themselves of any notions that this would be like
any previous conflicts -- the Persian Gulf, for example, where
you saw thousands of troops coursing across the desert. Also:
given the fact that there was going to be a special, unique, and
important role for Special Forces, there would be some things
that nobody could or should ever see.
In a December 6 letter to Washington bureau chiefs -- after correspondents
were physically restrained from approaching the friendly-fire
casualties near Kandahar -- you apologized for "severe shortcomings"
in handling the press in the region, and said you'd be sending
to Afghanistan more experienced public affairs officers who could
better handle the challenges. Have you done it?
It's done. There are public affairs officials right now at Bagram
Airfield, Mazar-i-Sharif, and with the marines at Rhino [near
Kandahar], the forward operating base. At Rhino, given its location
and the circumstances, a pool arrangement is still appropriate.
But at the other two, reporters can do unilateral coverage. The
primary desire is to use pools as seldom as possible, to move
to unilateral coverage as quickly as possible.
You've acknowledged that "mistakes were made" in meeting
the media's needs. What mistakes have you personally made?
I don't think I have communicated clearly enough down the line
to people on the ground in Afghanistan and elsewhere what our
intent is and what our expectations are in terms of handling the
media.
One of the guidelines agreed to by the Pentagon and the
press in 1992 after the gulf war is that "open and independent
reporting will be the principal means of coverage of U.S. military
operations." Media people complain that for practically the
whole Afghan war, there was no open and independent reporting.
Your response?
Two things. First: Until recently, all we had on the ground were
Special Forces in small numbers. Their visibility would not only
have done harm to their operational intent, it probably would
have put their lives at risk. Second: We now have greater numbers
of conventional troops on the ground. The media went in with the
first wave of marines. There were literally just a handful of
seats [available] on that first wave going into Afghanistan. One
bureau chief was quite upset, and said that was unacceptable,
and that it should have been all or nothing. We should have let
everybody in. I said, Well okay, here's your choice. If you had
demanded that anybody who wanted to go could go, then nobody could
have gone. And there would have been no coverage of the marines
going into Afghanistan.
Media people on the scene also have complained about lack of access
to pilots before and after their missions.
There have been extensive interviews done with pilots. Literally
several dozen correspondents have been up in the AWACs -- the
combat air patrols. Just today, we've been doing interviews with
people who were in the search and rescue operation of the B-1
bomber [that crashed on take-off near Diego Garcia]. Two or three
days ago, we conducted interviews with the Special Forces who
were injured as a result of the friendly fire. We have offered
up and conducted interviews with people who were with the 10th
Mountain Division in a region that we don't disclose because of
host-country sensitivities. So I just don't think that's valid.
Will reporters ever be allowed on the Kitty Hawk, the
aircraft carrier where many commando operations have originated?
It depends on what kinds of activities are being conducted off
the Kitty Hawk. The nature of activities that were emanating from
the Kitty Hawk were not ones that were suitable for any coverage.
What are your feelings about the general quality and quantity
of the reporting from Afghanistan?
If you actually look at the sheer volume of coverage of the war
since October 7, which was the first day of the air strike in
Afghanistan, I have been told -- and don't take my word for this
-- that it was extraordinary, and beyond what has been done in
the same amount of time in any previous conflict. So those elements
of the war that could be covered were getting extensive coverage.
The piece of it to which there was very little access -- and that
will probably be true going forward -- is the covert activities,
which is perfectly reasonable. We brought back combat camera footage
of the actual October 19 raid, which correspondents in this hallway
told me was unheard of, had never been done before, and which
was an extraordinary insight into some of the more unconventional
aspects of the war.
Has an edict gone out to senior military officials in
the Pentagon that they shouldn't talk to the press, outside of
certain tightly approved channels?
Just the opposite. We have encouraged, and I think we have produced,
greater facilitation of communications and interviews and coordination
with all sorts of people in the building. I've been told we are
the only defense agency in the world in which the media are actually
housed. There are thirty or forty of them who come to work here
every day. They roam freely throughout the building to any one
of the 23,000 people they want to see and talk to and interview.
[Still], prior to Secretary Rumsfeld being here, there was an
extraordinary amount and level of leaking, and extensive backgrounding
of information that probably was not appropriate to be shared.
So I think there was a bit of culture shock.
At one point, you wanted to cut back the briefings from
five a week to two.
It was the bureau chiefs who insisted -- insisted -- that we do
daily briefings. We said, you know, folks, this is a very unconventional
war, there will be very erratic, sporadic levels of activity.
Sometimes we'll be able to talk about things, sometimes we won't.
So isn't it more important, from a news judgment point of view,
to brief on a regular basis -- not just to brief for the sake
of briefing. They said, "No, no, no. Brief every single day,
if not more." And so now, not only do we brief five days
a week from the briefing room, I also do what I call a 9 a.m.
"gaggle" here in my office. Any media that are interested
can get the early morning take on information we have from the
night before.
Any generalizations about the quality of the press corps,
both at the Pentagon and in Afghanistan?
Ninety-nine percent of the correspondents who cover this building
on a regular basis are phenomenal. They are more responsible and
more sensitive to operational security and the safety of the men
and women in uniform than just about anybody you can find. But
when you start to get distant from that -- to bureau chiefs, or
corporate heads -- they don't have much knowledge about this.
At a meeting, a bureau chief actually said, in front of all the
colleagues there: "Well, if you're not going to let us go
along [on commando raids], then here's what you need to do. You
need to tell us when there's going to be covert activity, and
tell us when it's going to start and when it's going to end. And
then we can report on it after the fact."
What did you say to that?
I didn't say anything.
In other words, that was an idiotic request.
I wouldn't care to characterize it. There was stunned silence
in the room. I just use this to illustrate my point.
A final thought?
At a seminar with journalists recently, I said: "If you loved
everything we [at the Pentagon] were doing, I probably wouldn't
be doing a good job. If I loved everything you were doing, you
probably wouldn't be doing a very good job." We should accept
the fact that some healthy tension is a good thing. Providing
for the common defense is in the Preamble to the Constitution,
and the rights of the press are in the First Amendment. Those
two things are so important that it is probably valuable that
there is this healthy tension. If we were all happy, we probably
would be living in the Soviet Union.
Read Neil Hickey's Companion Piece: Access Denied
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