But our readers do care about the newspaper and its content. For a lot of them, it's the only newspaper they have. I have just returned from an 8-day tour of our military bases in South Korea. Our news editor accompanied me. We spoke to officers, NCOs, and civilians. Almost every one of them raised the subject of censorship with us, and they all thought it was wrong.

From these conversations, it is clear to me that the paper's credibility is almost gone. I suspect that what we found in Korea is also true in our other circulation areas. It's only my opinion because no one really knows, but I believe the paper is now read more for its sports and comics than anything else.

We urgently need reform at Stars and Stripes to restore the paper's credibility and independence, and it should begin immediately. The first and most important step is to place a civilian journalist with solid newspaper credentials in charge of all editorial functions. This person should be an outsider with no Stripes experience, and should be a contract employee who is not part of the Civil Service system.

I recommend that Congress ask the Society of Professional Journalists to form a screening panel to review applicants and nominate the top three candidates to DOD for final selection. This outside screening process is imperative, or you'll surely end up with a retired PAO colonel as editor.

Equally important is the removal of editorial control of the newspaper from the Unified Commands and the American Forces Information Service. Both of these agencies have demonstrated a remarkable inability to protect the paper from censorship and command influence. The GAO report solidly documents this failure. They have clearly forfeited any claim they might have to continued authority and responsibility.

Further, I firmly believe that if the newspaper remains under their control, they will only work to institutionalize the practices documented in the GAO report. Our Armed Forces do not deserve that.

The PAO Advisory Board should be abolished immediately. These boards are the primary instruments for exerting command control and influence over the paper's editorial policy. They are the direct equivalent of having your local chamber of commerce dictate editorial policy to your home town newspaper.

There is no real American newspaper that would tolerate such an absurd arrangement. Why should we?

Right now, Stars and Stripes is badly overstaffed with military officers. We have too many chiefs. In the Pacific, we have an Air Force colonel, an Army lieutenant colonel, and a Navy lieutenant commander. This is a wasteful use of military manpower. I am an officer, and I spent 24 years in the service, and I can assure you that is a fact.

Because of this overstaffing, our managing editor doesn't have much of a job. If he could be here today, he would gladly tell you this, and he'd tell you a lot more than this. The managing editor's primary duties are performed by the colonel and the lieutenant commander. So he has become a proofreader, and he is probably the most expensive proofreader in American journalism today.

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Also, Stripes does not need a colonel at the helm in order to maintain its image as the GI's newspaper. It is a GI's newspaper because it is read by GIs. A colonel is not a GI, as any GI will quickly tell you.

Likewise, we do not need a colonel assigned to the paper because of any war-time readiness requirements. This is just a fiction aimed at justifying a senior officer position. If we have a war and we suddenly find that we need a colonel, I can assure you the paper will function properly for the week or so it takes to fly one out to Japan or Germany.

Finally, the paper does need a special ombudsman, and it needs one badly. Again, an honest outsider who can hear complaints both about the newspaper and the personnel practices involving journalists that take place there. Personnel management at both Stripes newspapers is an unholy mess. It needs urgent reform.

Stars and Stripes is an important vital source of current news and information for our military personnel overseas. Of all the segments of our society, our Armed Forces should be the very last to have their news censored and managed. I refuse to believe the American people would want to deny our Armed Forces one of the most important freedoms that they're out there defending. Thank you for your time and attention.

Mr. HUTTO. Thank you, Mr. Brackett.

I perhaps should have withheld my question about whether the employees are happy or not.

[Laughter.]

Mr. HUTTO. I appreciate your speaking your mind. That's what we wanted you to do. I'm grateful to you.

I'd like to ask you a few questions. What is your GS ranking?

Mr. BRACKETT. I'm a GS-12, sir.

Mr. HUTTO. GS-12. Whom do you answer to?

Mr. BRACKETT. I answer directly to the managing editor, sir.
Mr. HUTTO. To the managing editor.

Mr. BRACKETT. He is a GS-13.

Mr. HUTTO. He answers to?

Mr. BRACKETT. He answers directly to the deputy editor-in-chief. Mr. HUTTO. Deputy editor-in-chief.

Mr. BRACKETT. Yes, sir. Deputy editor-in-chief who is a lieutenant commander and then his boss who is the editor-in-chief.

Mr. HUTTO. OK. You were in the private sector with Knight Ridder before you went to Stars and Stripes?

Mr. BRACKETT. Yes, sir, I was.

Mr. HUTTO. Why did you make that step? Was it a promotion, or what?

Mr. BRACKETT. You mean, from Knight Ridder to Stars and Stripes?

Mr. HUTTO. Yes.

Mr. BRACKETT. I was in London and my wife and I have spent most of our lives in Asia, and I had worked in Asian journalism. It's our home, and this opportunity became available. I'm a retired officer, I know Asia very well, I know journalism very well, and it seemed like a perfect match up.

Mr. HUTTO. How long have you been in that job?
Mr. BRACKETT. Five years now, sir.

Mr. HUTCHENS. Mr. Chairman, I might add that it was I who hired Dewey Brackett at the Stripes. I did so because of his very distinguished record in the civilian sector, and also his military history. Dewey didn't mention this, but I think he spent most of his Army career as an enlisted man, and then became an officer later in his career and had quite a career in counterintelligence during Vietnam. There's a lot about him that made him just the right person, I think, a good balance between military and civilian points of view for the job as Pacific editor.

Mr. HUTTO. You've indicated that it should be civilian managed, in other words, take the military out of it. So you obviously see that constant conflict between the uniformed military and the civilian staff?

Mr. BRACKETT. Yes, sir. I didn't want to go on at length about some of the things that I find difficult here, but I don't think there's any conflict between the editor-in-chief as an officer and the editor-in-chief as an editor. I think there's no conflict at all. The officer will always dominate.

Either that, or as Colonel Stevenson proved, you will get fired. It's just that simple. You're either going to do what the command says out there, and whether they tell you to do it or not is immaterial. That makes no difference. I mean, if you

Mr. HUTTO. Are you telling me then that the censorship comes from higher up than the editors-in-chief?

Mr. BRACKETT. Yes, sir, I think it does.

Mr. HUTTO. OK. So the editor-in-chief, the people assembled there to work on the Stars and Stripes, that's not where the problem is as you see it. It's higher than that? Is that correct?

Mr. BRACKETT. Yes, sir, very much higher than that. I would like to say for the record that I think Colonel Montgomery is one of the most blameless men in this entire situation that's going on here. Mr. HUTTO. I know he has a distinguished military record, and he is a fine officer.

Mr. BRACKETT. I think he has done exactly what they want. What we're dealing with here is a set of attitudes, a set of command attitudes. It's just as I said in my statement. They don't want certain types of stories to appear in certain places in the newspa

per.

That is communicated to the editor. He has to understand that framework and work within those parameters. If he doesn't, then the PAOS and the commanders are going to take steps to get rid of him, as they have done.

Mr. HUTTO. But if we civilianized it, it would have to be all the way. I mean, it would have to be contracted, and it couldn't be governmental, could it? You'd still have that same pressure, wouldn't you?

Mr. BRACKETT. No, sir. I think there is a way, as I pointed out in my statement. The way to handle it is simply this. You make it a contract position so he's not part of the civil service. He will serve, or she, whoever the editor is who's appointed, will serve for 3 to 4 years in a nonrenewable contract, so the man comes in knowing that he's going. That way, he is not under the pressures.

The other thing is that he should report directly to the Assistant Secretary

Mr. HUTTO. He knows he is going at the end of his tour? Mr. BRACKETT. He is going at the end of his tour. He will be a civilian editor who is not part of the system, in other words.

Mr. HUTTO. But he could be fired during that time.

Mr. BRACKETT. Well, for malfeasance, of course, anyone could have their contract terminated, or if you catch him with his hand in the cookie jar, something remotely, some sort of problem like that. But I think what he should do is report directly to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. That should be his boss. Complaints about him should be handled through that chain. He should not be answerable to people at the unified command level.

It's the unified command here that is causing the problem. That's what it is. It should be taken out from under that command. As long as it's under that command, you gentlemen are going to have a censored newspaper with the news in it managed.

Mr. HUTTO. Mr. Hutchens, you were talking about classified material. Wouldn't you agree, though, that in the Washington area, it's common for these slips-

Mr. HUTCHENS. Leaks.

Mr. HUTTO. Leaks are common occurrences, and we often-times have classified hearings and then we see what we'd talked about the next morning in the newspaper, sometimes even beforehand.

But being a governmental publication, as the Stars and Stripes is, it would seem to me that you have to have the discipline to obey if something is classified. I don't see how a Government publication could violate that.

Mr. HUTCHENS. I don't think it's necessary, Mr. Chairman, if the Pentagon in this instance treated Stars and Stripes just the way it would treat any other newspaper, no more and no less, in terms of its access to classified information.

This I believe is also spelled out in the regulations that Stars and Stripes reporters, for example, are to be treated just like any other media. But they're not. I mean, I can remember an admiral in the Philippines ordering one of our reporters into uniform one time, even though it was our direction that Stars and Stripes employees would wear civilian clothes.

I don't know if that answers your questions.

Mr. HUTTO. Well, I can understand when some other newspaper has reported on something and you're precluded from it, I can understand the frustration of that.

I'm just trying to get to the point that you do have to have a discipline if you're governmental and something is classified, it seems to me you would have to abide by that.

Mr. HUTCHENS. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would say if it were a UPI or AP story that contained leaked classified information that was getting disseminated every place else, that there shouldn't be any problem in running it in Stars and Stripes identified as an AP or UPI story.

Mr. COFER. The one point I think the Chairman's trying to make is, and we've had it here on the committee, there are certain things I think newspapers report that maybe, say, CIA, for example, that the administration and the CIA do not declassify that information.

I think it's incumbent on employees of the Federal Government and members of Congress that we may talk about something, but until that data is formally declassified by the Department of Defense or the CIA, then you can't talk about it. I don't see how that influences-what you're trying to say is, just because some information may be disclosed which is secret, or confidential in nature, just because a private sector newspaper has disclosed it, then the Government entity should also have the right to disclose it.

Mr. HUTCHENS. Yes.

Mr. COFER. I don't think that's a valid comparison. You still have the law of the United States Congress and the land of disclosing secret or classified information until it is declassified by the Department of Defense.

Mr. HUTCHENS. Excuse me. Are you saying then that there should have been a news blackout in the Stars and Stripes about the Pentagon papers.

Mr. COFER. I would believe you have to interpret the law as of the time that that disclosure was made. I think Mr. Brackett being a former intelligence officer would probably have the same opinion, if you read the law. I'm not saying whether you agree with the law or not. The law is that no one can disclose confidential or secret information until it has been declassified by the appropriate authorities, is that not correct, though?

Mr. BRACKETT. This isn't clear in the charter that we operate under.

Mr. COFER. I mean, I'm talking about the law, not your charter. Mr. BRACKETT. Yes. The law, you're absolutely correct in that. But the problem persists in our charter there. What do you do, for example, if AP and UPI have it and they've already sent it around the world, not only to U.S. newspapers but to everyone else, classified information, and a story containing classified information, and we get it. The Pentagon papers is a very good example.

Now, I think what the Charter refers to is that in our local reporting, if we come across classified information, we will not report that. I don't think it means to exclude things that are routinely reported by the wire services, though. I think that's the difference. Mr. COFER. Well, we have assumed, even though the wire services disclosed it, it is still technically classified information legally? Mr. BRACKETT. Yes.

Mr. HUTTO. OK. Mr. Hutchens, I take it, though, that this was an exception. This is not something that happened often, is it?

Mr. HUTCHENS. This is the only time I can remember, Mr. Chairman. I can remember sometimes simply because I or members of the staff were there, that we would gain access to classified information, probably information that we shouldn't have had in the first place. Didn't we publish because of that special access. I suspect that the same practice applies today.

But, again, and the case I cited, I never followed up on this but I don't think it had any, I don't think it should have been classified in the first place. Maybe it wasn't even classified, maybe it was just this general blowing smoke.

Mr. HUTTO. Mr. Ray.

Mr. RAY. Mr. Brackett, you had mentioned that you had done some extensive traveling and picked up a great number of serious