Stars and Stripes
Saturday 26 April 2008
Arlington, Virginia - The Defense Department has temporarily stopped feeding information to retired military officers pending a review of the issue, said Robert Hastings, principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs.
The New York Times first reported on Sunday that the Defense Department was giving information to retired officers serving as pundits for various media organizations in order to garner favorable media coverage.
Some of these retired officers saw their access to key decision-makers as possible business opportunities for the defense contractors they represent, according to the newspaper. The story also alleged that the officers who did not repeat the Bush administration's official line were denied further access to information.
Hastings said he is concerned about allegations that the Defense Department's relationship with the retired military analysts was improper.
"Following the allegations, the story that is printed in the New York Times, I directed my staff to halt, to suspend the activities that may be ongoing with retired military analysts to give me time to review the situation," Hastings said in an interview with Stripes on Friday.
Hastings said he did not discuss the matter with Defense Secretary Robert Gates prior to making his decision. He could not say Friday how long this review might take.
"We'll take the time to do it right," he said.
On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., said in a speech that he was angered by the allegations raised in the New York Times' story.
"There is nothing inherently wrong with providing information to the public and the press," Skelton said. "But there is a problem if the Pentagon is providing special access to retired officers and then basically using them as pawns to spout the administration's talking points of the day."
Skelton, who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was also disturbed by the ties between the military officers and defense firms.
"It hurts me to my core to think that there are those from the ranks of our retired officers who have decided to cash in and essentially prostitute themselves on the basis of their previous positions within the Department of Defense," he said.
Hastings, who had not seen Skelton's remarks before Friday's interview, said he is unaware of the Defense Department's past activities with retired military analysts. He took over his current post in March.
"I need a little time to kind of digest that and figure out what the path forward is," he said.
Journalism's Loss Was Propaganda's Gain
By Connie Schultz
Creator's Syndicate
Wednesday 23 April 2008
When journalists fail to ask the right questions, inevitably the majority of Americans will believe the wrong answers.
It's that simple and that potentially devastating, this relationship between journalists and the public. Especially in a democracy, where a free and aggressive press is supposed to be a crucial check against the abuses of power.
We are the watchdogs, but too many of us journalists who are stateside have been all bark and no bite in covering the war in Iraq. While our colleagues in Iraq and Afghanistan risk their lives to cover the war, we sometimes fail to ask the most rudimentary questions, such as, "What is your personal stake in this war?" or "Do you have ties to the current administration?"
In a long and jaw-dropping piece in Sunday's New York Times, reporter David Barstow documented just how badly television news has failed to ask the right questions. He recounted how, in numerous interviews on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox, dozens of former military officers masqueraded as independent observers, cheering on this never-ending war without mentioning that they had been intensely courted and coached by the Pentagon. They also didn't disclose their ties to military contractors profiting from the very war policies they were asked to evaluate.
Time and again, and not remotely coincidentally, these retired officers repeated Pentagon talking points on TV. Some of them did this even when they didn't agree with the administration. They were afraid of jeopardizing their access to classified information - and to power.
Newspapers aren't off the hook here. We regularly quoted from these interviews, and many papers ran op-ed pieces by some of these men.
Meanwhile, the American public was duped.
There are many jarring moments in Barstow's exhaustive story that illustrate not only the complicity of the ex-officers but also the cynicism of an administration convinced of its exemption from accountability.
"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," Barstow wrote.
"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.'"
"Properly armed"? What a curious choice of words.
Barstow's story, which came about after the Times sued the Defense Department for documents, started with an example from the summer of 2005. Criticism was mounting over the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Amnesty International had just branded it "the gulag of our times." Human rights experts from the United Nations had issued new allegations of abuse. Many were calling for Guantanamo to be shut down.
Journalists were banned from visiting Guantanamo. Instead, the administration flew in a group of retired military officers, the first of six such flights. Immediately after their tour, they appeared on various news shows describing Guantanomo in glowing terms and blasting critics for circulating lies.
How effective were they?
I learned how effective they were just recently, when I wrote a column about a little book of poetry written by Guantanamo detainees, most of whom have been imprisoned for years without charges.
Reader response overwhelmingly parroted the Pentagon briefings. They condemned the book and me for writing about it. Stop and listen to the voices behind these messages:
"These prisoners never had it so good," one woman wrote. "They have clean clothes, clean bedding, three meals a day, prayer time, exercise time, etc. etc. etc. That's suffering?"
On his company e-mail, a man wrote, "During saner and better times in this country, a piece of filth like you wouldn't dare write such trash."
Another man responded specifically to accounts of detainees' suicides: "They're committing suicide at Guantanamo Bay? Good. 'F' 'em. It saves the USA a bullet."
Are these the voices of an informed public?
Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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