# Briefed in the building, introduced as independent Case studies Briefed in the building, introduced as independent Illustration, not an archive object - Home - Case studies - Briefed in the building, introduced as independent At a glance From 2002 to 2008 the Defense Department's public affairs office gave retired officers who worked as broadcast analysts private briefings, talking points WhenApril 20, 2008ActorU.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs…Full record at propagandaarchive.org ## What it said Nothing in this program went out under the Pentagon's name. What reached the public was a retired general or colonel in a network chair, captioned with his rank, answering an anchor's questions about Iraq or the war on terrorism. What the audience did not see was the conference call or the talking points that, in many cases, came first. The department's own records, as the New York Times reported them on 20 April 2008, described the analysts as message force multipliers and surrogates who could carry administration themes and messages to millions of Americans in the form of their own opinions. That phrase is the heart of the case. It describes a government message designed to arrive looking like private judgment. Some of the participants later described it in blunter terms. Kenneth Allard, formerly an NBC analyst, called it psyops on steroids. Robert Bevelacqua, formerly with Fox News, said: It was them saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.' Robert Bevelacqua, former Fox News analyst, as quoted in the 2008 reporting collected on the FRAME case study. ## Who made it and why The program sat in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, under Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and, from December 2006, Robert Gates. According to the Times, Assistant Secretary Victoria (Torie) Clarke began recruiting "key influentials" in early 2002 as planning for a possible Iraq invasion got under way. Retired officers who appeared as network analysts became the main focus, and Clarke and her aide Brent T. Krueger eventually enlisted more than 75 of them. The Pentagon inspector general later counted the contacts. Between 2002 and 2008 there were 147 events for 74 analysts: 22 meetings at the Pentagon, 114 conference calls with generals and senior officials, and 11 Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq and to Guantánamo Bay. The inquiry confirmed that Rumsfeld's staff frequently gave analysts talking points before they went on air. The Times reported that the first of six Guantánamo trips, on 24 June 2005, flew a group of retired officers to Cuba on a jet normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney. A contractor, Omnitec Solutions, monitored what the analysts said afterward; one of its reports, cited by the Times, read: Commentary from all three Iraq trips was extremely positive. The department's stated reason was public information. Spokesman Bryan Whitman put it this way: The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people. Bryan Whitman, Pentagon spokesman, PBS NewsHour, 2008, as cited by the FRAME case study. There was a second layer. David Barstow's article, built on about 8,000 pages of Pentagon records the Times obtained through a lawsuit, reported that the analysts together represented more than 150 military contractors as lobbyists, executives, board members, or consultants, and that those ties were rarely disclosed to viewers and sometimes not to the networks. The largest group appeared on Fox News, then NBC and CNN, with analysts from CBS and ABC also included. ## What it got right or wrong The official verdicts should be stated as they were written. The inspector general's January 2009 report found no violation and no evidence that analysts used their access to win contracts. In May 2009 that report was withdrawn; Deputy Inspector General Donald M. Horstman said it did not meet accepted quality standards and relied on a body of testimonial evidence that was insufficient or inconclusive. On 21 July 2009 the Government Accountability Office, in opinion B-316443, found the outreach did not break the appropriations ban on "publicity or propaganda." It said the department did try to favorably influence public opinion about its war policies through the analysts, but found no evidence that it hid the outreach or paid analysts for favorable commentary. A second inspector general report, DODIG-2012-025 of 21 November 2011, found the office acted in compliance with policy and regulation and found no contract favoritism. That same 2011 report recorded one analyst telling investigators the intent was to move everyone's mouth on TV as a sock puppet, and another calling the talking points bullet points given for a political purpose. Legal and right are not the same word. GAO drew its line at payment and concealment, and by that line the department stayed inside the law. The Defense Department paid none of the analysts for commentary, and nothing barred a reporter from asking about the briefings. But no notice went out with the broadcasts either. A viewer in 2005 had no practical way to know that the independent expert explaining the war had been on a call with the department that week. What is not shown should also be said plainly. The record does not show that any analyst was paid by the Pentagon to comment, that any analyst's employer won a contract because of the access, or how much the program changed what Americans believed. The official reviews did not measure that. This page makes no finding about the wars themselves. ## Citizens should be able to tell who is speaking The First Amendment restrains government from controlling the press. It does not forbid a department from briefing anyone who will listen, and it should not. The problem here is different and quieter. A free press is useful to self-government partly because citizens can tell who is speaking. When the government's preferred themes come out of a retired officer's mouth on several channels in the same week, viewers may take repetition for independent agreement. That is a manufactured chorus, and it works best when the audience cannot see the conductor. The fair libertarian reading is not that the analysts were puppets; the record does not show what any of them privately believed. The point is that a government at war has a strong motive to shape how the war is discussed, and an arrangement that blurs the source should carry the burden of disclosure. The comparison GAO itself drew is useful. In 2005 it found the Department of Education's undisclosed $240,000 arrangement with commentator Armstrong Williams, made through the PR firm Ketchum to promote No Child Left Behind, to be "covert propaganda" under the same rider. Williams was paid and the sponsorship was hidden. The analysts were not paid, and the briefings were not secret, but they were invisible on screen. The law reached the first case and not the second. An informed citizen does not have to draw the line in the same place. An older American poster shows the honest version of the same appeal. In 1918 the Army used General Pershing's name, on an Army poster, to praise its supply troops (Pershing Says: The S.O.S. Shares the Success With Us). The endorsement was the message, and the sponsor was printed on it. The 2002-2008 outreach kept the endorsement and took the sponsor off the screen. ## Its legacy The response came quickly once the documents were public. Senator Carl Levin asked for an investigation on 23 April 2008. Representative Rosa DeLauro wrote to five network executives the next day. On 25 April public affairs chief Robert Hastings suspended the briefings and all other contact with the analysts pending review. In May the House required inquiries by the inspector general and GAO, and DeLauro and Representative John Dingell asked the FCC to look at the networks; the record reviewed here does not show the FCC opening a case. Senators John Kerry, Frank Lautenberg, Robert Menendez, and Byron Dorgan introduced S. 3099 to bar the Pentagon from spending on propaganda, and the FY2009 defense authorization act required a GAO opinion on the outreach. Barstow won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for this article and a November 2008 follow-up on retired General Barry McCaffrey's consulting work. The habits worth keeping are simple. When an expert comments on a war, ask who briefed him that week and whether the broadcast says so. Check the analyst's board seats and consulting clients against what is being discussed. When the same phrase comes from several "independent" voices in a day or two, treat it as a pointer to a common source, not proof of one. The program ran alongside the selling of the Iraq weapons case, and it belongs to a longer American story of government messages arriving under other bylines, from the FBI's planted news items to the Creel committee's speakers. ## Sources - FRAME case study "The Pentagon's retired military analyst outreach programme (2002-2008)" (propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/pentagon-military-analysts/), for the chronology, counts, quotations, and official findings on this page. - David Barstow, "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand," New York Times, 20 April 2008; "One Man's Military-Industrial-Media Complex," New York Times, 29 November 2008. - GAO, B-316443, Department of Defense: Retired Military Officers as Media Analysts, 21 July 2009; GAO, B-305368, Department of Education: Contract to Obtain Services of Armstrong Williams, 30 September 2005. - DoD Inspector General, DODIG-2012-025, Retired Military Analyst Outreach Activities, 21 November 2011 (redacted); Rep. Rosa DeLauro, statement on the withdrawal of the January 2009 inspector general report, May 2009. - PBS NewsHour, "Government Curries Favor With Military News Analysts," 2008 (Whitman); PR Watch, April 2008 (Allard); PR Week, April 2008, on the suspension; NPR, 24 April and 1 May 2008. - FRAME collection object: Pershing Says: The S.O.S. Shares the Success With Us (American Expeditionary Forces, 1918). Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/case-studies/pentagon-military-analysts/