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Stardate 20011124.1620 (Crew, this is the Captain): Matt Welch writes an excellent blog, and I owe him a great deal (like, about half my traffic at this point because of his multiple links to me). He's a pro, unlike me, and he writes today saying that my characterization of the press was too harsh. I tried to make clear that not all reporters are the way I described; perhaps even most are not. But it doesn't take many who are like that who are privy to confidential information and blab it to ruin the soup for all reporters.

There's a classic story about that from World War II. Just after Pearl Harbor, about the only force the US had in the Pacific to project power back against the Japanese was its force of submarines. For the first 18 months of the war, the subs were much less effective than anyone had hoped, because of a combination of completely bogus tactics learned before the war, poor commanders in submarines (much too timid) and faulty torpedoes. All that got straightened out by about the summer of 1943 and the submarines proceeded to lay waste to the Japanese merchant marine -- and a not inconsiderable part of the Japanese Navy. Representing less than 5% of the personnel of the US Navy serving in the Pacific, the submarines were responsible for 55% of the Japanese sinkings in the war and their contribution to the defeat of Japan cannot be underestimated. It was critical.

And at a certain point it became much more dangerous for the American submariners, because of a newspaper reporter who didn't have the sense to keep his mouth shut. At the beginning of the war, Japanese intelligence underestimated how deep American submarines could dive, so Japanese destroyers were setting their depth charges to go off too high. American subs could dive underneath them and pretty much be invulnerable to depth charging. This was quite the story, as you might imagine, and the submariners told their friends in the Navy, and it spread from man to man, and a reporter working for a Chicago newspaper picked it up -- and published it. Then a member of Congress talked about it in a speech in front of Congress. With all that publicity, the Japanese found out about it, and started setting their depth charges to go deeper -- and American submariners started dying.

After that, the submariners realized that they couldn't really trust anyone outside their service. They became known as the "silent service", not because of "run silent, run deep" but because they didn't talk to anyone else about what they did. Submarine officers who went to the O-club would remove their dolphins before doing so. That was the insignia worn on one collar which indicated that they were submariners. Ordinarily dolphins were worthy of respect; submariners recruited from the rest of the Navy and were generally regarded as picked men, the best of the best. But these officers didn't want it known. But if you watched closely and paid attention, you could pick them out. They were friendly and would talk to people, but only about unimportant things. They'd be the only ones there who never talked about what they themselves did. They'd talk shop, but never specifically about their own shop.

It wasn't just the press that the submariners didn't trust, it was even the rest of the Navy. It wasn't that they thought the press and regular Navy were out to get them; they weren't seen as enemies, merely as foolish. This is far from being the only time in history or the only military group that adopts such confidentiality. (For instance, the Special Forces are also like that.) It doesn't take many ambitious, unscrupulous or even simply overeager and careless reporters to ruin the soup for all of them. If the military wants to conceal what it is doing from reporters, it's because of long and bitter experience with how the press collectively misuses information. (discuss)

I lost all respect for Dan Rather during the Gulf War when he committed an on-air faux pas which almost gave away the game on the "left hook". Ironically, it happened when he was bitching about not being given enough access.

Update: CC sends in this link to an article discussing how the decision was made on the tactics used in Afghanistan, and providing details on Special Forces operations there. This article is a good example of what I'm talking about, because it was irresponsible to publish it. Much of what it discusses is still ongoing, and if it is indeed true and if it is accessed by the Taliban, it could endanger our special forces units still operating in Afghanistan.