Ruminations of an Expatriate

This is so wrong on so many levels that if it hadn’t occurred during the Cheney administration I would be really amazed at the audacity, as well as really appalled. One of the hallmarks of fascism is the interlacing of government and corporate interests. Another is government propaganda.

David Barstow has a really long piece up on the NYT web site reporting the Pentagon’s use of retired military brass, who serve as network TV “military analysts” and often military industry lobbyists, as propagandists. The Pentagon has provided these retired officers with classified information and taken them on “briefing” trips to Guantanamo, Iraq, and elsewhere to ensure they hew the party line when appearing as network analysts and the analysts often used the information obtained and their access to Pentagon officials to further the interest of the military vendors they represent.

So the next time you listen to one of these “analysts”, remember that chances are they are likely mobbed up Pentagon sluts.

Here’s a sample.
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.”

Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.

“Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.”

Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena.”

The documents released by the Pentagon do not show any quid pro quo between commentary and contracts. But some analysts said they had used the special access as a marketing and networking opportunity or as a window into future business possibilities.

John C. Garrett is a retired Army colonel and unpaid analyst for Fox News TV and radio. He is also a lobbyist at Patton Boggs who helps firms win Pentagon contracts, including in Iraq. In promotional materials, he states that as a military analyst he “is privy to weekly access and briefings with the secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high level policy makers in the administration.” One client told investors that Mr. Garrett’s special access and decades of experience helped him “to know in advance — and in detail — how best to meet the needs” of the Defense Department and other agencies.

In interviews Mr. Garrett said there was an inevitable overlap between his dual roles. He said he had gotten “information you just otherwise would not get,” from the briefings and three Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq. He also acknowledged using this access and information to identify opportunities for clients. “You can’t help but look for that,” he said, adding, “If you know a capability that would fill a niche or need, you try to fill it. “That’s good for everybody.”

At the same time, in e-mail messages to the Pentagon, Mr. Garrett displayed an eagerness to be supportive with his television and radio commentary. “Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay,” he wrote in January 2007, before President Bush went on TV to describe the surge strategy in Iraq.

Conversely, the administration has demonstrated that there is a price for sustained criticism, many analysts said. “You’ll lose all access,” Dr. McCausland said.

————

The Pentagon’s regular press office would be kept separate from the military analysts. The analysts would instead be catered to by a small group of political appointees, with the point person being Brent T. Krueger, another senior aide to Ms. Clarke. The decision recalled other administration tactics that subverted traditional journalism. Federal agencies, for example, have paid columnists to write favorably about the administration. They have distributed to local TV stations hundreds of fake news segments with fawning accounts of administration accomplishments. The Pentagon itself has made covert payments to Iraqi newspapers to publish coalition propaganda.

Rather than complain about the “media filter,” each of these techniques simply converted the filter into an amplifier. This time, Mr. Krueger said, the military analysts would in effect be “writing the op-ed” for the war.

From the start, interviews show, the White House took a keen interest in which analysts had been identified by the Pentagon, requesting lists of potential recruits, and suggesting names. Ms. Clarke’s team wrote summaries describing their backgrounds, business affiliations and where they stood on the war.

“Rumsfeld ultimately cleared off on all invitees,” said Mr. Krueger, who left the Pentagon in 2004. (Through a spokesman, Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment for this article.)

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.

———–

From their earliest sessions with the military analysts, Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides spoke as if they were all part of the same team.

In interviews, participants described a powerfully seductive environment — the uniformed escorts to Mr. Rumsfeld’s private conference room, the best government china laid out, the embossed name cards, the blizzard of PowerPoints, the solicitations of advice and counsel, the appeals to duty and country, the warm thank you notes from the secretary himself.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. “You’re back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV.” 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.

—————

At the Pentagon, members of Ms. Clarke’s staff marveled at the way the analysts seamlessly incorporated material from talking points and briefings as if it was their own.

“You could see that they were messaging,” Mr. Krueger said. “You could see they were taking verbatim what the secretary was saying or what the technical specialists were saying. And they were saying it over and over and over.” Some days, he added, “We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’ ”

On April 12, 2003, with major combat almost over, Mr. Rumsfeld drafted a memorandum to Ms. Clarke. “Let’s think about having some of the folks who did such a good job as talking heads in after this thing is over,” he wrote.

By summer, though, the first signs of the insurgency had emerged. Reports from journalists based in Baghdad were increasingly suffused with the imagery of mayhem.

The Pentagon did not have to search far for a counterweight.

It was time, an internal Pentagon strategy memorandum urged, to “re-energize surrogates and message-force multipliers,” starting with the military analysts.

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.

Laura Rozen, at her War and Piece blog, reports that the resignation of “White House aide Felipe Sixto”  “came about because the Center for a Free Cuba found out he was using federal funds to pay for a domestic propaganda campaign to support President Bush’s Cuba policy.”

It seems Sixto provided funds to the phony front group, Reporters Without Borders, for the conduct of the “domestic propaganda campaign”.  Reporters Without Borders has previously acknowledged receiving funding from the US government to propagandize relative to Cuba, which has been a primary focus of the group.

Nine days after the Colombia military (at the direction of Colombian President Uribe who was designated in the 1990s by the USA government as a narco trafficker and who is, as reported by Diehl’s own newspaprer, associated with “far-right paramilitary fighters”) crossed the Ecuadorian  border and killed 20 some FARC members and visitors in their sleep, the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl issued an editorial reciting chapter and verse President Uribe’s contentions that a FARC laptop recovered from the destroyed FARC camp revealed all sort of nefarious FARC deeds.  Included in Uribe’s accusations were that FARC provided financial support for Venezuelan president Chavez and Ecuadoran President Correa (the USA and Colombia previously asserted that FARC had provided support to the presidents of Brazil and Argentina), FARC efforts to obtain uranium with which to construct a dirty bomb, and even references to Barack Obama.  You may find Jackson’s piece of propaganda here.

You may find commentary on the subject here.

Today Venezuelan Minister of Communication and Information, Andrés Izarra, to Diehl to school.  Following is the text of Izarra’s letter to Diehl.

March 26th 2008, by Andrés Izarra
Jackson Diehl
Deputy Editor, Editorial Page
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20071
March 25, 2008

Dear Mr. Diehl,

Over the past several years, we have informed you of our concerns regarding the hostile, distorted and inaccurate coverage of Venezuela in your newspaper, and particularly on the Editorial Page. Previously, we communicated our alarm at the unbalanced reporting and writing on Venezuela during the period 2000-2006, which evidenced one-sided analyses and false claims regarding President Chávez’s tendencies and events within the country. Since then, however, the Post coverage has gotten worse. More editorials and OpEds have been written this past year about Venezuela than ever before, 98% of which are negative, critical, and aggressive and contain false or manipulated information. We are therefore led to believe that the Washington Post is promoting an anti-Venezuela, anti-Chávez agenda.

President Chávez has been referred to in Washington Post editorials and OpEds during the past year as a “strongman”, “crude populist”, “autocrat”, “clownish”, “increasingly erratic”, “despot” and “dictator” on 8 separate occasions and his government has been referred to 7 times as a “dictatorship”, a “repressive regime” or a form of “authoritarianism”. Such claims are not only false, but they are also extremely dangerous. The U.S. government has used such classifications to justify wars, military interventions, coup d’etats and other regime change techniques over the past several decades.

Far from a dictatorship, President Chávez’s government has the highest popularity rating in the Venezuela’s contemporary history and Chávez has won three presidential elections with landslide victories and several other important elections, including a recall referendum against his mandate in August 2004, which he won with a clear 60-40 majority. Hugo Chávez is the first president in Venezuela’s history to include the country’s majority poor population in key decision and policy-making. The creation of community councils that govern locally and the increase in voter participation are clear signs of a vibrant, open democracy, demonstrating that Venezuela is far from a dictatorship.

The Editorial Page inaccuracies and distortions extend beyond the mere labeling of President Chávez. On more than 11 occasions, editorials and OpEds have falsely claimed that President Chávez “controls the courts and the television media”. Venezuela has five branches of government - all of which are autonomous from one other by Constitutional mandate: the Executive, the Legislative, the Judiciary, the Electoral and the People’s Power. Unlike the United States, which allows for the Executive to appoint supreme court justices, in Venezuela, the high court magistrates are determined through a selection process and a vote in the National Assembly. The Executive branch in Venezuela plays no role in the assignment of judges to the courts. Communications media in Venezuela continues to be majority controlled by the private sector, despite what the Post Editorial Page claims.

Post editorials and OpEds also erroneously referred to the constitutional reform package last December on more than 8 occasions as enabling President Chávez to “rule indefinitely” or become a “de facto president-for-life”. The Constitutional reform did seek to abolish term limits, but not elections. Venezuelans would still have the right and duty to nominate candidates and vote for them in transparent electoral processes. Interestingly, the Post made no similar accusations against President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia when he twice made moves to change constitutional law to permit reelection to a second term. Uribe succeded in 2004 and is now again seeking to amend that law so he can run for a third term. Where are the Post’s cries about dictatorship and de facto president-for-life in Colombia?

The Post has also severely manipulated and outrighted censored information about economic growth in Venezuela. Twice, recent publications on the editorial page described the Venezuelan government economic measures as “disastrous, crackpot economic policies”. Under Chávez’s economic policies, extreme poverty has diminished to an all-time low of 9.4% (2007) from a high of 42.5% in 1996. Unemployment has been reduced to 6.9% (2007) from 16.6% in 1998. Minimum wage has been raised substantially during the Chávez government to become one of the highest in the developing world, and there has been a significant reduction in Venezuela’s public debt. Chávez also paid off Venezuela’s loans to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and has increased investment in the nation’s agricultural production industry.

Nevertheless, the Post fails to reflect any of these positive, progressive advances in its coverage and statements on Venezuela. Instead, Post editorials are dedicated to accusing President Chávez of engaging in an “arms race” (4 occasions), “violating human rights” (3 times), “facilitating/endorsing drug-trafficking” (6 times) and “promoting an anti-American agenda” (6 times). Worst of all, despite Chávez’s own statements to the contrary, the Post continues to perpetuate the dangerous myth that Chávez is an “anti-semite” “aligned with terrorist nations or groups” (9 times).

Mr. Diehl, you should certainly know that the United States is currently waging an international war against terrorism. Within that framework, the Bush administration has clearly stated that those nations associated with or friendly to terrorist states or groups can be subject to preemptive invasion or intervention. Are you seeking such an end in Venezuela?

Your editorial on February 15, 2008, “Mr. Chávez’s Bluff”, goes one step too far. The piece is an outright call for a boycott of Venezuelan oil, an act that would irreparably harm both the peoples of Venezuela and the United States. As the Post applauds the mafia tactics of one of the world’s wealthiest corporations, ExxonMobil, it’s evident that its allegiance lies with corporate profits over people’s rights.

And your latest editorial on March 5, 2008, “Allies of Terrorism” is well beyond a mere criticism of President Chávez’s policies; it’s a direct threat to the people of Venezuela. By accepting at face value - with absolutely no investigation or verification - the documents alleged to have been found on a computer belonging to Rául Reyes from the FARC, the Post recklessly condemns both Venezuela and Ecuador as nations that promote and harbor terrorism and justifies the most violating, reviled and dangerous Bush doctrine of modern times: Preventive War. By comparing Colombia’s violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty to a US attack against al-Qaeda, the Post shamelessly validates the most irrational war in history and calls for its expansion into Latin America. We find the Post’s defense of the violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty and its satisfaction with such aggressive - and illegal - tactics, together with the warning that Venezuela is in “danger”, extremely disturbing.

We are outraged with the Washington Post’s editorial coverage of Venezuela. The Post was once the bastion of genuine investigative reporting and truth-seeking. Those days are well gone and the Washington Post has now become nothing more than a tabloid serving special interests. The noble principles Eugene Meyer envisioned for the Washington Post in 1935, including “telling the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained”, “telling ALL the truth so far as it can be learned, concerning the important affairs of America and the world and “the newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public persons,” have been violated by editors like you, Mr. Diehl, who have chosen to promote a harmful personal agenda instead of ensure the ongoing greatness of your newspaper.

Sincerely,

Andrés Izarra
Journalist
Minister of Communication and Information
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

The Asia Times reports that “The initial press stories on the [Strait of Hormuz] incident, all of which can be traced to a briefing by deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in charge of media operations, Bryan Whitman, contained similar information that has since been repudiated by the navy itself.”

While Whitman did not wished to be identified, as is typical in these off-the record, “background briefing” disinformation efforts, an AP report identified Whitman.

What I don’t understand is why experienced “reporters” pass on information received during the “senior official” background briefings. Doesn’t it just stand to reason that these senior officials don’t wish to be identified as they don’t wish to be held responsible for the information they dispense if and/or when it becomes clear that the information is BS?

Those paying attention to USA politics have probably noticed that the term “Islamo-fascism” has increasingly crept into the lexicon of the candidates for the republican presidential nomination and their pundit promoters.

The term, I suppose, emerged from one of the so-called “institutes” or “think tanks”, which really act primarily as progenitors of “talking points” propaganda tendered by the political hacks parked within the institutions under such mellifluous job titles as “visiting scholar”.

The term, as with all terms of propaganda, through its repetition is permeating the USA consciousness; and will probably soon be taken by a majority as a matter of fate. That is, that there indeed exists an Islamo-Fascist movement.

Soon polls will indicate that 50% of the USA population supports a war on Islamo- fascism, whatever that might be. “Don’t bother me with details.  CBS, FOX, and the others have alerted me to the Islamo-fascist threat, so let’s turn the ragheads to glass”, soon will consider the uninformed, disinterested half of the USA population.

Juan Cole, an instructor of “Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan” and the most credible voice I’ve found with respect to all things Middle Eastern, regularly expresses his understanding of events at his excellent blog Informed Comment.

Those interested in the subject of so-called Islamo-fascism should read Cole’s take in “Combating Muslim Extremism” , appearing at the online version of The Nation.