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Banned
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Originally Posted by Charlatan
....What the Pentagon is doing is controlling their message. They want their version of events to be carried in the media. They have been stung in the past by "negative" messages that have turned public opinion against them. It is not in their interest to let this happen again. Why wouldn't they hire experts that can spread their point of view?....
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....because, (the DOD didn't hire the network's retired military officers/consultants...they had press credentials, they worked for the networks, they were acting as representatives of the network press as they were being briefed by the DOD....) when DOD employees use federal funds appropriated for defense to do it, (Psy-Ops directed at a domestic, civilian population) and they restrict briefings to network news conusltants who are agreeable with their script and goals and exclude the ones who are not agreeable, these DOD employees have broken the law.
Charlatan...I posted the FCC position on the network's obligation to present "REAL" news, in an earlier post, and here is the first prosecutor, in what capacity, I don't know....who agrees with my reaction to this. I am confident that there will be more to follow. Why would former head pentagon PR flack, DiRita act like he is acting....if he has no worries?
Quote:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../27/rs.01.html
CNN RELIABLE SOURCES
Media's Coverage of Pennsylvania Primary; 'New York Times' Reveals DOD Media Program
Aired April 27, 2008 - 10:00 ET
...KURTZ: Larry Di Rita, were you, the Pentagon, Don Rumsfeld, trying to get a positive message out through these TV analysts, these retired military men, who appeared to the viewer at home to be Independent?
LAWRENCE DI RITA, FMR. PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: Positive, no. I think our objective was a balance, a richer set of understandings. There was a general sense, and I think the public often -- it showed up in polls -- that they weren't getting the breadth of the story.......
(near the ens of the transcript):
.....KURTZ: I talked to retired Colonel Bill Cowan, who was a Fox military analyst. He said that three years ago, after he criticized the war effort on "The O'Reilly Factor," he was booted off the group, was never invited to another briefing, never got another telephone call, never got another e-mail. <h3>So it sounds like access was provided to those who weren't too critical.
DI RITA: I don't know anything.</h3> I heard -- I saw that in the story. I've heard other assertions to that effect. <h3>It was certainly not the intent.</h3>
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Excerpt from Dirita's own email, provided by the pentagon, linked and displayed in this threads OP:
Quote:
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanaly...20-%207922.pdf
(PAGE 7815)
<h3>From: Oi Rita. larry,</h3> elv. OSD·OASD·PA I Sent: Monday. January 17, 2005 7:27 AM To: I
~~:;~,~;:~~~~~P~~~~~d~~'O~::\~~~~~~l •.i:;f:.. ;X}"1
Ca t. USMC, OA~~::. Lawrence, Dallas, OASD PA, Keck. Gary, Col, OASD4j;!i,;~,/il I
c~: ~=~.-.FIS·HQlPIA I
Subject: Re: New Ideas for Military analyst coverage • Iraq trip I
. This is a thoughtful note ...r think it makes a lot of sense to do as you suggest ana 1
I
guess I thoughjt we already were doing a lot of this in terms of quick contact, etc...we
ought to be doing this. though, and we should not make the list too small ...
I
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld
I I
-----Original Message----From:
Merritt, Roxie T. CAPT, OASD-PA
I
~~~i~~R~~~~i~5tW;0~,%h:l;c~~~~;~.~~~~~;~,<~~~~y~~~:;~
w~~~~~~
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I I I Bryan, SES, OASD-PA <.B .W· a" 0 ' .. Lawrence, Dallas OASD-PA
BACKGROUND:
One of the most interesting things coming from this trip to Iraq with the media \
analysts was learning how their jobs have been undergoing a metamorphosis. There are
several reasons behind the morpho .. with an all voluntary military, no one in the media I
has current military background. Additionally, we have been doing a good job of keeping
these guys informed 50 that ~hey have the ready answers when the network comes calling.
I
CURRENT ISSUES:
I
The key issue here is that more and more, media analysts are having a greater impact
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on the television media network coverage of military issues. They have now become the geI
to guys not only on breaking storys. but they influence the view5 on issues. Th~y also h.ave a huge amount of influence on what stories the network decides to cover proactively I I with regards to military. In media ops, I have been using them more frequently to get our side of the story out II with media sensitive departments such as USD!, which is typically hard to penetrate with traditionally media, but that we have found to be receptive to talking to the analysts I I such as ~en Robinson. RECOMMENDATION:
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1.1 I recommend we develop a core group from within our media analysts list of those
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that we can count on to carry our water. They become part of a "hot list" that we
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immediately make calls to or put on an email distro before we contact or respond to media
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on hot issues. We can also do more proactive engagement with thiB list and give them tips
on what stories to focus on and give them heads up on upcoming issues as they are I
I developing. By providing them with current and valuable information, they become the key
go to guys for the networks and
<h3>it begins to weed out the less reliably friendly analysts I
I by the networks themselves.</h3>
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From the NY Times reporting, last month:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/wa...l?pagewanted=5
...Many also shared with Mr. Bush's national security team a belief <h3>that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation's will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war.</h3>
This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from "enemy" propaganda during Vietnam.
"We lost the war -- not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped," he wrote. <h3>He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars -- taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach "MindWar" -- using network TV and radio to "strengthen our national will to victory."</h3>....
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...and this was in the transcript, from the pentagon's linked page, I posted in post <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=2448647&postcount=3">#3...</a>
Quote:
.....On Tuesday, April 18, some 17 analysts assembled at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
A transcript of that session, never before disclosed, shows a shared determination to marginalize war critics and revive public support for the war.
"I'm an old intel guy," said one analyst. (The transcript omits speakers’ names.) <h3>"And I can sum all of this up, unfortunately, with one word. That is Psyops. Now most people may hear that and they think, 'Oh my God, they’re trying to brainwash.'"</h3>
"What are you, some kind of a nut?" Mr. Rumsfeld cut in, drawing laughter. "You don't believe in the Constitution?"......
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I have information besides <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/07767728164957616364">this</a> and this:
...that the author of this "letter" is a prosecutor:
Quote:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...fc8ceebf1.html
*
DiRita needs a lawyer
The examples that DiRita argues are proof that the program was not as GG characterizes -- essentially, that because they continued dealing with some analysts who were critical (well, whom DoD claims were critical), they therefore weren't involved with weeding out the dissenters -- are completely inane. It's like saying 'I didn't rob that bank because I walked by lots of banks and didn't rob them.' And even if true, they are not exculpatory.
And this was so lame it's almost comical; in the update, he complains:
One factual error that I ask you to corect (sic): I did not tell you or anyone else that either Joe Galloway or Barry McCaffrey were part of any particular program.
That's not only parsing so extreme as to be meaningless, it's also rather undermined by the first thing he says in his first email to GG:
I'm confident in my characterizations of the intent of the program. Some of the analysts were quite favorable to the president's goals in the war, others were not.
Well, if he's not providing Galloway and McCafferey as examples of those "others" in the "program" who were "not" favorable to the "president's goals in the war", why the hell is he bringing them up?
DiRita is an idiot for sending these emails (they are also appallingly sloppy for a Fortune 500 communications rep). He needs to hire acriminal defense attorney.
-- Jestaplero
[Read Jestaplero's other letters]
Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 10:25 AM
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Quote:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...454ba4158.html
Any admissions by the parties?
Nice work, Glenn.
I'm astonished that, in all of the documents you have quoted and/or referenced, unless I'm wrong I have yet to see any acknowledgment by the parties that the program was likely illegal. It's not like it was some obscure statute, because as you pointed out, the Armstrong Williams affair was recent.
I've been constrained by work from examining the document dump myself - have you seen any such admissions, or efforts to conceal these actions?
Such statements don't go to culpability, of course - ignorance of the law is no excuse - but would go to proof.
-- Jestaplero
[Read Jestaplero's other letters]
Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 09:37 AM
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...5197a1168.html
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Jestaplero
I've been constrained by work from examining the document dump myself - have you seen any such admissions, or efforts to conceal these actions?
Such statements don't go to culpability, of course - ignorance of the law is no excuse - but would go to proof.
This, of course, is the most secretive administration in a long, long time. And particularly DoD-related matters were almost never disclosed. It's clear none of them ever thought that what they were doing would be disclosed, and of course the DoD fought for a long time -- to the point of being threatened with sanctions, according to the NYT -- not to have to disclose these documents.
There are examples of them concealing things --- asking the analysts not to identify the briefings, who they briefers were. CNN asked if they could film the analysts coming and going to the meeting with Rumsfeld and were told that they'd be prohibited from doing that, that the analysts wanted to remain discreet.
I just don't think they gave much though to concealing this specifically because everything they did was done behind a wall of secrecy.
-- GlennGreenwald
[Read GlennGreenwald's other letters]
Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 09:54 AM
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Quote:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...e66eabb57.html
Larry Di Rita should be indicted.
Since the Congress has explicitly banned the use of government funds for propaganda purposes of this kind, any use of government facilities or materials for this project violated the US Code.
Even if there was no punishment indicated in the law where the Congress banned propaganda, there IS a punishment listed in the section of the US Code that bans the appropriation of government property for banned uses:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18...1----000-.html
641. Public money, property or records
Whoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts to his use or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, or any property made or being made under contract for the United States or any department or agency thereof; or
Whoever receives, conceals, or retains the same with intent to convert it to his use or gain, knowing it to have been embezzled, stolen, purloined or converted—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; but if the value of such property in the aggregate, combining amounts from all the counts for which the defendant is convicted in a single case, does not exceed the sum of $1,000, he shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
-- BrianScheetz
[Read BrianScheetz's other letters]
Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 09:40 AM
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Quote:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...483837043.html
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@jjs123
Why do these guys leave an email trail?!
Glenn touches upon why these particular actors may have felt safe, in his earlier response to me.
But generally: when I was fresh out of law school, my first job was doing document review for extremely large-scale corporate litigation. If I was left with one principal impression from that experience, it was "I can't believe the kinds of things people say in emails."
There was one particularly amusing bit of discovery that my colleagues and I were forced to disclose to the other side: two pharmaceutical reps engaged in a series of x-rated emails that can only be described as virtual sex via email. One of the participants at one point asked "Aren't you worried about putting all this in email?" to which the other replied "Oh, who's ever going to read this stuff?!"
That's when I instituted what I call my "New York Post" rule: before hitting send on any email, I always ask myself "Would I be comfortable if this email was published on the front page of tomorrow's New York Post?"
-- Jestaplero
[Read Jestaplero's other letters]
Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 11:36 AM
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Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/op...entagon&st=nyt
May 11, 2008
The Public Editor
Information That Doesn’t Come Freely
By CLARK HOYT
NINA BERNSTEIN, a Times reporter, wrote a front-page article last June about the deaths of prisoners in the fastest-growing form of incarceration in America, immigration detention.
Civil rights attorneys believed that, since the start of 2004, about 20 people had died while in custody facing possible deportation, but a spokeswoman for the federal immigration agency told Bernstein a surprising fact: the number was 62. Bernstein asked for details, like who they were and how they died. The spokeswoman refused, so Bernstein did what reporters often do — she filed a request under the federal Freedom of Information Act, known as FOIA, for what she believed should be public records. Although the law required the agency to answer such a simple request within 20 business days, Immigration and Customs Enforcement initially responded the way many agencies do — with silence.....
,,,,,,,Bernstein, who has a busy beat, immigration in the New York area, wrote her article without the details and moved on. But months later, right around Thanksgiving, she received an envelope containing a chart listing the people who had died in immigration detention — now 66 of them — with their dates of birth and death, the locations where they had been held, where they had died and the causes of death. Her FOIA request had been granted. That led Bernstein to a front-page article published last Monday about Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea, who fell while in detention, received no medical care for 15 hours and died of severe head injuries.
Times reporters use FOIA aggressively, and it has been central to two major stories in just the last three weeks — Bernstein’s and an article by David Barstow on April 20 about a Pentagon program to cozy up to military analysts on television and radio in hopes of generating favorable coverage of the administration’s war on terror. But it is increasingly difficult to pry records that should be open out of federal agencies. A study last year by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government found that FOIA requests were becoming more backlogged, waits for information were getting longer and agencies were saying “no” more often, using one of nine exemptions in the law for such considerations as national security or privacy.
Though late, at least Bernstein got records without having to go to court. The Times was not so fortunate in Barstow’s case, which seemed to show that an agency that does not want to obey the law can find a million creative ways to delay coughing up information that the public has a clear right to know.
Barstow first asked more than two years ago, on April 28, 2006, for records describing the Defense Department’s involvement with the analysts, most of them retired officers, many with business dealings with the Pentagon. He said he wanted transcripts of briefings and conference calls, records of trips and any documents describing the Pentagon’s strategy and objectives in what turned out to be a carefully planned program to try to, as Barstow’s article said, “transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse.”
As the law provides, he asked for expedited handling of his request. He was turned down, though he said the Pentagon did not tell him for a month after the decision. It said the information he wanted did not deal with “a breaking news story of public interest.”
Barstow appealed, arguing that the war on terror was by definition a breaking news story and certainly of public interest. The appeal was denied on Aug. 20, 2006, with bizarre reasoning familiar to anyone who has tried to wrest public information from a federal agency that does not want it released. “Your request is not for information on the war on terror,” the denial said. “It is for Department of Defense interactions with military and security analysts who discuss the war on terror. Therefore, you did not establish a compelling need for the information you requested.”
Barstow kept pressing and two months later received 687 pages of documents, mostly, he said, talking points and other briefing documents representing only a small portion of what he had requested.
A long succession of phone calls and written appeals, some from David McCraw, a vice president and assistant general counsel for The New York Times Company, prompted a trickle of additional material. Last summer, the Pentagon gave Barstow transcripts of briefings received by the analysts, with large portions blacked out. Barstow appealed the deletions, saying it was “ludicrous” to withhold material disclosed to selected representatives of the news media in a briefing. Two months later, the Pentagon relented — and on the same day gave Barstow another transcript, of a briefing with Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, with more deletions.
The Times, committed to spending resources on important FOIA matters even during a time of economic stress for newspapers, took the Pentagon to court last fall. Under the supervision of a federal district judge, Richard J. Sullivan, The Times and an assistant United States attorney representing the Pentagon agreed to deadlines for producing the records Barstow wanted. The Pentagon kept missing the deadlines.
At a hearing in February, Sullivan said the Pentagon was playing “cute” and refused to give any more extensions. “Two years is a long time,” he said. But in April, the parties were back in his courtroom, with the Pentagon pleading for more time. Sullivan was having none of it. “My orders have been issued since November,” he said. “I am not used to having to do this five or six times.” <h3>The judge threatened to bring Pentagon officials into court “to explain the delay and why they shouldn’t be held in contempt.”
With the records it had already obtained, The Times published Barstow’s article the following Sunday. Three days later, the Pentagon gave Barstow 2,800 more pages. His reporting continues. FOIA, he told me, has become “a cruel joke.”</h3>
Late last year, Congress passed the Open Government Act of 2007, with the intention of forcing better compliance with FOIA and heading off situations like Bernstein’s and Barstow’s. (Full disclosure: I testified in favor of the law as a representative of the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of 10 news organizations.) President Bush signed it on the last day of the year, but his administration quickly set about trying to dismantle one of its key features, an independent ombudsman who could mediate FOIA disputes before they turn into expensive lawsuits, like the one The Times is still pursuing.
The administration proposed no financing for the new office and tried to move its responsibilities to the Justice Department, which defends agencies trying to withhold information. Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and John Cornyn of Texas wrote to the White House last week to protest the transfer of the ombudsman, saying it would violate the law.
Leahy is a liberal Democrat and Cornyn is a conservative Republican, and while they do not agree on a lot of issues, they agree that bad things can happen when a government tries to hide the records of its actions.
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<h3>Charlatan, </h3> every day that the US corporate owned, broadcast media continues it's co-ordinated silence on this American tragedy, and their part in it, only adds to the resolve of those who object to what is happening to diminish what our free press and government once seemed to symbolize. The internet was developed in the nick of time. I've been following current events to some degree since the launch of the soviet Sputnik satellite and the soviet downing of U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers shocked us American public in the 50's. I've never experienced anything as arrogant, destructive, unethical, and secretive as our current government.
I don't think it's possible to overreact to unfolding events. The broadcast media have set themselves apart from the NY Time's biggest story of the last six weeks. They've switched off. Unprecedented that they've made themselves irrelevant....as they made the choice to deliver the script of power instead of speaking truth to it....
Last edited by host; 05-13-2008 at 12:14 AM..
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