Commentary: Remembering Pentagon Spokesman Ken Bacon

By Linda D. Kozaryn
American Forces Press Service

Aug. 17, 2009 - American Forces Press Service has lost a dear friend, a staunch supporter who believed the nation's troops had the same "need to know" about their defense secretary as the commercial press. Ken Bacon, 64, who served as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs during the Clinton administration, died of skin cancer Aug. 15, at his summer home on Block Island, R.I.

Bacon changed the face of military journalism in 1994, when he invited American Forces Press Service to become part of the Pentagon press corps that traveled the world with then-Defense Secretary William J. Perry. Bacon's invitation opened the door to the department's in-house news team, giving AFPS unprecedented access to the secretary and other senior defense leaders.

Until then, only a handful of commercial media accompanied Bacon and the defense secretary on their travels to meet with foreign defense officials and deployed U.S. forces. Bacon's support enabled AFPS to become a true news service, providing current coverage of international events to nearly 1,000 military newspapers.

I was the first AFPS reporter to travel as part of the secretary's press corps. After my first few trips, Bacon arranged for me to show clippings of the AFPS stories I'd written to the secretary during a long flight to Europe. As Perry flipped through the pages of news clips, he commented, "I always wondered how people in the military knew so much about me and my policies."

AFPS gave the secretary a direct link to the troops and, as a result, he became far more than the top photo in the military chain of command. As he traveled to 67 countries, logging more than 700,000 miles over the next three years, people throughout the military community learned of the secretary's troop visits, decisions and priorities.

"Every [private first class] knows my name because of American Forces Press Service," Perry said following his farewell ceremony on Fort Myer, Va., in 1997.

Traveling with the defense secretary has enabled AFPS to cover U.S. troop deployments in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The press service has broadened its perspective from the internal aspects of military life to an expanded view of combat operations, military ties with partners and allies, and the humanitarian efforts of U.S. forces around the globe.

An AFPS reporter was on board in 1996 when Perry traveled to Pervomaysk, Ukraine, to join Russian Defense Minister Gen. Pavel Grachev and Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Shmarov in destroying a Soviet missile silo to mark the beginning of a nuclear-free age in the former Soviet state.

AFPS also was there in 2000 when William S. Cohen became the first defense secretary to visit Vietnam since Melvin Laird in 1971. And AFPS was there in 2003 when Donald Rumsfeld flew into Iraq on an MC-130 from the Air Force's 919th Special Operations Wing less than a month after the fall of Baghdad.

I'm now the director of AFPS and I no longer travel to far-off lands. Instead, AFPS writers Jim Garamone, Donna Miles, Gerry Gilmore, Fred Baker, Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael Carden and Samantha Quigley pack their bags and head to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., to catch their flights with the defense secretary and other defense leaders.

Jim Garamone was the first AFPS reporter to become a permanent member of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff traveling crew when Air Force Gen. Richard Myer and later Marine Gen. Peter Pace invited AFPS along. AFPS currently travels throughout the United States and overseas with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, and is seeking an invitation to travel with Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn III.

Bacon served as our guide and mentor. He opened the door and set a precedent that lives on, and today, hundreds of thousands of people in and outside of the military read AFPS articles each week. He saw the value of having AFPS accurately chronicle the secretary's activities and remarks, as well as the many-faceted operations conducted by the U.S. military.

Thanks to Bacon's vision and high regard for the nation's men and women in uniform, the military community has been kept well-informed. The Internet has further expanded the AFPS audience. On behalf of all of us who tell the military's story from the inside, and on behalf of all who read AFPS, we are eternally grateful for his leadership and his commitment to the precepts of journalism.