Pentagon's media manipulation on war extended to newspapers

The New York Times on Apr. 20 published a massive piece by David Barstow on how the Pentagon for years has secretly deployed a large crew of retired military officers to flood the airwaves–network and cable–to offer pro-war talking points to the unsuspecting viewers. The focus is on TV, not print, but Barstow does reveal that the Times itself published "at least" nine op-eds by members of the Pentagon's military/media cabal, and the Pentagon helped two of them craft a Wall Street Journal piece. What may go overlooked, however, is that all of the leading newspapers also frequently quoted the same cabal members, always in support of the war and the administration. This is not to place the papers in the same category as the TV outlets which used these people 1) regularly 2) gave them true prominence and never asked questions and 3) often paid them per appearance. However, it will be interesting to trace how these same "analysts" got the talking points delivered via newspapers, as well. What follows are just some examples identified so far, which happen to emerge from the pages of The New York Times. Other papers widely quoted the retired military officers, but the Times' archives is easier to search for this purpose. And, in fact, most of the "analysts" identified by name in the Barstow article were never quoted much if at all by the paper previously. But the search finds, for example, that Gen. James A. Marks (a CNN analyst with deep ties to a contractor) wrote an op-ed for the Times on Nov. 10, 2004, offering an optimistic view of gains that might follow our attack on Falluja. He was quoted in numerous other Times stories. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who has often been critical of the conduct of the war, was quoted often in 2002 and early 2003 when he was major advocate of the invasion. He has also written op-eds for The Washington Post. One of the prominent cabal members in Barstow's Times article is Thomas G. McInerney, a Fox News analyst with deep ties to contractors. He shows up in several Times articles since 2002–as late as 2006 he is quoted as still believing Saddam had WMD and simply hid them in Syria and elsewhere. He co-authored that Wall Street Journal op-ed mentioned above. But most prominently at the Times he figured as the counter voice when three generals, including Gen. Wesley Clark, raised questions about attacking Iraq at a key moment in September 2002.