Spin, doctored

[unhappycamper]

Spin, doctored
By Tom Burgess

This summer, the Army, National Guard and Defense Department issued requests to industry to hire contractors to analyze and monitor media reporting and make recommendations to the highest ranks of the service. I was part of one team that considered this work, thinking it could be lucrative and perhaps lead to more business at the heart of the services’ top management.

Since 2005, the Pentagon increasingly has contracted for everything from information warfare to reaction-force training to military logistics, and basically has supplemented our active forces in Iraq with contracted military forces. This is a vestige of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “military light” approach for Iraq, under which the U.S. hired contractors to deploy more forces than possible by just deploying active and reserve troops. We learned, however, that contractors cost three to four times more to deploy. That is, if you’re sure you can find enough contractors willing to go.

A couple of days before we were to bid, I called my partner. His company is a major defense contractor which, like me, saw the value in the new media-monitoring positions for the Army (22 jobs), the Army National Guard (about 10 to 12 jobs) and the Defense Department (about 20 to 25 jobs). But, by the end of our talk, we decided to let the opportunity pass us by.

Why? First, I suggested that it would be one thing to have reporters wandering by the core of the Army’s media operations room and ask, “Who are these guys?” and be told they are auditors from Booz Allen, KPMG or Deloitte & Touche. That would be unusual, but no huge deal.

But what if the answer was that they were with defense contractors such as Raytheon, Boeing or Lockheed Martin? That could mean the folks who bring you radars, warplanes or helicopters also were advising top brass on media coverage of operations and hardware decisions. We contacted the Army and said, “We’re not playing.”

Having defense-industry professionals monitor media coverage of military operations not only is an obvious conflict of interest, it raises concerns about how we build military leaders.


Rest of article at: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/community/opinion/airforce_backtalk_publicaffairs_070917/