MACV established a press camp at Quảng Trị and the ARVN also set up a press center nearby. However MACV had no intention of giving Saigon based correspondents the true story of the battle or allowing reporters to cross into Laos. MACV refused to allow correspondents onboard U.S. military helicopters operating over Laos. Following the deaths of correspondents travelling on an RVNAF helicopter on 10 February, the RVNAF transported two groups of correspondents into Laos on 13 and 16 February, while ten travelled overland along Route 9. Due to the limited information available about the operation the press developed their own leads producing stories that were at times unreliable. Where the Nixon administration had sought to depict the operation as a strictly limited attempt to buy time for Vietnamization, many reporters had come to believe just the opposite, that the president intended to expand the war. MACV public affairs officers deferred to the South Vietnamese to provide details of operations in Laos in order to reinforce the impression that the U.S. sought to convey that this was a South Vietnamese operation conducted for their own defense.