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The War Profiteers - War Crimes, Kidnappings,
Torture and Big Money |
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April 20th,
2008 - Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand |
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Behind TV Analysts,
Pentagon’s Hidden Hand By David Barstow New York Times April 20, 2008 In the summer of 2005, the
Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay.
The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by
Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United
Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure. The administration’s
communications experts responded swiftly. 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. To the public, these men are
members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on
television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped
them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing
issues of the post-Sept. 11 world. Hidden 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 men on the plane and several dozen
other 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. 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. 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. “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.” The Pentagon defended its
relationship with military analysts, saying they had been given only factual
information about the war. “The intent and purpose of this is nothing other
than an earnest attempt to inform the American people,” Bryan Whitman, a
Pentagon spokesman, said. It was, Mr. Whitman added,
“a bit incredible” to think retired military officers could be “wound up” and
turned into “puppets of the Defense Department.” Many analysts strongly
denied that they had either been co-opted or had allowed outside business
interests to affect their on-air comments, and some have used their platforms
to criticize the conduct of the war. Several, like Jeffrey D. McCausland, a
CBS military analyst and defense industry lobbyist, said they kept their
networks informed of their outside work and recused themselves from coverage
that touched on business interests. “I’m not here representing
the administration,” Dr. McCausland said. Some network officials,
meanwhile, acknowledged only a limited understanding of their analysts’
interactions with the administration. They said that while they were
sensitive to potential conflicts of interest, they did not hold their
analysts to the same ethical standards as their news employees regarding
outside financial interests. The onus is on their analysts to disclose
conflicts, they said. And whatever the contributions of military analysts, they
also noted the many network journalists who have covered the war for years in
all its complexity. 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.” 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
Marine 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. With a majority of Americans
calling the war a mistake despite all administration attempts to sway public
opinion, the Pentagon has focused in the last couple of years on cultivating
in particular military analysts frequently seen and heard in conservative
news outlets, records and interviews show. 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. On
the flight to Cuba, for much of the day at Guantánamo and on the flight home
that night, Pentagon officials briefed the 10 or so analysts on their key
messages - how much had been spent improving the facility, the abuse endured
by guards, the extensive rights afforded detainees. The results came quickly.
The analysts went on TV and radio, decrying Amnesty International,
criticizing calls to close the facility and asserting that all detainees were
treated humanely. “The impressions that you’re
getting from the media and from the various pronouncements being made by
people who have not been here in my opinion are totally false,” Donald W.
Shepperd, a retired Air Force general, reported live on CNN by phone from
Guantánamo that same afternoon. The next morning, Montgomery
Meigs, a retired Army general and NBC analyst, appeared on “Today.” “There’s
been over $100 million of new construction,” he reported. “The place is very
professionally run.” Within days, transcripts of
the analysts’ appearances were circulated to senior White House and Pentagon
officials, cited as evidence of progress in the battle for hearts and minds
at home. Charting the Campaign By early 2002, detailed
planning for a possible Iraq invasion was under way, yet an obstacle loomed.
Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no
clear connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon and White House officials
believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome
this resistance. Torie Clarke, the former
public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the
analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to
her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information
dominance.” In a spin-saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed
most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent. And so even before Sept. 11,
she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit “key influentials” - movers
and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted
on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld’s priorities. In the months after Sept.
11, as every network rushed to retain its own all-star squad of retired
military officers, Ms. Clarke and her staff sensed a new opportunity. To Ms.
Clarke’s team, the military analysts were the ultimate “key influential” -
authoritative, most of them decorated war heroes, all reaching mass
audiences. The analysts, they noticed,
often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely
explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how
viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in
the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many
of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain
trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating
large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war. Even analysts with no
defense industry ties, and no fondness for the administration, were reluctant
to be critical of military leaders, many of whom were friends. “It is very
hard for me to criticize the United States Army,” said William L. Nash, a
retired Army general and ABC analyst. “It is my life.” Other administrations had
made sporadic, small-scale attempts to build relationships with the
occasional military analyst. But these were trifling compared with what Ms.
Clarke’s team had in mind. Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic
decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public
relations push to construct a case for war. Journalists were secondary. “We
didn’t want to rely on them to be our primary vehicle to get information
out,” Mr. Meyer 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. Assembling the Team 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. The group was heavily
represented by men involved in the business of helping companies win military
contracts. Several held senior positions with contractors that gave them
direct responsibility for winning new Pentagon business. James Marks, a retired
Army general and analyst for CNN from 2004 to 2007, pursued military and
intelligence contracts as a senior executive with McNeil Technologies. Still
others held board positions with military firms that gave them responsibility
for government business. General McInerney, the Fox analyst, for example,
sits on the boards of several military contractors, including Nortel
Government Solutions, a supplier of communication networks. Several were defense
industry lobbyists, such as Dr. McCausland, who works at Buchanan Ingersoll
& Rooney, a major lobbying firm where he is director of a national
security team that represents several military contractors. “We offer clients
access to key decision makers,” Dr. McCausland’s team promised on the firm’s
Web site. Dr. McCausland was not the
only analyst making this pledge. Another was Joseph W. Ralston, a retired Air
Force general. Soon after signing on with CBS, General Ralston was named vice
chairman of the Cohen Group, a consulting firm headed by a former defense secretary,
William Cohen, himself now a “world affairs” analyst for CNN. “The Cohen
Group knows that getting to ‘yes’ in the aerospace and defense market -
whether in the United States or abroad - requires that companies have a
thorough, up-to-date understanding of the thinking of government decision
makers,” the company tells prospective clients on its Web site. There were also ideological
ties. Two of NBC’s most prominent
analysts, Barry R. McCaffrey and the late Wayne A. Downing, were on the
advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an advocacy group
created with White House encouragement in 2002 to help make the case for
ousting Saddam Hussein. Both men also had their own consulting firms and sat
on the boards of major military contractors. Many also shared with Mr.
Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke
the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to
let that happen with this war. This was a major theme, for
example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A
retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr.
Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations
of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam. “We lost the war - not
because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He
urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars -
taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He
called his approach “MindWar” - using network TV and radio to “strengthen our
national will to victory.” The Selling of the War 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. In the fall and winter
leading up to the invasion, the Pentagon armed its analysts with talking
points portraying Iraq as an urgent threat. The basic case became a familiar
mantra: Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, was developing
nuclear weapons, and might one day slip some to Al Qaeda; an invasion would
be a relatively quick and inexpensive “war of liberation.” 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. The group included four analysts
from Fox News, one each from CNN and ABC, and several research-group
luminaries whose opinion articles appear regularly in the nation’s op-ed
pages. The trip invitation promised
a look at “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.” The situation, as described
in scores of books, was deteriorating. L. Paul Bremer III, then the American
viceroy in Iraq, wrote in his memoir, “My Year in Iraq,” that he had
privately warned the White House that the United States had “about half the
number of soldiers we needed here.” “We’re up against a growing
and sophisticated threat,” Mr. Bremer recalled telling the president during a
private White House dinner. That dinner took place on
Sept. 24, while the analysts were touring Iraq. Yet these harsh realities were
elided, or flatly contradicted, during the official presentations for the
analysts, records show. The itinerary, scripted to the minute, featured brief
visits to a model school, a few refurbished government buildings, a center
for women’s rights, a mass grave and even the gardens of Babylon. Mostly the analysts attended
briefings. These sessions, records show, spooled out an alternative
narrative, depicting an Iraq bursting with political and economic energy, its
security forces blossoming. On the crucial question of troop levels, the
briefings echoed the White House line: No reinforcements were needed. The
“growing and sophisticated threat” described by Mr. Bremer was instead
depicted as degraded, isolated and on the run. “We’re winning,” a briefing
document proclaimed. One trip participant,
General Nash of ABC, said some briefings were so clearly “artificial” that he
joked to another group member that they were on “the George Romney memorial
trip to Iraq,” a reference to Mr. Romney’s infamous claim that American
officials had “brainwashed” him into supporting the Vietnam War during a tour
there in 1965, while he was governor of Michigan. But if the trip pounded the
message of progress, it also represented a business opportunity: direct
access to the most senior civilian and military leaders in Iraq and Kuwait,
including many with a say in how the president’s $87 billion would be spent.
It also was a chance to gather inside information about the most pressing
needs confronting the American mission: the acute shortages of “up-armored”
Humvees; the billions to be spent building military bases; the urgent need
for interpreters; and the ambitious plans to train Iraq’s security forces. Information and access of
this nature had undeniable value for trip participants like William V. Cowan
and Carlton A. Sherwood. Mr. Cowan, a Fox analyst and
retired Marine colonel, was the chief executive of a new military firm, the
wvc3 Group. Mr. Sherwood was its executive vice president. At the time, the
company was seeking contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and
counterintelligence services in Iraq. In addition, wvc3 Group had a written
agreement to use its influence and connections to help tribal leaders in Al
Anbar Province win reconstruction contracts from the coalition. “Those sheiks wanted access
to the C.P.A.,” Mr. Cowan recalled in an interview, referring to the
Coalition Provisional Authority. Mr. Cowan said he pleaded
their cause during the trip. “I tried to push hard with some of Bremer’s
people to engage these people of Al Anbar,” he said. Back in Washington, Pentagon
officials kept a nervous eye on how the trip translated on the airwaves.
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. “We could not be more
excited, more pleased,” Mr. Cowan told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. There
was barely a word about armor shortages or corrupt Iraqi security forces. And
on the key strategic question of the moment - whether to send more troops -
the analysts were unanimous. “I am so much against adding
more troops,” General Shepperd said on CNN. Access and Influence Inside the Pentagon and at
the White House, the trip was viewed as a masterpiece in the management of
perceptions, not least because it gave fuel to complaints that “mainstream”
journalists were ignoring the good news in Iraq. “We’re hitting a home run on
this trip,” a senior Pentagon official wrote in an e-mail message to Richard
B. Myers and Peter Pace, then chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. Its success only intensified
the Pentagon’s campaign. The pace of briefings accelerated. More trips were
organized. Eventually the effort involved officials from Washington to
Baghdad to Kabul to Guantánamo and back to Tampa, Fla., the headquarters of
United States Central Command. The scale reflected strong
support from the top. When officials in Iraq were slow to organize another
trip for analysts, a Pentagon official fired off an e-mail message warning
that the trips “have the highest levels of visibility” at the White House and
urging them to get moving before Lawrence Di Rita, one of Mr. Rumsfeld’s
closest aides, “picks up the phone and starts calling the 4-stars.” Mr. Di Rita, no longer at
the Defense Department, said in an interview that a “conscious decision” was
made to rely on the military analysts to counteract “the increasingly negative
view of the war” coming from journalists in Iraq. The analysts, he said,
generally had “a more supportive view” of the administration and the war, and
the combination of their TV platforms and military cachet made them ideal for
rebutting critical coverage of issues like troop morale, treatment of
detainees, inadequate equipment or poorly trained Iraqi security forces. “On
those issues, they were more likely to be seen as credible spokesmen,” he
said. For analysts with military
industry ties, the attention brought access to a widening circle of
influential officials beyond the contacts they had accumulated over the
course of their careers. Charles T. Nash, a Fox
military analyst and retired Navy captain, is a consultant who helps small
companies break into the military market. Suddenly, he had entree to a host
of senior military leaders, many of whom he had never met. It was, he said,
like being embedded with the Pentagon leadership. “You start to recognize
what’s most important to them,” he said, adding, “There’s nothing like seeing
stuff firsthand.” 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.” They also understood the
financial relationship between the networks and their analysts. Many analysts
were being paid by the “hit,” the number of times they appeared on TV. The
more an analyst could boast of fresh inside information from high-level
Pentagon “sources,” the more hits he could expect. The more hits, the greater
his potential influence in the military marketplace, where several analysts
prominently advertised their network roles. “They have taken lobbying
and the search for contracts to a far higher level,” Mr. Krueger said. “This
has been highly honed.” Mr. Di Rita, though, said it
never occurred to him that analysts might use their access to curry favor.
Nor, he said, did the Pentagon try to exploit this dynamic. “That’s not
something that ever crossed my mind,” he said. In any event, he argued, the
analysts and the networks were the ones responsible for any ethical
complications. “We assume they know where the lines are,” he said. The analysts met personally
with Mr. Rumsfeld at least 18 times, records show, but that was just the
beginning. They had dozens more sessions with the most senior members of his
brain trust and access to officials responsible for managing the billions
being spent in Iraq. Other groups of “key influentials” had meetings, but not
nearly as often as the analysts. An internal memorandum in
2005 helped explain why. The memorandum, written by a Pentagon official who
had accompanied analysts to Iraq, said that based on her observations during
the trip, the analysts “are having a greater impact” on network coverage of
the military. “They have now become the go-to guys not only on breaking
stories, but they influence the views on issues,” she wrote. Other branches of the
administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales, then the
attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government
was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants,
Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding
general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the
analysts. “We knew we had
extraordinary access,” said Timur J. Eads, a retired Army lieutenant colonel
and Fox analyst who is vice president of government relations for Blackbird
Technologies, a fast-growing military contractor. Like several other analysts,
Mr. Eads said he had at times held his tongue on television for fear that
“some four-star could call up and say, ‘Kill that contract.’” For example, he
believed Pentagon officials misled the analysts about the progress of Iraq’s
security forces. “I know a snow job when I see one,” he said. He did not
share this on TV. “Human nature,” he
explained, though he noted other instances when he was critical. Some analysts said that even
before the war started, they privately had questions about the justification
for the invasion, but were careful not to express them on air. Mr. Bevelacqua, then a Fox
analyst, was among those invited to a briefing in early 2003 about Iraq’s
purported stockpiles of illicit weapons. He recalled asking the briefer
whether the United States had “smoking gun” proof. “‘We don’t have any hard
evidence,’” Mr. Bevelacqua recalled the briefer replying. He said he and
other analysts were alarmed by this concession. “We are looking at ourselves
saying, ‘What are we doing?’” Another analyst, Robert L.
Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who works in the Pentagon for a
military contractor, attended the same briefing and recalled feeling “very
disappointed” after being shown satellite photographs purporting to show
bunkers associated with a hidden weapons program. Mr. Maginnis said he
concluded that the analysts were being “manipulated” to convey a false sense
of certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Mr. Bevelacqua and
the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings
with the American public. Mr. Bevelacqua and another
Fox analyst, Mr. Cowan, had formed the wvc3 Group, and hoped to win military
and national security contracts. “There’s no way I was going
to go down that road and get completely torn apart,” Mr. Bevelacqua said.
“You’re talking about fighting a huge machine.” Some e-mail messages between
the Pentagon and the analysts reveal an implicit trade of privileged access
for favorable coverage. Robert H. Scales Jr., a retired Army general and
analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio whose consulting company
advises several military firms on weapons and tactics used in Iraq, wanted
the Pentagon to approve high-level briefings for him inside Iraq in 2006. “Recall the stuff I did
after my last visit,” he wrote. “I will do the same this time.” Pentagon Keeps Tabs As it happened, the
analysts’ news media appearances were being closely monitored. 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. Omnitec evaluated their
appearances using the same tools as corporate branding experts. One report,
assessing the impact of several trips to Iraq in 2005, offered example after
example of analysts echoing Pentagon themes on all the networks. “Commentary from all three
Iraq trips was extremely positive over all,” the report concluded. In interviews, several
analysts reacted with dismay when told they were described as reliable
“surrogates” in Pentagon documents. And some asserted that their Pentagon
sessions were, as David L. Grange, a retired Army general and CNN analyst put
it, “just upfront information,” while others pointed out, accurately, that
they did not always agree with the administration or each other. “None of us
drink the Kool-Aid,” General Scales said. Likewise, several also
denied using their special access for business gain. “Not related at all,”
General Shepperd said, pointing out that many in the Pentagon held CNN “in
the lowest esteem.” Still, even the mildest of
criticism could draw a challenge. Several analysts told of fielding telephone
calls from displeased defense officials only minutes after being on the air. On Aug. 3, 2005, 14 marines
died in Iraq. That day, Mr. Cowan, who said he had grown increasingly
uncomfortable with the “twisted version of reality” being pushed on analysts
in briefings, called the Pentagon to give “a heads-up” that some of his
comments on Fox “may not all be friendly,” Pentagon records show. Mr.
Rumsfeld’s senior aides quickly arranged a private briefing for him, yet when
he told Bill O’Reilly that the United States was “not on a good glide path
right now” in Iraq, the repercussions were swift. Mr. Cowan said he was
“precipitously fired from the analysts group” for this appearance. The
Pentagon, he wrote in an e-mail message, “simply didn’t like the fact that I
wasn’t carrying their water.” The next day James T. Conway, then director of
operations for the Joint Chiefs, presided over another conference call with
analysts. He urged them, a transcript shows, not to let the marines’ deaths
further erode support for the war. “The strategic target
remains our population,” General Conway said. “We can lose people day in and
day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and will
do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let
that happen.” “General, I just made that
point on the air,” an analyst replied. “Let’s work it together,
guys,” General Conway urged. The Generals’ Revolt The full dimensions of this
mutual embrace were perhaps never clearer than in April 2006, after several
of Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals - none of them network military analysts -
went public with devastating critiques of his wartime performance. Some
called for his resignation. On Friday, April 14, with
what came to be called the “Generals’ Revolt” dominating headlines, Mr.
Rumsfeld instructed aides to summon military analysts to a meeting with him
early the next week, records show. When an aide urged a short delay to “give
our big guys on the West Coast a little more time to buy a ticket and get
here,” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office insisted that “the boss” wanted the meeting fast
“for impact on the current story.” That same day, Pentagon
officials helped two Fox analysts, General McInerney and General Vallely,
write an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal defending Mr. Rumsfeld. “Starting to write it now,”
General Vallely wrote to the Pentagon that afternoon. “Any input for the
article,” he added a little later, “will be much appreciated.” Mr. Rumsfeld’s
office quickly forwarded talking points and statistics to rebut the notion of
a spreading revolt. “Vallely is going to use the
numbers,” a Pentagon official reported that afternoon. The standard secrecy
notwithstanding, plans for this session leaked, producing a front-page story
in The Times that Sunday. In damage-control mode, Pentagon officials
scrambled to present the meeting as routine and directed that communications
with analysts be kept “very formal,” records show. “This is very, very
sensitive now,” a Pentagon official warned subordinates. On Tuesday, April 18, some
17 analysts assembled at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Pace,
then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. A transcript of that
session, never before disclosed, shows a shared determination to marginalize
war critics and revive public support for the war. “I’m an old intel guy,” said
one analyst. (The transcript omits speakers’ names.) “And I can sum all of this
up, unfortunately, with one word. That is Psyops. Now most people may hear
that and they think, ‘Oh my God, they’re trying to brainwash.’” “What are you, some kind of
a nut?” Mr. Rumsfeld cut in, drawing laughter. “You don’t believe in the
Constitution?” There was little discussion
about the actual criticism pouring forth from Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals.
Analysts argued that opposition to the war was rooted in perceptions fed by
the news media, not reality. The administration’s overall war strategy, they
counseled, was “brilliant” and “very successful.” “Frankly,” one participant
said, “from a military point of view, the penalty, 2,400 brave Americans whom
we lost, 3,000 in an hour and 15 minutes, is relative.” An analyst said at another
point: “This is a wider war. And whether we have democracy in Iraq or not, it
doesn’t mean a tinker’s damn if we end up with the result we want, which is a
regime over there that’s not a threat to us.” “Yeah,” Mr. Rumsfeld said,
taking notes. But winning or not, they
bluntly warned, the administration was in grave political danger so long as
most Americans viewed Iraq as a lost cause. “America hates a loser,” one
analyst said. Much of the session was
devoted to ways that Mr. Rumsfeld could reverse the “political tide.” One
analyst urged Mr. Rumsfeld to “just crush these people,” and assured him that
“most of the gentlemen at the table” would enthusiastically support him if he
did. “You are the leader,” the
analyst told Mr. Rumsfeld. “You are our guy.” At another point, an analyst
made a suggestion: “In one of your speeches you ought to say, ‘Everybody stop
for a minute and imagine an Iraq ruled by Zarqawi.’ And then you just go down
the list and say, ‘All right, we’ve got oil, money, sovereignty, access to the
geographic center of gravity of the Middle East, blah, blah, blah.’ If you
can just paint a mental picture for Joe America to say, ‘Oh my God, I can’t
imagine a world like that.’” Even as they assured Mr.
Rumsfeld that they stood ready to help in this public relations offensive,
the analysts sought guidance on what they should cite as the next “milestone”
that would, as one analyst put it, “keep the American people focused on the
idea that we’re moving forward to a positive end.” They placed particular emphasis
on the growing confrontation with Iran. “When you said ‘long war,’
you changed the psyche of the American people to expect this to be a
generational event,” an analyst said. “And again, I’m not trying to tell you
how to do your job...” “Get in line,” Mr. Rumsfeld
interjected. The meeting ended and Mr.
Rumsfeld, appearing pleased and relaxed, took the entire group into a small
study and showed off treasured keepsakes from his life, several analysts
recalled. Soon after, analysts hit the
airwaves. The Omnitec monitoring reports, circulated to more than 80
officials, confirmed that analysts repeated many of the Pentagon’s talking
points: that Mr. Rumsfeld consulted “frequently and sufficiently” with his
generals; that he was not “overly concerned” with the criticisms; that the
meeting focused “on more important topics at hand,” including the next
milestone in Iraq, the formation of a new government. Days later, Mr. Rumsfeld
wrote a memorandum distilling their collective guidance into bullet points.
Two were underlined: “Focus on the Global War on
Terror - not simply Iraq. The wider war - the long war.” “Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is
the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.” But if Mr. Rumsfeld found
the session instructive, at least one participant, General Nash, the ABC
analyst, was repulsed. “I walked away from that
session having total disrespect for my fellow commentators, with perhaps one
or two exceptions,” he said. View From the Networks Two weeks ago General
Petraeus took time out from testifying before Congress about Iraq for a
conference call with military analysts. Mr. Garrett, the Fox analyst
and Patton Boggs lobbyist, said he told General Petraeus during the call to
“keep up the great work.” “Hey,” Mr. Garrett said in
an interview, “anything we can do to help.” For the moment, though,
because of heavy election coverage and general war fatigue, military analysts
are not getting nearly as much TV time, and the networks have trimmed their
rosters of analysts. The conference call with General Petraeus, for example,
produced little in the way of immediate coverage. Still, almost weekly the
Pentagon continues to conduct briefings with selected military analysts. Many
analysts said network officials were only dimly aware of these interactions.
The networks, they said, have little grasp of how often they meet with senior
officials, or what is discussed. “I don’t think NBC was even
aware we were participating,” said Rick Francona, a longtime military analyst
for the network. Some networks publish
biographies on their Web sites that describe their analysts’ military
backgrounds and, in some cases, give at least limited information about their
business ties. But many analysts also said the networks asked few questions
about their outside business interests, the nature of their work or the
potential for that work to create conflicts of interest. “None of that ever
happened,” said Mr. Allard, an NBC analyst until 2006. “The worst conflict of
interest was no interest.” Mr. Allard and other
analysts said their network handlers also raised no objections when the
Defense Department began paying their commercial airfare for Pentagon-sponsored
trips to Iraq - a clear ethical violation for most news organizations. CBS News declined to comment
on what it knew about its military analysts’ business affiliations or what
steps it took to guard against potential conflicts. NBC News also declined to
discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts. The
network issued a short statement: “We have clear policies in place to assure
that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that
nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of
interest.” Jeffrey W. Schneider, a
spokesman for ABC, said that while the network’s military consultants were
not held to the same ethical rules as its full-time journalists, they were
expected to keep the network informed about any outside business
entanglements. “We make it clear to them we expect them to keep us closely
apprised,” he said. A spokeswoman for Fox News
said executives “refused to participate” in this article. CNN requires its military
analysts to disclose in writing all outside sources of income. But like the
other networks, it does not provide its military analysts with the kind of
written, specific ethical guidelines it gives its full-time employees for
avoiding real or apparent conflicts of interest. Yet even where controls
exist, they have sometimes proven porous. CNN, for example, said it
was unaware for nearly three years that one of its main military analysts,
General Marks, was deeply involved in the business of seeking government
contracts, including contracts related to Iraq. General Marks was hired by
CNN in 2004, about the time he took a management position at McNeil
Technologies, where his job was to pursue military and intelligence
contracts. As required, General Marks disclosed that he received income from
McNeil Technologies. But the disclosure form did not require him to describe
what his job entailed, and CNN acknowledges it failed to do additional
vetting. “We did not ask Mr. Marks
the follow-up questions we should have,” CNN said in a written statement. In an interview, General
Marks said it was no secret at CNN that his job at McNeil Technologies was
about winning contracts. “I mean, that’s what McNeil does,” he said. CNN, however, said it did
not know the nature of McNeil’s military business or what General Marks did
for the company. If he was bidding on Pentagon contracts, CNN said, that
should have disqualified him from being a military analyst for the network.
But in the summer and fall of 2006, even as he was regularly asked to comment
on conditions in Iraq, General Marks was working intensively on bidding for a
$4.6 billion contract to provide thousands of translators to United States
forces in Iraq. In fact, General Marks was made president of the McNeil
spin-off that won the huge contract in December 2006. General Marks said his work
on the contract did not affect his commentary on CNN. “I’ve got zero
challenge separating myself from a business interest,” he said. But CNN said it had no idea
about his role in the contract until July 2007, when it reviewed his most
recent disclosure form, submitted months earlier, and finally made inquiries
about his new job. “We saw the extent of his
dealings and determined at that time we should end our relationship with
him,” CNN said. This article has been
revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: April 22, 2008 An article on Sunday about
the Pentagon’s relationship with news media military analysts misidentified
the military affiliation of one analyst, John C. Garrett. He retired as a
colonel from the Marines, not the Army. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html |