The Defense Department has withdrawn from its web site a report that had exonerated it from using retired generals for propaganda.

• Inspector at Pentagon Says Report Was Flawed, By David Barstow, New York Times, May 5, 2009.

In a highly unusual reversal, the Defense Department’s inspector general’s office has withdrawn a report it issued in January exonerating a Pentagon public relations program that made extensive use of retired officers who worked as military analysts for television and radio networks.

...In addition to repudiating its own report, the inspector general’s office took the additional step of removing the report from its Web site.

The DOD memo withdrawing the report:

• Withdrawal Memo for IE-2009-004 "Examination of Allegations Involving DoD Public Affairs Outreach Program" (.pdf 262 kb), Memo from Donald M. Horstman, Deputy Inspector General for Policy and Oversight, Inspector General Department Of Defense, "Subject: Inspector General of the Department of Defense Report No. IE-2009-004, "Examination of Allegations Involving DoD Office of Public Affairs Outreach Program," January 14,2009" (05/05/09).

The web page (dodig.mil/inspections/IE/Reports.htm) where the report originally was listed now only links to the withdrawal memo and DOD blocks that page from being archived by the Internet Archive and others. Cryptome, however, grabbed a copy and that copy is still available: ie-2009-004.zip ("Examination of Allegations Involving DoD Public Affairs Outreach Program, Department of Defense, Office of Inspector General, January 14, 2009, Report Number IE-2009-004".)

(Libraries interested in preserving fugitive documents might well consider purchasing Cryptome DVDs for $25. Two DVDs of the Cryptome collection contain 47,000 files from June 1996 to January 2009, ~6.9 GB).

Amy Goodman interviewed David Barstow recently:

• New York Times Reporter David Barstow Wins Pulitzer Prize for Exposing Military’s Pro-War Propaganda Media Campaign, Democracy Now!, May 08, 2009.

For earlier coverage of this issue on FGI, see: Military analysts.

David Barstow wrote back in April, 2008 about retired U.S. generals appearing on the major cable networks as "independent" media analysts, while they were simultaneously working for defense contractors, and repeating talking points from the Pentagon (see Military Analysts for FGI coverage). In that piece, Barstow painted a nasty picture of conflicts of interest and journalistic ethical malpractice.

In today's NY Times, Barstow has another devastating piece, this time directing his focus to Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general, prominent military analyst for NBC News, and highly-paid consultant to defense contractors. McCaffrey's duplicitousness (and by extension, the other military analysts and the networks themselves) is truly shocking.

"One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex". David Barstow. New York Times, November 30, 2008 (oddly the date is 11/29 in the online edition and 11/30 in paper!).

...On NBC and in other public forums, General McCaffrey has consistently advocated wartime policies and spending priorities that are in line with his corporate interests. But those interests are not described to NBC’s viewers. He is held out as a dispassionate expert, not someone who helps companies win contracts related to the wars he discusses on television...

...General McCaffrey used his access to further business interests, as he did during the summer of 2005, when Americans were turning against the Iraq war in droves.

Veritas had been on a shopping spree, buying military contractors deeply enmeshed in the war. Its biggest acquisition was of DynCorp International, best known for training foreign security forces for the United States government. By 2005 operations in Iraq and Afghanistan accounted for 37 percent of DynCorp’s revenues.

... What is more, some of DynCorp’s Iraq contracts were in trouble, plagued by cost overruns, inept work by subcontractors and ineffective training programs. So when DynCorp executives learned that General McCaffrey was planning to travel to Iraq that June, they asked him to sound out American commanders and reassure them of DynCorp’s determination to make things right....

Back home, General McCaffrey undertook a one-man news media blitz in which he contradicted the dire assessments of many journalists in Iraq. He bore witness to progress on all fronts, but most of all he vouched for Iraq’s security forces. A year earlier, before joining DynCorp’s board, he had described these forces as “badly equipped, badly trained, politically unreliable.” Just months before, Gary E. Luck, a retired four-star Army general sent to assess progress in Iraq, had reported to Mr. Bush that security training was going poorly. Yet General McCaffrey now emphasized his “surprising” conclusion that the training was succeeding.

After Mr. Bush gave a speech praising Iraq’s new security forces, Brian Williams asked General McCaffrey for an independent assessment. “The Iraqi security forces are real,” General McCaffrey replied, without noting the concerns about DynCorp.

Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek, has published a "lost chapter" from the 1993 Iran-Contra report:

• Launching the Private Network an 84-page draft, plus a CRS study on "Public Diplomacy, Project Democracy and Contra Aid" (attached as an Appendix). (PDF, 3.4 Mb, 104pp).

For background and Parry's report on this chapter, see: Iran-Contra's 'Lost Chapter' By Robert Parry, Consortium News, June 30, 2008.

[T]he Iran-Contra scandal's "lost chapter" is a narrative describing how Ronald Reagan's administration brought CIA tactics to bear domestically to reshape the way Americans perceived the world.

For a copy of the document, National Security Decision Directive NSDD-77, "Management of Public Diplomacy Relative to National Security," January 14, 1983, which is mentioned in the chapter, and other related documents, see: Rumsfeld's Roadmap to Propaganda, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 177. January 26, 2006.

Volume 1 of the three volume Final Report Of The Independent Counsel For Iran/Contra Matters is available online here from the Federation of American Scientists, and here from the Federal Bulletin Board, and here from permanent.access.gpo.gov.

In April, the New York Times broke a story about the now infamous Pentagon information apparatus that used retired military officers in a "campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance" (Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon's Hidden Hand By David Barstow, New York Times, April 20, 2008). The Times also published some of the documents it obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests on its web site (NY Times publishes some FOIA documents).

Now, the Pentagon has published documents it released. This collection appears more complete than what the NYT released.

• Military Analysts "These documents were released to the New York Times regarding the Pentagon's Military Analyst program." (last updated 28-May-08)

The documents are posted on the web at the "Reading Room" of the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff, Requester Service Center, Office of Freedom of Information, under the heading "5 U.S.C. § 552 (a)(2)(D) Records – Records released to the public, under the FOIA, that are or will likely become the subject of subsequent requests" under the heading "Military Analysts."

All governments manipulate the media to garner favorable news coverage and spin the flow of information to put their actions in a positive light. But in a story in Sunday's NY Times (April 20, 2008) entitled "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand," David Barstow describes a concerted effort by the Bush Administration who used ostensibly objective military analysts to spread propaganda and dupe the American public in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance in Iraq. It turns out that those "independent military experts" consisted of “more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.”

Once again, John Stewart describes this event with wit so that we'll laugh rather than scream. So I'll let him have the last word. And he mentions a GAO report called "Combating Terrorism: The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas" that you can now get your hands on via the Internet Archive.

Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.

These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.

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.”...

...Over time, the Pentagon recruited more than 75 retired officers, although some participated only briefly or sporadically. The largest contingent was affiliated with Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN, the other networks with 24-hour cable outlets. But analysts from CBS and ABC were included, too. Some recruits, though not on any network payroll, were influential in other ways — either because they were sought out by radio hosts, or because they often published op-ed articles or were quoted in magazines, Web sites and newspapers. At least nine of them have written op-ed articles for The Times.

In an investigation on how the Bush administration uses retired military officers to promote its message on the Iraq war, the New York Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantanamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.

The story based on these documents (Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon's Hidden Hand By David Barstow, New York Times, April 20, 2008) is supplemented online by "Audio, video and documents that show how the military’s talking points were disseminated" (How the Pentagon Spread Its Message and a "Document Archive," which allows users to read and download documents and parts of documents. Of the 8000 pages, only a few are available online, but these include emails, a "Talking Points Memo," excerpts from a Transcript of meeting with Mr. Rumsfeld, and a Pentagon document that reports "Monitoring of Analysts."

Together, the audio-visual presentation and the documents are a small model for how newspapers could be using the power of the web to enhance their coverage and utility. I would certainly like to see all 8000 pages online!

The story itself is a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of the daily news.

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."

...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.

Iraq: The Media War Plan, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 219, Edited by Joyce Battle, May 8, 2007.

In January 2003 Defense Department planners recommended the creation of a "Rapid Reaction Media Team" to serve as a bridge between Iraq's formerly state-controlled news outlets and an "Iraqi Free Media" network, according to a White Paper and PowerPoint slides that were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act....

American, British, and Iraqi media experts would be hand-picked to provide "approved USG information" for the Iraqi public, while an ensuing "strategic information campaign" would be part of a "likely 1-2 years . . . transition" to a representative government.

See also:

What is Information Warfare?

Information Operations Roadmap

U.S. Military's "Multi-National Force" on YouTube