Unembedded journalist's report provokes military ire

Washington Post
March 27, 2003
By Howard Kurtz

A reporter who never signed up for the Pentagon's embedding program in Iraq has run afoul of the military.

Phil Smucker, who writes for the Christian Science Monitor, told his paper yesterday that military police were going through his belongings and were concerned that he had disclosed too much information in an interview, according to Monitor Foreign Editor David Scott.

Despite repeated attempts to contact Smucker, "that's the last we've heard from him," Scott said. "He was upset. I don't think he felt like he'd done anything."

"Some general in Qatar blew a fuse and said, 'Get rid of this guy,' " said Smucker's father, John, who lives in Alexandria.

Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke said she is looking into the report but could not confirm that Smucker had been detained. "Our overwhelming experience to date is that people are trying very hard to be very careful, very responsible," she said. "There have been less than a handful of incidents in which someone revealed information they shouldn't."

Smucker has been traveling with the 1st Marine Division even though he is not one of the 600 "embedded" journalists who formally agree not to disclose information deemed too sensitive by military commanders. Since Smucker is independent, said Bryan Whitman, Clarke's deputy, local commanders can "treat him as any other civilian on the battlefield." A spokesman at the U.S. Central Command in Qatar had no immediate information on the situation.

Smucker, 41, is a freelance reporter who has also worked for the Washington Times, U.S. News & World Report, the Miami Herald and the San Francisco Chronicle, according to his father. He added that Smucker was detained by Syria for two days while trying to enter Iraq without a visa.

Scott said Smucker told him about 6:30 a.m. that he "got a general mad" with an interview he gave to CNN 90 minutes earlier and that the reporter said he was told that "I gave out information I shouldn't have given out."

In the interview, Smucker told CNN's Carol Costello: "We're about 100 miles south on the main highway. It's an unfinished highway. It goes between the Tigris and Euphrates River in the direction of Baghdad."

Smucker continued to provide more geographic details about the Army and Marine forces, prompting Costello to interrupt him:

"Well, don't be too specific," she said. "We don't want exact specifics."

"Okay," said Smucker, who gave a similar description yesterday to National Public Radio.

Scott said he suspects that the Marines "have his gear and are not letting him call out." He said Smucker might be expelled -- or forced to join the embedding program, "which would be fine by me."

While Smucker has been writing about the warfare in Iraq, his 75-year-old father has been trying to stop it. John Smucker said he has been arrested twice in recent weeks, once for kneeling on the steps of the Pentagon and again for blocking traffic on King Street in Alexandria.

As for his son, Smucker said: "I'm torn. Someone's decided to take his income possibilities away. But we want him back in the country anyway."

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