Nachman spent many years in the Intelligence  Corps.  Many of his duties and tasks there are still secret, others will be told by others, and some were public.  The Military Attaches and Foreign  Guests of the IDF Liaison Unit, and the Army Spokesman and Public Relations Department.  Nachman headed both of them.   He served as head of the Military Attaches Liaison Unit from l952-l954, when he was appointed Army Spokesman.  He brought with him to this task a fresh spirit and established new relations between the IDF and the Mass Media.  

     Nachman was the third Army Spokesman, after Moish Pearlman and Ami Perry.  Some people say he was the first Army Spokesman  that moved the department from the personal to the established.  Nachman served under two Chiefs of Staff, General Motke Makleff who was Chief for only one year, and General Moshe Dayan who succeeded him and moved the Spokesman Department which was attached to the Chief’s Office to the Intelligence Branch, then under the Leadership of Colonel Benjamin Givlie.  There was a feeling that developments in the world and in the country will  require changes in the Structure and operation of the Spokesman Department, and Nachman was charged with the task to reorganize this service for the benefit of the IDF as a whole in its missions.  He fulfilled the task completely, when the operations of the  Office and Units attached encompassed the whole Security Structure  of the State and of the Ministry of Defence.  

     There is no doubt that in the two years Nachman served as Army Spokesman, his special skills and talents as a person , were used to the limit.  He was a brilliant and pleasant conversationalist, ideas generator, stamped every occasion with his personal touch, and what is even more important – he understood  that in order to be a successful spokesman, one has to have an immediate access to information sources, and being an Intelligence man himself, he brought into the department more Intelligence Officers, like me (the speaker is Colonel Samuel Segev – head of Liaison Unit to the Press – Press Office – during Nachman’s tour as Army Spokesman) and other officers who were attached to the Unit.  This enabled  an uninterrupted connection between us and the different Departments of the Intelligence structure, and turned the Press Office  to a reliable, immediate and initiating source of information.

      I realize that when the subject is Public Relations the next word that comes to mind is propaganda.  There is nothing further away from that image from what was taking place under the leadership of Colonel Nachman Karni.  He came to the office during one of the most stormy times the country has known since the War of Independence.   These were the times of terrorist acts and reprisal activities.  This was also a very politically tempestuous time.  The period was during Ben-Gurion, Sharet, and again Ben-Gurion.  This was the time of the Parasha, which influenced immediately the relations between the IDF and the Press.  But it was also the time of the Arms Deals between Egypt and The Soviet Union, it was also the time of the preparations for the Sinai Operaion (Mivza Kadesh).  In all this periods and in all these events Nachman knew how to navigate the Spokesman Structure, in such a way that will enable the Army to stay away from the inner strifes, and yet  he knew how to initiate activities and information services with background materials, for the local and the foreign press.  The fact that he was previously a Field Man himself, during the War of Independence,  made him realize that the most important thing was to bring the Press to the action scene and the direction we always got from him was “bring the journalists to the spot as soon as possible, they should see what’s happening and report from there”. It sounds so natural today, but then in order to achieve it one had to confront unwilling superiors, and sometimes even some journalists who were afraid of the danger.  Nachm,an always knew how to smooth the doubts and convince the unwilling.  They trusted him and knew how reliable and responsible he Was.  

     I remember that in those years there were rumours that the Army is competing with the Foreign Office, the Army is casting a shadow over. The Foreign Office; Army Officers  sneer at Diplomats, there were even those who pointed at us , the offices of the Army Spokesman and the Press Unit, as taking part in causing the problems .  Today may be the opportunity  to negate the allegations and rumours and state that there never was such a thing.  It is true that the army was in the news every day because there were operarions and battles, but it is also tru that the initiative that Nachman showed in many areas was by far greater than any initiative expressed by equal Diplomatic Service people, and as a result, naturally, the initiating party would get the headlines and be more prominent in the press issues.  

     Thus it happened that when Nachman initiated good background briefings on the reprisals, or on certain meetings of the Cease Fire Committees, and would direct issuing good materials to Local and Foreign Press Correspondents, articles would be published , and those who knew how it happened, naturally preferred participating in the Army Press Conferences. This was done with no intention of embarrassing the Foreign Office Spokesman’s Office.  It simply showed what important place good initiative takes, what place is given to good judgement and mainly how important is the place of instinctive sense of what the public would like to read.  

     There were certainly problems.  There was sometimes friction between us and superior ranks, mainly disputes in how much information should get to the public, but Nachman would always see himself as representing the Press, and would always, so to speak, clear the way for the journalists to a better access in getting the real picture, in order to supply the public with the relevant information.  

     It was mentioned how pleasant a conversationalist Nachman was, and I can add that he never was boring.  His was a very original mind.  He never supplied was is called ‘dry information’.  He always made use of his own background; his intimate knowledge of the country, and what she has to offer.  I remember  that once we accompanied a Senior Editor of “The Time Magazine”, who especially came to see for himself whether the terror acts then were so damaging as to earn such reprisals.  Nachman suggested we accompany him to a frontier Kibbutz, and stay over night, as he requested.  He wanted to check whether the people there  really suffer, don’t sleep nights, and yet have to work in the fields during the day.  He conversed with the Kibbutz People, quite naturally around the supper table, they told him about what they are going through.  He was a suspicious man, and got up at 3 am , to see for himself whether they really all guard at night, including the women.  After he saw it was indeed so, he went back to bed. The next morning we took him for a tour around Jerusalem , and on our way back to Tel-Aviv we went through the Ella Valley .  Nachman told him that this was the place of the fight between David and Goliath.  His eyes lit up; forgetting his mission , he bent down to pick a round stone.  Put it in his pocket and said: “I’m taking it with me. It may be the very stone that killed Goliath”. One realized that with such actions people are made to feel they are in the land of the Bible. One can enrich the background material that the journalist uses.  These things were in Nachman’s nature, and he brought them them to good use in his tasks.

     I mentioned that there was some competition between us the Foreign Office.  But Nachman was also a man of great tact, and knew how not to embarrass people needlessly. Even if he had to remark on something that needed criticizing he did not speak rudely.  We were once present at a Press conference, when one of the  Foreign Office representative in the Cease Fire Committee had to brief some foreign correspondents, using a map. Either he did not know how to use the map, or the map wasn’t exactly suited to his needs, and it was embarrassing.  Nachman very gently took over and explained what needed explaining.  Only later he said to the man “you may want to brush up on your topography course”.

     When we  want to sum up Nachman’s  tour as Army Spokesman, today, we see that things he established as rules and means of work then, mainly his insistance on telling the truth, only the truth, became today the thumb rules of all Army Spokesmen.  It was Nachman who set down the directions and the rules, so early in the history of this office.