Information at War. Philip Seib

episodes not related to Vietnam set the stage for later tensions. Both centered on Cuba: the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 and the Missile Crisis of October 1962. In each instance, the flow of information to the public was significantly limited by behind-the-scenes agreements between the White House and leading news organizations.

      Trying to maintain secrecy about the upcoming American-sponsored invasion of Cuba, the White House pressured the New York Times and several other publications to withhold, or at least modify, stories before the invasion date, lest they tip off Fidel Castro’s regime about the coming attack. They agreed and did so. Nevertheless, the invasion was a disaster; almost all of the 1,400 US-backed anti-Castro Cubans were killed or captured as they went ashore at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba’s southern coast.

Although Kennedy had orchestrated the pressure campaign to limit coverage, he later told Times managing editor Turner Catledge, “Maybe if you had printed more about the operation you would have saved us from a colossal mistake.” Catledge later observed: “On the one hand he condemned us for printing too much, and in the next breath he condemned us for printing too little. He wanted it both ways, and he did not change my view that the newspapers, not the government, must decide what news is fit to print.”³²

      As we will see, journalists deferring to the White House is not uncommon when “national security” is cited. Those in the higher echelons of government often seem to believe that “We know more and we know better than you do,” with “you” encompassing not just the news media but the broader public as well. Sometimes the officials are correct; the breadth of their information sources – which may include the intelligence community and others not available to the press or the public – might give them enhanced perspective on events of the moment. But a government’s access to information does not, in itself, always lead to wisdom, and journalists generally agree that they should resist pressure even when it is dressed up as an appeal to patriotism.

      Compared to the Bay of Pigs situation, the 1962 Missile Crisis was a very different matter, as the stakes involved were so enormous. At issue was not an invasion of Cuba by a ragtag military unit, but rather a real danger of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union because of the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Alerted by aerial reconnaissance photos, Kennedy had decided to impose a naval quarantine on Cuba as part of a strategy to force the Kremlin to remove the missiles. “Quarantine” meant a blockade, which under international law constitutes an act of war and, in this case, could easily have led to a confrontation between American and Soviet naval vessels. The United States was poised to launch airstrikes and an invasion force if the missiles were left in place, and US bombers armed with nuclear weapons were ready to attack the Soviet Union. Kennedy planned to address the American people and the rest of the world on Monday evening, October 22, and he was counting on the Soviet leadership not knowing beforehand about the American response to the crisis.

So, when Kennedy learned that the New York Times and Washington Post were prepared to run stories about the quarantine and US troop movements before the speech, the President asked Times publisher Orvil Dryfoos and Post publisher Philip Graham not to print information that would give the Kremlin time to issue its own ultimatum before Kennedy’s address. Graham quickly agreed, but the Times moved more slowly. Washington bureau chief James Reston called the president and, citing the agreement by the Times the previous year to withhold information about the Bay of Pigs, asked: “If we hold out on our readers now, are we going to be in a war against the Russians before we print another edition? Some of us wonder whether you are asking for secrecy until after the shooting has begun.” In response, Kennedy promised, “There will be no bloodshed before I explain this very serious situation to the American people.”³³

      With that, the Times agreed, and it published only a vague report about “an air of crisis” in Washington. Kennedy gave his speech, which included this frightening message: “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”³⁴ After an exceptionally tense six days, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev declared (after the United States had secretly agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey) that the missile sites in Cuba would be dismantled. The crisis was over.

      These two Cuban crises illustrate how the news media operated as a gatekeeper determining what information reaches the public. As a matter of Constitutional law, news organizations could not be ordered to withhold information, but shared perceptions of national interest sometimes fostered de facto partnership. The public’s “right to know” became secondary to what news executives, in collaboration with the government, defined as a “need to know.” Between the government and the leading news organizations, a chokehold could be applied to the flow of information. Government officials and journalists could negotiate among themselves the timing for the public being able to learn important facts about a particular situation.

      In 1962, was the withholding of information a proper role for the news media? During the Missile Crisis, the public was left in the dark, albeit briefly, but the exigencies of the situation may have dictated news organizations’ restraint as being in the public’s interest. According to Graham Allison, when the missiles in Cuba were first discovered, Kennedy’s national security adviser McGeorge Bundy told the president that they probably had a week before the news leaked. Kennedy took six days to formulate his response and “noted afterward that if he had been forced to make his decision in the first 48 hours, he would have chosen the air strike rather than the naval blockade – something that could have led to nuclear war.”³⁵

From the perspective of those at the White House, this collaboration between the press and the government was a good thing, as diplomacy had time to work and defuse the situation. But the gatekeeper role cited here has changed considerably in recent years. With the presence of expanded broadcast outlets and the arrival of social media, there are now so many information “gates” that they cannot be controlled by a few media executives. Today, rather than having Kennedy’s seven days to devise a plan, the time during which secrecy could be maintained would probably be closer to seven hours. If Twitter, YouTube, and other such venues had existed in October 1962, they would almost certainly have been filled with individuals’ reports about troop movements in Florida, leaks from people in government supporting and opposing the administration’s proposed measures, disinformation from the Soviets, and other content – some of it accurate and some of it not. With social media available, it would be relatively easy to circumvent any limitation on information, no matter how high-minded the intent. The president would have faced a far more demanding timetable for deciding what to do.

      Even in the early 1960s, the government’s reliance on “national security” as a rationale for discouraging journalistic enterprise was wearing thin as a new, aggressive corps of correspondents made their presence felt. In their work during the initial years of the American presence in Vietnam, a number of these journalists reflected a more adversarial approach to covering their country’s military operations and a more confrontational attitude toward policymakers. In many ways, this was a contest for control of information, with news professionals rejecting the notion that they should be merely conduits for government-generated material and be deferential when the government wanted information altered or suppressed. They increasingly embraced their independence in their role as the principal providers of information to the public.

      Among the most notable of these journalists was David Halberstam of the New York Times. Halberstam was not yet 30 years old when he arrived in Vietnam in mid-1962, and he soon became frustrated by what he considered stonewalling and false information from US officials – civilian and military – in the country. So, he went off on his own. He wrote to an editor at the Times: “There are no briefings to attend, no easy way of coverage. The only way to get a story here is to walk through the swamps and climb the mountains and ride the helicopters into battle. I have been shot at innumerable times.”³⁶

      Halberstam saw it as a holy mission to tell his readers what was really going on in a war that, as yet, was receiving little attention