Journalistic Jingoism...

Posted By Blackfive

I was in Starbucks getting my caffeine fix and I saw the headline of the Chicago Tribune:

U.S. plans Al Qaeda offensive - Sources say military is mapping operation to strike inside Pakistan

The Bush administration, deeply concerned about recent assassination attempts against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and a resurgence of Taliban forces in neighboring Afghanistan, is preparing a U.S. military offensive that would reach inside Pakistan with the goal of destroying Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, military sources said.

U.S. Central Command is assembling a team of military intelligence officers that would be posted in Pakistan ahead of the operation, according to sources familiar with details of the plan and internal military communications. The sources spoke on the condition they not be identified.

As now envisioned, the offensive would involve Special Operations forces, Army Rangers and Army ground troops, sources said. A Navy aircraft carrier would be deployed in the Arabian Sea.

Referred to in internal Pentagon messages as the "spring offensive," the operation would be driven by certain undisclosed events in Pakistan and across the region, sources said. A source familiar with details of the plan said this is "not like a contingency plan for North Korea, something that sits on a shelf. This planning is like planning for Iraq. They want this plan to be executable, now."

The Defense Department declined to comment on the planned offensive or its details.

...A series of planning orders--referred to in military jargon as warning orders--for the offensive were issued in recent weeks. The deadline for key planning factors to be detailed by the U.S. military was Jan. 21.

Sources said the plan against Al Qaeda would be driven by events in the region rather than set deadlines and that delays could occur. But military sources said the push for this spring appeared to be triggered by the assassination attempts on Musharraf, both of which came in December, and, to some extent, the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Hussein was captured after eight months of an intense military and intelligence effort on the ground in Iraq. Pentagon and administration officials, buoyed by that success, believe a similar determined effort could work in Pakistan and lead to the capture or killing of bin Laden, said sources familiar with the planning.

Thousands of U.S. forces would be involved, as well as Pakistani troops, planners said. Some of the 10,600 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan would be shifted to the border region as part of regular troop movements; some would be deployed within Pakistan.

The Tribune should have titled it - Hey Osama, Watch Out!

This makes my blood boil...You think that this is going to be a surprise attack? Not anymore thanks to the stellar reporting at the Tribune! And you all know someone who is heading over there and will certainly be part of any offensive in the area.

It was written by Christine Spolar - Tribune Foreign Coorespondent. This is Christine Spolar's email address. You also can contact the newspaper's public editor, Don Wycliff . If you decide to send her an email, please keep it professional. Here is my message to Spolar and Wycliff:

Dear Ms. Spolar-

I read your front page article today in the Chicago Tribune. I am very concerned that your article may jeopardize American lives, if and/or when the offensive is launched.

I have some very good friends there now, and some very good friends on the way to Afghanistan.

I would hope that, in your efforts to be a top journalist and get a front page article, you are considerate of the potential costs in lives that your writing may cause. That goes for your editor, too.

At best, you may have destroyed our chances for a surprise attack. At worst, you may have gotten some of our men and women killed.

Matthew
http://www.blackfive.net
Chicago

Please let the Tribune know that this is unacceptable.

Update 11:30 AM CST: Just received a response from Christine Spolar. Here it is:

Thanks for your letter. Having covered conflicts for years, including the Bosnian war and now the effort in Iraq since April, I too am aware of your concerns. They are my concerns as well. I too have good friends in uniform, in the Pentagon and on the ground.

I also believe that keeping abreast of what these plans is part of my job and the public, and that includes military personnel involved in such endeavors, has the right to know, to be educated and to judge for themselves these operations. Thanks again for your thoughts...C

It's a dodge and I am sure everyone expected the "right of free speech and the freedom of the press" argument...And BTW, I don't believe anyone has a right to know about planned operations (especially Special Operations like these) except for the military and their civilian oversight (DOD, Congress, Senate, President).

Update 6:30pm CST: Here's a few letters to the Tribune that I was copied on...

The outrage, anger and the hostility I feel at this moment are just words and can't begin to describe how I feel about your front page article in today's paper. If one US Service member is injured or killed because of your reckless and irresponsible reporting, I hope it stays on your conscience for the rest of your life. No matter how you found out about this plan, what you and the Tribune did is dead wrong.

I hope you have the courage to visit the family members of any one wounded, maimed or killed to explain to them your were complicit in causing their injury or death and the escape of Osama, if he is still alive.

Anything less makes you a moral midget and coward.

I suppose had you been a reporter in late May of 1944 your would have run a front page story about D-Day so Hitler and his Generals could have killed even more American, British and Canadian troops.

I don't want to sound like John Kerry but I am also a wounded Viet Nam Vet who was awarded a Bronze Medal. I know what it is to be shot at and hit. You don't!

Joe H
----------------------------------------------------

I was appalled to read on your web site the details of future American military operations ("U.S. plans Al Qaeda offensive", Jan. 28).

You and your sources have significantly compromised this operation. Will you follow-up this article with equally large headlines taking credit for the American casualties you cause, or the Al Qaeda operatives you help to escape?

Shame.

Bruce

Links: Via Instapundit, Daniel Drezner has a post on the possible offensive into Pakistan.

Smash has a round up of posts on this topic.

I hope Darren Kaplan is right.

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» This is unacceptable from The Bejus Pundit
Matty O'Blackfive has a piece up concerning the Chicago Tribune's trumpeting U.S. military ops planning. Matty's right. This sort of vanity reporting costs lives, and we shouldn't stand for it. Read Matty's post, and send an email to the Tribune.... [Read More]

Comments

[Matt-bro]

Holy shit! Who's side are those idiots on?! If this was 60 years ago, Roosevelt would have had Spolar in prison!

[roach]

I honestly think this could be a deliberate leak to get the Pakis off their asses (or else!).

[Blackfive]

Understood. Except that, even if it was a deliberate leak, the Tribune should not have reported it anyway.

[Pixy Misa]

Or it might be the lead-up to operations in Syria.

As Smash said, WHOEVER DISCLOSED this information to the media is engaged in either a disinformation campaign, or treason.

As for the paper, well, I doubt they're part of the disinformation loop.

[Lola]

I'm inclined to believe that this is a decoy and that only part of this publicly declared plan is true. Remember what happened at the beginning of the GWII?

[section9]

Hold your horses.

This was a planned leak. It's probably designed to perk up bin Laden's ears and get him moving. When he moves, he makes mistakes. When he moves, his retinue and medical people move with him.

This is a disinformation campaign. I promise you.

[Blackfive]

I understand your point; however, it still shouldn't be reported. Unless you are saying the the reporter is really a CIA plant...?

I am talking about Responsible Journalism. Not hypothesizing about who, what, or why info was leaked.

[Richard Aubrey]

Some years ago, the WaPo burned a POW rescue mission. Their response to outrage was similar, if not worse.
In this case, though, I don't see the problem.
First, there are enough of these articles pointing to everywhere on earth that nobody knows if he is the target. Or, to put it another way, everybody knows he's the target all the time. In which case, they have to act like they're the target permanently. That can't be sustained indefinitely. Eventually, nobody knows what is going to happen, or when, or where.
The primary bit of information to be drawn from this is that the new thrust won't be in Paki.
Probably.
None of this is not to say that any soldier putting his life in the hands of a journalist is doomed.
Just imagine preparing to step out into the dark over a hostile city depending for your life on this Spolar moron keeping it quiet. No thanks.
But in this case, that's not what's happening.
Besides, the Islamofascists have enough spies to know what's happening in time.

[axiom]

I see the Tribune is trying to score an interview with Pakistani brass.

Honestly, I heard about this story gasped. I know the freedom of the press is important, but they have the freedom to NOT report things too. Just like free speech isn't an open invitation to shout "FIRE" in a crowded theater a similar code applies to the press. At least I would adhere to that if I were in the media.

We just recently had a case brought by attorney's for Wen Ho Lee to get NY Times reporters, including David Sanger, to reveal their anonymous sources from the EPA. I believe the SCOTUS upheld the reporters right to conceal their sources due to the nature of the case.

There are better ways of reporting these facts without revealing precise plans.

[andy]

The Chicago Tribune was involved in something like this in WW2. Immediately after the Midway victory, the Trib mentioned that secret information (and alluded to cipher breaking) helped the victory. Marshall and King were livid but kept their mouths shut, so that the Japs wouldn't figure out that we had penetrated their communications. If the Trib had been nailed, the Japs might have figured out that we were decrypting their communications and changed things.

[Shannon Love]

Matt-bro,

Actually, 60 years ago the Tribune did publish classified information concerning America's "Rainbow" doctrine for fighting WWII. Everybody ignored this transgression at the time hoping that the bad guys would not notice. Some historians believe that the revelation that U.S. military planning focused on Germany helped prompt Hitler into declaring war on the U.S. thus sealing his fate.

[Sandy P.]

I dropped Pravda by the Lake about 1-1/2 years ago. We hope it's disinformation.

However, I did write, "It makes me wonder whether she should would have written about the "D-Day" plan before it happened because, after all, "keeping abreast of what these plans is part of my job and the public, and that includes military personnel involved in such endeavors, has the right to know, to be educated and to judge for themselves these operations." After all, who could argue with her reasoning? It also makes me wonder whether or not the Tribune would have published it.

[JACITELLI]

Unfortunately the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Case in point, during WW2, Bell Labs developed a very simple yet effective way of garbling FDR's telephone conversations with England. The NYT's I believe found out about it, reported it down to how it even works. German spies in NYC read the article and forwarded the information to the Nazi's.

The Nazi's then devised a way to snoop on the very sensitive conversations b/w Churchill and FDR. One such conversation detailed the invasion of Sicily. The Germans were waiting for us there, and thousands of Allied troops were killed and wounded all because the NYT couldnt keep the lid on something so crucial.

Traitors as far as I am concerned.

[Linda]

Bottom line: Ms. Spolar is an irresponsible journalist.

I hold on to the highest hopes that CENTCOM has time to amend their plans in order to turn her article into disinformation.

Finally, her reply to you was sheer, poorly edited arrogance: "I've been covering conflicts for years," she airily asserts. To add a dash of humor to the mix, she follows-up her claims of experience with one of the worst run-on sentences I've seen in a while.

This leads me to believe that we have a journalist who relies heavily on her editor for the clarity of her writing. I wonder how much she relies on her editor for thought, as well?

[Dick Eagleson]

Matt-bro,

I wish you were right about Roosevelt. In the context of a conversation about how secrets get spilled because there are always people who want to impress others with how well-connected they are, I saw the late, legendary submariner Edward "Ned" Beach on a History Channel documentary say that a certain U.S. Congressman he declined to name had revealed in an interview that many of our Pacific Fleet submarines had escaped from Japanese pursuit because they could dive deeper than the Japanese Navy thought they could and that the Japanese set their depth charges for too shallow an explode depth. Not long after, our sub losses spiked up. So far as I know, no U.S. Congressman was shot for impacted stupidity during WW2 - and no journalists or editors either - but there was at least one of each who should have been.

The way I see Spolar's story in the Trib, either the U.S. Military wanted the story out or it didn't. If the former, Spolar gets no particular kudos for reportorial expertise if she is, in effect, a dupe. If the latter, then a blindfold and a cigarette are definitely in order.

[axiom]

Ms. Spolar is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. I don't think they pride themselves on graduates of "run-on" sentences.

[Richard Cook]

I'm tellin' you right now that the journalist do not care if they have compromised an operation. I think those backwards a**holes would be rather proud of themselves.

[axiom]

Correct me if I am wrong, but when the US government wants to leak something don't they usually go to the same group of 25 or so high level reporters? Spolar doesn't strike me a high profile reporter so I'm guessing she went treasure hunting and found a chest.

[jay]

Got a kick out of Spoler's line that: "the sources spoke on condition that they not be identified."

No kidding!

[Christopher]

Shameful and the reply to your concern even more so. As Americans we naturally have an aversion to "secret" anything most of the time and reporters are always after the big story but we have to use some common sense here. SpecOP troops need secrecy to conduct their operations. Most of their training revolves around the elemnet of being able to pull off a job secretly and this compromises that secrecy. And even like Blackfive mentions, whether or not this information is a planned leak it is the perogative of the reporter to exercise common sense and not print such a story. Same for the editor.

It's a damn shame. Who knows how many lives have been lost to this kind of foolery.

[Ron Nord]

If anything Ms. Spolar was handed disinformatin and she and her editot bite or she was in a bar drinking and fell for the story. Or maybe she just made it up out of smoke and mirrors, her paper has pulled that kind of stuff before. She's small potatoes, no one is going to give her anything like this story, who does she think she works for, the New York Times or the Washington Post.

[gogman]

Has anyone considered that this may be a huge PsyOps operation and this information was deliberately "leaked"?

Perhaps we are rattling the saber just to see what crawls out a cave.

Just a thought.

-gogman-

[Promethea]

Spolar always writes a lot of extremely stupid stuff about the West Bank and the Intifada, so her writing is probably just as stupid here. She is a second-rate reporter who never really "gets" the big picture.

[Jon]

If Ms. Spolar is prosecuted, we will know that a line was clearly crossed, and we will have a big discussion about the merits of putting lives in danger in the name of 'the people have a right to know'.

If she is ignored, or simply rebuked by a Pentagon public statement, we now have to wonder whether the US is trying to let the buzz not reach Pakistan, or if it was indeed disinformation. Or if the story was just plain wrong. Or made up.

I wonder if she would yell "Cops!" to warn drug dealers if the police were closing in.

[Christopher]

According to Reuters Pakistan is saying it wouldn't allow the operation and the Pentagon is denying that any such operation is in motion.

[section9]

And you believe them?

[Tom the Friendly Ghost]

Would you believe I found out what the Trib did by reading the "Daily Times" out of Pakistan? And then I saw the story again by reading the "Straits Times" out of Singapore. And the Trib wants me to get home delivery? Riiight.

[Blackfive]

Tom - I think everytime they call I'm going to order a Steak Sandwich, a bloody mary, and a steak sandwich and put it on the Spolar's tab.

I'm not going to ever buy one again...Trib that is. I'll keep supporting my local bartenders and steak houses, of course.

[Christopher]

Section9: Of course I don't believe them, Pakistan itself has to disinform it's own populace along with any other number of Arab nations to show it isn't groveling to the US. The US is probably going through the motions of denying this in a ploy to perhaps "fake out" Osama into doing something stupid. Though I don't think Spolar an informant I do believe the US is doing something.

It's Reuters anyways so I might have difficulty believing them period. :)

[jremke]

i heard the same report on the radio yesterday,
1/28/04, it was a national talk radio program (abc radio i think)i was apalled, but not suprised. remember when the marines landed in mogadishu (at dawn)and the asshat press had the lights on for their cameras.

[Hucklebuck]

We should all bear in mind the recent track record of the mainstream media in regard to the current military action in Iraq: They've been wrong nearly 100% of the time. Remember Arnett's "stalled" war? The "new" war plan? The widely reported belief re massive causualties?

Fortunatly, they don't know shit about this. Don't sweat it. She's probablu got this one wrong, too.

[Hucklebuck]

We should all bear in mind the recent track record of the mainstream media in regard to the current military action in Iraq: They've been wrong nearly 100% of the time. Remember Arnett's "stalled" war? The "new" war plan? The widely reported belief re massive causualties?

Fortunatly, they don't know shit about this. Don't sweat it. She's probably got this one wrong, too.

[abc]

jesus christ listen to you losers. did you whine so loud when the WHITE HOUSE outed a CIA spy, thereby jeopardizing god knows how many lives of how many spies working for AMERICA around the world????

WHERE THE FRIG IS THE OUTRAGE???!!!!!! GET A LIFE"!"!

[Arty]

If Spolar believes the public has a right to know, then it follows that the public has a right to know who the source is.

[Northscorp]

Oh, please.

The US has plans to attack Canada. Plans to attack eastern europe, and central america. The Pentagon has plans to attack every single nation on earth, and a good number of States in the Union as well.

And operational senarios pose absolutely no threat to the well being of troops on the ground unless tactical information is provided.

So lets see what was leaked. A carrier will be in the Gulf! (well at least one group has been there since 1991). Soliders will be on the ground! (wow. land troops on land.)

Oh, sorry. We lose the element of surpise. Yeah. Opposing forces usually get the idea from preliminary shock and awe airstrikes and a bunch of SpecOps and OGO's trying to look like locals.

You should be asking why the commander-in-chief wants to put soldiers' lives on the line in another foriegn land, and what the conquences that deployment will mean for america..