I can’t place the last time I saw an 11-page lede story on the New York Times‘ site, but just as we’re discussing the usefulness of the Mississippi press to its current or former government pals, along comes investigative reporter David Barstow with the same thing on national scale, Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.
You know their names and faces — among others, Ken Allard, the late Wayne Downing, Tom McInerney, Bob Scales, Monty Meigs, Don Shepperd, Barry McCaffrey, Paul Vallely. We know them as retired colonels and generals with good access to military decision-makers both in Iraq and in Washington, providing TV and radio seemingly “independent analysis” of how the war and its wagers operate.
They’ve been less ubiquitous lately, what with fatigue and depression having set into the populace and media in the sixth year of America’s Iraq war, but they’re still there. That is, they were until this exposé — as of today, we may finally be shut of them. For what we didn’t know is that,
[h]idden 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 … several dozen … 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. …
Barstow lays out how these guys sped — fresh from lavish treatment in Don Rumsfeld’s office or just off planes from Iraq or Guantanamo (having scoped out biz opportunities among other things) — to studios to mike-up and parrot the administration talking points they’d just heard but often no longer believed. Those with doubts stifled them to protect 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. " …
No, you jerk, the 4,038 American dead, the 205,000+ being treated for war-wounds, the 600,000+ whose VA claims make up a five- to fifteen-year backlog (h/t Deep Confusion) — they‘re the ones who’ve been hosed, along with the rest of this Bush-Cheney-wracked country.
Here‘s an audio of Barstow discussing one part of the “Psyops on steroids” — how the Pentagon in April 2006 marshalled its handpuppets to counter “the Generals’ Revolt” against wretched Rumsfeld. Or how about this?
… Uncomfortable facts had bubbled up during the trip. One briefer, for example, mentioned that the Army was resorting to packing inadequately armored Humvees with sandbags and Kevlar blankets. Descriptions of the Iraqi security forces were withering. "They can’t shoot, but then again, they don’t, " one officer told them, according to one participant’s notes.
"I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south, " General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.
The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.
"You can’t believe the progress, " General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be "down to a few numbers " within months. …
Read the whole thing. Then let’s meet back here with our pitchforks, pots of tar, and bags of feathers. Bring enough to do up several dozen of these whores.
Col. Pat Lang: “I was invited to one briefing at the Pentagon. At the meeting, many of those mentioned in this article were present. The purpose of the meeting was to give Rumsfeld the chance to explain the Abu Ghraib mess. I asked some awkward questions and was not invited again.”
emptywheel‘s interesting take, noting that NYT just posted one of its worst quarterly losses ever:
Well, duuuhhhhh. I commend the NYT for digging out the details, for connecting the dots, and naming names. But for all the people too stupid, too uninquiring, too gullible, too disinterested, or whatever, to have seen thru “the usual suspects” and their remarkably similar and totally linear reports, commentaries, and interviews during this administration’s corruption of what it means to be an American, I can only say, “Shame on you.”
I spent 32 years of my life wearing this nation’s Naval uniforms and standing my watches. I watched in utter disgust as Rumsfeld eviscerated the services’ finest leadership. I saw it coming from the outset: the best senior officers would recognize the impossibility of taking on SecDef, and they would simply turn in their retirement papers. The ones who replaced them would be suck-ups and cardboard cutouts of military leaders.
Damn this administration to hell. I once thought Ronald Reagan was the anti-Christ for what he did to our military. He can step aside … GWB wears that mantle now.
Ben out.
The ones who replaced them would be suck-ups and cardboard cutouts of military leaders.
One of the things I’ve most hated watching these years — though the competition for that dishonor is mighty strong, since it includes not just the upper military but Capitol Hill too.
“All warfare is based on deception.” Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”
“Foreknowledge cannot be elicited from ghosts and spirits; it cannot be inferred from comparison of previous events, or from the calculations of the heavens, but must be obtained from people who have knowledge of the enemy’s situation.
Therefore there are five kinds of spies used:
Local spies, internal spies, double spies, dead spies, and living spies. When all five are used, and no one knows their Way, it is called the divine organization, and is the ruler’s treasure.
For local spies, we use the enemy’s people.
For internal spies we use the enemy’s officials.
For double spies we use the enemy’s spies.
For dead spies we use agents to spread misinformation to the enemy. For living spies, we use agents to return with reports.
These guys were of course being used, the analysts and the networks "it’s in the book to do so.
That’s why they call it a war and a not a popularity contest. Everyone involved was well grown adults…if they were gullible to fall for the deception, they weren’t very sharp to begin with IMO. Some of the ones quoted sounded more like sour grapes about their access to the sugah tit being cut off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_tit
Surely they know the US military uses PsyOps on more than just the enemy….
“A man’s trust is a valuable thing. You don’t want to lose it over a game of cards.”
Kevin Costner’s 2003 movie, “Open Range”
What has surprised me is the magnitude of this effort. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.
That some of these retired officers, at least one of whom I’ve encountered personally, are behaving this way doesn’t surprise me at all. The article clearly explains their motivations, which is that they do a lot of business with the Pentagon. Honest people like Pat Lang don’t have to be convinced when there are so many authoritative-sounding people who are happy to be led around by the nose.
This is one of the things that are badly wrong with the defense industry. It is really too tied in with the government that is supposed to be its customer.
My comments about the press were not limited to the media in Mississippi, which is irrelevant except in a sadly small percentage of the times when the Big News story is in the backyard (e.g., Scruggs, when the MS press should have led the way).
But the NYTimes is front and center of my disgust with news coverage. I once thought the NYTimes hung the moon. It took the development of alternative news sources (including blogs!) for dimwitted me to figure out the NYT is not worthy of my trust. This article does not get it back.
My take on all this. It’s certainly a sad commentary on how our institutions are failing us.
Magnificent post, Cujo. Thank you so much for favoring folo with a link to it (which I’m sending to all my email friends too).
MsNE — lord, yes, wasn’t recognizing what Pinch Sulzberger and Donnie Graham have either done to or let their papers become breathtaking?! Though WaPo, and once in a great while, NYT, still do foster some excellent journalism, they’re nothing like what they were when they gained our respect. (Nor, I must say, is CBS, CNN, or PBS’s The News Hour.)
I don’t know your vintage, but if you, like me, became a news-and-Constitution addict over Watergate, it’s especially galling.
That we’ve lived to see such general hackification — my God, what an appallment.
What happened is the increasing politicalization of events instead of just objectively presenting the facts as “news” and letting the people determine their viewpoints. Now we have to read both sides of a story to find the distinct differences, actively search for the middle ground and then simply ignore both ends of the equation: since both ends/sides have nuts intent on making political points instead of sound public policy. But you are correct, hacks abound. For a price.
Shaves 11 Amen.
I tried to say as much in a long post on another thread I can no longer find. (I am outside the country with a bad internet connection, and I find this site very hard to naviagate.)
The ones who replaced them would be suck-ups and cardboard cutouts of military leaders.
One of the things I’ve most hated watching these years — though the competition for that dishonor is mighty strong, since it includes not just the upper military but Capitol Hill too.
That would describe the top military brass for the last 15-20 years as Colonel Hackworth used to excoriate the top generals for its culture of go along to get along and merit was seen as a threat, not an asset.
Nice to see the NY Times catching up with Ricks who has lapped them several times.
Thanks for the mention, Lotus. It’s fun to have readers who click on the blue type.
MsNExile 12, is this the comment you were searching for?
http://www.folo.us/2008/04/19/lessons-learned/#comment-17640
I’m sorry you’re having trouble navigating the site. If you can describe that a bit, maybe we can suggest something that’ll work better for you.
Great post Lotus, thank ye fer the H/T too…We have known of the deception since the inception of this misbegotten fiasco in Iraq, yet the truth does filter through. Bill Moyers spoke with Leila Fadel. bureau chief in Bagdad for McClatchy, and she gives a trustworthy ‘boots on the ground’ perspective worth a look.