A Colonel Second

The item moving over the A.P. ticker alarmed the U.S. embassy staff in Bonn. Michael McGhee, 19-year-old son of the U.S. Ambassador to West Germany, George McGhee, had been arrested in California for driving under the influence of LSD. The embassy's public affairs counselor, Albert Hemsing, phoned Colonel George E. Moranda, 49, U.S. Army information chief in Europe, and asked him to keep the story out of the Army daily, Stars and Stripes--at least until the case came to court.

A newsman first and a colonel second, Moranda objected. He called his superior officer, Major General Francis Pachler, U.S. Army Chief of Staff in Europe, to argue that the McGhee item was news that should not be suppressed. Pachler disagreed, told him to kill the story. Moranda replied that he would do so only on direct orders. The orders were given, and Moranda called Stars and Stripes--but it was too late. The first two editions had already come out with the story; it was suppressed only in the last two. Not that anyone in Germany would have had the slightest difficulty learning the news. It was carried in the German press.

Next day, Moranda was sacked. Though he had served only seven months of a three-year tour of duty, he was ordered to take a job with the chief of the Office of Information in the Pentagon. The Army claimed the reassignment was "routine," and it might have gone unnoticed. But last week the Overseas Weekly, a privately owned paper put out for enlisted men, broke the story.

A trim, competent career officer who holds the Bronze Star, Colonel Moranda was depressed at losing his job. But he has the comfort, at least, of knowing that the House Subcommittee on Foreign Operations and Government Information will investigate the affair. And on the eve of his departure from Europe, Stars and Stripes presented him with a certificate making him an honorary lifetime editor. The citation read: "In recognition of his having daringly espoused and cherished the cause of a free press by remaining contumacious in the face of critics."

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