The Ominous New Power Of Loose Lips

27 Sep 2001

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http://ebird.dtic.mil/Sep2001/e20010927ominous.htm

The Ominous New Power Of Loose Lips
By Bob Greene

They did it with scissors.

According to newspapermen who covered the European front in World War II, that
is how military censors often made certain that copy sent back to the United
States by war correspondents contained no information the U.S. government did
not want made public: The censors literally cut the offending passages out of
the typed-up pages before the stories were transmitted back home.

As the U.S. enters into these uncertain days, there is a lesson in that.
Because the world itself has been utterly transformed technologically since
those "Loose Lips Sink Ships" years. Loose lips do, indeed sink ships -- and
bring down fighter planes. Military forces hope to approach enemy targets in
secrecy.

Which is going to be immensely difficult in the battles to come. In each war,
secrecy has been incrementally harder to maintain. Vietnam was often called the
first television war -- and even though the pictures were not live, the
immediacy of film footage had an enormous effect on the public's feelings
about the war. Americans saw warfare and death through a TV camera lens. They
didn't like it.

Which was no surprise to the government. In World War II, U.S. military censors
routinely banned American newspapers and magazines from showing photos of dead
soldiers. It was only after Life magazine convinced the government that to
publish a particular photo of American soldiers who had been killed on a beach
would help readers back home understand exactly what was at stake that the
 censors relented.

In the Gulf War, many old-time veterans were outraged that the U.S. military
command was giving regular, internationally televised briefings. If the
American people could hear and see what the generals were saying, so could the
enemy. It didn't seem to matter -- that war was concluded quickly.

Now, though, we are in new territory. Putting aside the question of whether
21st Century reporters can be persuaded to hold back information, there is an
unprecedented complication.

(If the concept of reporters holding back information is foreign to you -- if
you assume reporters would never do that -- then you only have to look back to
the 1930s and 1940s, when the American people did not know that Franklin D.
Roosevelt used a wheelchair. Press photographers did not shoot pictures of him
in the wheelchair; print and radio reporters never referred to the fact. Try
to conceive of that now: a president spending much of his time in a wheelchair,
and the public does not know because of a gentlemen's agreement among the press
corps.)

But the new complication has nothing to do with any gentlemen's agreement. It
has to do with the Internet -- and its ramifications for troop movements.

Even if all accredited war correspondents were to agree to keep their mouths
shut about troop movements, much of the world today is hooked up to the global
computer network. You may have noticed that President Bush, in his address to
the nation last week, referred to a Web address where relief donations could be
sent. Think about the newness of that: a president, preparing his people for
war, giving out an Internet address with the implicit knowledge most of the
public would understand it, and be able to use it.

And the U.S. troops aboard the ships heading for foreign waters and possible
battle -- some of the troops, in interviews as they left their bases here, said
that they planned to stay in touch with loved ones by using e-mail. Just that
quick.

So . . . in our very different world, how does the Pentagon -- or the military
command of any of our allies or enemies -- make certain some private citizen
somewhere in the world does not notice warships or warplanes, notify someone
somewhere who is deeply interested in just such information . . . and give away
secrets that can cost lives and lose battles? Put the traditional press aside
for a moment -- how do commanding officers keep anything silent in a universe
where instant communication is a keyboard tap away? Where anyone with a laptop
computer can get the news out faster than Edward R. Murrow could ever count on?

Scissors aren't going to be of any use this time around. Loose lips have a
potential power they never did before.

The Ominous New Power Of Loose Lips

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