Pentagon mixed
propaganda with PR, report finds
John Byrne
Published:
Friday December 12, 2008
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Pentagon_mixed_propaganda_with_PR_report_1212.html
The Pentagon may have mixed propaganda with public relations in
an effort to win the "war of ideas" as part of the Iraq war,
according to a little-noticed report released Thursday.
An inspector general's report said a whopping
$1 million had been used
to merge propaganda and PR efforts in 2007 and 2008. The Senate
recently stripped out $3 million from the Pentagon budget for a
Defense Department "strategic communication" program.
"Without clearly defined strategic communications responsibilities,
DoD may appear to merge inappropriately the public affairs and
information operations functions," the inspector general said in a
report released yesterday nestled in a Washington Post article.
Such programs should be the province of the undersecretary of
defense for policy, it added.
The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs
"should only perform strategic communications responsibilities
related to its public affairs mission," while calling attention to
a 2005 Pentagon document, "Public Affairs," which asserted that PR
and "information" ops "differ with respect to the audience, scope
and intent and must remain separate."
"The inspector general also raised questions about the Office of
Public Affairs' use of funds and personnel from the Armed Forces
Information Service to carry out its functions without specific
authority," veteran intelligence reporter Walter Pincus
noted Friday. "AFIS, which
was recently renamed Defense Media Activity, runs Pentagon internal
communications including Stars and Stripes as well as the Armed
Forces Radio and Television Service. With a budget of more than
$160 million and about 1,200 staff members, it nonetheless comes
under the authority, direction and control of the assistant
secretary for public affairs, whose authorized staff is only 89,
according to the report."
Strikingly, the Washington Post is the only media outlet to have
reported on the report, according to an examination of
Google News Friday
morning.