NATO News Blackout

In Paris' Palais de Chaillot last week, workmen put the finishing touches on NATO's elaborately furnished, brand-new press conference room. At one end of the well-appointed room rises a stage for briefing officers, flanked by a photographers' gallery, a glass-enclosed television room and simultaneous translation booths so that newsmen would not miss a word of what was said. There is only one trouble. The 160 newsmen regularly covering NATO know from past experience that comparatively little will be said for publication. Reason: NATO and its military arm SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe) have been blanketed by such a curtain of "security" that even legitimate news is consistently blacked out.

One of the bars to free flow of news to the world is the fact that all decisions of NATO's council to release news have to be unanimous; any one of the 14 member nations can block such a proposal. Though information officers on NATO's staff have fought to get more news out, military men have been afflicted with what NATO Secretary General Lord Ismay called a "secrecy phobia." Correspondents also complain that incoming SHAPE officers have no idea of 1) how to deal with the press, and 2) how to use NATO news to counteract Communist propaganda.

Last summer SHAPE refused to let correspondents cable the location of new bases, though French Communist papers managed to find out enough to print a map of them. Newsmen were refused information on a new headquarters building, though details of the building's vital "war room" were printed in the Communist papers. They had picked up the information from workmen. The blackout on news has also prevented SHAPE from counteracting propaganda from Moscow. When Malenkov recently took a backhanded slap at SHAPE by saying Russia's armed forces were no bigger than in 1939, NATO officials refused to comment to newsmen. Not until a month later, when the matter was no longer in the news, did Lord, Ismay say weakly: "I would say that [Malenkov's claim] is not exactly truthful by a very long way."

By cutting off newsmen from the facts about NATO's concrete achievements in building up SHAPE'S power, some SHAPE and NATO officials feel that NATO has failed to justify the billions of dollars contributed by member nations. Said one top SHAPE officer: "When military expenses begin to eat up to two-thirds of [member nations'] budgets, it's necessary to have more & more of a sense of accountability to the public rather than less & less."

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