Why is a Washington committee on China denying journalists access to unclassified war games?

It’s 5:40 p.m. I’m sitting inside the grand House Ways and Means Committee room in the Longworth Building opposite the Capitol in Washington, D.C., waiting to observe the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party run a two-hour tabletop war game, simulating what armed conflict could look like between the U.S. and China in the Taiwan Strait.

On the walls around me are portraits of past chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee, including Rep. Charlie Rangel, the first African American to sit in that leather seat that rises just a couple of inches higher than the ones on either side of it.

There’s a casually dressed crew setting up TV cameras. They’re from ABC, I learned earlier when chatting with reporters in the hall, and are preparing to film a special program that will air this Sunday.

Committee staff in suits are setting up two folding tables, carefully putting on handsome black tablecloths.

“Do the moves only happen on one table?” I hear one staffer ask.

“This is what the members are going to be standing around and talking about,” another staffer said. “This is where the moves are going to be made,” pointing to the different tables.

On either side of the tables are large flat-screen TVs, turned on but blank. To the left of the setup is a sign that reads, “Organized by the Center for a New American Security. Bold. Innovative. Bipartisan.” Other suited staffers sitting to the left of the sign thumb through illustrated binders, presumably preparing for the event.

It’s 5:50 p.m. I’m sipping my iced latte and checking my email. I look at the team setting up, thinking about how lucky I am to be in America and to be an American, able to have this kind of direct access to my government. I found this event through Congress.gov, via an automatic committee meeting announcement that emailed me the time and location of the event. The announcement stated that the name list of witnesses of the hearing “would display when it becomes available,” as would information about the video of the proceedings.

I exchange smiles with a staffer standing a few feet from me. I again think about how the openness of governance is part of what makes America strong. How privileged I am to be sitting in that grand leather chair with fast, open internet provided by my Congress, and with the ability to see its members in action as they go through a terrifying scenario of how WWIII might start in the Taiwan Strait.

The staffer looks at me a little closer. “Hi, are you with ABC?” he asks me.

When I tell him that I’m with The China Project and am looking forward to covering this exercise in my column, he informs me that it is a closed event. Perplexed, I show him where I had seen the event listed on Congress.gov, and show him that there is nothing on the site stating that it is closed. Politico even reported yesterday where and when it was to be held, I tell him.

“It’s on the House Repository site,” he says, and shows me on his phone a webpage that says “Meeting: Taiwan Tabletop Exercise” and “Closed to Public.”

“I’d like to cover this for my column. Is there any way I can stay?” I’m pleading. His smile flattens as he again informs me that it is a closed event.

I’m not giving up. “Perhaps I could talk with one of the members? Is there anyone I could interview about the event?” Without responding, he silently walks away. A few moments later, he returns with the card of the Select Committee’s press secretary and escorts me out of the room.

Photo by Laurel Schwartz

Staff, members of Congress, and Capitol Police walk by, smile, and say hi to me. This is a House office building, open to the public. Even after January 6, anyone is allowed to walk in off the street, go through the metal detectors, and open the office door of any member of Congress during office hours. In these halls, you see people of all ages, wearing pins and lanyards representing their home state, organization, or cause they’re championing. You hear different languages. Sometimes people wear traditional cultural garb.

Across from me and the black velvet rope blocking my access to the hearing is the door to the office of Rep. Wiley Nickel, a freshman congressman from North Carolina. Above it is a blue and yellow sign that reads “BELIEVE,” just as Coach Ted Lasso taped above his office in the hit TV series.

I believe in the freedom and openness of America. Part of why I decided to leave Beijing was because of the increasingly restricted access to information. Now I’m sitting in a House Office Building, a place I consider to be a hallowed space, where citizens have direct access to their elected officials. But I’m being prevented from watching as members of the Select Committee go through a war-game scenario predicting the beginning of WWIII in the Strait of Taiwan.

It’s 6:55 p.m. I recognize members from the Select Committee filing into the room through the Members’ entrance.

It’s 7:13 p.m. I just got a series of Google Alerts on the China Select Committee. Axios, Politico, the Washington Post, the Washington Examiner, and the South China Morning Post all just posted stories about the exercise, either referencing a statement they were given or unnamed sources from the Committee’s staff. Meanwhile, I’m watching the chairman, Rep. Mike Gallagher, being interviewed live on Fox News about the event.

Interviewer: “Thanks for taking the time with us. We hope you’ll come back after the war games to let us know what lessons you learned from them.” Rep. Gallagher: “Absolutely,” he says before signing off and coming down to the exercise.

It’s 7:21 p.m. Now I can hear dramatic, bass-heavy music coming from inside the room. Behind the closed doors, they’ve started playing out how WWIII could start between my free country and China. And the only way I’m going to get to see what happens in this non-classified event is through an exclusive, pre-produced program that will air Sunday on ABC.

It’s 8:30 p.m. As I’m walking toward the exit, I hear voices chatting in Mandarin. Around the corner, I find half a dozen reporters chatting. They’re from Voice of America Mandarin Service and several independent Taiwanese outlets. The Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press, all English-language outlets, are inside the event, they tell me (we were unable to independently verify this). They don’t know how those journalists got access to the exercise, and, like me, are also surprised that this event was not open to the public as previous Select Committee hearings had been.

Publication of this column was delayed due to multiple unsuccessful requests for comment from the Committee by email, phone, and text.

One of the Chinese-language reporters tells me that she contacted the committee several days ago to try to attend the event and never heard back. They tell me that before the event, they asked Committee staff for a pool report about the event, but were told none would be available. All they were provided with was a printout of the chairman’s opening remarks. It is a closed event, they confirm for me and show me the same webpage the staffer had shown me earlier. They, too, don’t know why this, unlike most of the previous hearings held by the special committee in D.C. and around the U.S., was closed to the public. They are sticking around until the event ends at 10:30 p.m. to try to speak with members of the Committee and participants on their way home.

Frustrated and exhausted, I wander back to the metro through the cavernous Union Station, smiling as I see a temporary planetarium that NASA is setting up to celebrate Earth Day. I see an unhoused man examining a large poster board showing satellite maps of places where human development has destroyed natural habitats. He smiles at me and shuffles away.

Then it occurs to me that the reporters I met in that hallway were all of Chinese descent and that I had introduced myself to the Committee staff as a columnist from a publication that has “China” in its name. In Beijing, I would expect government officials to limit the diversity of reporters they let in a room. America is better than this. We need to be.