[A-List] Fwd: [R-G] Rolling Stone magazine: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

Psy-Ops have been used successfully in all news since just immediately
before and after the setting up of the 9/11 disaster.   As any can see
Psy-Ops work.   When the professional con-men who use them start believing
their con that just happens to be the beginning of the end, as Reality is
Other.  Suzanne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 1:37 AM
Subject: [R-G] Rolling Stone magazine: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators
To: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk at gmail.com>


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/another-runaway-general-army-deploys-psy-ops-on-u-s-senators-20110223?ich

 [image: Rolling Stone] <http://www.rollingstone.com/>
 Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators
 Sen. John McCain walks with Lt. Gen. William Caldwell at Camp Eggers in
Kabul, Afghanistan on January 6, 2009.
Senior Airman Brian Ybarbo/U.S. Air Force (Homepage image: AP)

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in
"psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into
providing more troops and funding for the war, *Rolling Stone *has learned
– and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by
military investigators.**

The Runaway General: The **Rolling Stone Profile of Stanley McChrystal That
Changed History<
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-runaway-general-20100622>

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star
general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy
in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to
what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was
repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with
Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S.
laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was
subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to
behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the
leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking
orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me
to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a
line."

King David's War: How Gen. Petraeus Is Doubling Down on a Failed
Strategy<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/king-davids-war-20110202>

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members
of the IO team and internal documents obtained by *Rolling Stone*. Those
singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman,
Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House
Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the
Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of
influential think-tank analysts.

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in
Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an
increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own
definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to
influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on
"hostile foreign groups." Federal law forbids the military from practicing
psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a
"propaganda rider" that also prohibits such manipulation. "Everyone in the
psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target
Americans," says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It’s what you learn on day one."

The Insurgent's Tale: A Soldier Reconsiders
Jihad<
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-insurgents-tale-rolling-stones-2005-profile-of-a-soldier-reconsidering-jihad-20110131
>

When Holmes and his four-man team arrived in Afghanistan in November 2009,
their mission was to assess the effects of U.S. propaganda on the Taliban
and the local Afghan population. But the following month, Holmes began
receiving orders from Caldwell’s staff to direct his expertise on a new
target: visiting Americans. At first, the orders were administered verbally.
According to Holmes, who attended at least a dozen meetings with Caldwell to
discuss the operation, the general wanted the IO unit to do the kind of
seemingly innocuous work usually delegated to the two dozen members of his
public affairs staff: compiling detailed profiles of the VIPs, including
their voting records, their likes and dislikes, and their "hot-button
issues." In one email to Holmes, Caldwell’s staff also wanted to know how to
shape the general’s presentations to the visiting dignitaries, and how best
to "refine our messaging."

Congressional delegations – known in military jargon as CODELs – are no
strangers to spin. U.S. lawmakers routinely take trips to the frontlines in
Iraq and Afghanistan, where they receive carefully orchestrated briefings
and visit local markets before posing for souvenir photos in helmets and
flak jackets. Informally, the trips are a way for generals to lobby
congressmen and provide first-hand updates on the war. But what Caldwell was
looking for was more than the usual background briefings on senators.
According to Holmes, the general wanted the IO team to provide a "deeper
analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more
funds." The general’s chief of staff also asked Holmes how Caldwell could
secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge. "How do we
get these guys to give us more people?" he demanded. "What do I have to
plant inside their heads?"

According to experts on intelligence policy, asking a psy-ops team to direct
its expertise against visiting dignitaries would be like the president
asking the CIA to put together background dossiers on congressional
opponents. Holmes was even expected to sit in on Caldwell’s meetings with
the senators and take notes, without divulging his background. "Putting your
propaganda people in a room with senators doesn’t look good," says John
Pike, a leading military analyst. "It doesn’t pass the smell test. Any
decent propaganda operator would tell you that."

At a minimum, the use of the IO team against U.S. senators was a misue of
vital resources designed to combat the enemy; it cost American taxpayers
roughly $6 million to deploy Holmes and his team in Afghanistan for a year.
But Caldwell seemed more eager to advance his own career than to defeat the
Taliban. "We called it Operation Fourth Star," says Holmes. "Caldwell seemed
far more focused on the Americans and the funding stream than he was on the
Afghans. We were there to teach and train the Afghans. But for the first
four months it was all about the U.S. Later he even started talking about
targeting the NATO populations." At one point, according to Holmes, Caldwell
wanted to break up the IO team and give each general on his staff their own
personal spokesperson with psy-ops training.

It wasn’t the first time that Caldwell had tried to tear down the wall that
has historically separated public affairs and psy-ops – the distinction the
military is supposed to maintain between "informing" and "influencing."
After a stint as the top U.S. spokesperson in Iraq, the general pushed
aggressively to expand the military’s use of information operations. During
his time as a commander at Ft. Leavenworth, Caldwell argued for exploiting
new technologies like blogging and Wikipedia – a move that would widen the
military’s ability to influence the public, both foreign and domestic.
According to sources close to the general, he also tried to rewrite the
official doctrine on information operations, though that effort ultimately
failed. (In recent months, the Pentagon has quietly dropped the
nefarious-sounding moniker "psy-ops" in favor of the more neutral "MISO"
– short for Military Information Support Operations.)

Under duress, Holmes and his team provided Caldwell with background
assessments on the visiting senators, and helped prep the general for his
high-profile encounters. But according to members of his unit, Holmes did
his best to resist the orders. Holmes believed that using his team to target
American civilians violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which was passed by
Congress to prevent the State Department from using Soviet-style propaganda
techniques on U.S. citizens. But when Holmes brought his concerns to Col.
Gregory Breazile, the spokesperson for the Afghan training mission run by
Caldwell, the discussion ended in a screaming match. "It’s not illegal if I
say it isn’t!" Holmes recalls Breazile shouting.

In March 2010, Breazile issued a written order that "directly tasked" Holmes
to conduct an IO campaign against "all DV visits" – short for "distinguished
visitor." The team was also instructed to "prepare the context and develop
the prep package for each visit." In case the order wasn’t clear enough,
Breazile added that the new instructions were to "take priority over all
other duties." Instead of fighting the Taliban, Holmes and his team were now
responsible for using their training to win the hearts and minds of John
McCain and Al Franken.

On March 23rd, Holmes emailed the JAG lawyer who handled information
operations, saying that the order made him "nervous." The lawyer, Capt. John
Scott, agreed with Holmes. "The short answer is that IO doesn’t do that,"
Scott replied in an email. "[Public affairs] works on the hearts and minds
of our own citizens and IO works on the hearts and minds of the citizens of
other nations. While the twain do occasionally intersect, such
intersections, like violent contact during a soccer game, should be
unintentional."

In another email, Scott advised Holmes to seek his own defense counsel.
"Using IO to influence our own folks is a bad idea," the lawyer wrote, "and
contrary to IO policy."

In a statement to *Rolling Stone, *a spokesman for Caldwell "categorically
denies the assertion that the command used an Information Operations Cell to
influence Distinguished Visitors." But after Scott offered his legal
opinion, the order was rewritten to stipulate that the IO unit should only
use publicly available records to create profiles of U.S. visitors. Based on
the narrower definition of the order, Holmes and his team believed the
incident was behind them.

Three weeks after the exchange, however, Holmes learned that he was the
subject of an investigation, called an AR 15-6. The investigation had been
ordered by Col. Joe Buche, Caldwell’s chief of staff. The 22-page report,
obtained by *Rolling Stone*, reads like something put together by Kenneth
Starr. The investigator accuses Holmes of going off base in civilian clothes
without permission, improperly using his position to start a private
business, consuming alcohol, using Facebook too much, and having an
"inappropriate" relationship with one of his subordinates, Maj. Laural
Levine*.* The investigator also noted a joking comment that Holmes made on
his Facebook wall, in response to a jibe about Afghan men wanting to hold
his hand. "Hey! I’ve been here almost five months now!" Holmes wrote.
"Gimmee a break a man has needs you know."

"LTC Holmes’ comments about his sexual needs," the report concluded, "are
even more distasteful in light of his status as a married man."

Both Holmes and Levine maintain that there was nothing inappropriate about
their relationship, and said they were waiting until after they left
Afghanistan to start their own business. They and other members of the team
also say that they had been given permission to go off post in civilian
clothes. As for Facebook, Caldwell’s command had aggressively encouraged its
officers to the use the site as part of a social-networking initiative – and
Holmes ranked only 15th among the biggest users.

Nor was Holmes the only one who wrote silly things online. Col. Breazile’s
Facebook page, for example, is spotted with similar kinds of nonsense,
including multiple references to drinking alcohol, and a photo of a warning
inside a Port-o-John mocking Afghans – "In case any of you forgot that you
are supposed to sit on the toilet and not stand on it and squat. It’s a
safety issue. We don’t want you to fall in or miss your target." Breazile
now serves at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he works in the office
dedicated to waging a global information war for the Pentagon.

Following the investigation, both Holmes and Levine were formally
reprimanded. Holmes, believing that he was being targeted for questioning
the legality of waging an IO campaign against U.S. visitors, complained to
the Defense Department’s inspector general. Three months later, he was
informed that he was not entitled to protection as a whistleblower, because
the JAG lawyer he consulted was not "designated to receive such
communications."

Levine, who has a spotless record and 19 service awards after 16 years in
the military, including a tour of duty in Kuwait and Iraq, fears that she
has become "the collateral damage" in the military’s effort to retaliate
against Holmes. "It will probably end my career," she says. "My father was
an officer, and I believed officers would never act like this. I was
devastated. I’ve lost my faith in the military, and I couldn’t in good
conscience recommend anyone joining right now."

After being reprimanded, Holmes and his team were essentially ignored for
the rest of their tours in Afghanistan. But on June 15th, the entire Afghan
training mission received a surprising memo from Col. Buche, Caldwell’s
chief of staff. "Effective immediately," the memo read, "the engagement in
information operations by personnel assigned to the NATO Training
Mission-Afghanistan and Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan is
strictly prohibited." From now on, the memo added, the "information
operation cell" would be referred to as the "Information Engagement cell."
The IE’s mission? "This cell will engage in activities for the sole purpose
of informing and educating U.S., Afghan and international audiences…." The
memo declared, in short, that those who had trained in psy-ops and other
forms of propaganda would now officially be working as public relations
experts – targeting a worldwide audience.

As for the operation targeting U.S. senators, there is no way to tell what,
if any, influence it had on American policy. What is clear is that in
January 2011, Caldwell’s command asked the Obama administration for another
$2 billion to train an additional 70,000 Afghan troops – an initiative that
will already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $11 billion this year. Among the
biggest boosters in Washington to give Caldwell the additional money? Sen.
Carl Levin, one of the senators whom Holmes had been ordered to target.
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