-Caveat Lector-
Pentagon Tightly Controls War Info
By CALVIN WOODWARD
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than two weeks after a stealth fighter-bomber crashed
in Yugoslavia, U.S. and NATO officials have not acknowledged for the record
that it was shot down. The success rate of the attacks is a mystery. Even
President Clinton's role in approving targets is an off-limits ``operational
detail.''
As the sky over Yugoslavia cleared intermittently, rhetorical fog in the
briefing rooms of Washington and Brussels began to disperse a bit, too. Signs
of progress in the air campaign have encouraged officials to be more open.
But they have yet to disclose numbers of hits and misses or discuss likely
percentages of success, and for reasons that go beyond the conflict at hand.
Controls on war information are being tightened in response to a perception
that military secrecy generally has gone lax since the Cold War.
``The leadership is taking a more conservative approach,'' Pentagon spokesman
Kenneth Bacon says. Both Defense Secretary William Cohen and Gen. Henry
Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ``think we ought to be as
stingy as possible in giving out information, which means we have to be
restrained with the press.''
The restraint has been evident not just in the scant specifics offered on
many days but in the broad aims of the NATO campaign, especially the loosely
defined goal to ``degrade'' the Serbian military.
``I don't get any impression of deliberate distortion,'' says Barry Zorthian,
chief U.S. government spokesman in Saigon during much of the Vietnam War.
``There certainly is some cautious withholding.''
Critics call a restrictive policy self-defeating.
``In today's world, it seems there's information out there one way or
another. You can't hide it,'' said retired Air Force Col. John Warden, a
planner of the Persian Gulf War air campaign. ``When you try to hide it, you
create a bad impression, in this case raising significant doubts about
strategy.''
NATO and U.S. officials have given examples of targets destroyed and shown
video, detail that has become more plentiful in recent days. Officials
generally have avoided ``score keeping'' or other quantifying information
that might be useful in helping the public judge whether the campaign is on
track. Privately, they have said the plane downed March 27 probably was hit
by a missile.
The limits resemble or are even tighter than those during the Gulf War, which
far exceeded those that existed during the Vietnam War.
In Vietnam, correspondents observed combat virtually unfettered and briefings
were detailed -- though misleading in their optimism. Many military officers
thought the press was too unrestricted in Vietnam, and some blamed war
coverage for the turn in public sentiment against America's war effort.
Bacon has cited several instances of loose lips causing complications,
including a report signaling NATO's interest in attacking the Interior
Ministry in Belgrade -- a fat target in any event -- that gave Serbs time to
empty the building.
The spread of the Internet and satellite TV ``gives the Serbs real-time
information,'' Bacon said, noting live broadcasts of Serbia-bound bombers
taking off. ``This is war on TV as it happens, even more than the Persian
Gulf War.''
Former Sen. Bob Dole, who served President Clinton as a special envoy in
Yugoslavia before the fighting started, said: ``I can see why you don't say,
`This is our target list.' But after the fact, then you ought to tell the
American people what happened.''
Bacon argues even post-bombing details could tell Serbs what they could not
find out from simply surveying damage.
Zorthian disputes that. ``There's reason not to get tempted to speculate and
interpolate too much,'' he said. ``There's no reason to hold back what you
know.''
Early in the Gulf War, U.S. officials said 80 percent of allied bombing
missions were succeeding, and Patriot missiles invariably were intercepting
Scud missiles headed for populated areas. The percentage was greeted
skeptically because no proof was furnished, and claims of Patriot hits were
shown after the war to have been overstated.
Political sensitivities play alongside tactical judgments in deciding what to
say.
When Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart ducked questions about a report that the
president has had the final say on some targets, he was refusing to confirm
or deny the sort of micromanagement that President Johnson exercised to ill
effect in Vietnam.
Then, it was a constant struggle to deal with the gap between the upbeat
``dissembling'' from Washington and the confused facts on the ground,
Zorthian said.
``Inevitably, we had it in Vietnam, we had it in the Gulf War: ... the
tendency to overstate the effect of air strikes,'' he said. ``You always face
the problem of believing there is much more damage by bombing than happens in
fact.
``They're wise not to interpret the information they have too extensively,
more broadly than is warranted. They ought to stick what they know.''
And, he said, tell it.
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