“The value of information does not survive the moment in which it was new,” the critic Walter Benjamin wrote in 1936. “It lives only at that moment. . . . A story is different. It does not expend itself. It preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time.” One thing that makes Taliban press statements feel like stories is that they are set in the context of Afghan history and experience. Trolling around an insurgent’s English-language website recently, I happened on a press release from November titled, “The occupying forces are the main factor behind the recent assault and all other adversities.” The ostensible topic was a joint U. S.-Russian drug raid near the Pakistani border in October that netted more than 2,000 pounds of opium and heroin. But the statement’s real purpose was to question U. S. aims in Afghanistan, and to connect them to those of the Russians in the 1980s. In doing so, the Taliban mined a rich vein of resentment among Afghans, many of whom fail to understand why any nation would send soldiers to another country unless they sought to conquer it. The critique fit neatly into a larger narrative that is already familiar to Afghans. “Some analysts are of the opinion that the intention behind the recent co-operation is that Russians want the Americans” to stay in Afghanistan, the release says, so that “American imperialism is also engraved in Afghanistan” the way Soviet imperialism was years ago.

ISAF press releases have none of this narrative flow. They rarely offer a coherent account of why something happened, or what it has to do with anything else. In some cases, NATO doesn’t know what happened. It takes time for details to travel from the battlefield to a public affairs officer, who can share them with reporters. Even when information is available, ISAF press releases are bland and official, and the Afghans featured in them, whether Taliban commanders or wounded civilians, remain opaque to the reader. Information is not the same as a story. But Kirchner stuck to his guns. “The truth, frankly, is our greatest weapon, and we use that,” he told me. “The truth.”

In the last couple of years, NATO has ramped up its information campaign against Taliban propaganda, and I’ve often wondered whether soldiers are actively hunting Taliban spokespeople. At first, Kirchner avoided the question. While allowing that Taliban spokesmen are legitimate targets, he said that, to his knowledge, most operations seek weapons facilitators, bomb makers, and insurgent commanders, not spokespeople. I pressed him. Why had NATO arrested the Al Jazeera journalists, whose loyalties might be dubious, when the alliance could have sought the insurgents the journalists were speaking to, who were clearly on the other side?

Kirchner seemed to hesitate slightly, as if he were about to give me some bad news and he wanted to let me down easy. “I would think that most of them are in Pakistan,” he said gently. “I mean, that is Gary’s personal opinion.”

“Even though they’re reached by Afghan cell phone numbers?”

“I didn’t know that,” Kirchner said. There was an awkward silence. “I mean, I don’t focus on that. That’s really—in public affairs, in my domain—that’s not an area that we focus on.”

Kirchner declined to discuss the allegations against Nader and Nekzad, beyond saying that the men had “crossed the line of good journalism.” He kept calling the channel for which they worked “Al Jazeer.” “The outcome is that we’re communicating more with Al Jazeer,” Kirchner said. “I think what we’re trying to do is reach out to the Afghan media and insure that both sides of the story get told.”