2nd Military-Media Test Goes Smoothly : Pentagon Pleased as Reporters Secretly Observe War Games

FT. CAMPBELL, Ky. — The Pentagon, in a sharply scaled-back test of military-media cooperation in combat coverage, secretly flew 12 reporters to an Army base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border Thursday to observe infantry maneuvers.

The test grew out of acrimonious sparring in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Grenada 23 months ago, when the Pentagon refused to allow news coverage of the initial assault on that island.

In the Kentucky test, Army and Air Force troops “rescued” a mythical Latin nation seemingly modeled after Grenada and Nicaragua. The test bore little resemblance to the disastrous first trial, in a Honduras exercise last April, that was leaked to the public almost before it began.

Pentagon officials said that they were pleased by Thursday’s test. “This time, in contrast to the last one, I think things are proceeding as planned,” said Col. Dante A. Camia, who supervised the news operation.

However, he conceded that the second trial was far less ambitious than April’s test, which involved overseas travel, air and sea transport and complicated logistics and communications arrangements.

4,000 Troops Involved

Thursday’s 20-hour test--in which 12 reporters observed war games by 4,000 troops of the elite 101st Army Airborne Division--went like clockwork.

Although the Honduras mission had ended in a shouting match between reporters and military officers, Camia said Thursday that the Pentagon “could not ask for a better sense of cooperation” than that exhibited at Ft. Campbell.

The maneuvers, borrowing from U.S. experience in Grenada, involved an American invasion of a mythical country, Sanna, run by an unpopular Marxist government that was holding U.S. medical students hostage.

The “students” were rescued and U.S. forces stayed on to “stabilize” the country and repel forces from a neighboring Marxist nation. The local military, one officer said with a grin, was called “Sannaists,” an apparent reference to Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista Party.

Working with precision, the 101st Division--which had taken part in the Grenada invasion in 1983--chased the mythical enemy with helicopter-borne air assaults and infantry sweeps through heavily wooded country.

The Kentucky exercise is part of a regular series used to evaluate combat performance of Army units. Camia said he hopes to arrange at least four such exercises for media coverage each year.