LESLIE DAY: Hi, my name is Leslie Day, and I'm from Lawrencville, Georgia, and I want to ask CNN, how does the government decide what to tell the public and what not to?</s>MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, (RET.) CNN MILITARY ANALYST: This is the age-old question of what to say and what not to say.</s>DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECY.: Who's getting ready to deploy? Where are you off to? Yes, you have to shoot me if you told me, right? Just checking.</s>SHEPPERD: It's absolutely essential in an open society that you give the citizens information that allows them to maintain their public support of military activities. They need to know what you're doing with their sons and daughters. At the same time, the military has to maintain what they call, "opsec," they're operational security. In other words, you don't want to give enough detail to an enemy that they can use it against you. The secretary of defense through his public affairs establishes what each of the services can say and do. In other words, they issue press guidance and what can be said and the guidelines that goes along with it. And then each of the services puts out the information. Then the networks get talking heads like me, retired military people that basically know how to balance information. We try to put out information and explain the military activities to the public without giving away operational details.</s>GEN. WESLEY CLARK, (RET.) CNN MILITARY ANALYST: We don't want to do anything that's going to assist the enemy. We don't want to do anything that's going to make it harder for the president and his team to make these terrible decisions that they're confronting right now.
Ask CNN: How Does the Government Decide What to Tell the Public and What Not To?