Part of the problem of being a military officer in charge of providing information to the media about the war on terrorism is knowing where the enemy gets most of its information.

        From the media.

        “This is a different kind of war,” said U.S. Navy Capt. T.L. McCreary, a Cincinnati-area native who is special assistant for public affairs to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

        “And some of it is going to have to be secret.”

        Capt. McCreary, who grew up in Bridgetown and attended Oak Hills High School, reports directly to Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, who was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs recently by President Bush.

        His job, he says, is to “get the chiefs' message out,” to assist the public affairs office at the Department of Defense, and get military news to the media.

        It is one of many public- affairs assignments the captain has held since leaving Northern Kentucky University in 1978 and joining the Navy.

        Capt. McCreary has, in the old Navy tradition, “seen the world,” having:

        • Spent two years on a destroyer in the western Pacific and Indian oceans.

        • Served on the USS Missouri during the Persian Gulf War.

        • Served three years in Bahrain.

        The captain said Americans may find that, as the war against terrorism goes on, they will not have the 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-week information stream they saw during the Persian Gulf War a decade ago.

        That may be especially true in the phase America is now headed into — a ground campaign involving small groups of highly trained and highly secretive commando forces.

        “Nation-states usually have sophisticated intelligence-gathering operations; they can get information on their enemies through back channels,” he said.

        “... This is an enemy that gets its information from the media and through the Internet.”

        The limits on information, Capt. McCreary said, will involve mostly details on military operations and plans.

        “Everybody knows how many people we have and what ships and what guns,” the captain said. “But the operational stuff, we won't talk about.”

        A great deal of information is available on official military Web sites, but Capt. McCreary said that information is being “very carefully screened.”

        “But we are going to put information out there; this is a free society and people have a right to know what they are paying for,” Capt. McCreary said.

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