The Press: Secret Dogs of War

The dog story on Page One of Hearst’s San Francisco Call-Bulletin looked as harmless as a puppy: the Stanford Research Institute wanted to rent ten acres of city-owned land to train Army dogs in spotting land mines.

A Call-Bulletin reporter picked up the story at the city’s Public Utilities Commission; the institute’s rental request was listed on the commission’s mimeographed calendar, open for public inspection. After the story was in print, the Bulletin called the institute (which is independent of Stanford University) for more facts, was told that the dog project was a military secret. The institute asked City Editor Jack McDowell to kill the story. Why, then, asked McDowell, hadn’t the papers been warned that the project was classified? Answered an institute spokesman: “Oh, we couldn’t do that. It would be a breach of security.” Said McDowell: “They couldn’t or wouldn’t give any reason why the story would damage their project or hurt national security . . .” The Bulletin refused to kill the story. (The institute persuaded other San Francisco papers not to print the item.)

After President Truman’s new security regulations, the Call-Bulletin was visited by an Army Engineers security officer from Fort Belvoir, Va. What he wanted to know from Managing Editor James A. Bales was whether the military “could depend in the future” on the Call-Bulletin’s “cooperation with national defense and security.”

Last week the Call-Bulletin told its readers what it had told the Army security officer: the Call-Bulletin “has always cooperated with the Government in the interest of national security . . . But nobody is going to dictate to this newspaper what it should print.”