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Originally Posted by Charlatan
I'm not so sure I'd agree with that. Isn't the difference just a matter of scale?
As for the illegality issue, were these retired officers still on the Pentagon's payroll? I understood they were being paid by the Networks and, in some cases, by defense contractors.
It does not strike me as the same thing as the example you are using.
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Charlatan, if you scroll about 85 percent of the way down the article web page, you come to this
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/wa...pagewanted=all
...View From the Networks
.....Mr. Allard and other analysts said their network handlers also raised no objections when the Defense Department began paying their commercial airfare for Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq — a clear ethical violation for most news organizations...
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The article is influenced by the study of the 8000 pages the NY Times sued the pentagon for release of, and from interviews with analysts and broadcast networks and pentagon officials, like Larry DiRita.
Above the excerpt, there is a repetitious account of the incentives for the analysts to cooperate with the intent of the pentagon that they help broadcast, during their network TV comments, the pentagon's messages.
The reward was also the conflict of interests. Analysts "carrying water", received exclusive briefings and invites to pentagon paid trips to Iraq and Gitmo, and to dinners where they got close to pentagon officials. These retired military ananlyst/consultants sold their relationship and proximity to pentagon officials in the US and in Iraq, via their consulting businesses, and their dual roles as lobbyists representing defense crontractors. The also invested in and served on boards of the defense contractors.
If you were "in good" with the pentagon, you could sell that to defense contractors....it's a daisy chain, Charlatan. There was no profit in disagreeing on TV with the pentagon message, and you got excluded from the briefings and from the pentagon paid for trips. The pentagon hired a consultant who monitored every comment that the consultant/analysts made in broadcasts. They presented reports on this activity to the pentagon, and the result was that those who dissatisfied the pentagon, lost their access.
All of the taxpayer money spent on this "OP", is of questionable legality, most of all the trips for the analysts at taxpayer expense and the cost of the time spent by pentagon staff and the media consultant hired to organize, communicate with, and track the consultant/analysts TV performances.