One week in August 1942 several stories on the British war effort appeared on the wires of the Associated Press, written by an AP reporter based in London named Drew Middleton.

What the readers did not know was that Middleton had spent part of that week not in England but under enemy fire in a boat off the coast of France, watching an Allied commando raid on a German strongpoint.

The Germans didn’t know either, which was the point.

Middleton, now the military correspondent of The New York Times , recalls that British censors told him he had been chosen to cover an important story, the details of which they would not disclose. To do this, he would have to write in advance several articles that could be released while he was away. The important story was the famous raid on the German fortress at Dieppe. Twenty-two Allied correspondents were part of the press pool on that secret operation, and if they all had disappeared from view during a single week, the Germans might have thought something was afoot. So Middleton and the others were asked to provide, in the most accurate sense of the term, “cover stories.” Secrecy was assured, and the public learned of the Dieppe raid later, through the press.

During the German air attacks on London during the war, Edward R. Murrow made live radio broadcasts from the rooftops. This raised a problem of censorship, because Murrow might inadvertently describe secret military installations. The problem was solved when a British censor was sent to the rooftops to stand next to Murrow during the broadcasts. If Murrow began to describe something militarily sensitive, the censor tapped him on the wrist and Murrow changed the subject. Secrecy was assured, and the world got Murrow’s story of the London bombing.

Throughout the war, Gen. George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, held regular meetings with influential members of the Washington press. Marshall told them all the bad news and all the good news, every bit of it off the record, because he felt that an informed press would lead to a better-informed public and more support for the war. During all those years there was never a disclosure. Secrecy was assured, and the public got a balanced view of the war.

World War II was an officially declared war. The Korean “police action” was not. And in Vietnam the U.S. Congress never was asked to declare war.

Relations between the press and the American military deteriorated when the United States began to engage in undeclared wars of uncertain popularity. The Ernie Pyles who had written sympathetically about World War II were replaced by the David Halberstams and Seymour Hershes who wrote accurately but critically about Vietnam.

There was no military censorship in Vietnam, because no legal basis for it existed in an undeclared war. Instead, members of the press received credentials that could be revoked if the reporting damaged military