In May 2006, freelance journalist Sarah Olson interviewed Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada for Truthout.org and National Radio Project’s “Making Contact.” Watada is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse orders to deploy to Iraq (he considers the war to be illegal), and as a result became the first military officer charged with public dissent since 1965. Lt. Watada faces four counts of conduct unbecoming an officer. The Army has subpoenaed Olson to testify in Watada’s court martial, which is slated for the first week of February, in order to verify the statements Watada made to her, which are already a part of the public record.
Paul McLeary: How did you find out about the case initially?
Sarah Olson: I cover the antiwar movement, and I had been doing stories about conscientious objectors or war resisters, among other things. So, it’s a story I’ve been following, and I’ve been telling people that if they know someone who wants to talk, to let me know, so it was a logical thing.
PM: You interviewed him in May and he held a press conference and went fully public in June.
SO: Yeah. I published the truthout story the morning he went public at his press conference [on June7].
PM: How long was it after your story came out that the Army first contacted you about the case?
SO: I heard from them in July. Ehren was formally charged on fifth of July with two counts of contemptuous speech and three counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. In August they added another conduct charge, and then when they convened the court martial in November, they dropped the contemptuous speech charges, so right now he’s facing four counts of conduct unbecoming an officer, each of them based on statements he made to the public or to the press about his opposition to the war. One of those is based on the selected statements from the truthout interview I did with him.
PM: Obviously the interview is out there in the public domain, so what would the Army hope to gain by subpoenaing you and having you come in and reaffirm that you did the interview and that he said what he is already on the record as saying?
SO: Everything that appears in print is considered hearsay until someone agrees to confirm it. The more complicated thing about this is that because it is also available on radio, it is actually something that they can listen to, and hear his voice, so my argument is going to be that you don’t need journalists [to testify] in this case, because you can download a couple different pieces that I did with him, listen to his voice and verify his words yourself.
PM: As far as the ethical issues involved, do you feel that if you testify — and if you don’t you’re potentially looking at jail time — your standing among potential sources in the future might be put at risk?
SO: Absolutely. That is one of several arguments I’m making. I believe that when you are seen — rightly or wrongly — as collaborating with the government in a prosecution, it sends a message to anybody who is considering talking to me that “Talk to me and you’ll go to jail.”
It’s important to acknowledge that many journalists don’t have an issue with going to court to verify their reporting. That’s all the Army says it wants from me. Obviously once I get up on stand they can ask whatever they want, there’s no limitations on that, so that sets up this slippery slope. But more to my concern … once speech itself becomes a crime it doesn’t matter if it is public material or confidential, and it sends a horrible message that you’re willing to take sides in a way that journalists should never do.
PM: A big part of this case is the issue of the responsibility Lt. Watada has toward fulfilling the military obligation he willingly entered in to. When you volunteer for the military, you sign a contract and agree to live by a certain set of rules, and in effect you’re willingly signing away some of your rights, in one form or another. Having done that, don’t you think that Lt. Watada is trying to back out of a contract that he’s made, and now he is simply paying the price for attempting to break that contract?
SO: That is the heart of this case, and frankly, it’s something that I don’t think has been covered well. But the question in all of these conduct charges is whether or not Lt. Watada exceeded the scope of his allowable speech. I do think that when you look at the history of military prosecutions for speech — and I’m not a military law expert — you see that there are differences between how Lt. Watada is speaking and how people spoke in previous cases. So, it’s a legitimate question as to whether or not this is a new way of looking at, or defining, the unacceptable speech. It’s a legitimate question to be asking, and quite frankly I wish more people were asking it.
PM: Have you talked to other antiwar vets after you were subpoenaed, and are you still working on the same types of stories?
SO: Not now. I’m certainly not able to cover the Watada case, but I have talked to other antiwar veterans around the Watada case, but I’m not actively covering any aspect of this story, or Iraq war stories at this point.
PM: If you knew, going into this story, that you would likely be called before a military court to testify, would you still have gone ahead with the story?
SO: Yeah, I would have. The Iraq war is one of the most important issues of our time, so I think it’s the obligation and the responsibility of the media to tackle every aspect of the war and to hear from all of the voices involved. I think truly we need more debates, not less, in the media in general, and certainly around the Iraq war.
PM: In covering the antiwar movement, and antiwar veterans of the Iraq war, how do you think the mainstream media has dealt with the issue of dissent, if at all?
SO: There have been individual instances of fantastic reporting of the antiwar movement, of Iraq war veterans who oppose the war, Iraq war veterans who support to war – there’s been some good reporting across the board. On the other hand I heard Paul Rieckhoff (an Iraq vet who now opposes the war) talk at the Media Reform Conference in Memphis last weekend, and he gave a searing indictment of the mainstream media. He said that he and other Iraq war veterans had been betrayed by the media in its lack of ability to cover the legitimate questions raised by the antiwar movement properly. That was his analysis.
PM: Anything else you’d like to add about the case, and your involvement in it?
SO: The case cuts right to the heart of a couple First amendment issues. It’s the journalist’s job to report the news and not to participate in government prosecution of political speech. It’s very important to preserve the press as a place to which all perspectives have access. I think that testifying, or the issuance of these subpoenas, erodes the necessary separation between the press and the government, and it threatens to turn journalists in to the investigative arm of the government.
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.