UNCLASSIFIED i ' TO FROM ff I • ' I Robert M Nelson Jr Exercise Mighty Derringer Controller Jack Campbell Public Information I 1 The only objective for public information controllers is to make exercise players at the highest levels On-scene Commander and above play 0 Prcd1ctably we had 11ttle _success but more than in previous operations ii r - k tohavc r in fu1 pl ' nr nNIJS hecause the orimary players the Department of State l ft following the assault We had created a repressive foreign State Government whose actions we had expected the U S to try to soften especially when the lives of American correspondents were in jeopardy but this did not play out The one direct response from ' players came when the OSC requested his PIO to meet with the OCONUS I information chief to elicit a promise not to mention NEST this after the U S had revealed enough information that only the most naive newspaper person would not know this It was not clear to this controller that the OSC utilized the expert1se·of the PIO to inform him of what was going on in the oustide world or to use his advice on how to h ndle contingencies The OSC relied completely on the ability of the State Depar t nt to handle everything and to ma1nta1n the stonewall It is unfortqa te that State did not remain so that we could see if the OSC would require close coordination between his PIO and State To me the most glaring deficiency was that DOE NEST did not establish even notionally a public affairs function 1n Las Vegas In any deployment especially overseas th1s would be the most heavily involved element of the DOE public affairs complex This should have been brought home by the strong pressure brought by Bill Barrett intrepid adversarial correspondent for the International Wire Service in Las Vegas