Encyclopedia of the Persian Gulf War

Page 201

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National Defense Authorization Act–al-Nuhayyan. Sheik Zayid Bin Sultan

National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993 (Public Law 102-190, 105 Stat. 1290)

This legislation, enacted on 5 December 1991, appropriated funds for “military activities of the Department of Defense” for the years 1992 and 1993. Important in the bill was section 734, which established a “Registry of Members of the Armed Forces Exposed to Fumes of Burning Oil in Connection with Operation Desert Storm” in the Department of Defense.

See also

Persian Gulf Conflict Supplemental Authorization and Personnel Benefits Act of 1991;

Veterans Health Care Act of 1992.

National Emergency Construction Authority

See Appendix 4, Executive Order 12734 of 14 November 1990.

National Media Pool (NMP)

Established “in response to protests over the news blackout effected in the first two days of the invasion in Grenada” in 1983, the Defense Department’s National Media Pool was first used during the invasion of Panama in 1989, with some protests from the media. It was revived for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm to keep a firm handle on press reporting during a delicate situation.

In its Final Report to Congress, the U.S. military wrote of the NMP, “The pool enables reporters to cover the earliest possible military action in a remote area where there is no other presence of the American news media, while still protecting the element of surprise, an essential part of operational security. Starting with those initial 17 press pool members, representing Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Cable News Network, National Public Radio, Time, Scripps-Howard, the Los Angeles Times, and the Milwaukee Journal, the number of reporters, editors, photographers, producers, and technicians grew to nearly 800 by December [1990]. Except during the first two weeks of the pool, those reporters filed all their stories independently, directly to their news organizations.” According to journalist John J. Fialka, the NMP was deployed on 12 August 1990 and arrived in Dhahran the next day. The pool was dissolved because of protests on 26 August, giving way to a system of individual pools of reporters assigned to various units.

See also

Censorship of the War, Coalition;

Joint Information Bureau;

Journalists;

Media.

References:

Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress, Report by the Department of Defense, April 1992, 652;

Fialka, John J., Hotel Warriors: Covering the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1992), 67;

MacArthur, John R., Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (New York: Hill & Wang, 1992), 8–9.

National Security Council

Under the direction and leadership of Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Council played an important role in advising the President on national security matters during the crisis in the Persian Gulf. The council was constituted by the National Security Act of 1947 (61 Stat. 497), which established that “the function of the Council shall be to advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security so as to enable the military services and the other departments and agencies of the Government to

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