So the Pentagon decided it didn’t like having a newspaper that wouldn’t kiss the ring. On Friday they fired the publisher, the editor-in-chief, and a Middle East reporter from Stars and Stripes, the paper that’s been telling troops the truth since 1942. Not because they botched a story. Not because they made things up. Because the editor went on CBS and said censorship would be a red line for him.
That’s it. That’s the whole crime. Erik Slavin told the truth on television, and the brass called it insubordination.
Slavin had been at that paper since 2005. He embedded with troops in Iraq. He ran news operations across Europe and the Middle East. He got named editor last year, and the first thing the Pentagon did was wait for him to say something honest in public so they could show him the door. He told CBS that if Stars and Stripes got turned into a public relations outfit, that was a line he wouldn’t cross. Turns out crossing a line in front of your bosses is the one kind of insubordination that actually gets you fired in this government. Everything else gets you a promotion.
Then there’s Max Lederer Jr., the publisher. Thirty-plus years at the paper. He announced his retirement on Tuesday, said his understanding of the paper’s mission “differed in fundamental ways” from what the Pentagon wanted. He was supposed to walk out September 30 on his own terms. Instead they couldn’t even let the man have that. They fired him before he could finish packing his desk. That tells you everything about the kind of people running things. They don’t just want you gone. They want you humiliated on the way out.
US Army (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsLara Korte covered the Iran War from the paper’s European bureau in Germany. She’d been there since December. Her sin was appearing in that same CBS segment and saying she worked for Stars and Stripes, not for the Pentagon. “These firings are a shame for the institution and service members, who swore to defend the Constitution and deserve the right to a free and independent press,” she said Friday. She’s right, and everybody in a uniform knows it.
Here’s the pattern they don’t want you stitching together. In April, the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, the paper’s ombudsman, a position Congress created specifically to protect editorial independence. In March, they rolled out an “overhaul” that barred the paper from using certain wire services, killed the comics, and demanded all content be consistent with “good order and discipline,” a phrase they yanked straight out of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Now they’ve axed the top three people who pushed back. Navy Capt. William Urban, the newly installed military deputy to the publisher, put out an open letter Friday about the “future direction” of the publication. Read that phrase twice. Future direction. That’s bureaucrat-speak for “we’re taking over, and the next person who objects should update their resume.”
Stars and Stripes has run independently since 1994. Congress set it up that way on purpose, because somebody had the basic sense to know that the military shouldn’t be editing its own press coverage. About 65% of the paper’s budget comes from the Defense Department, and its staff are technically DOD employees. That was always the deal: the money comes with strings attached, but the journalism doesn’t. Now the strings are being pulled tight enough to choke the whole operation.
The troops swear an oath to defend the Constitution. The Pentagon swears an oath to the chain of command. This week we found out which one actually matters when they conflict.