"Sir, you have a booger in your nose,"

[SoCalDem]

http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/wood051104.html

NATIONAL SECURITY

Military Traditions Hamper Sharing of Information

BY DAVID WOOD
c.2004 Newhouse News Service

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More Stories by David Wood

WASHINGTON -- America's high-tech military relies on an antiquated, Civil War-era command system that is dangerously slow and cumbersome and stifles direct, honest reporting, defense officials and other experts say.The reporting system -- historically based on how far an officer could yell above the din of battlefield musketry and cannon -- helps explain how senior defense officials were sandbagged two weeks ago by the explosive appearance of photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. The photos had been given to the Army five months earlier.

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"The information system is dysfunctional; the people who literally have a need to know are not getting their information," said Steven Aftergood, who studies government information for the Federation of American Scientists.

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Information coming out of Abu Ghraib went through two different reporting chains, the 800th Military Police Brigade and the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. From there, it traveled up two different "stove pipes," one through the U.S. Central Command in Baghdad and one through the U.S. Army's Provost Marshal's office, investigators said.This maze of vertical and horizontal pipes is clogged by bureaucratic procedures and secrecy requirements.
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It's the bad news that is hardest to get through.

Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, the Army's retired chief of staff, tells of observing field maneuvers with a group of his highest aides when a young enlisted soldier rushed up with a sheaf of messages. "Sir, you have a booger in your nose," he announced to Sullivan, provoking horrified gasps from the assembled colonels and junior generals -- but a chuckle from Sullivan, who blew his nose and got on with his work. "None of my senior officers dared to tell me," he recalled later. "That said something about how this Army works."

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"Retaliation against whistleblowers ranges from charging you with sexual harassment and stealing paper clips to blacklisting you and taking away your job duties," Miller said. "We always tell whistleblowers to think pretty hard before they do this." Rumsfeld admits to chafing under a system that delays bad news, especially in an age of instant, 24-hour information that can give the actions of a few soldiers a global strategic impact. "We need to examine our procedures and habits to reflect that we're in a time of war and we're in the information age," he testily told the Senate Armed Services Committee Friday.

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