Pentagon Used Psychological Operation on US Public, Documents Show

Part II in my investigative series for Raw Story:

Pentagon Used Psychological Operation on US Public, Documents Show

Figure in Bush propaganda operation remains Pentagon spokesman

In Part I of this series, Raw Story revealed that Bryan Whitman, the current deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, was an active senior participant in a Bush administration covert Pentagon program that used retired military analysts to generate positive wartime news coverage.

A months-long review of documents and interviews with Pentagon personnel has revealed that the Bush Administration's military analyst program -- aimed at selling the Iraq war to the American people -- operated through a secretive collaboration between the Defense Department's press and community relations offices.

Raw Story has also uncovered evidence that directly ties the activities undertaken in the military analyst program to an official US military document’s definition of psychological operations -- propaganda that is only supposed to be directed toward foreign audiences.

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Comments

[Brad Jacobson]

Pentagon Used Psychological Operation on US Public, Documents Show

[Donald]

We should be much more troubled by there use of electronic snooping such as hacking into your phone and PC lines 24/7 even when you think they are on the hook! Most are not aware of this capability to monitor all sound in a room even when the headset in on the cradle! This is a trick that is far more dangerous to freedom that them feeding you a false message!

[Batocchio]

Nice work. The PR Watch guys have done a good job of covering another one of their favorite tricks – propaganda abroad, designed so the American press will pick up on it. It technically bypasses the domestic propaganda laws (in a sense, the embedded journalists are the same, but with slightly different dynamics). Of course, the Bushies and the Pentagon itself never really gave a damn about those laws.

The summer after the Gulf War, one of my brothers and I took a media class, with rotating reporters speaking on a topic every week. Regardless of the stated topic, though, pretty much all they talked about was how thoroughly the Pentagon had bullied, censored and sanitized the press – because, insanely, the military blamed the press for losing Vietnam. I knew some of the sanitizing was going on, but not how bad it was and how it was accomplished. The class was enormously valuable, and I grow more grateful for it over the years. And oh, for the days when reporters wanted the truth.

Of course, now with Afghanistan, some venues (including Frontline, the Nation and the Independent) are raising the glaring questions and fact-checking, and the public is wary, but many in the despicable Beltway crowd are eager to create yet another Vietnam – after all, only the lower orders will suffer.

[mujeres rusas]

The summer after the Gulf War, one of my brothers and I took a media class, with rotating reporters speaking on a topic every week. Regardless of the stated topic, though, pretty much all they talked about was how thoroughly the Pentagon had bullied, censored and sanitized the press – because, insanely, the military blamed the press for losing Vietnam. I knew some of the sanitizing was going on, but not how bad it was and how it was accomplished. The class was enormously valuable, and I grow more grateful for it over the years.