New York Times Claims Bushhitler/Pentagon Using Mind Control On Americans
New York Times:
By DAVID BARSTOW
Published: 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.
Continue
Be respectful of others and their opinions. Inflammatory remarks and inane leftist drivel will be deleted. It ain’t about free speech, remember you’re in a private domain. My website, my prerogative.
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Tell us what you think about the “information and opinion controlling” tactics of wartime Lincoln and wartime FDR … in the media AND with the Congress … ?
Get back real soon on that, as I do have a slight degree of adult ADD that I selfishly pamper and refuse to correct …
You have 12 hours …
GO!!
April 20th, 2008 at 11:14 amTell us what you think about the “information and opinion controlling” tactics of wartime Lincoln and wartime FDR … in the media AND with the Congress … ?
Apparently EVERY day is a brand-new day for some people.
Especially when they are in front of a camera.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:31 amWow what an agenda the NY Slime has. And what is the agenda of some of these military pundits? Could it be that they are such asswipes that the Pentagon no longer wants them around? Could it be that their shithead rep WHILE in service has followed them around after service?
Listen civilians, if the Pentagon is willing to give you a tour of what is going on behind the scenes and you come back with some smartass remarks while in front of the camera in opposition to the facts; then don’t be surprised if the Pentagon flips you the bird.
And don’t be surprised if folks who actually know a good deal about the inner workings of the Pentagon and the GWOT diss you as well.
But I digress….
The NY Slimes: All the news that’s fit to obfuscate; and all the sophistry that you need for any news day.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:43 amThe NY Times and MSM make people seek information on the Web.
They are driving the force that will replace them.
How many people believe the NYTimes?
How many people know that the NYT will lie to benefit the Democrats?
How many people know that the NYT will support the enemies of America?
Everyone knows……….Just like CBS,ABC,NBC,CNN,MSNBC they are all the same.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:34 pmI don’t think anyone is being “fooled” by these ex-generals and whatnot. Everyone knows that they represent the military point of view, and that, in general, there is a lot of agreement by these folks. Why is this some kind of sin to allow them to express their opinions?
Or is the “sin” (from the viewpoint of the commie-lib media) that they are allowed to express their views at all? I think the latter is the case. What the commie-lib media wants is the bad old days when there were only 3 networks controlling all news and information being “fed” to the American public, and all three of them were controlled by Liberals. So the “sin” in their eyes is allowing any other viewpoint than their own. Nonsense!!
April 20th, 2008 at 1:26 pmspeaking of the Times, columnist Lary Bloom, recently wrote an article about me. I met him at my school and I guess he was interested in my writing and my personal story of marine to college student.
Supposedly it is a nice, a-political, human interest story about the service of veterans and their transition to the civilian world. Who knows though, I’m not holding my breath. Reporters like to take stuff out of context. It doesn’t come out till the 27th.
Anyway, I just thought that was relevant (and admittedly I wanted to plug the piece). I hope some good things that our military does get out through the article written about me.
April 20th, 2008 at 1:32 pmHah!!! CNN was having a ball with this earlier today. Every liberal who hears about this story will buy it hook, line and sinker and use it as a ‘gotcha’ to try to win the debate about Iraq. Problem is that the bloggers and Fox will dig into it and, in a few days, will have the rest of the facts that will totally undermine the Slimes’ story. But the Slimes will never amend or correct their story and most of the country will then believe the Bush Lied People Died meme. All so predictable.
April 20th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Old Sailor: Commie Lib Media always has Wes Clark to help them and a few more. Just that he readily comes to mind. Hard for me to say this about a person who rose to the rank he did but, Ret. General W. Clark is a first class puke.
April 20th, 2008 at 3:42 pmMake sure one of us gets a link to that story here so we can get it on …
Maggie
April 20th, 2008 at 6:21 pmWill do!
April 20th, 2008 at 7:22 pmKenneth Allard…. said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.
“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”
If anyone wants to hear a sophisticated information operation, and feel like they have been hosed, they should catch one of the network headline loops that Rush Limbaugh puts together for his show. You get to hear every major network announce a breaking or important story, using identical intro lines and often verbatim terms - remember the term “gravitas” from a few elections ago?
The catch is that nobody can watch all the news shows at once, so you cannot really see how orchestrated the whole thing is - until you hear Rush’s loop, and then you can hear quite clearly how the networks are hosing us all by trying to claim that they are unbiased or have no hidden agenda.
Of course they will jump on this so-called story of Bush media manipulation, because they need to cover their own tracks by throwing the attention somewhere else for a while.
Rush has often said, look at what the left accuses the right of doing, because that is what they themselves are doing most of the time!!
April 20th, 2008 at 7:34 pmAnyway; let us know how it turns out, and cut loose a link when it comes out.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:41 pmThanks for the interest. I must say though - as far as what my country had to offer me - I actually don’t get any money from the government for college even though I served honorably in combat twice because I was a reservist (I only get the GI bill at a pro-rated amount if I stay attached to a unit which is self-defeating because I would just continually deploy and not get to go to college). I think thats going to be a part of the story and a reason I agreed to it; reservists are used as much as active duty forces these days and the laws and benefits have not caught up yet.
I did get to talk about civil affairs, my mos, which is a very unheard of yet crucial job to winning the war in Iraq. We do all the good stuff the media never talks about, until now hopefully.
April 20th, 2008 at 9:05 pmI guess this would be a great place to scream “WARNING FROM CIA CREATED ELECTRONIC MIND CONTROL SLAVE, IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING.
DO NOT THINK EVERYTHING IS NOT A TEST…………………
April 20th, 2008 at 11:23 pmTESTING TESTING TESTING