Another Mil-blog gone

Earlier this month, I directed anyone who stumbled in here to the blog of a U.S. soldier fighting with a Stryker unit in Mosul. The soldier identified himself as "CB" and wrote brilliant first-person accounts of firefights, patrols and day-to-day impressions of Iraq.
Before long, he was being read in the White House and the Pentagon as well as by folks like me. His commanding officer called him in one day a couple of weeks ago to compliment him on his writing and to caution him to be careful about including any details that might compromise operational security.
He was freaked out and concerned that he was now known to the upper echelons and was clearly on their radar screen.
He started being deliberately vague, "Today we went somewhere and did something," but his posts still had his distinctive voice and his observations were keen and compelling.
Then NPR got involved.
Reporter Eric Niiler did a piece on the Day to Day program that cast the Army in a very negative light vis a vis military bloggers. CB and the other soldier interviewed, a captain who also blogs from Iraq, weren't particularly pleased with the way the story was spun and said so online.
Now, today, CB's blog is no more. All of the previous content has been removed and the title, which morphed from "My War - Fear and Loathing in Iraq" to "My War," was changed today to "Over and Out."
I have lots of conflicting thoughts about what happened to CB and his blog and how his superiors tried to balance free speech against the safety of the troops and the success of the mission.
But as a professional journalist, I'm crystal clear on one thing: Eric Niiler betrayed the trust CB and the captain placed in him when they agreed to be interviewed.

I sent the following e-mail this morning to the Ombudsman at NPR:

I'm writing to complain about Eric Niiler's Aug. 24 piece about military bloggers in combat zones on Day to Day .
It's clear that the impetus for the story was the runaway popularity of a blog by a soldier in Mosul, Iraq who identified himself as "CB."
As a retired print journalist who has been following CB's blog for the last few weeks, I was angered and disturbed by Niiler's piece. Niiler obviously brought his own agenda to the story and turned it into a rant about Army persecution of bloggers.
The real story, of course, is the online public's enthusiastic response to what CB has been writing and how it's fresher and more genuine than anything we get from the mainstream media, including NPR. An honest reporter would have made that the central point of his story and explored the reasons why it is so.
As it turned out, Niiler doomed CB's blog by calling international attention to it and by divulging CB's name and unit.
I notice this morning that all of the previous content of CB's blog is gone and the name has been changed to "Over and Out."
It probably would have happened eventually, but Niiler's story made it a certainty.
That, in my judgment, is irresponsible journalism - using and abusing a source and distorting the reality of the situation just to have a sexier story.
At the same time, I recognize that once CB's superiors became aware of his blog, they had an obligation and a responsibility to make sure it was of no value to the enemy and did not endanger our troops. In that regard, I think they are right to err on the side of caution, even if it means silencing a voice many of us have come to admire and trust.
But the fact remains that Niiler put his own spin on the story and, in so doing, undermined the credibility of NPR. This is precisely why I and thousands like me search the internet for blogs from Iraq. The mainstream media, including NPR, isn't giving us the coverage we want.