ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY                                        211

   The plan called for the Pentagon to fly a pool of about a dozen journalists
to a combat zone prior to hostilities actually commencing, if possible.  DOD
drilled this plan with varying degrees of success over the next several years.
Then in late 1989 the United States invaded Panama.        The press pool was
delayed for many hours while the world monitored the drama through Pentagon
briefings and reports from journalists trapped in hotels. Once again the media
howled like a scorned mistress.
   The Pentagon had more time to get its act together when DESERT SHIELD
began to unfold in August 1990.  It helped that we deployed to a country that
excluded news media as a matter of national policy. The Saudis, who normally
don't permit media into their tightly guarded society, eventually did grant visas
to a DOD-controlled media pool.    By mid-August the world was watching
American Service members sweating on tarmacs and loading docks somewhere
in Saudi Arabia.
   Within a few weeks the flood gates were opened and war correspondents,
some seasoned but many green, poured into the country by the hundreds.     We
didn't know it at the time, but Marines would be on center stage of the world's
biggest arena for five months before a single shot would be fired.  And when
you're in the spotlight, you might as well dance.

                      Wartime Public Affairs Themes

   Not that the Marines who arrived in Saudi Arabia in mid-August were in a
mood to pirouette.  At the Jubail commercial port, the tension was thicker than
the humidity as commanders struggled to offload vast quantities of weapons and
equipment and field their units for combat. Troops sweltered in blistering metal
warehouses waiting to move out.   The threat of chemical warfare, terrorism,
and heat stroke combined to add an edge to the anxieties that normally accom-
pany a combat deployment.   The last thing any of the commanders wanted to
deal with at this time was a gaggle of journalists.
   Most of the reporters, photographers, technicians, and producers followed
the operation from the U.S. Central Command (CentCom) Joint Information
Bureau (JIB) in Dhahran.    The posh Dhahran International Hotel, with its
cascading indoor fountains, sumptuous buffets, and preening doormen seemed
a universe away from Marine Corps positions in the Saudi sands.       The ubi-
quitous blue hemispheres seen so frequently as a backdrop behind television
news reporters broadcasting from Saudi Arabia, and thought by many American
viewers to be domes of a mosque, were in fact the cabanas at the Dhahran In-
ternational swimming pool.
   The media set up their news bureaus and satellite dishes at the International
and haggled with JIB officers in their efforts to see U.S. forces and interview
commanders and troops.     The public affairs annex to CentCom's DESERT
SHIELD operations order, published 14 August 1990, encouraged commanders
to provide access to news media within the bounds of operational security
(opsec) and outlined the media pool support guidelines.   The guidance had little
immediate impact on Marine Corps forces, who were too busy preparing for