Pentagon may change rules for covering Guantanamo trials

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Pentagon may change rules for covering Guantanamo trials
By Lesley Clark | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, August 5, 2010

WASHINGTON — Faced with protests from a number of news organizations, the Pentagon is considering revising the rules it invoked in May to ban four reporters from covering the trials of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Defense Department said Thursday that reporters covering next week's scheduled military commission trial of Canadian Omar Khadr won't be barred from identifying one of his interrogators by name. Khadr is accused of throwing a hand grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in July 2002.

More changes to the rules governing media coverage of trials at Guantanamo are under review, including the Defense Department's photography policies, which news organizations have complained are unduly restrictive.

"We're definitely committed to operational security concerns, as well as concerns for journalists to cover the hearings as best they can," said Tanya Bradsher, a spokeswoman for the Department of Defense.

Bradsher said the Pentagon moved swiftly to address the question of whether Army Sgt. Joshua Claus could be named because reporters are scheduled to travel to the base on Saturday for Khadr's trial, the first under the Obama administration's new military commission rules.