AP Impact: Pentagon boosts spending on PR

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AP Impact: Pentagon boosts spending on PR

By CHRIS TOMLINSON – 2 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — As it fights two wars, the Pentagon is steadily and
dramatically increasing money spent on winning what it calls "the
human terrain" of world public opinion. In the process, concerns have
been raised that this is spreading propaganda at home in violation of
federal law.

An Associated Press investigation found that over the past five years,
the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and
abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year,
according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents. That's
almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006.

This year, the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for
recruitment, advertising and public relations — almost as many as the
total 30,000-person work force in the State Department.

"We have such a massive apparatus selling the military to us, it has
become hard to ask questions about whether this is too much money or
if it's bloated," says Sheldon Rampton, research director for the
Committee on Media and Democracy, which tracks the military's media
operations. "As the war has become less popular, they have felt they
need to respond to that more."

Yet the money spent on media and outreach still comes to only 1
percent of the Pentagon budget, and the military argues it is well-
spent on recruitment and the education of foreign and American
audiences. Military leaders say that at a time when extremist groups
run Web sites and distribute video, information is as important a
weapon as tanks and guns.

"We have got to be involved in getting our case out there, telling our
side of the story, because believe me, al-Qaida and all of those
folks ... that's what they are doing on the Internet and everywhere
else," says Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., who chairs the Terrorism,
Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee. "Every time a
bomb goes off, they have a story out almost before it explodes, saying
that it killed 15 innocent civilians."

___

On an abandoned Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas, editors for the
Joint Hometown News Service point proudly to a dozen clippings on a
table as examples of success in getting stories into newspapers.

What readers are not told: Each of these glowing stories was written
by Pentagon staff. Under the free service, stories go out with
authors' names but not their titles, and do not mention Hometown News
anywhere. In 2009, Hometown News plans to put out 5,400 press
releases, 3,000 television releases and 1,600 radio interviews, among
other work — 50 percent more than in 2007.

The service is just a tiny piece of the Pentagon's rapidly expanding
media empire, which is now bigger in size, money and power than many
media companies.

In a yearlong investigation, The Associated Press interviewed more
than 100 people and scoured more than 100,000 pages of documents in
several budgets to tally the money spent to inform, educate and
influence the public in the U.S. and abroad. The AP included contracts
found through the private FedSources database and requests made under
the Freedom of Information Act. Actual spending figures are higher
because of money in classified budgets.

The biggest chunk of funds — about $1.6 billion — goes into
recruitment and advertising. Another $547 million goes into public
affairs, which reaches American audiences. And about $489 million more
goes into what is known as psychological operations, which targets
foreign audiences.

Staffing across all these areas costs about $2.1 billion, as
calculated by the number of full-time employees and the military's
average cost per service member. That's double the staffing costs for
2003.

Recruitment and advertising are the only two areas where Congress has
authorized the military to influence the American public. Far more
controversial is public affairs, because of the prohibition on
propaganda to the American public.

"It's not up to the Pentagon to sell policy to the American people,"
says Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., who sponsored legislation in Congress
last year reinforcing the ban.

Spending on public affairs has more than doubled since 2003. Robert
Hastings, acting secretary of defense, says the growth reflects
changes in the information market, along with the fact that the U.S.
is now fighting two wars.

"The role of public affairs is to provide you the information so that
you can make an informed decision yourself," Hastings says. "There is
no place for spin at the Department of Defense."

But on Dec. 12, the Pentagon's inspector general released an audit
finding that the public affairs office may have crossed the line into
propaganda. The audit found the Department of Defense "may appear to
merge inappropriately" its public affairs with operations that try to
influence audiences abroad. It also found that while only 89 positions
were authorized for public affairs, 126 government employees and 31
contractors worked there.

In a written response, Hastings concurred and, without acknowledging
wrongdoing, ordered a reorganization of the department by early 2009.

Another audit, also in December, concluded that a public affairs
program called "America Supports You" was conducted "in a questionable
and unregulated manner" with funds meant for the military's Stars and
Stripes newspaper.

The program was set up to keep U.S. troops informed about volunteer
donations to the military. But the military awarded $11.8 million in
contracts to a public relations firm to raise donations for the troops
and then advertise those donations to the public. So the program
became a way to drum up support for the military at a time when public
opinion was turning against the Iraq war.

The audit also found that the offer to place corporate logos on the
Pentagon Web site in return for donations was against regulations. A
military spokesman said the program has been completely overhauled to
meet Pentagon regulations.

"They very explicitly identify American public opinion as an important
battlefield," says Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington
University. "In today's information environment, even if they were
well-intentioned and didn't want to influence American public opinion,
they couldn't help it."

In 2003, for example, initial accounts from the military about the
rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch from Iraqi forces were faked to rally
public support. And in 2005, a Marine Corps spokesman during the siege
of the Iraqi city of Fallujah told the U.S. news media that U.S.
troops were attacking. In fact, the information was a ruse by U.S.
commanders to fool insurgents into revealing their positions.

___

The fastest-growing part of the military media is "psychological
operations," where spending has doubled since 2003.

Psychological operations aim at foreign audiences, and spin is
welcome. The only caveats are that messages must be truthful and must
never try to influence an American audience.

In Afghanistan, for example, a video of a soldier joining the national
army shown on Afghan television is not attributed to the U.S. And in
Iraq, American teams built and equipped media outlets and trained
Iraqis to staff them without making public the connection to the
military.

Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of strategic communications for the
U.S. Central Command, says psychological operations must be secret to
be effective. He says that in the 21st century, it is probably not
possible to win the information battle with insurgents without
exposing American citizens to secret U.S. propaganda.

"We have to be pragmatic and realistic about the game that we play in
terms of information, and that game is very complex," he says.

The danger of psychological operations reaching a U.S. audience became
clear when an American TV anchor asked Gen. David Petraeus about the
mood in Iraq. The general held up a glossy photo of the Iraqi national
soccer team to show the country united in victory.

Behind the camera, his staff was cringing. It was U.S. psychological
operations that had quietly distributed tens of thousands of the
soccer posters in July 2007 to encourage Iraqi nationalism.

With a new administration in power, it is not clear what changes may
be made. Obama administration officials have said they intend to go
through the Department of Defense budget closely to trim bloated
spending.

The emphasis on influence operations started with former Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In 2002, Rumsfeld established an Office of
Strategic Influence that brought together public affairs and
psychological operations. Critics accused him of setting up a
propaganda arm, and Congress demanded that the office be shut down.

Rumsfeld has declined to speak to the press since leaving office, but
while defense secretary he spoke bluntly about his desire to revamp
the Pentagon's media operations.

"I went down that next day and said, 'Fine, if you want to savage this
thing, fine, I'll give you the corpse,'" Rumsfeld said on Nov. 18,
2002, according to Defense Department transcripts of a speech he
delivered. "'There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna
keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.'"

In 2003, Rumsfeld issued a secret Information Operations Roadmap
setting out a plan for public affairs and psychological operations to
work together. It noted that with a global media, the military should
expect and accept that psychological operations will reach the U.S.
public.

"I can tell you there wouldn't be a single American disappointed with
anything that we've done that might be out there, that they don't know
about," says Col. Curtis Boyd, commander of the 4th PSYOP Group, the
largest unit of its kind. "Frankly, they probably wouldn't care
because maybe they are safer as a result of it."

In January 2008, a new report by the Defense Science Board recommended
resurrecting the Office of Strategic Influence as the Office of
Strategic Communications. But Congress refused to fund the program.

In February, the Army released a new eight-chapter field manual that
puts information warfare on par with traditional warfare.

The title of an entire chapter, Chapter 7: "Information Superiority."

Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York
contributed to this report.