Military Paper Challenges Defense Dept.

[Woodmonkey]

Military Paper Challenges Defense Dept.


WASHINGTON — Top editors at the military newspaper Stars and Stripes are asking for full disclosure of the paper’s relationship with a Department of Defense publicity program, called America Supports You, after disclosures that money for the program was funneled through the newspaper.

The newspaper’s two top editors have asked that the acting publisher, Max D. Lederer Jr., and the Pentagon official who oversees the program, Allison Barber, release details of a relationship that involves employees of the newspaper’s business department overseeing contracts on behalf of America Supports You. The program was established three years ago to build public support for the troops.

“This is not how an editorially independent newspaper should conduct itself,” the executive editor, Robb Grindstaff, and managing editor, Doug Clawson, said in a Dec. 8 letter to Mr. Lederer and Ms. Barber, and copied to the secretary of defense. The letter added that the refusal to release information was damaging morale on the editorial side of the paper.

“The integrity and credibility of both Stars and Stripes and the D.O.D. public affairs department with our audience is negatively impacted by this continuing scenario,” Mr. Grindstaff and Mr. Clawson wrote.

The newspaper, financed in part by the Pentagon, is part of the American Forces Information Service and reports ultimately to Ms. Barber, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for public liaison and internal communications.

The editors’ letter follows an e-mail message sent in November by six midlevel editors of the newspaper requesting Mr. Lederer’s resignation after he failed to respond to their request that he release documents detailing the paper’s financial dealings with America Supports You.

Thomas P. Skeen, the newspaper’s senior editor in the Pacific who signed the e-mail message, said the issue came down to the credibility of the newspaper.

“To me personally it was just hypocrisy at its worst,” Mr. Skeen said of the refusal to release the details of the relationship between the newspaper and the program.

In an interview, Ms. Barber said that there were no plans to release the details and that all money spent by Stars and Stripes had been reimbursed.

America Supports You has been the subject of an inquiry by the Defense Department’s inspector general. The audit is one of four examining the office of the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, according to the inspector general’s office.

The inspector general inquiry is looking at the relationship between America Supports You and Stars and Stripes, which have different types of financing. Because Stars and Stripes relies partly on advertising revenue, it operates with fewer guidelines and restrictions than other Pentagon programs that rely solely on appropriated funds, including America Supports You.

Ms. Barber said the choice to involve the Stars and Stripes business department was made out of expediency and had nothing to do with the looser financing regulations.

An audit, announced in October, is examining whether the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference, a Pentagon outreach program that educates civilian leaders about the military, is in compliance with the law and Defense Department policies.

After a Stars and Stripes reporter, Jeff Schogol, discovered that the inspector general’s office had widened the inquiry to include the newspaper, he investigated and wrote articles that the newspaper published. Documents have been posted on the paper’s Web site, Stars and Stripes: Independent U.S. military news from Iraq, Afghanistan and bases worldwide, that describe payments, including a $499,000 purchase agreement between Stars and Stripes and a contractor doing work for the America Supports You program. The documents stipulate that work be submitted to employees on the business side of the paper for an advertising program and a Web site for America Supports You.

In November, Mr. Lederer sent an e-mail message to employees conceding that using the newspaper as a contracting agent for America Supports You might have been unwise and that more debate was necessary.

Perception of objectivity has always been a thorny issue for the editorial staff because the paper is supposed to be free from government censorship — but is owned and partly financed by the government.

By statute, the newspaper is guaranteed editorial independence. There are stipulations, including that the newspaper cannot knowingly publish classified information that has not been disclosed elsewhere.

Ms. Barber said it was only recently that the news staff voiced concerns about the relationship with the publicity program. “What I would say is if we’ve had the America Supports You contract for maybe two years, and they didn’t even know about it, then clearly there is that established firewall that you have to have in an organization that is a First Amendment organization,” she said.

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