WASHINGTON, March 29 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - In the first such incident in Iraq invasion war, the Pentagon expelled a U.S. journalist with the Christian Science Monitor from Iraq claiming he revealed sensitive information in broadcast interviews, the Boston-based newspaper said Friday, March 28.

Phil Smucker, a U.S. national based in Cairo, was reporting in southern Iraq for the Monitor, and the Daily Telegraph of London. He was criticized for the information he reported in an interview with CNN which the Pentagon said endangered a U.S. military combat unit by being too specific.

"My understanding of the facts at this point from the commander on the ground is that this reporter was reporting, in real time, positions, locations, and activities of units engaged in combat," says Bryan Whitman, deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.

"The commander felt it was necessary and appropriate to remove [Smucker] from his immediate battle space in order not to compromise his mission or endanger personnel of his unit," He added.

The U.S. forces in Iraq were slammed by the world press for keeping many necessary information from the press, leaving many of the readers confused amid conflicting reports and misleading information.

The Monitor hit back, saying Smucker "was escorted by the U.S. Marines from the front lines of the war in Iraq Thursday. He is being taken to Kuwait, the Pentagon says, because of information Smucker reported in a broadcast appearance with CNN early Wednesday."

Judging from the transcript of the CNN interview, “it does not appear to us that he disclosed anything that wasn't already widely available in maps and in U.S. and British radio, newspaper, and television reports in that same news cycle,” according to the paper.

It added that its reporter is an experienced war correspondent who understands “the gravity of such situations and not one who would knowingly put U.S. troops - and himself - in jeopardy.”

Smucker was one of several hundred journalists in Iraq who are not officially "embedded" with U.S. occupation forces. But he and Monitor photographer Andy Nelson had crossed into Iraq from Kuwait as part of a U.S. Marines convoy.

The reporter's father, John Smucker of Alexandria, who has twice been arrested in antiwar protests, said this was the first such incident in his son's 18-year career as a foreign correspondent.

"I think he's being treated unfairly, … He didn't spill any beans that hadn't been spilled the day before," Smucker told the Washington Post.

Many press outlets hit out at the U.S. forces for blocking their correspondents’ access to true information.

An early example of false claims relates to the battle to take control of Umm Qasr, the southern Iraqi deep-sea port and one of the key targets in the early war.