The Pentagon Propaganda Program - The DocDump Goldmine

People are having a lot of fun with the document dump from the Department of Defense of the materials the New York Times used in their "Pentagon pundits" story. At first blush it looks like the Times missed the opportunity to make this a four-part series, there's so much rich information here.

First, and this one is more funny than illegal, the DoD is monitoring blogs, apparently, with an employee designating Talking Points Memo "super-liberal" and deciding that Rajiv Chandrasakaran, who wrote a rebuttal to a Dan Senor op-ed on the site, must have a "liberal bias" and that the op-ed is like a "Washington Post assistant managing editor guest-hosting for Limbaugh." The irony of expressing this shock based on someone responding to a DAN SENOR op-ed - the guy was the mouthpiece for the Coalition Provisional Authority and now shows up on TV like he's just some random analyst - is pretty thick.

And in case you want to see what an actual biased reporter is like, let me direct you to this note from Jed Babbin, from Human Events magazine, requesting an interview with Gen. George Casey:

hi. jed babbin, one of our military analysts, is hosting the michael medved nationally syndicated radio show this afternoon. he would like to see if general casey would be available for a phone interview any time between 3 and 6 pm. topics would be: status of operations in iraq and if troop levels should/can/will be reduced. ... please feel free to contact jed directly (contact info below) if the general can/would be available for the interview. this would be a softball interview and the show is 8th or 9th in the nation.

A short time later a press flack from the Office of the Secretary of Defense writes back ...

Hi Thanks for sending this. Just fyi, probably wouldn't put "softball" interview in writing. If that got out it would compromise jed and general casey.

The real problem for the Pentagon is not the propaganda, it's the overt nature of the propaganda. To wit:

In a Feb. 16, 2006 email exchange, Pentagon media staffers discussed coordinating with the Heritage Foundation to identify someone to speak about detainee treatment at Gitmo. An anonymous employee suggested retired Army Sergeant Major Steve Short because “he seems to be on message and very articulate.”

Pentagon public affairs official Allison Barber responded by warning that the DoD could not officially “endorse” one particular speaker over another. “Important to remember that heritage can invite anyone to present and that we don’t really have an opinion on anyone,” Barber wrote.

The anonymous author then suggested s/he might lie and pretend not to have ever heard of Short:

"Gasp! are you telling me to tell a lie???? surely not! ;)"

Just two weeks after this email exchange — on March 1, 2006 — Short was invited by Heritage to participate on a panel entitled “GITMO: What You Read Vs. What You See.” And he was indeed “on message”:

There were simply no rules at DoD. It had an extensive P.R. shop and it used retired generals and military figures who could go on TV and speak the party line as "assets". This was all done out in the open and surely the media organizations knew exactly what they were getting. There was a time when rigged quiz shows would have the ability to bring down television channels. This is about war and peace, propaganda that leads to mass catastrophe, and yet there's relative silence.

Amazing.

UPDATE: Media Matters is reporting that military analysts cited in the NYT article have delivered 4,500 quotes and appearances in major media. This is a sophisticated and effective propaganda programs and the traditional media were willing co-conspirators.