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It is time to stand up and be counted. Unless we do we may passively surrender a freedom that has served our country well, a freedom for which many have given their lives: Freedom of Speech. This freedom must not be withheld from the uniformed servants of a people who so cherish this right to have made it the First Article in the Bill of Rights.
The active-duty military professional has always had to live with some restrictions on publishing and speaking in public to ensure that classified information was not inadvertently released. Unfortunately, there have also always been those officials who would use security review to censor.
The need for security review is acknowledged, even though such review must be dramatically streamlined. Policy review, on the other hand, must be seen as censorship, plain and simple. Very often, people submerged in an organization have important ideas. Very often it’s important to have free-wheeling discussion of concepts. When the emperor has no clothes, it must be pointed out. Free and polite expression is one way to be sure these things can happen.
This philosophy notwithstanding, a new and harsher prepublication review regulation is now making its way through the “chop” chain, slowly and narrowly distributed. Those who fear public controversy in the first place are holding this process close to their vests. The “chop” avoids those who might take an opposing view. From what is known of it, military academia and other bodies that strive to be forums for education and advancement of the military profession, while maintaining close and non-adversarial relationships with the organizations they attempt to serve, have good reason to tremble for their future. Indications are that the new regulation, and its interpretation by those who fear controversy, will censor for policy deviation as well as security.
Censorship such as that now under consideration will permit the active-duty writer to serve up only the kind of puff and pap so often seen in official publications, filled with public affairs handouts, party lines, sea stories, and writings which have been so altered along a laborious “chop” chain that they are virtually unrecognizable by the author. The muzzling of active-duty writers wrought by ponderous prepublication review requirements could well bring about a Proceedings filled with contributions by out-of-touch retirees and civilian armchair strategists.
The question, then, is what would be the effect on the Naval Institute should the censors and the thought police prevail? The answer might well be the demise of the Naval Institute as it has been known and has served the sea services these past 117 years.
Lieutenant Colonel G. Murphy Donovan, U.S. Air Force, makes a good case that Air University Review was killed because it sometimes diverged from official Air Force policy. He describes how active-duty military authors are bedeviled by “thought police” in the guise of security review which is really policy review {Air- power Journal, Winter 1988). If the term “thought police” sounds far-fetched, consider that in the Navy it is indeed the “police,” the same organization that commands the Naval Investigative Service (NIS), that conducts security (and policy?) reviews of articles and speeches.
The continuation of the Naval Institute as the professional society for naval people, encouraging free discussion but remaining ever loyal to the sea services was the topic of Captain G.V. Stewart’s “The Admirable Servant, Occasionally Obsequious,” reprinted in part in this issue. In his article, Captain Stewart writes, “There is no reason why the Institute should ‘ever work tactfully and gracefully’ to avoid censorship. At its first hint of application, censorship should be halted with a warning shot across the bows which, if not heeded, should be followed by a broadside. ...”
It’s time for a shot across the bows.
By Vice Admiral Robert F. Dunn
Vol. No. 74, No. 10__________________ October, 1948 Whole No. 548
The Admirable Servant, Occasionally Obsequious
By Captain G.V. Stewart, U.S. Navy (Retired)
. . . From the very beginning of the U.S. Naval Institute the question of censorship has been held to be a delicate one and it has been approached most tactfully and with a light touch: a rather timid way to consider that which trespasses upon the greatest of all freedoms of mankind—free speech and free press.
In order to show the state of mind of the charter
Proceedings / June 1990