The Pentagon’s Media Analyst Domestic Psy-Ops Program: Is It Legal?
By: bmaz Sunday April 20, 2008 12:52 pm
By now you have probably heard that the New York Times has an in-depth piece by David Barstow out for Sunday's edition on the use by the Pentagon of media "military experts" as propaganda conduits.
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The bottom line seems to be that
any "covert" program by the government to shape the news, or disseminate false news, to the domestic American audience constitutes a violation of both the Appropriations Act prohibitions as well as the Anti-Deficiency Act. As further evidence of how sensitive the United States has historically been on prohibiting the governmental dissemination of domestic propaganda, keep in mind that the Smith-Mundt Act even prohibits the domestic dissemination of information utilized in foreign propaganda efforts of the US, which, of course, are legal (think Voice of America radio).
You would have to imagine that the first rationalization from Bushco will be along the lines of "well this is different than the Armstrong Williams situation because we didn't expend any money paying the military analysts and there was no quid pro quo". I would argue that the following snippets from today's NYT article put the lie to that likely defense:
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.
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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.
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Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”
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Conversely, the administration has demonstrated that there is a price for sustained criticism, many analysts said. “You’ll lose all access,” Dr. McCausland said.
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Some of these analysts were on the mission to Cuba on June 24, 2005 — the first of six such Guantánamo trips — which was designed to mobilize analysts against the growing perception of Guantánamo as an international symbol of inhumane treatment.
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It was, he said, “psyops on steroids” — a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. “It’s not like it’s, ‘We’ll pay you $500 to get our story out,’ ” he said. “It’s more subtle.” The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.
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The memorandum led to a proposal to take analysts on a tour of Iraq in September 2003, timed to help overcome the sticker shock from Mr. Bush’s request for $87 billion in emergency war financing.
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Some Pentagon officials said they were well aware that some analysts viewed their special access as a business advantage. “Of course we realized that,” Mr. Krueger said. “We weren’t naïve about that.”
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Some e-mail messages between the Pentagon and the analysts reveal an implicit trade of privileged access for favorable coverage.
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The Pentagon paid a private contractor, Omnitec Solutions, hundreds of thousands of dollars to scour databases for any trace of the analysts, be it a segment on “The O’Reilly Factor” or an interview with The Daily Inter Lake in Montana, circulation 20,000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1208722405-n0YubxZfX3X5gh1TsZcYCwmore at:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/04/20/the-pentagons-media-analyst-domestic-psy-ops-program-is-it-legal/#more-2051
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