The Propaganda War
The Pentagon's brand-new plan for winning the battle of ideas against terrorists
The official inquiry into the practices of the consulting firm, the Lincoln Group, has not been made public. The House Armed Services Committee has requested a list of all media contracts in Iraq, but the Pentagon has so far failed to provide one. "As far as the committee is concerned," says staff member Loren Dealy, "we're still waiting to hear back."
The United States engaged in similar practices during the Cold War when Communist parties made inroads in western Europe. A former Pentagon official who has worked in this area says that on rare occasions, planting news stories secretly can be effective. But "if you do find it necessary, for goodness' sake, do it on a classified basis by professionals--going to the folks up the river," he says, referring to the Central Intelligence Agency, which has the mandate for covert political action.
A previous effort to resolve these disputes came to naught. A Pentagon "Information Operations Roadmap" was written in 2003 and declassified this January in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. It attempted to lay out guidelines for psychological operations and limit their use to "semipermissive" and "nonpermissive" environments. But even though "it was signed by the secretary as definitive guidance," Chris Lamb, the former defense official who wrote it, said "it was never enforced." He adds, "The problems result from the unwillingness of the psyop community to abide by the lanes in the road that were made explicit in the [2003] road map."
There are those in uniform who are so wary of having their credibility compromised in any way that they are instinctively opposed to psychological operations. "In my personal view," one official says, "we ought to make the term go away. It carries so much baggage."
Others see this as a misunderstanding of psychological operations, which they insist are based on credible, truthful information but aim to influence rather than just deliver information. One former official scoffs at public-affairs officers who don't think media "spin" is part of their job. "They are not journalists," he says. "Their job is to defend American policy. Guys in uniform express the views of the military!" All this fighting, he concludes, reveals that persuasive communications is a difficult art form replete with nuance.
After the September 2004 meeting in the "tank," the psychological operations community stepped out smartly.
The "information operations" mission was assigned to the Strategic Command led by a four-star general. STRATCOM in turn set up a Joint Information Operations Center at Lackland Air Base in San Antonio. Now led by a reserve colonel who is a television broadcaster in private life, the JIOC has been staffed with temporary personnel but will soon get 10 billets or permanent staff positions. The JIOC sends Information Operations Support Teams to the various regional combatant commands in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The Special Operations Command in Tampa also has a Joint Psyop Support Element that fields teams around the world.
"Strange critters." A senior official emphasizes that information operations--including psychological operations--are "conducted predominantly during a military operation and generally focused on an opposing force or the strategic elements of an opposing force." But that elastic definition currently includes Iraqi civilians.
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