As many of you know, David Axe spent the last few months reporting regularly from Iraq for Defense Tech and other publications. Then, two weeks ago, those reports abruptly stopped.
In the online edition of Editor & Publisher, David explains why:
In early February, I was embedded at a remote Iraqi Army training base, and interviewing a U.S. officer about the development of Iraqi security forces when a sour-faced U.S. Army sergeant pulled up in a Humvee. He ordered me to put away my cameras and get in.
“You’re in violation of regulations,” he said. I thought it was a joke. So did the officer. But the sergeant persisted. So I apologized to my interviewee, stowed my gear and climbed into the Humvee.
Over the next 36 hours, I was shuttled from base to base and finally to Kuwait — under armed guard for all but the final leg. I never got an official explanation for what was happening. From my guards and others, I gleaned that I had published supposedly sensitive information on my blog at www.noahshachtman.com, thus allegedly endangering U.S. forces and disqualifying me for a military embed.
David Axe probably went too far, risking soldiers lives, and the interest of the country.
my thoughts too pedestrian but then again these guys here running the site always seem very responsible so i do wonder where the wrong doing occurred. maybe someone will go back and search through to try and find out but i cant be bothered. shame though
Obviously both too lazy to click a link too.
From the article Noah linked at Editor and Publisher:
“It turns out that the “classified information” in question concerned radio jammers that the U.S. Army uses to defeat Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), the biggest killers in Iraq. Understandably, my editors were interested in the military’s efforts to counter IEDs. I got the info in an on-the-record interview with Army 1st Lt. Derek Austin, who apparently didn’t know it was supposed to be secret. Also, I had checked the info against public websites like http://www.globalsecurity.org, leading me to believe that there was nothing sensitive about it.
The Army’s claim that I was endangering U.S. troops by betraying their secret weapons didn’t hold up too well. But then, it didn’t have to. On the ground in Iraq, the Army is the highest authority, simply by virtue of its near monopoly on security and safe transport.”
Obviously Axe forgot, or didn’t give a damn about the word OPSEC. I agree he has a right to do his stories but has no right to help the enemy.
Back it the states soldiers and their family’s are taught to use care and caution as to the content of their communications, remember Geraldo Rivera with the “line in the sand” act he pulled some years ago. The Axe article “To armor or not to Armor” was a good example of telling people that these are all of their eggs they have in their backet.
This article was a good reason to get him the hell out of there before he did more damage, just for the sake of being awarded a silly trophy for journalism, to add to his already inflated ego.
This guy reminds me of Jane Fonda, and Geraldo Rivera rolled into one.
And YES, I’am a vietnam Vet, old but still remember.
Hi again Noah,
You have a lot of readers who don’t click your links, it seems.
David Axe makes it clear – he did NOT violate OPSEC, all the information he gave DefenseTech was already available through well known sources such as globalsecurity.org.
Here’s my post – I will say it if no-one else will.
“What a dumb move by the military. It seems to me to be simply a case of kneejerk overreaction and exersize of power simply because they have it but, since DefenseTech is not the most rigfhtwing and hawkish of military websites and doesn’t slavishly adulate all the shiny tinker-toys and the top brass, it may be a more deliberate vindictiveness.”
Regards, Cernig
something i noted in the article was ‘With more than 2,200 Americans dead in the so-called War on Terror’ wtf is all this so called buisness??? that sounds alot like the BBC’s power of nightmares program saying that proved to be all to false. This is not any sort of ‘So called war on terror’ it is a war on terroism yes but i hardly find it suprising they didnt want axe there when he calls it a ’so called war on terror’ i dont think even a deluded john kerry would call it a ’so called war on terror’ and i certainly dont think the victims of global terrorism would think its a fake ’so called war on terror’ either. Good ridence to bad crap i say if thats the attitude of the guy. Its in the same league as John Simpson from the BBC calling the 7/7 bombers ‘misguided criminals’ , whatever next eh i guess axe will be telling us the wars ‘all for oil’ or some such lame crap.
ShepUK,
It’s a “so-called War on Terror”, because terror is an emotion and you can’t wage war on it any more than you can wage a war on happiness or loneliness. Besides, there weren’t many terrorists in Iraq until we invaded the place and prepared a battlefield for them. Now they flock over the borders to fight us and kill Iraqis. At the same time, we’ve created the conditions for homegrown terrorism in Iraq by giving Iraqis something to resist … and an excuse for exercising ages-old vendettas.
Terrorism has been around for a long time. The civilized world has fought it for a long time. This “War on Terror” label is an effort to create box into which a lot of sundry (and dubious) adventures can be crammed.
And if you think any of the above is untrue, I challenge you to spend a few months in Iraq and see for yourself.
–David Axe
with respect i think you have just answered what i thought and most probably whoever booted you out thought. And hell if i was in command or what ever there and noticed that attitude then i’d have probably done the same. If we had had people with such negitive attidude during ww2 we wouldn’t have gotton anywhere, I’m not trying to get personal in some digital debate and i do repect you greatly for going out there which is more then i have i’ll agree 100%. Its just your whole argument is crap really such as there were no terrorists in Iraq before, something i think we all know is simply not true, yes it is correct to say the evidence isnt available to prove it in a 100% accurate way that would hold up in a court room but do you honestly think people like Saddam should be ruling over people, i think someone like yourself even though you’ve got an obviously intelligent mind would have only stood a small chance of having a tortue free/dictator ship free decent life if you’d have grown up in Iraq. Personally i think dictators all around the world should be gotten rid of but thats just me. Besides Sammy never complied with the damn ceasefire from the first gulf war and was milking the UN under the terrible Oil for food crap, what more reasons you want to kick an asshole like that outa rule!
Good Morning Folks,
The DoD has used the selected access of Journalist as a means of controling the information comming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, the inspiration for this “Information Control” is allegedly the former Presidental National Security Advisor Condalezza Rice, now our sec. of State and to give her credit it has worked.
Her position was simple. Unlike the first Gulf War where access of the Press was limited and critics got air space, remember Peter Arnett and Bernard Shaw, nobody in this Administration wanted to have that happen again, just let ‘em come along for the ride.
If we don’t like what they report give ‘em the boot. It has worked, all the media has been in lock step with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld since the begaining.
Those of us who have followed the wars since the begaining have seen a constant pattern of control of information comming out of the war zones. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that everybody reporting the wars are on the same message.
David got 86ed. because he is a journalists who post on a site that doesn’t buy all of the Bush message and refuses to be spoon fed the daily grul of the DoD/Pentagon spinners.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Good on you David Axe for keeping true to your journalistic ethics and morals. You serve your country by questioning your countries behaviour.
There’s a story about a journalist in the Pacific Theater in WW2 who discovered after Midway that the US Navy had broken the Japanese naval codes. He worked for the ferociously anti-Roosevelt Chicago Tribune, which printed the story he filed, flabbergasting the Navy and the President, who demanded an investigation.
The investigation revealed that the reporter was well-liked and respected by the naval officers he had come into contact with. Among other things, he had been on the Lexington when she went down and had helped get the wounded off. He hadn’t done anything underhanded but had asked questions and processed the answers which the Navy investigators concluded was “just good reporting.”
In the end, of course, the reporter hadn’t committed any crime by knowing something and telling his editor: if a crime was committed, it was committed by the Tribune, which had actually published the offending article. In those apparently-unlamented “Dark Ages,” the US Government could not hold a trial in camera. all criminal proceedings were public because of the primitive belief that the Constitution forbade secret tribunals. The Navy advised Roosevelt to let the matter drop rather than send the press and Japanese intelligence tearing through back issues of the Chicago Tribune looking for the article that got the editors indicted.
I offer this as a bit of historical perspective, along with the observation that the Japanese Empire and the Third Reich offered a far more credible threat to our way of life than car bombers in Iraq or Afghan cave-dwellers. Our civilization is becoming wealthier and more sophisticated, but not necessarily more enlightened.
I enjoyed your reporting, Axe, and I doubt the Iraqis learned anything new from your work. They seem to be doing just fine. But I and a lot of other readers needed some perspective on what was going on and that’s why we kept checking in to read your posts.
I know that I’m going to miss what I considered to be one of the sanest sources of Iraq info around.
But what can you do? As you said, they’ve got the monopoly on safety…
David was “axed” out because he put words in my husband’s mouth! He wrote things that my husband did not say, then tired to blame Derek for “not knowing” it was a secret!! Shame on you for not taking reasponsiblity for the stuff you write!!
James: “In those apparently-unlamented “Dark Ages,” the US Government could not hold a trial in camera. all criminal proceedings were public because of the primitive belief that the Constitution forbade secret tribunals.”
You should perhaps study history and law a bit more. That WWII reporter was a US citizen and not a combatant, let alone an illegal combatant. No noncombatants such as journalists have of late been tried secretly, or indeed at all, for their reporting. And the only US citizens whom the Bush Administration has wished to try in military tribunals (Hamdi and Padilla) were caught either overseas or immediately upon arrival from overseas, in accordance with ex parte Quirin (1942). The only thing unusual about our treatment of illegal combatants now vs. historically is that we have not had any executions recently.