www.the-edge.org
By Gar Smith /
The-Edge
Black Programs and the Future of Propaganda
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Gardiner claims that the Pentagon was behind the
creation of the "EmpowerPeace" website.
Gardiner says the site was pulled because it violated US laws against
domestic propaganda but the site can still be found on the Web (www.empowerpeace.com).
The-Edge has invited EmpowerPeace to respond to
Gardiner's assertions. |
The bogus
"surrender" of
Milt Bearden, a former CIA manager for clandestine operations has a related
question: "It will be important to learn who was behind the fake
The falsehoods about
Another probable "black program" identified by Gardiner involved the
planting of a false story that Saddam Hussein had taken refuge in the Russian
Embassy in
In the oddest example of perception management, Pentagon media masters actually
created a website to promote world peace. The "EmpowerPeace"
website appeared to represent a citizen's anti-war movement. The goal seemed to
be to foster the impression that the US people (and especially US children)
were essentially peace-loving. "It looked like a grassroots effort,"
Gardiner recalls. "It seems to have been aimed at the Arab audience
set."
The EmpowerPeace website didn't last long. The reason,
Gardiner suspects, is that its creation probably violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which bans the domestic dissemination of
government propaganda.
Gardiner found another "strange website" called "The Iraq Crisis
Bulletin," which offered daily updates and reports from around the world.
The site was recommended by the American Press Institute but there was
"absolutely no indication of the sponsor of the site." With a little
research, Gardiner discovered that "the articles were [written] by Voice
of America correspondents."
The problem with this, Gardiner notes, is that "the Voice of America is
prohibited from doing communications for the American press. But, during Gulf
II, it was getting the message to them." The VOA refused to respond to
Gardiner's requests for information on "The Iraq Crisis Bulletin."
Collateral Damage
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Mapping the Ministry of Propaganda, a historic
merging of politics, militarism and public "perception management."
The Coalition Information Center with offices in
the London, Islamabad and the White House started work in mid-2002 (six
months before it was officially authorized by an Executive Order). In 2003,
the CIC morphed into the Office of Global Communications, staffed by Tucker Eskew, Dan Bartllett, Jeff
Jones, Peter Reid. The OGC works closely with the White House Iraq Group,
which consists of Karl Rove, Condi Rice, Jim Wilkinson, Stephen Hadley,
Scooter Libby, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, and
Nicholas Callo. |
Gardiner wraps up his 56-page investigation with a series of charts that
assess several Defense Department press briefings to
determine the role played by PSYOPS, false or engineered information, and
non-informative responses. His conclusion: "Even if you give them slack
for not giving any information, it turns out that more than half the answers
were not truth... Maybe a better way to say it would be that if an American (or
Brit) were diligent about wanting to understand the war, he could not rely on
the statements made by the
Perhaps the penultimate example of the non-responsive response came in an April
7 DOD press briefing when General Myers was asked about the status of the
chemical missile unit cited by Secretary Powell during his UN testimony. Powell
had told the world that
According to Gardiner, Myers "was very evasive, saying that he did not
recall ever having heard about such a unit."
The Future: The OGC, the Roadmap and 'Strategic Fusion'
Perception management (the art of propaganda, misdirection and lies, if you
will) is no longer discreetly hidden away in some dark wing of the intelligence
or defense establishments: It has become firmly
enshrined right down the hall from the Oval Office.
The Office of Global Communications (OGC) is centered
in the White House. If there is a Ministry of Propaganda in the Bush
administration, the OGC is it. As Gardiner notes: "The White House is at
the center of the strategic communications
process."
The OGC has two components: One committee deals with conducting the perception
of the war on terrorism while a second committee concentrates on "more
general" propaganda projects.
According to the Times of London, the exact dispensation of the OGC's $200 million operating budget is largely a mystery.
It is known that the OGC spent $250,000 on its military pressroom in
Gardiner discovered that "at times there were as many as three Brits
associated with the Office of Global Communications. These assets were
networked. To insure the military would be a willing part of the network, three
people from the White House Office of Global Communications were sent to work
with Central Command. Jim Wilkinson became General Franks' Director of
Strategic Communications.
"The war was handled like a political campaign. Everyone in the message
business was from the political communications community. In London, there was
a parallel organization and a parallel coordination process. They kept the
coordination with secure video teleconferences."
The system worked well but, as John Rendon revealed
at a London conference on July 3, there was still room for improvement. Rendon told his fellow conferees that the idea of using
"embedded journalists" was quite successful and worked just as they
hoped it would from tests they had run to gauge how reporters would perform
once they bonded with the soldiers in their assigned units.
One of the mistakes, Rendon said, was that while they
had taken command of the story, they had "lost control of the
context." The problem was the veteran newsmen in the networks: they had
"too much control of context," Rendon
complained. "That has to be fixed for the next war," Rendon declared.
At the same conference, Captain Gerald Mauer, the
Joint Staff Assistant Deputy Director for Information Operations, observed that
public diplomacy and public affairs are slowly morphing into a single combined
information operation. Mauer envisions a Strategic
Fusion Center that "brings everything
together." The Pentagon is already hard at work crafting an Information
Operations Roadmap.
Mauer also told his fellow perception managers that
"We hope to make more use of Hollywood and Madison Avenue in the
future." The overall goal remains the same Mauer
explained: to allow the men who now control Washington to "disrupt,
corrupt or usurp adversarial... decision-making."
Gardiner finds that the future envisioned by Rendon
and Mauer is fundamentally "frightening."
The phrase "adversarial... decision-making will be disrupted"
reportedly was added by Douglas Feith, the Under
Secretary of Defense for Policy. What it means,
Gardiner warns, is that "we will even go after friends if they are against
what we are doing or want to do."
Criticism, questioning and debate are now defined as "adversarial"
and the new watchword out of Washington is: "If you don't agree with us,
you could be the target of an information attack." The new reality is that
"punishment of those who disagree is a dimension of the strategy."
"If the democracies of the United States and the United Kingdom are based
upon informed, open debate of the issues," Gardiner states, "we've
got some fixing to do.
"It's not enough to look at the arguments about weapons of mass
destruction before the war," Gardiner argues. "There needs to be an
inquiry of the broader question of how spin got to be more important than
substance. What roles did information operations and strategic psychological
operations play in the war" What controls need to be placed on information
operations?"
Solutions Are Needed to Control Information Warfare
Sam Gardiner has become the Paul Revere of our generation. He has raised a cry:
It is no longer "The Redcoats are coming!" but "The PSYOPS are
coming!"
"We need a major investigation," Gardiner insists. "We need
restrictions on which parts of the government can do information operations. We
should not do information operations against friends. We have to get this back
in control."
One remedy is the Smith-Mundt Act, which was created
in the aftermath of WWII with the intent of protecting American citizens from
brainwashing by covert government propaganda campaigns. Unfortunately, Gardiner
has discovered, the Smith-Mundt Act "no longer
works." We became collateral damage, a target group of messages intended
for other groups."
Gardiner's findings have not yet received due attention from the US media and
with good cause. Gardiner's investigation revealed that the mainstream media
not only failed to stand up to the government and insist on the truth, they all
too often submitted in complicit cooperation with the government. Even in
peacetime, the corporate media is an "embedded" media.
Gardiner has some hard questions for America's press barons:
· "How was
it that the Washington Post took classified information on the Jessica
Lynch story and published it just the way the individual leaking it in the
Pentagon wanted?"
· "Why did
the New York Times let itself be used by 'intelligence officials' on
stories?"
· "Why did
the Washington Times never seem to question a leak they were
given?"
·
"Why were newspapers in the UK better than those in the US in
raising questions before and during the war?"
Since releasing his study, Gardiner has had the opportunity to talk with many
people in the print media. While many have appeared "quite
interested" in his findings, Gardiner admits that he has "not heard
any self-criticism from reporters to whom I have talked." In conversations
with TV producers and reporters, Gardiner found the prevailing reaction was
that "the whole story is just too complex to tell."
Gardiner's most disheartening reaction came during a presentation at "a
major Washington think tank." Most of the Washington veterans in the
audience kept asking, "So, what's new?" And when Gardiner opined that
there was "no passion for truth in those who were taking us to war," he
distinctly heard callous laughter breaking out among his listeners.
It is the sound of that brittle laughter that keeps Sam Gardiner going. Things
must be changed. The dragons of information warfare must be slain.
As Gardiner says: "I pain for our democratic process when I find
individuals not angered at being deceived."
Gar Smith is Editor Emeritus of Earth Island Journal, Roving Editor
at The-Edge (www.the-edge.org)
and co-founder of Environmentalists Against War (www.envirosagainstwar.org).
For more information contact:
Sam Gardiner's complete report is available online in six PDF files at :www.indybay.org/news/2003/10/1653148.php
Sam Gardiner may be reached at: SamGard@aol.com
For more information on the Bush administration's use of propaganda to
misinform the public and promote wars of domination, see Weapons of Mass Deception, by John Stauber
and Sheldon Rampton and visit the website of PRWatch: www.prwatch.org/books/wmd.html.
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