Here's yet another Operational Security question: Is it okay to publicly discuss a Standard Operating Procedure?

 A letter-writer last month wanted to know "when it became acceptable to quote or discuss base policies concerning actions taken during an attack in a public format such as Stars and Stripes....Operational security is something that seems to be lacking when it comes to writing letters to Stripes, or when screening these letters prior to their being printed."

He was referring to two previously published letters, one criticizing an SOP that gave soldiers directions to follow during a mortar attack on base, and the other defending the SOP. A DOD official with whom I spoke cast a pox on both houses -- the soldiers for writing about SOPs in the first two letters, and Stripes for printing what they wrote.

It's a sticky situation all-round. Soldiers feel they have the right to respectfully question what they see as wrongful rules.Congress has explicitly granted them First Amendment protections. And any newspaper will and should resist being put in the position of enforcing DOD directions to the armed forces; that's the government's job. (A job former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld emphasized belonged to commanders when he issued a message in 2003 complaining that too much unclassified but sensitive material from SOPs, FOUOs, CONOPS and OPLANS was showing up on public Web sites.)

Letters here are read for many measures of suitability, including material sensitive for OPSEC. By directive, Stripes does not publish classified information not already revealed publicly. The discussion of SOPs for taking cover during a mortar attack did not seem out of line.

There is tension between printing sensitive information from any source, including a paper's own reporters, and withholding it for fear of aiding the enemy. Stripes' top editors point to the good that can come from printing the information. "How many lives have been saved by changes in procedures, policies and equipment due to news articles and letters to the editor raising a thorny issue?" asks executive editor Robb Grindstaff. In Europe, managing editor Doug Clawson, in charge of the the bureau that sends reporters to the war zone, says, "This paper has done a ton more to keep troops safe, than it has to put them in any kind of harm's way."

Still, all are agreed that when something so obviously dangerous shows up, even in an unclassified instrument like an SOP, it ought to be rejected.