CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. – A National Guardsman who asked Defense Secretary Rumsfeld a bold question about armor on war vehicles went to the microphone after consulting with a Tennessee reporter.

Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts, who is embedded with the 278th Regimental Combat Team, wrote about the incident in an e-mail to co-workers sent Wednesday.

Mr. Pitts said he worked with guardsmen after being told reporters would not be allowed to ask Mr. Rumsfeld any questions.

“I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions so I brought two of them along with me as my escorts,” he wrote. “Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have.”

Mr. Pitts also said he arranged for the questioners to get recognized.

“While waiting for the VIP, I went and found the Sgt. in charge of the microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd,” Mr. Pitts wrote in an e-mail that was posted on several Web sites yesterday.

Specialist Thomas “Jerry” Wilson, 31, of Nashville, asked Mr. Rumsfeld why, after almost two years of war, soldiers were searching dumps for metal to weld on vehicles destined for hostile territory.

“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?” Specialist Wilson said.

The question appeared to surprise Mr. Rumsfeld and prompted cheers among the soldiers listening to him in a hangar.

The Chattanooga newspaper’s publisher and executive editor, Tom Griscom, commended the reporter’s work yesterday. He said the question was one that members of the unit and their families wanted answered, based on the reporter’s previous coverage of training stints in Mississippi and California.

“I think that Lee used what was available to him to get an answer to a story that we have covered and that has been important,” said Mr. Griscom, who served as White House communications director under President Reagan.

A member of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute, Kelly McBride, said she did not fault the reporter for getting help with asking the question but described the failure to include that information with his story as “dishonest with his readers.”