NBC's "One-Man Military-Industrial-Media Complex"

By Diane Farsetta, PR Watch. Posted December 8, 2008.

In addition to documenting how easily military uniforms and medals have masked hidden interests and shaped coverage of the most important issues of the past several years, Barstow's new article further shows the journalistic bankruptcy of war commentary. In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, McCaffrey had "significant doubts" about the size of the U.S. invasion force and the lack of post-invasion planning. Yet, in his appearances on NBC and its cable affiliates, McCaffrey was a cheerleader for the imminent war. Days before the invasion, McCaffrey told Tom Brokaw that he had no "real serious" concerns about invading Iraq. When McCaffrey belatedly admitted some doubts, Rumsfeld cut him out of the Pentagon's pundit briefings and calls. Yet, the Pentagon continued to cultivate McCaffrey and monitor his public statements, arguably paying more attention to him than to their stable of more compliant pundits.

How the Pentagon managed McCaffrey

The 8,000 pages of Pentagon pundit documents -- which the New York Times obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request (backed up by lawsuits) and the Defense Department later made public -- provide more information about McCaffrey and his complex relationship with the Pentagon's PR machine. (The Center for Media and Democracy has converted the Pentagon pundit documents to text-searchable form.)

McCaffrey was one of the earliest participants in the Pentagon pundit program. He attended pundit meetings with Rumsfeld on October 31, 2002, and January 10, 2003, and was on a pundit conference call discussing Iraq on April 1, 2003. McCaffrey's name also appears on a roster of 14 Pentagon pundits, dated February 12, 2003.

According to Barstow, Rumsfeld exiled McCaffrey from the pundit program in 2003. Yet the Pentagon continued to include McCaffrey in its media tracking and analysis, and went to significant lengths to influence what he was saying. In a November 2006 email exchange among Pentagon officials involved in the pundit program, one explained that McCaffrey's "audience reach is significant, and his observations will continue to shape popular opinion as we transition to a new SECDEF [Secretary of Defense] and continue to look hard at the GWOT [Global War on Terror] way ahead."

One way in which the Pentagon sought to sway McCaffrey was by organizing and funding overseas trips for him. "Other military analysts were invited on trips, but only in groups. General McCaffrey went by himself," reports Barstow. "The stated purpose was for General McCaffrey to provide an outside assessment in his role as a part-time professor at West Point. But his trips were also an important public relations tool, meticulously planned to arm him with anecdotes of progress."

The Pentagon pundit documents detail four of McCaffrey's freebie trips: to Afghanistan and Pakistan in August 2005, to Saudi Arabia in January and February 2007, a return to Pakistan and Afghanistan in February 2007, and to Kuwait and Iraq in March 2007. The documents specify that most of these trips were requested by the U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, the rest of the Middle East, Egypt and Central Asia. The exception is McCaffrey's Saudi Arabia visit, which was "at the invitation of Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Turki Al Faisal." According to Barstow, McCaffrey also traveled to Iraq on the Pentagon's dime in the summer of 2005, December 2007 and October 2008.

The Pentagon also attempted to shape McCaffrey's commentary by ensuring that he talked to high-level officials before his major media appearances. On Friday, August 26, 2005, Pentagon PR staffer Larry Di Rita emailed his colleagues that McCaffrey (along with Pentagon pundits Montgomery Meigs and Wayne Downing) were scheduled to appear on influential political talk shows that Sunday. "Would it make sense to see if general petreaus [sic] were willing to speak with them between now and then?" DiRita asked. "YES," responded Captain Frank Thorp, the PR assistant to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers. "Not a bad idea," responded another Pentagon PR staffer, Bryan Whitman, who was heavily involved with the pundit program.

See more stories tagged with: new york times, donald rumsfeld, nbc, david barstow, barry mccaffrey, pentagon pundits, pentagon propaganda

Diane Farsetta is senior researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy.

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