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At the height of the Second World War there was a meeting of censors in Washington to decide what the United States government should tell its people about the progress of the struggle against Japan. One censor summed up the general feeling: "I'd tell them nothing until the war's over and then I'd tell them who won."
Of course, that did not happen and wiser counsel prevailed. But ever since there comes a time--as it has now in Britain-- when the government wishes it could follow that anonymous American censor's advice and have total control over what the public should be told about the war.
This is difficult to do in a democracy like Britain with its powerful press and even more difficult to do in the United States where freedom of expression is written into the Constitution. But that does not stop our leaders from trying to get the media "on side", as it is now over the war in Afghanistan.
If appeals to patriotism, the national interest, security, and the need to support "our boys" do not work, then our leaders can always try intimidation and accuse the media of favouring the enemy, endangering the safety of our leaders, stabbing the troops in the back, falling for propaganda and sabotaging the whole war effort.
We have nearly at that stage now. The British and American governments want the media in both countries to agree not to re-broadcast messages from Osama bin Laden or the Taliban, particularly recorded videos released to the Arab TV station, Al Jazeera. They argue that the messages are provocative propaganda which may encourage Muslim youths in Britain to volunteer for service with the Taliban and that they may contain a hidden code ordering further terrorist attacks on the West.
Both accusations are ludicrous. Of course, responsible broadcasters need to warn viewers that any reports originating from the enemy side need to be treated with caution and scepticism. But if this is a battle of ideas, then it is up to us to come up with convincing counter ones not simply try to silence the other side.
Mrs Thatcher tried this with the IRA. The time had come, she said, to "deny them the oxygen of publicity". If she had had her way, then anything the IRA said would have disappeared from the news. She was persuaded to restrict her ban to anything the IRA said on television--but no IRA voice would be allowed on the screen.
There was an outcry from the BBC and ITV and scenes of prominent IRA figures on TV speaking but without sound and then, later, with lips moving but with the dubbed voice of an actor. Finally, the whole ban became so ridiculous and impossible to enforce that it collapsed in acrimony.
Hidden messages? This harks back to 1939-45 when the BBC broadcast messages to the Resistance in Occupied Europe; "The little white rabbit has left his hutch"... "The Camembert cheese is over-ripe". But this system took months to develop and depended on the certainty that the BBC would broadcast the message at a fixed time and that the Resistance would be listening at the right moment.
Even if Osama bin Laden did include a coded message in any of his videos, there was no certainty that it would be broadcast, when it would be broadcast, or that his followers would be watching.
Actually bin Laden's communications system is known. His followers use email with a buy-across-the-counter encryption package that they change frequently. Or pay-as-you-go mobiles that they use for one conversation and then throw away. Or they pop into an internet cafe, create a new Hotmail address, send an email and are gone again in five minutes.
Within Afghanistan, his messages are often carried by bicycle or on foot. In an age of high technology surveillance, stone age communication is impenetrable.
If neither reason for asking for a voluntary ban on Osama bin Laden's videos bears close examination we have to look for other reasons for the government's stance. The main reason is, of course, that it is worried that giving publicity to what he has to say might undermine support for the war against him.
As long as he continues to threaten further terrorist strikes against the West, he causes no propaganda problems--he runs true to the image our own propaganda has painted of him. But who knows what he might say next?
Will he come out with an unanswerable question like the one the Al Jazeera TV interviewer asked Tony Blair: "Why is it acceptable for Israel to have weapons of mass destruction, but not an Arab country?"
The problem is that the Alliance put together by the United States and Britain was always going to be a shaky. The spectacle of two of the world's most powerful industrial nations bombing a Third World, agricultural one in the midst of a famine, was never going to be an edifying one.
Its success depended on convincing everyone, especially the Muslim world, that the strikes were aimed at the guilty men and those harbouring them and not at the suffering Afghanis. But we know from the Gulf War and Kosovo that the most deceitful propaganda is that which claims modern air strikes are so precise that no innocent civilians will die.
So what really worries the government is that the next video from Afghanistan will show the mangled bodies of Afghani women and children killed in raids by the Western Alliance. This is why it is trying to intimidate the media into agreeing on a blanket ban on anything coming from Osama bin Laden.
This is a dangerous step for freedom of expression. In a war of national survival, like the second world war, the media is expected to be on side. If the government believes that is the case now, then it should impose censorship. Otherwise it should keep quiet.
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