The Clash of Journalism and Government Intelligence
A Contemporary Ethics Case Study
Beatrice Rosen
November 8, 2013
Journalism 430
On June 22, 2008, The New York Times published a gripping article that provoked
the clash of two cultures: journalism and government intelligence.1 "Inside a 9/11
Mastermind’s Interrogation” detailed the success of Deuce Martinez, a CIA interrogator
and soft-spoken analyst who spoke no Arabic, in prying secrets from Khalid Shaik
Mohammed. Martinez established an affinity with the captured Al Qaeda leader, who was
believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington.2 Journalist
Scott Shane’s powerful story provided the closest look to date at the CIA interrogation
program’s techniques, which were concealed from the public and critics who accused the
agency of torture.3 However, the Times’ decision to include Martinez’s name in the
article provoked ethical controversy. The CIA and Martinez’s attorney protested that
naming Martinez would invade his privacy and put him and his family at risk from
terrorists or harassment from agency critics.4 Yet Martinez was not a clandestine officer,
and there was no evidence that he would be in greater danger than the slew of other
officers identified in the news media. Thus, the episode involved two competing
journalistic principles: the paper’s commitment to reporting the story as fully and
accurately as possible, versus minimizing harm to vulnerable stakeholders. The Times
staff concluded that the public’s right to know about one of the most contentious aspects
of the war on terror, the interrogation of prisoners, held more weight than the potential
harm in naming an honorable public servant. This ethical decision to identify Martinez
was the right one because it heightened reliability and validity in the reporting process,
and was necessary for the credibility and completeness of the article.5
The interrogation took place in 2003, when the invasion of Iraq was giving
Muslim extremists new motives for mayhem. Mohammed was the one to know about the
next plot. Feeling a tremendous amount of pressure, the CIA interrogation program was
hastily thrown together by an agency that lacked training in incarceration and
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interrogation techniques. Martinez, one of the program’s new recruits, was a 36-year-old
CIA analyst who had never worked undercover. Ironically, he was the one who got
Mohammed talking. Martinez “chose to leave the infliction of pain and panic to others,
the gung-ho paramilitary types whom the more cerebral interrogators called
‘knuckledraggers.’” He was brought in after the “rough stuff,” when the prisoner
demonstrated a desire to talk. Martinez listened to Mohammad’s endless complaints,
brought him snacks, and exploited their common experiences. Mohammad grew talkative
and divulged information about past and planned plots. Fellow CIA officers were
astonished by Martinez’s patience and willingness to listen to the killer’s musings.
As Shane’s groundbreaking, investigative report approached publication in 2008,
Martinez was already coaching other CIA analysts in their efforts to track terrorists.6 The
Times was concerned that disclosing Martinez’s name could potentially harm him and his
family. In a letter to the Times’ Washington bureau editor, the CIA’s director of public
affairs said naming Martinez “would be reckless and irresponsible.” The decision “could
endanger the lives of this American and his family” by making them Al Qaeda targets.7
Yet the use of his name makes the powerful story more believable, bolsters reporting
credibility, and gives the reader a focal point. The Times feared that readers would
question the article’s legitimacy if its central character went nameless.8 Martinez’s
surprising role as a key interrogator in the anti-terrorism effort, given his lack of
experience and skills, captures the ad-hoc nature of the CIA program. His success at
building a relationship with the most ruthless of terrorists also pertains to the national
debate over interrogation techniques.9
The paper wrestled with multiple ethical dilemmas in its decision to disclose
Martinez’s identity. Two main principles in the Society of Professional Journalists’ code
of ethics are “seek truth and report it” and “minimize harm.” The paper had a duty to
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report accurate, precise, and substantive information about the interrogation, and a
responsibility to protect journalistic independence in the face of pressure. In this case, the
pressure was to withhold Martinez’s name – a key element – from the story. On the other
hand, it also had an obligation to minimize harm to Martinez and his family.10
In making its decision, the Times seriously considered and weighed the
consequences to Martinez. Public editor Clark Hoyt described the reasoning behind this
decision in an op-ed, published two weeks after Shane’s original article came out. He said
that in previous cases, the paper has withheld stories for fear of harm. This was when a
persuasive case has been made that the danger – whether to national security or an
individual – is real and imminent. In this case, there is no history of Al Qaeda hunting
down individuals in the United States for retribution. It prefers dramatic attacks that kill
indiscriminately.11 Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who represents CIA employees,
agreed with Hoyt that “it would be unrealistic…to think he’s at risk of harm here in the
United States.” Josh Meyer, previously a Los Angeles Times reporter and co-author of the
2012 bestseller “The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11
Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” also agreed. Meyer specifically pointed out the
distinction between a covert officer, and an employee working on a covert operation.
“Deuce Martinez was not in a covert capacity, which is a legal designation.” For this
designation to apply to him, “the Justice Department argued that he was working on a
clandestine, classified investigation. Yet every CIA investigation is considered
classified.” If this standard is applied to all investigations, then technically no news
organization should write about anybody that works for the agency.
Marcia DeSanctis, writer and network television news journalist, likewise
acknowledged that outing a covert operative is harmful and irresponsible. As Meyer
pointed out, Martinez did not have this role. DeSanctis emphasized the importance of the
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story’s national security implications, which the Times was honor-bound to pursue. “It
also questioned one of the biggest public debates of the last ten years: whether or not
torture was having the desired effects. The only harm would have been had the Times
bowed to outside pressure and not told the whole story as Shane reported it.”
Government secrecy was not an issue, for DeSanctis noted, “the reveal is just a matter of
time. It may as well be under the Times’ heavy scrutiny and the paper’s strong sense of
responsibility and standards of accuracy.” Alan Abrahamson, Los Angeles Times staff
writer from 1989 to 2006, said United States citizens like to know what their government
is doing, and why, and how. “The Constitution says we are a government by and for the
people, and the First Amendment gives the power to the press. The press has the
authority to hold people in positions of authority accountable. Plain and simple.”
In the end, the Times made an ethical decision based on which SPJ principle
deserved the greatest weight.12 According to the code of ethics, news organizations must
take particular steps when it comes down to making the judgment call: gather, verify, and
make sense of the facts; consider missing pieces of the puzzle; hear as many opinions as
possible from diverse sources; identify various motives of the stakeholders; examine and
challenge any assumptions; explore various possible actions – a minimum of three
alternatives is essential – and make a good decision. In this case, the Times could use
Martinez’s full name, no name at all, or use his surname. It ultimately resolved to use his
surname, and substitute his nickname for his given name.
The SPJ code of ethics is a guide, not a law.13 The Times followed this guide
throughout the deliberation process, and gave significant consideration to multiple
requests that Martinez’s name be withheld from the story.14 Hank Klibanoff, director of
Emory University’s Journalism Program, said it’s okay if a reporter simply cannot
minimize harm to various stakeholders. They are ethically bound to report the truth.
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There is a conflict of interest between the government and journalistic independence, and
“if there was government regulation of the press, then it should just print its own paper.”
The Times still did what it could to minimize harm, as evident in its decision to identify
Martinez by the nickname “Deuce.” Thus, as DeSanctis stated, Shane “was seeking truth
and minimizing harm, not playing one against the other.” The two guiding principles are
not mutually exclusive, and news organizations must strive to abide by both. No decision
can satisfy everyone, but as Bob Steele, formerly of the Poynter Institute says, “Ethics is
about principles and process. Well-intentioned, thoughtful people can and will disagree.”
Scores of journalists and news organizations typically agree with the Times’
decision to identify Martinez. Steele, who is also the Nelson Poynter Scholar for
Journalism Values, was enlisted by Hoyt to help with the decision process. He also came
to the same conclusion. Meyer said he would have gone even farther: “Honestly, if you’re
going to go that far and publish his nickname, you might as well go all the way and print
his full first name.” Meyer cited his own decisions in writing “The Hunt for KSM” as an
example. He checked with the CIA on every officer mentioned in his book. If they
provided him with legitimate information that an officer was in the clandestine capacity,
Meyer gave them a fake name. If they were not listed under the legal designation, he
printed their full name. Meyer added that officers who work on a classified case and get
into the counterterrorism business, like Martinez, are accepting certain risks. They can’t
“tell a reporter that they can’t mention who you are and what you’ve done. To me, that
gets in the way of the First Amendment.”
The Times still had to face the possibility that Martinez and his family might end
up being harmed. “Nobody in the position of authority wants to cause someone harm on
their watch because it would lead to lawsuits and the obvious moral calamity,”
Abrahamson said. Despite the potential consequence, the Times had analyzed the risk and
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was willing to take it. “These are risks journalists take every day, and there is no way to
avoid it,” DeSanctis said. She admitted that if she were Shane, “I probably would not
have felt comfortable, but I would have done it. One in a million something happened to
Martinez? I would never forgive myself, even if it were not as a result of my reporting.”
The Times did what it could to report the truth and minimize the potential harm, as
advised by the SPJ. Adhering to the ethical code is what ultimately matters in making
judgments because it leads to the best conclusions.
In the long run, the Times and Martinez were both well-served by the resolution.
The paper stayed true to their ethical duties as a news organization, and still provided the
closest look to date beneath the CIA interrogation program’s blanket of secrecy.15
Despite the criticism and negative feedback from various CIA officers and public
citizens, Shane received national recognition for his investigative reporting. For
Martinez, the potential danger felt new and potent when his identity was first revealed in
the article’s publication. He was considered a victim at the time, but Martinez still
remains unscathed to this day.16 The fear of imminent harm has faded, and instead “many
people think he’s a great patriot and one of the best statesmen on our covert operations,”
DeSanctis said. “I wonder if perhaps his lawyers did protest too much and if this is a
story that actually, they wanted to tell in full.” Shane portrayed Martinez as “reasonable,
effective, engaged, and genuinely interested in KSM. In fact, he was the anti-torturer and
so his actions might be interpreted as almost defiant to his own intel commanders.” Not
only was he recognized for obtaining valuable information that possibly saved thousands
of lives, but he was also commended for his refusal to inflict physical harm on
Mohammed. The Times placed him in a publicly admirable spotlight.
Martinez objected to identification in the article because he wanted to “out”
himself. Meyer used Jose Rodriguez, CIA Director of the National Clandestine Service
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and career undercover officer from 2004 to 2007, as an example of what Martinez wanted
to do. In 2012, Rodriguez published “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions after
9/11 Saved American Lives.” The memoir defended the waterboarding program, and his
decision to destroy the videotapes of such violent interrogation sessions. Rodriguez was
featured on a CBS News “60 Minutes” segment, and interviewed by numerous
organizations. “Everybody in the CIA wants it both ways like this. They want to hide
behind the cloak of classified information, until it comes time to write a book and make
millions of dollars,” Meyer said. This is difficult to do in an environment where
journalists are obligated to seek and report the truth to a news-hungry public. “I think
Martinez was thinking about writing a book, and he wanted to out himself in it. He didn’t
like someone else outing him.” Yet unlike Rodriguez, whose title gave him legal
protection from media identification, Martinez was not in a covert capacity. The Times
had every right to include his name in its article.
The CIA and United States government were ill-served by the decision. The
article paved the way for future in-depth exposés and reports on the agency’s violent
interrogation tactics. Ten months after “Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation” was
published, Times writers Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane released “Interrogation Memos
Detail Harsh Tactics by the CIA.” As a report on the nature of the memos, which were
made public by the Justice Department, the article was the most comprehensive public
accounting to date of the CIA program. The documents described the brutal methods
approved by the Bush administration for obtaining information from Al Qaeda’s senior
operatives. In dozens of pages of impassive legal prose, procedures like “keeping
detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or
putting insects into the box to exploit their fears” are spelled out in careful detail.17
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair defended the program, pointing out that
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the memos were written when CIA officers were frenetically working to prevent a repeat
of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The techniques were authorized in 2002, and were
among the administration’s most closely guarded secrets.18 They were used as late as
2005 in the CIA’s secret overseas prisons, which include the one in Poland where
Mohammed was kept. He was one of the senior operatives subjected to such brutal
tactics, right before Martinez was brought in for the interrogations. By the time the
memos were made public, President Obama had already outlawed harsh interrogation
techniques and closed the CIA’s prisons.
In this age of increasing government secrecy, it is the press’s duty to inform the
public about some of the government’s most important and controversial actions. Thus,
the Times’ decision to include Martinez’s nickname and surname in Shane’s article was
undoubtedly the right one. From the editors’ note that accompanied the article, to Hoyt’s
op-ed piece, it is evident the Times gave significant consideration to multiple requests to
withhold his name from the story. Shane and his editors abided by their ethical
obligations to seriously weigh the potential consequences of identifying Martinez.
However, Steele points out one concern in their decision-making process: “Whether
Times editors went far enough in seeking additional input from knowledgeable,
independent individuals who could asses the potential risks to Martinez’s personal safety
and that of his family.” They listened to what Agency officials and Bob Bennett, the
attorney representing Martinez, had to say. Yet these are the opinions of people
connected to the story, and are not “independent from the ethical issue to be resolved.” In
explaining the reasons behind their judgment call, the editors never mention any attempts
to gain insight from additional independent voices.19 Such a perspective could present the
Times with an appealing, alternative course of action, which they had not thought of. The
outside individual could also meaningfully assess potential risk to Martinez’s personal
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safety or that of his family.
The CIA and Bennett argued that publishing Martinez’s name was an “invasion of
privacy.” It may have an impact on his career and current employer, Steele noted, but any
negative repercussions related to his privacy or career seem to outweigh a duty to publish
the story with Martinez’s name included. It made the story a more accurate, precise, and
substantive account of Martinez’s role in the interrogation program.20 Furthermore, he
was not a clandestine officer, and there was no indication that he would be in greater
danger than other officers identified in the news media. Shane and his editors still
honored the principle of independence by including various key stakeholders in the
deliberations. They were transparent and accountable in giving readers information on
why and how they made their decisions. They were sensible in what they reported about
him, and did not include revealing details about his family.21
The ethical dilemma behind “Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation” involved
several strong, competing SPJ principles: “seek truth and report it” and “minimize harm.”
No choice can fully honor both of them, and according to Hoyt, journalist and
government intelligence have “diametrically opposed views about openness.” Yet the
Times did not fall to government pressure and withhold Martinez’s name, a key element,
from the story. It instead chose to protect journalistic independence and report the story
as fully and accurately as possible, while still minimizing harm to the various
stakeholders. The majority of national news organizations and journalists who have
examined the case agree with the paper’s decision. This includes scholars like Bob Steele
from the Poynter Institute, an international strategy center and leader in journalism
education, and Josh Meyer, former Los Angeles Times national security journalist. The
CIA and Martinez and his family were the stakeholders who did not agree with the
decision, but for different reasons. For the Agency, more bad than good came about in
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article’s publication; they still receive public criticism for their harsh interrogation
techniques. Martinez was positively recognized as an honorable public servant because of
his success in prying secrets from Mohammed, despite his refusal to use violence. Yet he
wanted to be the one to reveal his accomplishments and the role he played in the
interrogation program.
There is a distinction between minimizing harm and causing no harm at all. The
Times, in using Martinez’s nickname, did minimize harm, and still produced a reliable
and credible article. If the code said, “engender no harm,” then the story could not be
published. Thus, the paper’s decision set a powerful example for future reports on
government operations, and paved the way for subsequent groundbreaking articles on
government secrecy.
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Notes
1
Clark Hoyt, “Weighing the Risk,” New York Times, July 6, 2008.
2
Scott Shane, “Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation,” New York Times, June
22, 2008.
3
Ibid.
4
“Editors’ Note,” New York Times, June 22, 2008.
5
Ibid.
6
Scott Shane, “Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation,” New York Times, June
22, 2008.
7
Clark Hoyt, “Weighing the Risk,” New York Times, July 6, 2008.
8
Bob Steele, “When Principles Collide: The NYT and the CIA Interrogator,”
Poynter.org, June 27, 2008.
9
Scott Shane, “Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation,” New York Times, June
22, 2008.
10 Bob Steele, “When Principles Collide: The NYT and the CIA Interrogator,”
Poynter.org, June 27, 2008.
11 Clark Hoyt, “Weighing the Risk,” New York Times, July 6, 2008.
12 Bob Steele, “When Principles Collide: The NYT and the CIA Interrogator,”
Poynter.org, June 27, 2008.
13 Gene Foreman, The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the
Pursuit of News (Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 83-97.
14 Bob Steele, “When Principles Collide: The NYT and the CIA Interrogator,”
Poynter.org, June 27, 2008.
15 Scott Shane, “Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation,” New York Times, June
22, 2008.
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16 Clark Hoyt, “Weighing the Risk,” New York Times, July 6, 2008.
17 Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, “Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by
the C.I.A,” New York Times, Apr. 16, 2009.
18 Ibid.
19 Bob Steele, “When Principles Collide: The NYT and the CIA Interrogator,”
Poynter.org, June 27, 2008.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
13
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<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/washington/web22ksmnote.html>.
Foreman, Gene. The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the Pursuit of
News. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
Hoyt, Clark. "Weighing the Risk." Nytimes.com. New York Times, 6 July 2008. Web.
12 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/opinion/06pubed.html?ref=hoyt>.
Mazzetti, Mark, and Scott Shane. "Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the
C.I.A." Nytimes.com. New York Times, 16 Apr. 2009. Web. 6 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us/politics/17detain.html?pagewa
nted=all>.
Shane, Scott. "Inside a 9/11 Mastermind's Interrogation." Nytimes.com. New York
Times, 22 June 2008. Web. 6 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/washington/22ksm.html?pagewan
ted=all&_r=0>.
Steele, Bob. "When Principles Collide: The NYT and the CIA Interrogator."
Poynter.org. Poynter, 27 June 2008. Web. 6 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/everyday-ethics/89755/when-principlescollide-the-nyt-and-the-cia-interrogator/>.
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