Censorship at the Pentagon

The Defense Department's new security information order, which newsmen predicted would create a brownout of news from the Pentagon, last week produced a byproduct they did not expect. In Washington, Illinois Democratic Congressman William Dawson announced that his Government Operations Committee is launching an investigation to find out whether the Administration is withholding "pertinent and timely information from [the press]." A special subcommittee plans to question everyone from Syndicated Columnist Drew Pearson to the Washington Post and Times Herald's Managing Editor J. Russell Wiggins, chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Ever since Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson decreed that news put out by or extracted from the Pentagon must be "constructive" (TIME, April 18), newsmen have been worried. Such a policy is just the thing for Government officials who want to cover up their own mistakes by withholding "nonconstructive" news. In practice, reporters got less and less news at the Pentagon. When Wilson named R. (for Richard) Karl Honaman, 59, as his new information chief, newsmen were even more concerned. He had never been a newsman, and what press experience he had gained was as Director of Publication for the Bell Telephone Laboratories. His only recent Government experience was as a censor for the Department of Commerce. By last week, newsmen's complaints about Honaman and the news brownout at the Pentagon prompted the congressional probe.

Check List. Most of the furor centered around Honaman's definition of "constructive" news. Said Honaman: "There are . . . many cases where demands for information which take up the time of people with busy schedules do not truly meet the requirements of being useful or valuable, nor yet very interesting to the public." The A.S.N.E.'s Wiggins promptly pointed out that Honaman's definition meant that he--and not newsmen--would decide what the public is likely to be interested in.

Last week reporters turned up another source of complaint. They discovered that Army field commands had received "balance sheets for strategic information" prepared under Honaman's direction. The forms were designed so that information officers could check off answers to a series of questions that would supposedly help them decide whether information requested by reporters would be "helpful" or "harmful" to U.S. interests, e.g., "Does the information have much/little helpful/ harmful effect on world opinion?" Taken literally, said one of the officers who received the form, the check list would make him turn down virtually all reporters' requests for information. Under fire for the check list and his fuzzy policies, Honaman got himself into even hotter water with the press by suggesting that editors should voluntarily refrain from publishing any information that they thought might be helpful to the Russians, even if it was not classified.

Feathers in a Windstorm. Wiggins spotted the flaw in that. Said he: "The newspapers . . . will not join in a conspiracy with this or any other administration to withhold from the American people nonclassified information . . . Honaman is asking them in effect to assume a censorship and suppression role which the Government itself is unwilling to undertake." Added the Scripps-Howard Washington Daily News: "Trying to pin him down . . . is like attempting to retrieve a handful of feathers in a windstorm."

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