Pentagon investigation into propaganda effort met with skepticism

The office of the Defense Department's inspector general said in a report Friday that it had found no wrongdoing in a Pentagon public relations program that made use of retired officers who worked as military analysts for television and radio networks. The report was prompted by articles in The New York Times last year that described an elaborate and largely hidden Pentagon effort, dating from 2002, to transform a group of high-profile network military analysts into "surrogates" or "message force multipliers" for the Bush administration. The articles also documented how military analysts with ties to defense contractors sometimes used their special access to seek advantage in the competition for contracts related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In response to the articles, at least 45 members of Congress called for inquiries into the program, with some asserting that it might have constituted an illegal campaign of propaganda directed at the American public. But in the new report, the inspector general's office, noting the absence of a clear legal definition of propaganda, said there was an "insufficient basis" to conclude that the program had violated laws prohibiting the government's domestic use of it. It also said investigators had been unable to document any instance where military analysts had used their special access–scores of meetings with senior officials, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, hundreds of pages of briefing materials–"to achieve a competitive advantage for their company." Moreover, while the report said two senior Pentagon officials had complained in sworn testimony that the outreach to military analysts had become "politicized," and while it documented one instance in which an analyst had lost access because of critical war commentary, it also found there was not enough evidence to conclude that the Pentagon "undertook a disciplined effort" to assemble a contingent of influential analysts "who could be depended on to comment favorably on DoD programs." The report dismissed as merely a "personal view" one e-mail message, written by a senior public affairs official at the Pentagon, that urged her superiors to cultivate a core group of military analysts "that we can count on to carry our water." It also discounted repeated references in Pentagon documents that described military analysts as administration "surrogates." These references, the report said, simply reflected the fact that several of the officials who catered to the analysts had previously worked in political campaigns. Some Democratic members of Congress immediately expressed concerns about the scope, methodology and accuracy of the report. They noted that several leading architects of the program, including Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon's chief public affairs official during the invasion of Iraq, and Lawrence DiRita, a senior aide to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, had refused to be interviewed by the inspector general's office. In addition, the inspector general's office made no effort to search for e-mail messages beyond those the Defense Department had released to The Times in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The report asserts that 43 military analysts had no affiliations with defense contractors. But its listing of analysts without ties to contractors included many with easily documented connections to them, including Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general and NBC military analyst. In fact, as The Times reported in November, General McCaffrey is a paid consultant to several military contractors and sits on the boards of several others, including DynCorp, one of the nation's largest recipients of contracts connected to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Asked why General McCaffrey was listed as having no ties to contractors, officials at the inspector general's office said their "search parameters" might not have uncovered all relevant business relationships. Representative Paul W. Hodes, Democrat of New Hampshire, remarked: "To say there are factual inaccuracies in this report is the understatement of the century. I think it is a whitewash. It appears to be the parting gift of the Pentagon to the president." Two other inquiries into the program are continuing. One, being conducted by the Government Accountability Office, is scheduled to be completed next month. The other is being done by the Federal Communications Commission, which has regulatory oversight of broadcasters.