When, during the invasion of Grenada, Secretary of State George Schultz announced that newsmen were no longer “on our side,” he was correct. It's a far, far different world with wars far different from World War II, when our civilization was threatened and it would have been treason for a newsman to report from the “other side.” As a youth in the Pacific theatre of that war I saw my first foreign correspondent: He was uniformed and could have been a general.

It all began to change during Korea; not all newsmen were accredited in that United Nations war. When, in April, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the U.S. Marines and 82nd Airborne ashore in the Dominican Republic, some of us went ashore with the first wave of Marines. Daily we crossed the Marines’ lines to cover the rebel side of the war.