Late last week, Defense Secretary said he was “grateful” to reporters for exposing the problems facing outpatients at Walter Reed Medical Center. Gates said he is “very disappointed we did not identify it ourselves,” but praised media reports for exposing a problem in need of attention.
To its credit, the Defense Department is responding quickly in the face of national outrage. To its detriment, part of the response includes ordering rehabilitating troops to shut up.
Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.
“Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
It is unusual for soldiers to have daily inspections after Basic Training.
Soldiers say their sergeant major gathered troops at 6 p.m. Monday to tell them they must follow their chain of command when asking for help with their medical evaluation paperwork, or when they spot mold, mice or other problems in their quarters.
It’s not unreasonable to think that daily room inspections are part of a new-found interest on the part of Pentagon officials in ensuring comfortable living conditions for troops recovering from serious injuries. Why wounded soldiers have to wake up early to have their rooms ready for inspection every day at 7am is less clear.
As for the media policy, it’s expected but harder to justify.
Obviously, Defense Department officials don’t want to suffer the embarrassment of front-page exposes in the Washington Post, in which convalescing troops are seen struggling with an inefficient bureaucracy, while living in dreadful outpatient facilities.
But the answer is not to impose new rules stopping troops from communicating with reporters. Indeed, had these wounded soldiers not talked to the media, they wouldn’t be getting the help they need now. If the Pentagon is “grateful,” as Defense Secretary Gates suggested, then why respond with what is, in practice, a gag order?
What’s more, the Navy Times also reported that the Pentagon responded to the Walter Reed revelations by cancelling future cooperation with the media.
The Pentagon also clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense Department medical facilities, to include suspending planned projects by CNN and the Discovery Channel, saying in an e-mail to spokespeople: “It will be in most cases not appropriate to engage the media while this review takes place,” referring to an investigation of the problems at Walter Reed.
In other words, a degree of transparency helped expose a problem, and prompted a response, so from now on, we’ll have less transparency.
Typical.