A National Disgrace: Propaganda and the Pentagon

[Nati Ice]

Flash based interactive feature - [url="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/20/washington/20080419_RUMSFELD.html"]http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04...9_RUMSFELD.html[/url]

In my opinion, Rumsfeld's constitution line (midway through the second part) is the most telling.


[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?hp"]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washingt...enerals.html?hp[/url]

[quote][b]Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand[/b]

By DAVID BARSTOW
Published: April 20, 2008

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.

As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”

The Pentagon defended its relationship with military analysts, saying they had been given only factual information about the war. “The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people,” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

It was, Mr. Whitman added, “a bit incredible” to think retired military officers could be “wound up” and turned into “puppets of the Defense Department.”

Many analysts strongly denied that they had either been co-opted or had allowed outside business interests to affect their on-air comments, and some have used their platforms to criticize the conduct of the war. Several, like Jeffrey D. McCausland, a CBS military analyst and defense industry lobbyist, said they kept their networks informed of their outside work and recused themselves from coverage that touched on business interests.

“I’m not here representing the administration,” Dr. McCausland said.[/quote]

Remainder - [url="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?pagewanted=2&hp"]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washingt...wanted=2&hp[/url]

[|BlackJesus|]

[center][size=5][font="Arial Black"][b]2 + 2 = 5[/b][/font][/size][/center]

[|Bunghole|]

This is not surprising to me and I'm sure has been done before.

Just because you as an analyst allow one side to present it's information doesn't mean you have to repeat it. If you're a good, objective analyst, you'd weigh what the Pentagon was showing you with the appropriate grains of salt against your own military experiences and what "the other side" is saying and present a balnced view.

The major networks generally softball those military analyst guys anyway, so there's not much that's substantive that you couldn't read about on your own on the internet or in the newspapers.

[b]This is my response in the "other" thread with the same article. Fuck merging them for now.[/b]

[Nati Ice]

[url="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-brendan-demelle/unearthed-news-of-the-wee_b_99981.html"]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-ken...ee_b_99981.html[/url]


[quote][b]Rumsfield Propaganda Push Violates Federal Anti Propaganda Statutes[/b]

Donald Rumsfeld's military analyst program violated federal anti propaganda statutes. Federal law prohibits the use of federal funds to propagandize the American people.

According to laws officially enacted in 1951 and affirmed by every appropriations bill since, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States."

The Government Accountability Office's definition of "publicity or propaganda" includes [PDF] "'covert propaganda' (i.e., the communication does not reveal that Government appropriations were expended to produce it)."

The White House's own Office of Legal Council further clarified the law in a 2005 memorandum following the controversy over the Armstrong Williams scandal (when it was discovered that the Bush administration had actually paid willing to publicly endorse its No Child Left Behind Law):

"covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties" would run afoul of restrictions on using appropriated funds for "propaganda."

As Sheldon Rampton points out, the key passage here is the phrase, "covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties." As David Bartow's excellent New York Times report demonstrated in detail, the Pentagon's military analyst program did exactly that.
1. It was covert. As Barstow's piece states, the 75 retired military officers who were recruited by Donald Rumsfeld and given talking points to deliver on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and MSNBC were given extraordinary access to White House and Pentagon officials. However, "The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon."
2. It was an attempt to mold opinion. According to the Pentagon's own internal documents (which can be downloaded and viewed from the New York Times website), the military analysts were considered "message force multipliers" or "surrogates" who would deliver administration "themes and messages" to millions of Americans "in the form of their own opinions." According to one participating military analyst, it was "psyops on steroids."
3. It was done "through the undisclosed use of third parties." In their television appearances, the military analysts did not disclose their ties to the White House, let alone that they were its surrogates. The military analysts were used as puppets for the Pentagon. In the words of Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and for Fox News military
analyst, "It was them saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you."

In a February 1, 1988 memorandum by the White House Office of Legal Council. Conservative lawyer Charles Cooper (then head of the OLC), explaining the legal limitations to White House efforts to win support for the Contra War in Nicaragua. Cooper declared that the Reagan Administration "can make available to private groups, upon request, printed materials that explain and justify the Administration's position on Contra aid. These materials must be items that were created in the normal course of business and not specifically produced for use by these private groups." Cooper continues:
It would be unwise, however, for the Administration to solicit the media to print articles by or interviews with anyone not serving in the government. And, of course, the Administration cannot assist in the preparation of any articles or statements by private sector supporters, other than through the provision of informational materials as described in the preceding paragraph.

In the case of the current Pentagon pundit scandal, however, the Pentagon clearly was assisting in the preparation both of articles and statements by private sector supporters. It did not simply provide "informational materials" that had been "created in the normal course of business." Rather, it sat down with the retired military analysts, many employed by arms dealers in business with the Pentagon and worked closely with them to draft talking points and script language to deploy them as message amplifiers and surrogates without disclosure.[/quote]


[quote][b]Rumsfeld knew he was breaking the law
[/b]
Donald Rumsfeld was evidently told by advisors that his propaganda program was illegal and insisted to go forward anyway. In a transcript of one his meetings with his propaganda team of military media analysts, Rumsfeld complains that he has been warned that his "information operations" directed at U.S. citizens are "illegal or immoral":
"This is the first war that's ever been run in the 21sth Century in a time of 24-hour news and bloggers and internets and emails and digital cameras and Sony cams and God knows all this stuff. ... We're not very skillful at it in terms of the media part of the new realities we're living in. Every time we try to do something someone says it's illegal or immoral, there's nothing the press would rather do than write about the press, we all know that. They fall in love with it. So every time someone tries to do some information operations for some public diplomacy or something, they say oh my goodness, it's multiple audiences and if you're talking to them, they're hearing you here as well and therefore that's propagandizing or something."

This transcript demonstrates that Rumsfeld was aware of federal prohibitions on domestic propaganda operations. Although it is illegal to target propaganda at the America people, the law does not forbid propaganda aimed at foreign audiences. Rumsfeld has been warned, however, that in today's world with "bloggers and internets and emails," even information operations overseas reach "multiple audiences" including U.S. citizens who are "hearing you here as well and therefore that's propagandizing." Rumsfeld, however, made these statements during a conference with military pundits whom he had recruited specifically for information operations targeting U.S. audiences. Yet he went ahead and did it anyway. In another part of the transcript, he explained why. In fighting the war on terror, Rumsfeld said, the "center of gravity's here in Washington and in the United States." In other words, he intended specifically to break the law by targeting the American public to put pressure on Washington law makers to go along with his war. That transcript alone provides the smoking gun with clear enough evidence for any prosecutor to convene a grand jury.[/quote]




someone needs to grow a pair and indicte these cock suckers