http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/
8,000 pages of "tin foil".
Now here's why it's not just unethical or Orwellian, but illegal:
"No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."
-Every House appropriation bill since 1951
So what's "Propaganda"? According to the
GAO
either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) "covert propaganda."
Covert propaganda cited as
information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.
The
GAO already weighed in on this the last time around when the White House was filming fake spot stories and putting them on the network feeds. They said
The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the viewing audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual -- the essential fact of attribution is missing.
They
go on to say that
The publicity or propaganda restriction helps to mark the boundary between an agency making information available to the public and agencies creating news reports unbeknownst to the receiving audience.
Everyone knows this. Even the
White House's own counsel.
In the wake of the Armstrong Williams scandal (White house paid him to publicly endorse NCLB)
Over the years, GAO has interpreted "publicity or propaganda" restrictions to preclude use of appropriated funds for, among other things, so-called "covert propaganda." ... Consistent with that view, OLC determined in 1988 that a statutory prohibition on using appropriated funds for "publicity or propaganda" precluded undisclosed agency funding of advocacy by third-party groups. We stated that "covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties" would run afoul of restrictions on using appropriated funds for "propaganda".
It was covert. As Barstow's piece states, the 75 retired military officers who were recruited by Donald Rumsfeld and given talking points to deliver on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and MSNBC were given extraordinary access to White House and Pentagon officials. However, "The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon."
It was an attempt to mold opinion. According to the Pentagon's own internal documents (which can be downloaded and viewed from the New York Times website), the military analysts were considered "message force multipliers" or "surrogates" who would deliver administration "themes and messages" to millions of Americans "in the form of their own opinions." According to one participating military analyst, it was "psyops on steroids."
It was done "through the undisclosed use of third parties." In their television appearances, the military analysts did not disclose their ties to the White House, let alone that they were its surrogates. The military analysts were used as puppets for the Pentagon. In the words of Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and for Fox News military analyst, "It was them saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you."
And even Rumsfeld himself had been warned that domestic dissemination of propaganda was illegal, which he mentions
here:
This is the first war that's ever been run in the 21sth Century in a time of 24-hour news and bloggers and internets and emails and digital cameras and Sony cams and God knows all this stuff. ... We're not very skillful at it in terms of the media part of the new realities we're living in. Every time we try to do something someone says it's illegal or immoral, there's nothing the press would rather do than write about the press, we all know that. They fall in love with it. So every time someone tries to do some information operations for some public diplomacy or something, they say oh my goodness, it's multiple audiences and if you're talking to them, they're hearing you here as well and therefore that's propagandizing or something.
If he knew that it was illegal to propagandize where it might get back to us, he sure as hell knew it was illegal to target us directly.
And the media is still not reporting it, although they did tell us about the other attempts to propagandize us in which they were not implicated.
Y'all can call this "tin foil" all you want. Of course, you can also shove a cat in the oven, but that don't make it a biscuit.
