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Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times ($) last Tuesday concluded with a remark about the Pentagon's internal news clipping service, the Early Bird. It's a daily compendium of articles related to military matters that's widely read by those inside the Pentagon, including the reporters who work there.

Kristof wrote that the traditionally "dispassionate collection" of articles was, of late, reflecting some spin. "Lately it has been leading with in-house spin," wrote Kristof. "The Early Bird of Nov. 20, for example, began with three separate unpublished letters to the editor by Pentagon officials before getting to the news from around the world." Pentagon Correspondent David Martin confirms that he's noticed the same pattern in the past month or two, and it appears to be a part of the larger communications strategy that the Pentagon has adopted recently. One aspect of that strategy includes rebutting news reports that the Department of Defense perceives as inaccurate or misleading.

In the past, says Martin, the Early Bird has always been a "fair mix of news" in which you could "almost never spot any slant." At some point during Sec. Rumsfeld's tenure, says Martin, the first section of the Early Bird began including corrections of military-related stories that had been printed in newspapers the previous day. They were primarily small factual corrections, such as a major general being referred to as a brigadier general, etc.

"There was this sort of unstated editorial point that these corrections were important" since they appeared before other news, and "it just emphasized the point that newspapers get it wrong sometimes," said Martin. Nonetheless, he doesn't think most reporters thought too much of it.

But more recently, letters from the Pentagon to the editors of various papers have been included in the front section of Early Bird, and "they were contesting not just an individual fact, but sometimes contesting the whole thrust of a story." It's an example of the types of rebuttals that have been identified as part of the Department of Defense's new strategy, says Martin, referring to a recent situation in which a public affairs officer took issue with CNN reporter Barbara Starr's tone in calling a top military spokesman's comments a "stunning development" in a news segment.

"When you walk around this building, you will inevitably run into someone who's been tasked with responding to the thrust of some story," said Martin. "That means putting it in the Early Bird. It's part of this battle to get their message out."

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Since there may be some moments this Thanksgiving when you'd rather not be spending time with your friends and family, and would instead prefer to glue yourself to a computer, here's a handy compendium of Public Eye posts from the past few weeks that you may have missed. (You can also check out some of our Editor's Picks in the right column.) You'll probably want to take a gander at two Q&A's with correspondent Jim Stewart, who retired last month, for some of his reflections on 37 years at CBS News. He told us how he developed his sources over the years, and he answered our traditional "10 Plus 1" – which includes a pretty good "biggest jerk" story...

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Before this week’s big change at the Pentagon, there was another, albeit less momentous change that gained headlines -- the Pentagon’s newest public relations strategy. We noted last week that the Department of Defense appeared to be taking a page from the White House Communications Office in ramping up the “rapid response” unit of its public relations operation – a technique traditionally seen only during the rough and tumble of political campaigns. Much like the White House’s strategy, one aspect of this effort includes rebutting news reports that the Pentagon perceives as inaccurate or misleading.The New York Times last week looked into the operation, noting that one television reporter had been approached by the Pentagon press office regarding the tone of her reporting:

Barbara Starr, a veteran Pentagon correspondent for CNN, said she was surprised last month to be challenged by press officers within minutes after completing a report on a Baghdad briefing where the military’s top spokesman called the results of recent security operations “disheartening.” Ms. Starr said she had called it a “stunning development” on the air.

“They objected to the tone during my live shot,” she said. “My view is that if a general says things are disheartening, that is news.”

Pentagon Spokesman Brian Whitman told the Times that he was unaware of the call to Starr, “but said that he had challenged the content of television broadcasts before and that it had nothing to do with the reorganization of the press office.”

CBS News Pentagon correspondent David Martin told us that he hasn’t yet “been hit by the quick-reaction squad. But I would agree with Barbara that the use of the word ‘disheartening’ by the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq was a ‘stunning development,’ particularly since he was reading from a prepared text.”

As far as the potential effect that this might have on his reporting, Martin said that the new strategy poses detriments – as well as benefits.

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Before stories like the CIA leak investigation were splashed across the front pages of newspapers, we didn’t hear much about government investigations into leaks to the media. These days, however, we hear quite a bit about them. In the latest example, The Washington Post today notes a recent request by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee for a “sweeping inquiry into the possible leak of a classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq by a staff member, including and audit of staff telephone records and e-mail to identify unauthorized contacts with news media or messages related to the leaked document.” I spoke to National Security Correspondent David Martin about the effect such investigations have on reporting from the Pentagon.

“Most of the time when there’s a leak,” said Martin, “whatever recriminations that are made within the government are made privately. It rarely gets to be subject of a story. What has really changed with the Bush administration is that these leak investigations are now spread exhaustively on the public record."

Martin cited the Valerie Plame case, the government’s investigation into the leaking of the NSA eavesdropping story to the New York Times, and the CIA’s investigation of leaks to the Washington Post about secret prisons.

What’s particularly interesting about the potential House Intelligence investigation, said Martin, is that the information about the NIE that was disclosed to the New York Times was, within days, declassified by the government. “The government decided that it wouldn’t harm national security so they declassified it. So the harm there [for the leaker] was in deciding on his or her own to put it out.”

For the most part, said Martin, the disclosure of most classified information wouldn’t necessarily pose a threat to national security. Often, it’s just that no one has bothered to declassify it.

The threat of disclosure instead may be political, said Martin. “Either it’s counter to the message – like the NIE, which was counter to the message that the Iraq war was making us safer.”

The other possibility is that leaked information limits the government’s “freedom of action,” said Martin. “If [as a reporter] you don’t know something is going on, then you’re not asking them questions about it. Then they can take their time and make decisions without any outside pressure.”

“Obviously we want full, real-time information and they want to reveal partial information with a significant time delay.”

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Occasionally, we take a look at the experience of covering major news events of the past. Sharyl Attkisson recently shared what she remembered most about one chapter of the Clinton/Lewinsky saga. Bob Orr discussed separating fact from rumor in the 1996 TWA Flight 800 crash. And Charlie Wilson remembered filming outside the Washington Hilton when Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, one of the biggest terrorism stories before 9/11, and one that dealt with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Correspondent David Martin was among those who covered the story and he addressed some of the criticisms that have arisen since then about media coverage of terrorism prior to 9/11.

“I certainly remember the Cole as a very big story,” said Martin. “It was a warship nearly sunk by two men in a motorboat. The assumption was that it was Osama because two years before in ’98, we had the embassy bombings in Africa and that had been Osama.”

As far as questions about whether enough attention was paid to the Cole bombing in its immediate aftermath, Martin contends that the denouement of the story wasn’t all that much different from many other major stories that simply run out of steam.

The Clinton administration "never had any evidence to launch another strike," said Martin, so "the Cole started to no longer be a daily news story because there was no subsequent action that would keep it alive."

“The big question for a while was, should the captain of the ship be punished and should the ship even have called in a place like Yemen,” he explained. “But it started to, like all news stories, run its course and there weren’t any new developments to keep it alive -- this happens with every news event.”

As far as criticisms that the media didn’t spend enough time covering the threat of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden before 9/11, Martin disagrees. “I’ve obviously done more stories on terrorism since 9/11, but we didn’t have a war on terror before 9/11, and that took everything to a different level. But I think of all my journalistic sins, paying attention to terrorism I think is not one.”

“Where we failed, and I mean everybody,” said Martin, “was in making the leap of imagination that those kinds of attacks overseas were the harbingers of 9/11.”

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In reporting the recent news from North Korea that the government had tested a nuclear bomb, the facts are hard to come by. North Korea’s is a tightly controlled communist regime and, obviously, traditional journalists are not welcome.

“It’s a story that’s sort of doubly constrained,” said national security correspondent David Martin. “Number one, you have a total lack of access to North Korea. And two, you’re dealing with a story about two of the most secretive things, nuclear weapons and intelligence.”

Essentially, there aren’t a lot of sources to begin with and even the U.S. government doesn’t necessarily have the best information about what happened. “So you just go into it knowing that those are the rules of the game,” he said.

When North Korea announced that it had conducted a nuclear test, there was no objective information to work with. “So you rely on the people you’ve dealt with over the years,” said Martin, “and they tell you the best information they have.”

The inevitable problem: “you have to recognize that the best information may be inaccurate,” said Martin, citing the intelligence community’s past inaccuracies regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. “When you think about how wrong the intelligence community was on that, then you really have to approach the story with caution.”

One problematic element of the story, said Martin, arises in estimating the yield of the blast.

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In seeking a story for last night’s special, “Five Years: How Safe Are We?” back in June, a look at the National Counter Terrorism Center “was a natural choice,” said correspondent David Martin. “It was new, it was secret and it was directly relevant to 9/11. It was created specifically to correct the intelligence failures of 9/11.”

So, Martin had the subject of his story. “The question, of course, was how do you get in there?” he said.

He started in the most logical (and somewhat ironic) of places – the National Counter Terrorism Center’s Public Affairs Office. “Even for a secret place, they have a public affairs officer,” said Martin. The PA officer happened to be someone Martin had been acquainted with for some time, and he was receptive to the idea. He took it to his boss, Vice Admiral Scott Redd, who was willing to consider it.

By July, Martin spent a few hours with Redd at the center without cameras to determine “whether our mutual needs could be met,” said Martin. “Their primary need being not to give away any secrets and our primary need to provide pictures of what goes on out there.”

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To report on the Pentagon you need “a press pass and a good pair of shoes,” David Martin told me last Thursday in CBS’s booth in the complex (which, compared to the tiny White House booth, is the equivalent of a large sports arena.) Indeed, by the end of the day, I was glad I didn’t wear heels.

From the inside, the Pentagon looks relatively sterile and almost museum-like (historical military objects in various glass cases and portraits of past presidents, past generals, past defense secretaries, etc., on the walls.) Still, “it’s an incredibly open building,” for reporters, Martin said. “You can really roam this building at will … it’s not a hostile place. They don’t treat you like an intruder.” There are, of course, spaces you can’t just waltz on into. But I was pretty surprised that we walked right through the corridor outside Secretary Rumsfeld’s office and right through the hallway between the offices of the Joint Chiefs.

“Over the years, you learn that 95 percent of the good stories you get in the hallways. The more you’re out in the hallways the more likely you are to stumble on a story or pick up on vibes,” said Martin. When you read or hear something attributed to a senior defense department official, said Martin, it’s probably from a conversation that took place in the hallways.

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Pentagon correspondent David Martin covered the My Lai massacre story close-up 30 years ago. Now he's watching the story of Haditha unfold and he tells PE about the differences, similarities and what the damages might be for the U.S. as it unfolds. Here's David:


The first big news story I ever covered was the court martial of Lt.William Calley for the My Lai massacre. Here I am more than 30 years later covering the investigations into what could very well turn out to be another massacre at Haditha in Iraq. Having sat through every day of Calley’s court martial, I knew a lot more about what happened at My Lai than I currently do about what happened at Haditha, but there are some obvious similarities and some obvious differences.

First the differences. Hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed at My Lai – the exact number has never been established. Two dozen women, children and unarmed men were killed at Haditha. The Army investigated My Lai before it was exposed in the press. Haditha is under investigation only because Time Magazine found out about it and brought it to the attention of the U.S. command in Baghdad. Most of the soldiers at My Lai were there because they had been drafted into the Army. All the Marines at Haditha were volunteers.

Now the similarities. Both wars were dragging on with no end in sight and becoming increasingly unpopular back home. In both wars, U.S. troops were up against an enemy that hid among the local population. Both the soldiers at My Lai and the Marines at Haditha were angry and frustrated – taking casualties with little to show for it. And in both cases, there were photos of the bodies which made the killings all the more horrifying, although so far the pictures taken at Haditha haven’t seen the light of day.

I came away from the Calley court martial convinced that none of the grim realities of Vietnam justified or even mitigated what happened at My Lai – and the jurors agreed, since they convicted Calley. I also came away thinking that Calley was just not officer material and never should have been put in command of men in combat. Had they been better led, My Lai would not have happened.

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Pentagon correspondent David Martin tells us about a new episode in press leaking -- and why he thinks leaks are an important part of the process.

There’s a new front in the war on leaks. This time it’s the U.S. Special Operations Command which is searching for the source of a story in the Army Times, an independent newspaper published for a military audience. The story, written by Sean Naylor, has not caused much of a public stir because it contains no news bulletins, but it is burning up the wires between the Pentagon and the Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, with vows to track down the leaker.

The story, entitled “Closing in on Zarqawi,” is, according to Pentagon officials, an extremely accurate account of special operations in Iraq which must have come from someone with access to inside information. In detail only a Pentagon reporter could love, Naylor outlines the organization of Task Force 145 – the outfit charged with tracking down Abu Musa al Zarqawi – and explains that the commander of the hunt is asking for still more troops to keep the pressure on. It even quotes from an e-mail written by the commander, Lt. Gen. Stan McChrystal.

The story won’t strike the average reader as an expose, but to someone like myself, who appreciates from long experience how tough a nut the Special Operations Command is to crack, it is a wonder. To receive even the most basic of briefings on their operations in Iraq, a military officer with a Top Secret clearance still has to sign a separate nondisclosure agreement. Yet there it all is, laid out in the pages of the Army Times.

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