convore.json/groups/socal-martial-law-alerts/did-a-top-general-run-psy-ops-on-senators/messages.json

[{"user_id": 11626, "stars": [], "topic_id": 8987, "date_created": 1298615105.5338261, "message": "Aides to a prominent general are insisting that their boss didn\u2019t run a psychological operation on members of Congress. But the e-mails they provided to Danger Room to back up their denials appear to reinforce the initial charges: that Lt. Gen. William Caldwell IV, head of training in Afghanistan, used propaganda personnel to \u201cspin\u201d visiting U.S. Senators.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s a potentially serious offense. If Caldwell did order the operation, it could violate a decades-old law called the Smith-Mundt Act, which forbids the government from targeting propaganda at American citizens. Caldwell\u2019s boss, Gen. David Petraeus, announced on Thursday that he\u2019ll investigate the \u201cfacts and circumstances\u201d of a potentially improper use of information operations.\r\n\r\nThe accusations come from Lt. Col. Michael Holmes, the leader of an information operations unit in Afghanistan, who tells Rolling Stone that Caldwell\u2019s staff retaliated against him after he balked at their efforts to use him to influence American dignitaries.\r\n\r\nOne of Caldwell\u2019s aides says that Holmes wasn\u2019t acting in an \u201cInformation Operations,\u201d or \u201cIO,\u201d capacity when dealing with the visiting legislators. Holmes may have been trained in psychological operations. But, at the time, Holmes was functioning as a garden-variety staff officer for Caldwell. According to the aide, they prepared some briefing books and talking points in advance of the dignitaries\u2019 visits \u2014 nothing more, nothing less.\r\n\r\n\u201cConducting research on important issues for individual VIP visitors to tailor talking points and connect with their interests and concerns is not IO. I guarantee all senior commanders have staff performing this kind of work. It\u2019s merely being prepared and doing your homework,\u201d the aide e-mails.\r\n\r\nAccording to this version of events, only after Holmes found himself in hot water in an investigation did he run to Hastings with a story of a propaganda-happy Caldwell.\r\n\r\nBut internal e-mails from Caldwell\u2019s command, known as NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A), show that Holmes routinely worked on information operations for the general.\r\n\r\nFirst, a disclosure: Both Michael Hastings, the author of the Rolling Stone piece, and Caldwell are longtime friends of this blog.\r\n\r\nAccording to Hastings\u2019 piece, Caldwell asked Holmes for information on visiting legislators that a quick googling could retrieve: voting records, pet issues and \u201cpressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds [and] more people,\u201d Holmes recounted to Hastings \u2014 the Afghanistan training effort still needs more training and personnel. Holmes initially cooperated. But in mid-March 2010, according to an NTM-A timeline obtained by Danger Room, Holmes \u201cexpressed concern\u201d that the tasking was an \u201cillegal\u201d psychological operation.\r\n\r\nThat prompted Caldwell\u2019s chief of staff, Col. Joseph Buche, to investigate. On March 30, an NTM-A lawyer determined \u201cevidence\u201d that Holmes and a subordinate, Maj. Laural Levine, were in an \u201cinappropriate relationship\u201d in which they wore civilian clothes and drank alcohol off-base, in violation of a military restriction on boozing it up in Afghanistan. The investigation had a new target.\r\n\r\nIn the e-mails reviewed by Danger Room, Holmes defends his trips off base in civilian clothing as necessary to conduct information operations. One e-mail from May 10, 2010, refers to a documentary NTM-A wanted to make about \u201ccommunity policing.\u201d Referring to the documentary as the work of an IOTF \u2014 Information Operations Task Force \u2014 Holmes says that for the film to be persuasive, \u201cthere should be no open military presence either on film, or in the area during the shooting.\u201d That means getting the men in \u201csportscoats and chinos\u201d and the women in headscarves. In his e-mail signature, Holmes refers to himself as chief of an \u201cIO FST\u201d \u2014 an Information Operations Field Support Team.\r\n\r\nA different e-mail explains that the Afghan government also sought to get U.S. military personnel in civilian garb, so they\u2019d be less conspicuous. On May 4, 2010, a State Department official affirmed that a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai wanted U.S. forces at a Kabul media center to \u201cstrive to be in civilian clothing whenever possible.\u201d\r\n\r\nJack Kem, Caldwell\u2019s top civilian deputy, balked at having military personnel in civvies, for fear that their \u201cconcealed weapons\u201d would be legally problematic if the service members were captured. Holmes continued to argue in his defense that he was asked to wear civilian clothes at weekly meetings with an Information Operations Task Force.\r\n\r\nUltimately, Holmes departed Afghanistan in September, after calling the inquiry into his civilian clothing a \u201ckangaroo court.\u201d He now runs a consulting firm specializing in \u201cstrategic communications\u201d \u2014 another cousin of propaganda \u2014 in Texas, according to the firm\u2019s Facebook page.\r\n\r\nThe clothing issue is less important than what it shows: that Holmes was indeed working on information operations for Caldwell. Caldwell\u2019s staff argues that Holmes wasn\u2019t working on information ops when he was dealing with U.S. senators or congressmen. But Caldwell\u2019s aide conceded that he can\u2019t document that claim.\r\n\r\nUltimately, it\u2019ll for Petraeus to determine. But in Holmes\u2019 case, the already-blurry lines between spin and propaganda got muddied by having an information operations officer involved in congressional glad-handing. Psychological operations are supposed to muddle the messages of foreign enemies or disrupt their communications. (Think the Air Force\u2019s Commando Solo spy plane, which can disrupt an adversary\u2019s broadcasts and replace them with pro-U.S. propaganda.)\r\n\r\nBut many a commander has lamented that messages from insurgents can chip away at domestic U.S. support for a war, while American hearts and minds aren\u2019t supposed to be targeted by the U.S. military. In reality, the military has workarounds. Every single military command wants to influence Congress to protect their budgets, missions and turf. Sponsored trips to tour the war zones for legislators, think-tankers and even journalists are coordinated events to put the best spin possible on the war effort. Is that spin or propaganda?\r\n\r\nThe distinction is supposed to be enforced by staffing \u2014 that is, keeping the information operations folk out of the public-relations game. \u201cIt is a pretty big old red line,\u201d says Bob Mackey, a retired Army officer with intelligence experience; Smith-Mundt is supposed to block the military from even using \u201ctruthful IO\u201d on Americans. Petraeus will have to determine if Holmes\u2019 involvement in Caldwell\u2019s congressional outreach maintained that bulwark or eroded it.\r\n\r\nFor what it\u2019s worth, one of the targets of the alleged psy-ops campaign, Sen. Carl Levin, is calling no harm, no foul. Levin\u2019s long been an advocate of boosting training for the Afghan security forces so U.S. troops can withdraw. \u201cI have never needed any convincing on this point,\u201d he said in a statement. He expressed confidence that \u201cthe chain of command will review any allegation that information operations have been improperly used in Afghanistan.\u201d\r\n\r\nhttp://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2011/02/army.mil-30761-2009-02-19-190236.jpg\r\n\r\nhttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/did-a-top-general-run-psyops-on-senators/?utm_source=co2hog", "group_id": 3920, "id": 206360}]