http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/politics/11propaganda.html?hp&ex=1134363600&en=6ed9a1b5468ea92a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Military's information war is vast and often secretive

By Jeff Gerth

December 11, 2005

The media center in Fayetteville, N.C., would be the envy of any global 
communications company.

In state of the art studios, producers prepare the daily mix of music and 
news for the group's radio stations or spots for friendly television 
outlets. Writers putting out newspapers and magazines in Baghdad and Kabul 
converse via teleconferences. Mobile trailers with high-tech gear are parked 
outside, ready for the next crisis.

The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and 
those writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological 
operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call 
"truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, 
though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their 
American sponsorship is hidden.

"We call our stuff information and the enemy's propaganda," said Col. Jack 
N. Summe, then the commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, 
during a tour in June. Even in the Pentagon, "some public affairs 
professionals see us unfavorably," and inaccurately, he said, as "lying, 
dirty tricksters."

The recent disclosures that a Pentagon contractor in Iraq paid newspapers to 
print "good news" articles written by American soldiers prompted an outcry 
in Washington, where members of Congress said the practice undermined 
American credibility and top military and White House officials disavowed 
any knowledge of it. President Bush was described by Stephen J. Hadley, his 
national security adviser, as "very troubled" about the matter. The Pentagon 
is investigating.

But the work of the contractor, the Lincoln Group, was not a rogue 
operation. Hoping to counter anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, 
the Bush administration has been conducting an information war that is 
extensive, costly and often hidden, according to documents and interviews 
with contractors, government officials and military personnel.

The campaign was begun by the White House, which set up a secret panel soon 
after the Sept. 11 attacks to coordinate information operations by the 
Pentagon, other government agencies and private contractors.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus of most of the activities, the military 
operates radio stations and newspapers, but does not disclose their American 
ties. Those outlets produce news material that is at times attributed to the 
"International Information Center," an untraceable organization.

Lincoln says it planted more than 1,000 articles in the Iraqi and Arab press 
and placed editorials on an Iraqi Web site, Pentagon documents show. For an 
expanded stealth persuasion effort into neighboring countries, Lincoln 
presented plans, since rejected, for an underground newspaper, television 
news shows and an anti-terrorist comedy based on "The Three Stooges."

Like the Lincoln Group, Army psychological operations units sometimes pay to 
deliver their message, offering television stations money to run 
unattributed segments or contracting with writers of newspaper opinion 
pieces, military officials said.

"We don't want somebody to look at the product and see the U.S. government 
and tune out," said Col. James Treadwell, who ran psychological operations 
support at the Special Operations Command in Tampa.

The United States Agency for International Development also masks its role 
at times. AID finances about 30 radio stations in Afghanistan, but keeps 
that from listeners. The agency has distributed tens of thousands of 
iPod-like audio devices in Iraq and Afghanistan that play prepackaged civic 
messages, but it does so through a contractor that promises "there is no 
U.S. footprint."

As the Bush administration tries to build democracies overseas and support a 
free press, getting out its message is critical. But that is enormously 
difficult, given widespread hostility in the Muslim world over the war in 
Iraq, deep suspicion of American ambitions and the influence of antagonistic 
voices. The American message makers who are wary of identifying their role 
can cite findings by the Pentagon, pollsters and others underscoring the 
United States' fundamental problems of credibility abroad.

Defenders of influence campaigns argue that they are appropriate. 
"Psychological operations are an essential part of warfare, more so in the 
electronic age than ever," said Lt. Col. Charles A. Krohn, a retired Army 
spokesman and journalism professor. "If you're going to invade a country and 
eject its government and occupy its territory, you ought to tell people who 
live there why you've done it. That requires a well-thought-out 
communications program."

But covert information battles may backfire, others warn, or prove 
ineffective. The news that the American military was buying influence was 
met mostly with shrugs in Baghdad, where readers tend to be skeptical about 
the media. An Iraqi daily newspaper, Azzaman, complained in an editorial 
that the propaganda campaign was an American effort "to humiliate the 
independent national press." Many Iraqis say that no amount of money spent 
on trying to mold public opinion is likely to have much impact, given the 
harsh conditions under the American military occupation.

While the United States does not ban the distribution of government 
propaganda overseas, as it does domestically, the Government Accountability 
Office said in a recent report that lack of attribution could undermine the 
credibility of news videos. In finding that video news releases by the Bush 
administration that appeared on American television were improper, the 
G.A.O. said that such articles "are no longer purely factual" because "the 
essential fact of attribution is missing."

In an article titled "War of the Words," Defense Secretary Donald H. 
Rumsfeld wrote about the importance of disclosure in America's 
communications in The Wall Street Journal in July. "The American system of 
openness works," he wrote. The United States must find "new and better ways 
to communicate America's mission abroad," including "a healthy culture of 
communication and transparency between government and public."

Trying to Make a Case

After the Sept. 11 attacks forced many Americans to recognize the nation's 
precarious standing in the Arab world, the Bush administration decided to 
act to improve the country's image and promote its values.

"We've got to do a better job of making our case," President Bush told 
reporters after the attacks.

Much of the government's information machinery, including the United States 
Information Agency and some C.I.A. programs, was dismantled after the cold 
war. In that struggle with the Soviet Union, the information warriors 
benefited from the perception that the United States was backing victims of 
tyrannical rule. Many Muslims today view Washington as too close to what 
they characterize as authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and 
elsewhere.

The White House turned to John Rendon, who runs a Washington communications 
company, to help influence foreign audiences. Before the war in Afghanistan, 
he helped set up centers in Washington, London and Pakistan so the American 
government could respond rapidly in the foreign media to Taliban claims. "We 
were clueless," said Mary Matalin, then the communications aide to Vice 
President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Rendon's business, the Rendon Group, had a history of government work in 
trouble spots, In the 1990's, the C.I.A. hired him to secretly help the 
nascent Iraqi National Congress wage a public relations campaign against 
Saddam Hussein.

While advising the White House, Mr. Rendon also signed on with the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, under a $27.6 million contract, to conduct focus groups 
around the world and media analysis of outlets like Al Jazeera, the 
satellite network based in Qatar.

About the same time, the White House recruited Jeffrey B. Jones, a former 
Army colonel who ran the Fort Bragg psychological operations group, to 
coordinate the new information war. He led a secret committee, the existence 
of which has not been previously reported, that dealt with everything from 
public diplomacy, which includes education, aid and exchange programs, to 
covert information operations.

The group even examined the president's words. Concerned about alienating 
Muslims overseas, panel members said, they tried unsuccessfully to stop Mr. 
Bush from ending speeches with the refrain "God bless America."

The panel, later named the Counter Terrorism Information Strategy Policy 
Coordinating Committee, included members from the State Department, the 
Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. Mr. Rendon advised a subgroup on 
counterpropaganda issues.

Mr. Jones's endeavor stalled within months, though, because of furor over a 
Pentagon initiative. In February 2002, unnamed officials told The New York 
Times that a new Pentagon operation called the Office of Strategic Influence 
planned "to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign news 
organizations." Though the report was denied and a subsequent Pentagon 
review found no evidence of plans to use disinformation, Mr. Rumsfeld shut 
down the office within days.

The incident weakened Mr. Jones's effort to develop a sweeping strategy to 
win over the Muslim world. The White House grew skittish, some agencies 
dropped out, and panel members soon were distracted by the war in Iraq, said 
Mr. Jones, who left his post this year. The White House did not respond to a 
request to discuss the committee's work.

What had begun as an ambitious effort to bolster America's image largely 
devolved into a secret propaganda war to counter the insurgencies in Iraq 
and Afghanistan. The Pentagon, which had money to spend and leaders 
committed to the cause, took the lead. In late 2002 Mr. Rumsfeld told 
reporters he gave the press a "corpse" by closing the Office of Strategic 
Influence, but he intended to "keep doing every single thing that needs to 
be done."

The Pentagon increased spending on its psychological and influence 
operations and for the first time outsourced work to contractors. One 
beneficiary has been the Rendon Group, which won additional 
multimillion-dollar Pentagon contracts for media analysis and a media 
operations center in Baghdad, including "damage control planning." The new 
Lincoln Group was another winner.

Pentagon Contracts

It is something of a mystery how Lincoln came to land more than $25 million 
in Pentagon contracts in a war zone.

The two men who ran the small business had no background in public relations 
or the media, according to associates and a résumé. Before coming to 
Washington and setting up Lincoln in 2004, Christian Bailey, born in Britain 
and now 30, had worked briefly in California and New York. Paige Craig, now 
31, was a former Marine intelligence officer.

When the company was incorporated last year, using the name Iraqex, its 
stated purpose was to provide support services for business development, 
trade and investment in Iraq. The company's earliest ventures there included 
providing security to the military and renovating buildings. Iraqex also 
started a short-lived online business publication.

In mid-2004, the company formed a partnership with the Rendon Group and 
later won a $5 million Pentagon contract for an advertising and public 
relations campaign to "accurately inform the Iraqi people of the Coalition's 
goals and gain their support." Soon, the company changed its name to Lincoln 
Group. It is not clear how the partnership was formed; Rendon dropped out 
weeks after the contract was awarded.

Within a few months, Lincoln shifted to information operations and 
psychological operations, two former employees said. The company was awarded 
three new Pentagon contracts, worth tens of millions of dollars, they added. 
A Lincoln spokeswoman referred a reporter's inquiry about the contracts to 
Pentagon officials.

The company's work was part of an effort to counter disinformation in the 
Iraqi press. With nearly $100 million in United States aid, the Iraqi media 
has sharply expanded since the fall of Mr. Hussein. There are about 200 
Iraqi-owned newspapers and 15 to 17 Iraqi-owned television stations. Many, 
though, are affiliated with political parties, and are fiercely partisan, 
with fixed pro- or anti-American stances, and some publish rumors, 
half-truths and outright lies.

From quarters at Camp Victory, the American base, the Lincoln Group works to 
get out the military's message.

Lincoln's employees work virtually side by side with soldiers. Army officers 
supervise Lincoln's work and demand to see details of article placements and 
costs, said one of the former employees, speaking on condition of anonymity 
because Lincoln's Pentagon contract prohibits workers from discussing their 
activities.

"Almost nothing we did did not have the command's approval," he said.

The employees would take news dispatches, called storyboards, written by the 
troops, translate them into Arabic and distribute them to newspapers. 
Lincoln hired former Arab journalists and paid advertising agencies to place 
the material.

Typically, Lincoln paid newspapers from $40 to $2,000 to run the articles as 
news articles or advertisements, documents provided to The New York Times by 
a former employee show. More than 1,000 articles appeared in 12 to 15 Iraqi 
and Arab newspapers, according to Pentagon documents. The publications did 
not disclose that the articles were generated by the military.

A company worker also often visited the Baghdad convention center, where the 
Iraqi press corps hung out, to recruit journalists who would write and place 
opinion pieces, paying them $400 to $500 as a monthly stipend, the employees 
said.

Like the dispatches produced at Fort Bragg, those storyboards were one-sided 
and upbeat. Each had a target audience, "Iraq General" or "Shi'ia," for 
example; an underlying theme like "Anti-intimidation" or "Success and 
Legitimacy of the ISF;" and a target newspaper.

Articles written by the soldiers at Camp Victory often assumed the voice of 
Iraqis. "We, all Iraqis, are the government. It is our country," noted one 
article. Another said, "The time has come for the ordinary Iraqi, you, me, 
our neighbors, family and friends to come together."

While some were plodding accounts filled with military jargon and 
bureaucratese, others favored the language of tabloids: "blood-thirsty 
apostates," "crawled on their bellies like dogs in the mud," "dim-witted 
fanatics," and "terror kingpin."

A former Lincoln employee said the ploy of making the articles appear to be 
written by Iraqis by removing any American fingerprints was not very 
effective. "Many Iraqis know it's from Americans," he said.

The military has sought to expand its media influence efforts beyond Iraq to 
neighboring states, including Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan, Pentagon 
documents say. Lincoln submitted a plan that was subsequently rejected, a 
Pentagon spokesman said. The company proposed placing editorials in 
magazines, newspapers and Web sites. In Iraq, the company posted editorials 
on a Web site, but military commanders stopped the operation for fear that 
the site's global accessibility might violate the federal ban on 
distributing propaganda to American audiences, according to Pentagon 
documents and a former Lincoln employee.

In its rejected plan, the company looked to American popular culture for 
ways to influence new audiences. Lincoln proposed variations of the 
satirical paper "The Onion," and an underground paper to be called "The 
Voice," documents show. And it planned comedies modeled after "Cheers" and 
the Three Stooges, with the trio as bumbling wannabe terrorists.

The Afghan Front

The Pentagon's media effort in Afghanistan began soon after the ouster of 
the Taliban. In what had been a barren media environment, 350 magazines and 
newspapers and 68 television and radio stations now operate. Most are 
independent; the rest are run by the government. The United States has 
provided money to support the media, as well as training for journalists and 
government spokesmen.

But much of the American role remains hidden from local readers and 
audiences.

The Pentagon, for example, took over the Taliban's radio station, renamed it 
Peace radio and began powerful shortwave broadcasts in local dialects, 
defense officials said. Its programs include music as well as 9 daily news 
scripts and 16 daily public service messages, according to Col. James Yonts, 
a United States military spokesman in Afghanistan. Its news accounts, which 
sometimes are attributed to the International Information Center, often put 
a positive spin on events or serve government needs.

The United States Army publishes a sister paper in Afghanistan, also called 
Peace. An examination of issues from last spring found no bad news.

"We have no requirements to adhere to journalistic principles of 
objectivity," Colonel Summe, the Army psychological operations specialist, 
said. "We tell the U.S. side of the story to approved targeted audiences" 
using truthful information. Neither the radio station nor the paper 
discloses its ties to the American military.

Similarly, AID does not locally disclose that dozens of Afghanistan radio 
stations get its support, through grants to a London-based nonprofit group, 
Internews. (AID discloses its support in public documents in Washington, 
most of which can be found globally on the Internet.)

The AID representative in Afghanistan, in an e-mail message relayed by Peggy 
O'Ban, an agency spokeswoman, explained the nondisclosure: "We want to 
maintain the perception (if not the reality) that these radio stations are 
in fact fully independent."

Recipients are required to adhere to standards. If a news organization 
produced "a daily drumbeat of criticism of the American military, it would 
become an issue," said James Kunder, an AID assistant administrator. He 
added that in combat zones, the issue of disclosure was a balancing act 
between security and assuring credibility.

The American role is also not revealed by another recipient of AID grants, 
Voice for Humanity, a nonprofit organization in Lexington, Ky. It supplied 
tens of thousands of audio devices in Iraq and Afghanistan with messages 
intended to encourage people to vote. Rick Ifland, the group's director, 
said the messages were part of the "positive developments in democracy, 
freedom and human rights in the Middle East."

It is not clear how effective the messages were or what recipients did with 
the iPod-like devices, pink for women and silver for men, which could not be 
altered to play music or other recordings.

To show off the new media in Afghanistan, AID officials invited Ms. Matalin, 
the former Cheney aide and conservative commentator, and the talk show host 
Rush Limbaugh to visit in February. Mr. Limbaugh told his listeners that 
students at a journalism school asked him "some of the best questions about 
journalism and about America that I've ever been asked."

One of the first queries, Mr. Limbaugh said, was "How do you balance justice 
and truth and objectivity?"

His reply: report the truth, don't hide any opinions or "interest in the 
outcome of events." Tell "people who you are," he said, and "they'll respect 
your credibility."


Carlotta Gall and Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed reporting from Afghanistan 
for this article.


	
	
		
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