While covering Russian President Vladimir Putin's 2001 visit to the United States, a Russian reporter wondered why President George W. Bush asked U.S. news outlets to refrain from broadcasting or printing statements from videotapes of Osama bin Laden.

Why, the reporter asked during a Nov. 13, 2001, news conference, didn't Bush simply order the press not to run the tapes?

"Whoever thinks I have the capability and my government has the capability of reining in this press corps simply doesn't understand the American way," Bush responded.

But it has not always been due to a lack of trying. As reporters battle restrictions in covering a war on terrorism that started in Afghanistan and expanded during the U.S.-led war in Iraq, they have faced several obstacles, albeit sporadic, in covering news events stateside.

Twice, the government strongly discouraged the broadcast of war-related video: videotaped messages by bin Laden soon after the Sept. 11 attacks and, later, a graphic video displaying the murder and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Government officials also tried restricting the use of satellite images and the gathering of video and photographs on government property and at the attack sites themselves.

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, police cordoned off the blocks around the site of the former World Trade Center towers, restricting access not only to tourists but to photographers and reporters. Several photographers landed in jail on trespassing charges, including four in New York City who apparently got too close to the wreckage, and two in Pennsylvania who walked near the United Airlines crash site.

Stephen Ferry, on assignment for Time magazine, was charged with criminal impersonation after firefighters found him on the day of the attacks wearing New York City Fire Department coveralls and a hard hat and carrying a firefighter's toolbox, which Ferry said he picked up from an unattended fire truck to protect himself and his equipment. Two days later, Ferry was charged with criminal possession of a forged instrument. Ferry eventually pleaded guilty to the charges and, as part of a plea agreement, gave the Library of Congress all of the photographs from 28 rolls of film seized from him during his arrest. The photographs were to be attributed to an anonymous donor.

In Pennsylvania, photographer William Wendt and his assistant, Daniel Mahoney, were arrested for defiant trespass while on assignment for The New York Times Magazine. The two men allegedly lost their way to the press tent and were arrested after walking 50 yards off course and into a restricted area near the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93. The two pleaded guilty, and paid fines and court fees.

Restricted images of war

If any theme developed with stateside bans following the attacks of Sept. 11, it had to do with restricted images.

In an Oct. 10, 2001, conference call with broadcast network executives one month after the attacks, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice warned that videotapes from bin Laden and his "henchmen" could be used to frighten Americans, gain supporters and send messages about future terrorist attacks.

All five major broadcast news networks -- ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, CNN, NBC News and its affiliate MSNBC -- agreed not to air unedited, videotaped statements from bin Laden or his followers and to remove language the government considered inflammatory. This marked a rare moment when all of the networks decided through a joint agreement to limit prospective news coverage.

In a press conference, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the Bush administration feared that the tapes are a way for bin Laden to send coded messages to other terrorists.

"The means of communication in Afghanistan right now are limited," Fleischer said. "One way to communicate outside Afghanistan to followers is through the Western media."

Two months later, the administration did not interfere with broadcasters when they aired a videotape of bin Laden boasting about the terrorist attacks. However, in spring 2002 the government pressured CBS News when the network announced it would air portions of the Pearl videotape, a propaganda piece created by his captors and titled "The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl."

Officials at the State Department issued a statement confirming that "at the request of the Pearl family, the Department contacted CBS News to confirm whether CBS intended to broadcast parts of the videotape made by the killers of Daniel Pearl and to ask that in consideration of the sensitivities of Mr. Pearl's family CBS reconsider the decision."

CBS declined, and anchor Dan Rather defended the May 14, 2002, broadcast as necessary to "understand the full impact and danger of the propaganda war being waged."

In the meantime, the FBI contacted several Internet sites that posted the Pearl video and threatened obscenity charges if they did not remove it. ProHosters, an Internet company in Sterling, Va., that hosted a Web site which posted the video, complied at first. However, ProHosters reposted the video with a note saying Americans should decide for themselves whether they want to watch it.

Two years later, in May 2004, the U.S. government stayed out of the media's business following the release of another tape, this one made in Iraq, showing the decapitation of Nicolas Berg of West Chester, Pa. According to the CIA, Berg was murdered by Abu Musab Zarqawi, an Islamic extremist with alleged ties to al Qaeda. First released through an Islamic group's Web site, the video was picked up by media groups throughout the world.

Many independent Internet publishers in the U.S. made the entire content of the video available online, while the major broadcast networks aired only non-graphic images. No one from the Bush administration publicly asked the media not to broadcast the video.

Similarly, the government remained silent as news organizations throughout the country independently grappled over how to cover gruesome events -- including the murder and mutilation of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, as well as the beheading of U.S. military contractor Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia and South Korean translator Kim Sun-il in Iraq -- without offending audiences.

In late 2004, the State Department banned from U.S. airwaves Al-Manar, a television network popular in the Arabic-speaking world, citing it as a supporter of terrorism. "It's not a question of freedom of speech," State Department Spokesman Richard A. Boucher told The Washington Post. "It's a question of incitement of violence. We don't see why here, or anywhere else, a terrorist organization should be allowed to spread its hatred and incitement through the television airwaves."

When newsgathering involves the death of U.S. soldiers overseas, the Pentagon said no request for access to returning coffins will be granted.

In March 2003, the Bush administration dusted off a 13-year-old policy that bans the photographing of coffins containing the remains of U.S. military personnel who died overseas. Set in place by President George H.W. Bush before the 1991 Gulf War, the policy has prevented journalists from showing the public how -- and how often -- flag-draped coffins arrive in the U.S. from abroad.

Weeks before the start of the war in Iraq, the Pentagon informed military bases throughout the country that the often-ignored policy must be enforced. Exceptions were made to the media ban throughout President Bill Clinton's two terms in office, which included U.S. military operations in Somalia and Bosnia. The ban also was occasionally ignored during the war in Afghanistan, which received widespread public support in the United States.

Media observers alleged that the Bush administration was attempting to curb the press's ability to report the unpleasant realities of the Iraq war. However, thanks to a federal Freedom of Information request by Russ Kick, publisher of the Web site TheMemoryHole.org, more than 360 photographs of flag-draped caskets and honor guard ceremonies were publicly released by the government. The pictures were taken by the U.S. military.

The ban on photographing the loading and unloading of caskets containing military personnel remains. City and regional governments have also implemented prohibitions against photography, both by professionals and tourists.

Interference on the homefront

Government officials have not always been "hands off" with the media, though. Under the guise of "homeland security," government restrictions on photojournalism have increasingly shielded public buildings, financial offices and public transportation systems from the lens of TV and still cameras.

On March 19, 2002, Pentagon police officers seized a videotape from a Fox News cameraman shooting a traffic stop on a Virginia highway that runs along the northern side of the Pentagon. Officials said they confiscated the tape because the cameraman had been on government land where photography is not permitted unless journalists have an official escort.

Police handcuffed the cameraman, who held security clearances and credentials to film at the Pentagon, after he refused to turn over the tape. Pentagon officials and Washington bureau chiefs later spent several weeks hashing out new policies concerning newsgathering on military property.

In general, the journalists and military officials agreed that reporters and camera operators should seek an escort before gathering news on military property. But in the case of breaking news, the journalists should be able to gather the news and be willing to allow military officials to review photographs and videos afterward.

A ban on interviewing soldiers, constant military escorts and potential unannounced searches were among 14 ground rules that the military ordered reporters to agree to before covering the court martial of U.S. Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar at Fort Bragg, N.C., in April 2005, according to a report in the Easton, Pa., Express-Times.

The rules are an "affront to the First Amendment rights of free speech and press," a coalition of media groups led by Military Reporters & Editors and joined by the Reporters Committee wrote in an April 26 letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Army Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks wrote in response that some of the rules were designed to protect attorney-client privilege issues and "other privacy concerns," while other rules are media ground rules always in effect on the base. "Our goal remains to balance the right of access by the public and the news media with the legal rights of those accused, alleged victims and witnesses."

Even in non-military situations, the credentialing process for journalists has tightened in many areas of the country. New rules requiring background checks were implemented for capitol reporters working in Harrisburg, Pa., in September 2002. Police reporters in Chicago were required to undergo background checks, and were initially going to be fingerprinted as part of the process.

In spring 2004, the New York City Transit Authority announced a proposal to prohibit all photography, filming and videotaping on subways, buses and commuter trains. Terrorists could use the images to organize an attack, authority officials said. Similar restrictions already exist in Massachusetts, New Jersey and parts of Florida.

On June 6, 2004, nearly 100 professional and amateur photographers staged an underground protest in New York, snapping pictures throughout the subway system for more than an hour.

"The point is really to make everyday people wake up and realize that photographers are not terrorists," Joe Anastasio, who organized the event, told The New York Times. "In the last few years, photographers near anything vaguely important have been getting harassed."

New York police and city transit officials tossed the plan to ban photography on the city's subway system, the New York Daily News reported May 24, 2005. Civil libertarians and free press groups, including the Reporters Committee, had criticized the plan.

In August 2004, an intern at a small newspaper in Washington, D.C., was detained by U.S. Capitol Police for nearly an hour after taking pictures of security checkpoints near the Capitol. Michael Hoffman, a rising junior at American University, was ordered to show his driver's license and provide his social security number even after explaining he was on assignment for The Common Denominator newspaper.

An officer confiscated Hoffman's disposable camera, and later developed the film before returning the negatives and a copy of the prints to the paper's office. A second set of prints the Capitol Police Department held for its records were also turned over to the Denominator one day later.

Similarly, in August 2003, American University journalism graduate student Dena Gudaitis had her reporter's notebook confiscated by U.S. Secret Service officers while on assignment outside the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. The embassy is located next to the U.S. Naval Observatory, where Vice President Dick Cheney's residence is located.

Gudaitis, of Solon, Ohio, was among 33 graduate students sent throughout Washington to write a "slice-of-life" article as part of a class project. Upon approaching the British Embassy, nearby U.S. Secret Service personnel took her notes and searched her purse; Captain Tommy Taylor personally returned the notes and apologized for his officers' overreaction, according to American University.

Others in the news industry have spent time behind bars simply for doing their jobs.

While perhaps not directly related to Sept. 11, at least 17 reporters were arrested during World Bank and IMF protests in Washington, D.C., in September 2002. Journalists covering the protests were swept up in the mass arrests of more than 600 individuals, handcuffed and detained for several hours. The post-Sept. 11 climate of fear in Washington, D.C., certainly contributed to law enforcement's refusal to give leeway to journalists covering the protests.

Various media organizations, including The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, have asked the police department to reconsider how to better treat journalists covering protests. During the IMF protests, journalists with press credentials were still arrested by police officers. Media organizations want to make sure that police officers acknowledge a journalist's press rights in covering protests.

While covering a demonstration protesting the war in Iraq, Nick Varanelli, a photographer for The (Sacramento City College) Express, was arrested in spring 2003 on charges of rioting and blocking traffic while taking pictures of one of the protests. He repeatedly displayed his press pass, but was told that it was not valid because it had not been issued by the San Francisco Police Department.

Lee Nichols, an editor at The Austin Chronicle, filed a complaint with the Austin Police Department for being pepper-sprayed in the face while covering a March 20, 2003, antiwar protest. According to Nichols, he was standing between two cameras in an obvious group of journalists.

And the restrictions also occurred in the skies. Many television stations could not use news helicopters after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded aircraft immediately after Sept. 11. Even after the FAA began restoring the right to the nation's airspace, the agency's restrictions kept the helicopters out of the sky.

After two months of halted flights for newsgathering and traffic watches, many helicopters returned to the air on a limited basis in early December. A few weeks later, on Dec. 19, 2001, the FAA restored general aviation access to airspace above the nation's 30 largest metropolitan areas.

While restrictions stifled news helicopter flights, they did not apply to student pilots, such as the Florida teenager who died in January 2002 after ramming a stolen plane into the Bank of America building in Tampa. Broadcasters still have not gotten an explanation as to why news helicopters were among the last aircraft to return to the sky.

In Washington, security concerns continue to hamper journalists sporadically more than three years after the attacks. A freelance photographer covering a 2005 presidential inaugural protest for alternative media network Indymedia was hit with pepper spray and had his cameras confiscated before District of Columbia police arrested him as he filmed a group of protestors. Earlier on Inauguration Day, as many as 15 percent of the 1,000 television reporters and cameramen who applied for special credentials to be allowed into a high security zone for the ceremony did not get them, The Associated Press reported. Credentialing was denied to several print journalists who were fingerprinted and photographed and had background checks.

In March 2005, Bill Arkin, a military analyst for NBC News and the author of several books, including one on code names assigned to U.S. military and intelligence operations, was accused in a forged Defense Department document of being a spy for Saddam Hussein. Arkin is a former Army intelligence analyst. The origins of the forged document, which was sent to a Washington Times reporter, are unclear.

Lyng-Hou Ramirez, a journalist with the Miami-based Grupo de Diarios America, which compiles information from 11 newspapers in Latin America, filed a complaint with the Organization of American States after more than a dozen local law enforcement officers and Secret Service agents detained her without explanation at a June 2005 OAS meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Newsgathering and the Department of Justice

Sadly, such infringements upon newsgatherers' rights are nothing new. One of the most ominous post-Sept. 11 events occurred after The Associated Press began exploring why a package mailed from its Philippines bureau in September 2002 never reached assistant Washington Bureau Chief John Solomon. Federal Express claimed the package was lost, but the AP discovered that the FBI had the package, which contained an unclassified, eight-year-old crime lab report from a terrorism case.

According to the AP, the package was intercepted by the Customs Service and turned over to the FBI without a warrant. It was kept without notice or due process. AP would never even have known about the interference had it not pressed for answers.

The FBI later admitted it acted wrongly and returned the package -- more than nine months after it was first sent. More chilling: the FBI admitted that it kept the package to prevent Solomon from reporting certain contents of the report.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the FBI to explain its actions in this case and in others, including an earlier decision to obtain Solomon's home phone records from May 2-7, 2001, as a result of an unrelated story.

In a letter to Grassley, Assistant Attorney General Daniel J. Bryant said the Justice Department believes obtaining a reporter's home or work phone records is a perfectly legitimate and potentially quicker way to ascertain the identity of confidential sources.

"It is our view that obtaining a reporter's home telephone records in order to identify a media source revealing protected wiretap information is completely justified in some cases," Bryant wrote. "Determining the identity of, locating and interviewing and/or giving polygraph tests to all of the agents, prosecutors and defendants, secretaries, private attorneys, staff or other individuals with access to wiretap information may not be a reasonable alternative to issuing a subpoena for telephone toll records."

Interference at the borders

Many reporters have endured a different set of difficulties in dealing with the U.S. government at international borders.

Roger Calero, a native Nicaraguan and permanent U.S. resident, was stopped in December 2002 at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston by Immigration and Naturalization Service officials on his way back into the Unites States from assignments in Cuba and Mexico. Associate editor of the monthly Spanish-language news publication Perspectiva Mundial and staff writer for the labor-oriented newsweekly The Militant, Calero was detained in an INS facility and his press credentials, digital camera and laptop computer were seized by INS officials. The basis for his detention was a 14-year-old marijuana conviction -- when he was a high school student in Los Angeles.

Calero received his permanent green card and his Nicaraguan passport from the Department of Homeland Security on May 15, 2003, after a six-month legal battle.

But even those with spotless records face hurdles, due to how the government handles visas for journalists.

Members of the foreign news media are not eligible for a Department of Homeland Security visa waiver program that allows citizens from 27 "friendly" nations to travel visa-free to the United States for up to 90 days for tourism or business. Journalism is the only profession singled out for visa purposes.

At least 14 foreign journalists have been detained and sent home by U.S. officials since March 2003, according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) who introduced a bill in September 2004 that would allow foreign reporters into the United States without special journalist visas. The bill never made it out of a House subcommittee and has not been reintroduced.

"The problem is not misinterpretation of the law administered incorrectly by a few immigration agents," Lofgren wrote in an e-mail to the Reporters Committee. "It is with our immigration law that singles out the foreign press, radio, film or other foreign information media."

In May 2003, six French journalists traveling to the United States to cover a video game trade show in California were detained at Los Angeles International Airport and later sent back to France for not having press visas. Instead of obtaining the required "I" visas, the French reporters tried to enter the U.S. only with valid passports.

One year later, British journalist Elena Lappin was also detained upon arriving at Los Angeles International Airport on May 3. Traveling with a valid passport but no visa, Lappin was taken in handcuffs to a detention center after informing U.S. customs officials she was on a freelance assignment for the British daily newspaper The Guardian. Lappin was sent back to London the following day.

Weeks later, the U.S. Customs & Border Protection bureau announced it would begin granting foreign media a one-time break if they arrive in the United States on assignment without an I visa. Citing the "high number" of foreign journalists who have been arriving at U.S. airports with the wrong visa or no visa at all since Sept. 11, 2001, customs officials said the policy shift is to educate members of the media without preventing them from doing their jobs.

"It makes us look overly bureaucratic, and we don't want to look that way," said Bill Anthony, a spokesperson for Customs & Border Protection, who noted that the policy was directed at journalists who arrive in the U.S. with the wrong visa, not those who have "no visa or passport whatsoever."

"We want to keep terrorists and terrorists' weapons out of the country," Anthony added. "We don't want to keep journalists out of the country."

That hasn't always been the case. In February 2003, a U.S.-based Iraqi journalist, Mohammed Hussan Allawi, was ordered to leave the country following State Department charges that he had engaged in activities considered harmful to national security. Allawi, the United Nations reporter for the Iraqi News Agency, was not formally charged and authorities were unclear on what exactly his "harmful activities" were. In response, the Iraq government ordered Fox News correspondent Greg Palkot to leave Baghdad.

Also in February 2003, FBI agents questioned journalist Nayyar Zaidi for allegedly dialing from his home a handful of phone numbers linked to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Zaidi, who has been a U.S. citizen for 27 years, is the Washington bureau chief of the newspaper Urdu Daily Jang, the flagship publication of Pakistan's largest media company.

Zaidi claimed the information the FBI alleged it had about him is fabricated and that the agency wanted to get to his sources. The FBI reportedly asked Zaidi to provide them with his personal work-related phone book, but he refused. The investigation has since been dropped, according to the Pakistani Embassy.

Financial institutions in the United States also turned a cold shoulder to foreign journalists, particularly those from Middle Eastern nations.

In March 2003, the New York Stock Exchange revoked the credentials of reporters for the Qatar-based television network Al-Jazeera. NYSE made the move after the Arab network, which serves 35 million people and had covered the stock exchange for more than five years without incident, aired controversial video of captured and dead American soldiers during the war in Iraq.

The Nasdaq Stock Market also refused to allow Al-Jazeera to use its facilities to broadcast live reports. Nasdaq explicitly linked its ban to the network's broadcast of captured and killed U.S. soldiers. "In light of Al- Jazeera's recent conduct during the war, in which they have broadcast footage of U.S. POWs in alleged violation of the Geneva Convention[s], they are not welcome to broadcast from our facility at this time," Nasdaq spokesman Scott Peterson said.

Media organizations argued that no such provision existed in the Geneva Conventions that regulates what journalists may publish or broadcast. The network was readmitted to the stock exchanges in May 2003.

Stemming from concerns about how intelligence issues are covered, intelligence officials and members of the press started meeting in 2002 for informal, off-the-record discussions in Washington, D.C. Known simply as "Dialogue," the group met every few weeks over dinner. The gatherings received little publicity, but they attracted officials from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council and the Department of Defense as well as several Washington, D.C.-based journalists. Investigative reporter and National Security Archive founder Scott Armstrong and former CIA General Counsel Jeffrey Smith brought the group together to discuss anti-leaks legislation in light of the worries of both government and media.

The Department of Homeland Security

On Jan. 24, 2003, the doors opened at a new law enforcement and investigatory agency with functions taken from as many as 22 other federal agencies. The reorganization of these operations reportedly marked the biggest government bureaucratic shake-up since the creation of the Department of Defense half a century ago.

The Department of Homeland Security's first secretary, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge had a mixed record on openness issues (he fought in 2001 to substantially improve the state's open records law, yet was earlier accused of violating the law when he refused to reveal details of a $145 million payment to an emissions testing company in 1995). Michael Chertoff , a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia (3rd Cir.) from 2003 to 2005, was sworn in as the second department secretary after a 98-0 vote Feb. 15, 2005.

Before being named to the appellate court, Chertoff worked as a prosecutor in New Jersey, the Southern District of New York and in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He also served as special counsel for the Senate committee investigating the Whitewater political scandal and in the law firm Latham & Watkins.

One month after Chertoff started in the job, a federal report on terrorism threats -- such as exploding chlorine tanks and infecting cattle with foot-and-mouth disease -- disappeared from the Internet where it was briefly posted. In explaining why the report should have been, and from now on will be, confidential, Chertoff said, "What I want to resist is . . . a temptation to feed the desire for information by putting something out that we are not in a position to speak about definitively."

A day later, in his first public appearance before reporters, Chertoff said he plans a "disciplined" approach to sharing threat-related information with the public.

In June 2005, the Reporters Committee wrote Chertoff urging him to adopt guidelines restricting how agents seek to obtain information from journalists, similar to regulations that have been in place at the Department of Justice for more than three decades. The letter was sent after a leaked memo from the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security sparked its officials to visit the home and workplace of Bill Conroy in an attempt to discover his source for an article on the online news service Narco News.

Next section: The USA PATRIOT Act and beyond