Tag: Rumsfeld

FCC to Probe “Hidden Hand” Analysts

~ Matt Armstrong

The Federal Communications Commission is looking into whether the Pentagon’s program to use and leverage retired officers as “message force multipliers.” David Barstow broke the story in The New York Times earlier this year. Today, writing in the Congressional Quarterly, John M. Donnelly’s reports the FCC launched a probe to “address congressional questions about a Pentagon program viewed by some lawmakers as propaganda.”

The FCC is looking into whether TV networks and certain on-air analysts broke the law by failing to disclose to viewers that the apparently independent analysts were in fact part of a Pentagon-funded information campaign, a spokesman for the commission said.

“What I can confirm is that the enforcement bureau at the FCC is looking into this matter, and I can confirm that they have sent letters in connection with it, seeking information,” the spokesman said late Tuesday, without elaborating on when the inquiry began or who its targets are.

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Has State ceded all responsibility to DoD?

~ Matt Armstrong

From the Associated Press comes Pace Tries to Ease Iraq Concerns:

ISTANBUL, Turkey – In the troubled region surrounding Iraq, a frequent question posed to the top U.S. military officer visiting the area was not when his troops will pull out of Iraq, but how long they will stay.

From the glittery King’s palace in Saudi Arabia to the devastated slopes of the Pakistani mountainside and a staid Turkish symposium, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sought last week to ease concerns about whether opposition to the war at home could pressure American forces to leave Iraq before it is stable.

"I think it’s fair to say that in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, there is a clear desire for the U.S. to stay with it until the job is done – which, coincidentally, is how we look at it," Pace said Sunday as he left Istanbul for Washington.

On his first diplomatic-oriented trip since last fall, Pace traveled to three countries whose leaders are worried about the U.S. commitment to the Iraq war and the global war on terror. Failure to secure Iraq could fuel insurgencies in their countries and instability in the region, where terrorism is a familiar threat.

I wish I had the time to analyze the news for word usage and framing in the context of the military doing "diplomacy" and related terms. Official DoD news releases do not use the word "diplomacy" or "diplomatic" but do use other key phrases normally associated with State.

  • Pace said that he “did more listening than talking” during the
    meetings. Still, he was able to answer questions from his counterparts
    on U.S. government policy on Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. "It
    made for a full and open dialogue," he said….In Turkey, Pace said he tried "to solidify the superb relationship"
    between the two countries. "I looked them in the eye and told them the
    truth," he said….The chairman said his visits built on previous ones by other government
    officials, and said further visits will build on his progress. "We have
    to keep the dialogue open so you have ample opportunity to answer the
    questions before the questions become confusion," Pace said.
  • Good governance, economic development, and education are more important
    in ultimately choking off terrorism than military might    , Pace said at
    the symposium, which is sponsored by the Turkish General Staff. There
    is a role for the military in providing security, but economic programs
    that create jobs will be the long-term solution to terrorism, he said.
    "Once we have security in place, the other elements of national power
    will be the keys to the long-term victory in the war on terror," he
    said…."Good education systems that do not teach hate, but tolerance of
    various religions, ideas and principles" will also help defeat
    terrorism, Pace said. "How can any country reach its full potential if
    it does not include various sectors of its people, whether it be for
    religious purposes, or color of skin or for any other reason, like
    gender?" he said.

Where is Condi and her State Department?

Rumsfeld on Openness

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

From WSJ via FAS Secrecy News is the following:

"I have long believed in the importance of granting the public greater access to information about their government–the good and the bad," wrote Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a Wall Street Journal opinion article this week, noting that he had co-sponsored the Freedom of Information Act as a member of Congress in 1966.

He wrote of the challenges of informing the public in "this new Information Age," and observed that "a healthy culture of communication and transparency between government and the public needs to be established."

"This openness, however, does not obviate the necessity of protecting the secrecy of confidential information that, if revealed, could harm the security of the U.S."

"While I have long believed that too much material is classified across the federal government as a general rule, an increasingly cavalier attitude towards sensitive information in various quarters can put the lives of our troops at correspondingly increasing risk."

During Secretary Rumsfeld’s tenure, a growing quantity of formerly public information has been withdrawn from public access.

MediaChannel.org has the complete 18 July 2005 article.

Pentagon “roadmap” calls for “boundaries”…

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 4 Comments

Heads up on a report just acquired by FOIA by National Security Archive: Information Operations Roadmap. The National Security Archive headline describes it thus:

A secret Pentagon "roadmap" on war propaganda, personally approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but provides for no such limits and claims that as long as the American public is not "targeted," any leakage of PSYOP to the American public does not matter.

Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and posted on the Web today, the 74-page "Information Operations Roadmap" admits that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa," but argues that "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices."

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, amended in 1972 and 1998, prohibits the U.S. government from propagandizing the American public with information and psychological operations directed at foreign audiences; and several presidential directives, including Reagan’s NSD-77 in 1983, Clinton’s PDD-68 in 1999, and Bush’s NSPD-16 in July 2002 (the latter two still classified), have set up specific structures to carry out public diplomacy and information operations. These and other documents relating to U.S. PSYOP programs were posted today as part of a new Archive Electronic Breifing Book.

Several press accounts have referred to the 2003 Pentagon document but today’s posting is the first time the text has been publicly available. Sections of the document relating to computer network attack (CNA) and "offensive cyber operations" remain classified under black highlighting.

There is a lot to digest in this and related documents. Other priorities prevent me from diving deep right now, but I’ll return to this later.

UPDATE 1 Feb 06 See ZenPundit’s posting on same (but with a different title and 3 days after this post :).