Editor Backs Embed in Rumsfeld Incident but Criticizes Aftermath

By: Joe Strupp The editor/publisher of the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press offered support late Thursday for his embedded reporter, who has been criticized for prompting a national guardsman to ask Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a controversial question during a visit to Kuwait.

"I think he was doing what he felt he was embedded to do: tell the stories of the soldiers of this unit," said Tom Griscom, editor and publisher of the paper. But Griscom criticized the embed's story about the incident, which did not mention the reporter's connection to the soldier who asked the question.

The embed, Lee Pitts, sought a response from Rumsfeld about why military units in Iraq are lacking proper armor for many vehicles. A lengthy email that he wrote to a fellow reporter ended up on several Web sites, including the Romenesko site at the Poynter Institute, the Drudge Report, and E&P Online, which Griscom lamented.

"He is there to write stories, not make news himself," Griscom said of Pitts. The editor added that the recipient of the e-mail, whom he would not identify, should not have passed it along.

Griscom was communications director in the Reagan White House in 1987-1988.

He said Pitts' story on the incident, which ran Thursday, should have included an explanation of how the embed, barred from questioning Rumsfeld himself during an appearance in Kuwait Wednesday, convinced a Tennessee national guardsman to pose the question.

"In the rush of putting the story together, it was unfortunately a stitch that got lost," said Griscom. "But tomorrow, we will pick that stitch up." He has written an editor's note for the Friday paper.

Pitts has been covering the local guard unit since last summer, Griscom said, and went to Kuwait with the unit three weeks ago as an embedded reporter. Griscom said he had not spoken with the reporter since the e-mail was discovered, during a "blackout" period, but supported his effort to get Rumsfeld to comment on the issue.

"Lee has written the story about the armor problem several times, this is not an issue out of thin air," Griscom said. "We did a front page story on it last week and have done others."

The editor pointed out that Pitts only mentioned the possible question to the national guardsman, Specialist Thomas Wilson, and could not have forced him to ask it. "It is appropriate to talk to a soldier about what he would ask," Griscom said. "Then it is up to the soldier. The soldier asked the question." The question, in any case, drew loud and sustained applause from other soldiers in the town hall meeting.

In his email, Pitts wrote, "I just had one of my best days as a journalist today," and explained how he hooked up with two national guardsmen before the event. Only soldiers were allowed to ask questions of Rumsfeld.

Lawrence Di Rita, a Pentagon spokesman, released a statement yesterday noting that "Town Hall meetings are intended for soldiers to have dialogue with the secretary of defense. It would be unfortunate to discover that anyone might have interfered with that opportunity, whatever the intention."

But Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon press officer, told The New York Times that the episode had violated no rules and that no action would be taken against either Specialist Wilson or the reporter.

Still, Griscom commented that Pitts' drawing attention to himself via the lengthy email was not wise. "We ought to know," he explained, "that anything sent electronically can be passed to someone else."

He added: "One thing that bothered me was that none of my senior editors or myself were aware of the e-mail until noon [Thursday], about 24 hours too late."

Griscom would not say if the reporter who received the e-mail from Pitts and forwarded it on was disciplined. "We had a discussion about what we expect in relation to e-mails and I'll leave it at that," he said.

He said he had receive many calls from media on Thursday, from as far away as San Francisco, and also heard from "Rush Limbaugh listeners" along with supportive calls from soldiers' families.