Journalists who cover the military beat around the country participated in briefings at the Pentagon and panel discussions and presentations with a variety of experts on topics ranging from medical care for veterans to national security law during a June conference organized by the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative.

About 30 journalists chosen from a pool of applicants gathered June 23-24 for the “Covering the Military at Home and Abroad,” sessions in Washington, D.C. Many also participated in an optional one-day immersion in using computer-assisted reporting to cover defense issues. Investigative Reporters and Editors and Medill were co-organizers of those sessions.

“The two-day fellowship and Saturday’s NICAR session were fun and instructive,” conference participant Mike Cronin of The Daily said. “I had a blast, learned a lot.”

Gretel C. Kovach of the San Diego Union-Tribune also found the conference to be a success. “I returned to San Diego full of ideas and skills.”

Below are links to stories from the conference, as well as the main conference page.

• Military contractors a rich source of stories
• Great stories about the military start with understanding of FOIA4
• Experts offer advice on how to best cover medical issues of returning troops
• When it comes to cyber law, serious issues remain unresolved
• General sees speed-up in Afghan transition
• U.S. Cyber Command tasked with protecting Dept. of Defense from Internet explosion
• Conference Photo Gallery
• Main conference coverage page.

Those contractors provide reporters with a wealth of potentially great and important stories, in part because they are getting hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money with little if any government oversight, two experts on contracting told reporters attending Medill’s first annual Medill National Security Journalism Initiative conference.

They said that while big-ticket contractors like Halliburton and the company formerly known as Blackwater get most of the coverage, there are hundreds of others that are raking in huge profits – often for services the military had long provided for far less money.

Laura Peterson, a national security analyst with the Taxpayers for Common Sense watchdog organization, said the Defense Department purchases more than $1 billion of goods and services every day, making it is the largest employer in America.

Peterson said the system is geared toward U.S. taxpayer giveaways to contractors, because of a pervasive government mindset that “you can’t put price tag on security: it costs what it costs.” As a result, bad contractors often escape with little or no disciplinary action when improperly inflating their profits or even breaking the law.

She said President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous Military Industrial Complex speech proved prescient, in that the defense sector spent $145 million lobbying in 2010 and now employs more than 1,000 lobbyists.

Over the past decade, the contracting  of national security has grown exponentially due to the Bush administration’s doctrine that the war on terrorism required massive amounts of contract labor and technology.

Peterson said many of the best stories come from an examination of:

• The lack of competition among contractors.
• The revolving door of government officials joining contractors and vice versa.
• Contractors performing “inherently governmental functions” and severe cost overruns. Those cost overruns are due primarily to underbidding by contractors, changing requirements by government and the increasing complexity of systems, she said.

T. Christian Miller, an award-winning reporter for ProPublica, said other good stories can be found by looking beyond the military to the State Department, which employs small armies of contractors overseas in what is becoming “a Diplomatic Industrial Complex.”

And he said those contractors also operate with little oversight, in part because the U.S. government watchdog agencies often can’t send their auditors and investigators into dangerous and remote environments in which they operate.

Miller urged reporters to mine the many government and private websites that have a ton of information about contractors, including FedBizOpps  and the Commission on Wartime Contracting.

And Miller, who has reported extensively from Iraq and other war zones, urged reporters to go overseas, saying it’s not as expensive as many think, especially because “once you’re in the hands of the military, everything is free.”

Those that can’t afford such trips can find plenty of information in the United States, especially on military bases.

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That was the advice given by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists to reporters attending the first annual Medill National Security Journalism Initiative conference.

Steven Aftergood (Photo/Molly Nevola)

Aftergood, director of the federation’s Project on Government Secrecy, is one of the nation’s foremost experts on getting the U.S. government to respond to reporters’ inquiries on the military and other national security agencies.

During his hour-long presentation, Aftergood discussed websites, including some maintained by the government, that may provide a gold mine of information about how to properly file FOIAs and get information. One of them is his own website, Secrecy News, which reports on new developments in government secrecy and provides public access to documentary resources on secrecy, intelligence and national security policy.

Aftergood said every reporter needs to become familiar with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff Freedom of Information Act Requester Service Center.

The service center processes FOIAs for records related to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff (OSD/JS), and many other specific Defense Department components.

Aftergood also told reporters that before submitting a FOIA request, they should check to see if the information is not already on the Pentagon’s OSD/JS FOIA Library or other DoD web sites, as the chances are good someone else has done the applying and the waiting for you.

The service center’s Recently Posted Documents includes those newly released under FOIA. And its Frequently Requested Documents are those most often requested under the FOIA. The two sites are updated on a regular basis.

One key document is the executive summary of the Department of Defense Chief Freedom of Information Act Officer’s Report to the Department of Justice (PDF), which outlines what kind of material has been released recently, Aftergood said.

The Defense Department alone has dozens of sub-agencies devoted to processing FOIA requests, Aftergood said. In many cases, FOIA specialists working there—at the Pentagon and elsewhere—are key allies, especially in helping reporters know what it is that they are looking for.

“Know what exactly you want, be specific and you’ll increase your chances of success,’’ Aftergood said. “And find out who’s mostly likely to have what you want.’’

He added that FOIA officers are often eager to help. Without their input, many reporters file FOIAs that lack detailed and specific information, or are so broad that it takes Pentagon bureaucrats months or even years to comply with them.

“Also, you need to ask yourself, can you get it without using FOIA?’’ Aftergood asked. That often frees up documents, or entire databases, much more quickly.

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Returning troops are also suffering from other problems, including traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, crippling injuries, depression and difficulty in adjusting to civilian life. And they are doing so at such frequency that the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs can’t keep up, according to a panel of experts at the first annual Medill National Security Journalism Initiative conference.

T. Christian Miller (Photo/Molly Nevola)

The panelists, including a senior Army public affairs officer, gave journalists attending the conference advice on how best to cover these important stories in Washington, on military bases and in communities around the country with significantveteran populations.

Panelist T. Christian Miller, a reporter for ProPublica, said the most important first step is to talk to those involved, not just read reports. He advised reporters to “get onto a military base and have a good look around” and to talk to troops, their families and military officials to get a good first-hand understanding of the issues.

One key to understanding the many related issues is to work with the service members or veterans in order to get access to their health records and other important documentation, according to Miller, a ProPublica reporter who has won numerous awards for his coverage of how the military often fails its wounded.

Todd Bowers (Photo/Molly Nevola)

Todd Bowers, deputy executive director for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, told  conference participants that he is only one of many wounded veterans who are now working for advocacy groups as a way of personally helping to resolve some of these complicated issues. He said working with the media to call attention to the physical, psychological, social and economic costs of war and their effects on those who serve, their families and the communities they are trying to rejoin is of paramount importance.

Bowers said many problems, including military suicides, are likely to get worse in the near future even as the U.S. presence diminishes in the two war zones. That’s because the depression and feelings of alienation that can plague returning troops often take years to develop, he said.

“It’s hard to reintegrate; no one understands what you’ve been through. And you often find that one of the biggest shocks is the difficulty in transferring those [military] skills to the civilian marketplace,” according to Bowers, who said some of his family members were angry at him for re-enlisting and serving subsequent tours of duty in Iraq.

Col. Tom Collins, the chief of media relations within Army Public Affairs, said the U.S. military is working overtime to correct some of the problems, and he and other panelists praised the Obama administration to taking steps to involve the private sector in providing jobs and other services for returning troops and veterans.

Collins said the Army wants to work closely with the media to not only make sure these issues are covered but to make sure they report fairly and accurately, even after problems are identified. “We’re thin-skinned [but] through you guys we’re able to tell our story,” Collins said.

Later he added,  “Please be patient with us.”

Kelly Kennedy, the moderator of the panel, urged conference attendees to look beyond the daily news headlines and dig deeper to get at some of the more fundamental issues, including whether the military’s use of burn pits to get rid of waste in overseas war zones is causing lung damages and other illnesses.

T. Christian Miller’s handout from the conference:

Download (PDF, 198KB)

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While the Obama administration has treated the cyber threat more seriously than either the Bush or Clinton administrations, Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security told the 2011 Medill National Security Journalism conference, serious legal issues are still unresolved.

Among those policy issues are making U.S. cyber defense consistent with the Fourth Amendment; resolution of a basic “turf war” between the CIA, Homeland Security and the Department of Defense; determining what authority to invoke in defending the private sector and how to apply the laws of war or, in other words, how to respond with proportionality when attacked in cyberspace.

Baker was one of three guests on the National Security Law panel that also focused on the role of military commissions, America’s overall detention policy and what one panelist described as the media’s misdirected attention to that policy.

Baker, Reeves and Wittes. (Photo/Molly Nevola)

Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former editorial writer for The Washington Post, said the media is failing to cover how the most basic laws surrounding detention are being written in cases before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington.

Instead of focusing on the actual development of law, he said, the vast majority of the media that is even interested in detention issues is “obsessively” covering the Guantanamo detention issue, which is declared “profoundly unimportant” compared to larger questions surrounding American detention policy.

The question of whether the U.S. should be engaged in noncriminal detention of terrorism suspects is both complicated and creates mixed opinions, he noted, but the reality at this time is all three branches of government and both major political parties agree that it is necessary.

He also dismissed the question of whether defendants should be tried by military commissions as important but with only a handful of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay it is only a small corner of a policy that has touched tens of thousands of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wittes said press coverage of who can be detained and who gets what due process is minimal and rarely looks at the rules being written at this moment in the D.C. courts.

Panelist Jack Rives, executive director of the American Bar Association and formerly the Air Force’s top judge advocate general, explained how military commissions work and said they are necessary considering the four descriptive words that describe the defendants:  “alien, unprivileged, enemy belligerents.”

Rives said the commissions are unlike many other judicial systems such as courts martial or the international criminal courts. There are many similarities to U.S. civilian courts, however, including the presumption of innocence, the right to be present at trial and to see evidence presented against them.

Statements obtained by torture are not allowed, he added, and defendants have the right to appeal a decision.

Among the differences are more relaxed hearsay rules and judges can determine if they believe prosecution statements are reliable.  One large, underlying issue is whether information primarily gathered for intelligence interests can later be used as evidence in the judicial proceeding.

The military commissions are a fair legal process and not a kangaroo court, Rives declared, paraphrasing former celebrity lawyer F. Lee Bailey who said if he was ever charged with a crime and was innocent, he would want to have a military trial.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — The president’s new plan to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan will accelerate the transition to Afghan security control already set in motion by top U.S. commanders, according to the Camp Pendleton Marine who spent last year in charge of the international coalition in southwestern Afghanistan.

Key details about which U.S. troops will leave first, and from where, are in flux. But the insurgents are certain to respond to the pullout by attacking Afghan forces to probe their abilities and resolve, Maj. Gen. Richard Mills said Friday in Washington, D.C. He spoke with military reporters at a Medill National Security Journalism Initiative conference.

“What you’re seeing is a speed-up in what was already a process that Gen. (David) Petraeus put in place. There was a process of transition from coalition forces’ control to Afghan control that was due to start 1 July,” one that includes the capital of Helmand province, where Mills commanded 30,000 NATO troops until returning from his yearlong tour in March.

“I would expect that Afghan security forces will be tested, through murder and intimidation,” Mills said. “I don’t believe the insurgent has the ability to mount a serious large-scale attack, but he’ll push to see what reaction he gets and the capability.”

Roughly a third of the entire U.S. force of 100,000 troops is scheduled to come home by September 2012, according to the plan announced Wednesday by President Barack Obama.

Mills, responding to several questions from journalists at the conference, said it is unclear at this point how the withdrawal will affect Marine operations. About 20,000 U.S. Marines are stationed in southwestern Afghanistan.

“The key to that is what kind of forces come out of the country. That is the question everyone will be looking at. Are we going to bring out support folks, collapse headquarters, bring out those kinds of people? Obviously that has less impact on actions on the ground,” Mills said. “Where they come from and what type of units are really two key questions.”

The Marines took advantage of the surge of extra troops sent to southwestern Afghanistan last year to roust the Taliban from their safe havens, choke off insurgent supply routes, train the Afghan army, and nurture the local economy and government institutions, Mills said.

Although the troops he commanded under the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force made “tremendous” headway last year, Mills said the insurgents are broken, but not yet beaten.

Underscoring his comments Friday was the Pentagon’s announcement of the latest Camp Pendleton Marine fatally wounded in combat in Afghanistan: Cpl. Gurpreet Singh, 21, of Antelope, died June 22. He was the fifth Marine from the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment killed since the unit took command in April of the violent Sangin area in northeastern Helmand province.

When asked if his commander in chief’s plan of withdrawal starting this summer could endanger the gains Mills described, he demurred. “With transition, we’ve been directed to do so, and we will do so. It’s just a question of risk, and how much,” Mills said.

About 30 journalists participated in the conference, which also was sponsored by the McCormick Foundation and Carnegie Corp. Mills, the keynote speaker of the inaugural event, has been discussing his tour with a variety of groups in the U.S. and Britain since he handed over command in March to Maj. Gen. John Toolan and East Coast Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C.

He has been selected for a third star and will begin a new job next month in charge of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va. He also will become deputy commandant for combat development and integration.

This story first appeared on SignOnSandiego.com.

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Col. Rivers Johnson reviews statistics (Click to enlarge)

The role of the U.S. Cyber Command is to operate and defend Department of Defense electronic networks, mainly those with the .mil Internet address, Col. Rivers Johnson, the Command’s public affairs officer, told conferees at the 2011 Medill National Security Journalism conference during a PowerPoint demonstration on the scope of cyber protection.

“Technology outstrips law and policy by a long shot,” Rivers said as he detailed the new command’s attempts to address the extraordinary multiplication of Internet messages and addresses.

Rivers said there are

• About 4,000 known websites used by suspected terrorists.
• Routinely about 140 foreign Intelligence organizations attempt to hack into the U.S. defense networks.
• Some  250,000 outside probes into Pentagon and other military servers every day (that’s 6 million times a day).

U.S. Cyber Command employs about 700 persons, roughly split between military and civilian.  Their goal is to protect but also to use all the Internet resources available including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and other social media, said Rivers.

Among  the “Cyber Environmnent” facts that Rivers laid out in his presentation.

• In 2010, 107 trillion e-mails sent — 294 billion every day. 600 million on Facebook — 72% of internet users.
• 2.9 billion — the number of e-mail accounts worldwide.
• Terrorist groups are active on 4,000 websites.
• 140 Foreign Intelligence organizations are trying to hack into U.S. computers.

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The session, featuring trainers from IRE’s National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting, will be hosted by Medill’s National Security Journalism Initiative.

The program is set for Saturday, June 25, and will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at  Medill News Service, 1325 G St. NW, Washington, DC. There is a $50 registration fee.�
Instructors and speakers will include . . .

• Sarah Cohen, Duke University Knight Chair in Computational Journalism and former Pulitzer-Prize-winning database editor for the Washington Post and IRE/NICAR training director.
• David Donald, data editor for the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, former IRE/NICAR training director.
• Margot Williams, database editor/correspondent for NPR’s Investigative Team, former database/online investigative guru for both The Washington Post and The New York Times.
• Josh Meyer, director of education and outreach, Medill National Security Journalism Initiative and former 20-year Los Angeles Times reporter, the last decade of that covering terrorism and  national security in Washington.
• Ellen Shearer, director of Medill’s Washington Program, Medill News Service and co-director of the National Security Journalism Initiative.

Planned sessions include:

• Overview of the workshop, introduction to covering national security. Putting it all together in the real world, with a look at quick-turn watchdog stories that you can produce in your newsroom.
• Hands-on training in Excel. Learn to build your own spreadsheet from paper records. Learn basic but powerful functions including putting information in order, filtering out just what you need from a national or statewide data set, and doing math calculations such as change and percent change with large data sets. National security data will be used in the training, focusing on U.S. government weapons sales to foreign countries.
• Effective use of the Internet: What reporters and editors need to know. From better search techniques to the invisible Web, how to find documents and databases on deadline on the national security front and where to find reliable Web sites for enterprise stories. The craft of better searching and not wasting time. Handling issues of credibility and ethics online.
• National security data and documents. Move beyond anecdotes and he-said, she-said journalism with data and documents. Advice on developing a documents state of mind, navigating public records, using new technologies, exploring key records on a variety of related topics, and becoming familiar with key data sets to produce high-impact stories.
• What the National Security Journalism Initiative and IRE can do for you.