[R-G] Firms Awarded $300M for Pro-US Propaganda in Iraq

[Anthony Fenton]

U.S. to Fund Pro-American Publicity in Iraqi Media

By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 3, 2008; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/02/AR2008100204223_pf.html

The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to  
$300 million over the next three years to produce news stories,  
entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi  
media in an effort to "engage and inspire" the local population to  
support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government.

The new contracts -- awarded last week to four companies -- will  
expand and consolidate what the U.S. military calls "information/ 
psychological operations" in Iraq far into the future, even as  
violence appears to be abating and U.S. troops have begun drawing down.

The military's role in the war of ideas has been fundamentally  
transformed in recent years, the result of both the Pentagon's  
outsized resources and a counterinsurgency doctrine in which  
information control is considered key to success. Uniformed  
communications specialists and contractors are now an integral part of  
U.S. military operations from Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and beyond.

Iraq, where hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on such  
contracts, has been the proving ground for the transformation. "The  
tools they're using, the means, the robustness of this activity has  
just skyrocketed since 2003. In the past, a lot of this stuff was just  
some guy's dreams," said a senior U.S. military official, one of  
several who discussed the sensitive defense program on the condition  
of anonymity.

The Pentagon still sometimes feels it is playing catch-up in a  
propaganda market dominated by al-Qaeda, whose media operations  
include sophisticated Web sites and professionally produced videos and  
audios featuring Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants. "We're being out- 
communicated by a guy in a cave," Secretary Robert M. Gates often  
remarks.

But Defense Department officials think their own products have become  
increasingly imaginative and competitive. Military and contractor- 
produced media campaigns, spotlighting killings by insurgents, "helped  
in developing attitudes" that led Iraqis to reject al-Qaeda in Iraq  
over the past two years, an official said. Now that the insurgency is  
in disarray, he said, the same tools "could potentially be helpful" in  
diminishing the influence of neighboring Iran.

U.S.-produced public service broadcasts and billboards have touted  
improvements in government services, promoted political  
reconciliation, praised the Iraqi military and encouraged Iraqi  
citizens to report criminal activity. When national euphoria broke out  
last year after an Iraqi singer won a talent contest in Lebanon, the  
U.S. military considered producing an Iraqi version of "American Idol"  
to help build nonsectarian nationalism. The idea was shelved as too  
expensive, an official said, but "we're trying to think out of the box  
on" reconciliation.

One official described how part of the program works: "There's a video  
piece produced by a contractor . . . showing a family being attacked  
by a group of bad guys, and their daughter being taken off. The  
message is: You've got to stand up against the enemy." The  
professionally produced vignette, he said, "is offered for airing on  
various [television] stations in Iraq. . . . They don't know that the  
originator of the content is the U.S. government. If they did, they  
would never run anything."

"If you asked most Iraqis," he said, "they would say, 'It came from  
the government, our own government.' "

The Pentagon's solicitation for bids on the contracts noted that media  
items produced "may or may not be non-attributable to coalition  
forces." "If they thought we were doing it, it would not be as  
effective," another official said of the Iraqis. "In the Middle East,  
they are so afraid they're going to be Westernized . . . that you have  
to be careful when you're trying to provide information to the  
population."

The Army's counterinsurgency manual, which Gen. David H. Petraeus co- 
wrote in 2006, describes information operations in detail, citing them  
among the "critical" military activities "that do not involve killing  
insurgents." Petraeus, who became the top U.S. commander in Iraq early  
last year, led a "surge" in combat troops and information warfare.

Some of the new doctrine emerged from Petraeus's own early experience  
in Iraq. As commander of the 101st Airborne Division in northern  
Nineveh province in 2003, he ensured that war-ravaged radio and  
television stations were brought rapidly back on line. At his urging,  
the first TV programs included "Nineveh Talent Search" and a radio  
call-in show hosted by his Arabic interpreter, Sadi Othman, a  
Palestinian American.

Othman, a former New York cabdriver employed by Reston-based SOS  
International, remained at Petraeus's side during the general's  
subsequent Iraq deployments; the company refers to him as a senior  
adviser to Petraeus.

SOSi has been one of the most prominent communications contractors  
working in Iraq, winning a two-year $200 million contract in 2006 to  
"assist in gathering information, conducting analysis and providing  
timely solutions and advice regarding cultural, religious, political,  
economic and public perceptions."

"We definitely believe this is a growth area in the DOD," said Julian  
Setian, SOSi's chief operating officer. "We are seeing more and more  
requests for professional assistance in media-related strategic  
communications efforts, specifically in gauging of perceptions in  
foreign media with regard to U.S. operations."

The four companies that will share in the new contract are SOSi, the  
Washington-based Lincoln Group, Alexandria-based MPRI and Leonie  
Industries, a Los Angeles contractor. All specialize in strategic  
communications and have done previous defense work.

Defense officials maintained that strict rules are enforced against  
disseminating false information. "Our enemies have the luxury of not  
having to tell the truth," Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman told  
a congressional hearing last month. "We pay an extremely high price if  
we ever even make a slight error in putting out the facts."

Contractors require security clearances, and proof that their teams  
possess sufficient linguistic abilities and knowledge of Iraqi  
culture. The Iraqi government has little input on U.S. operations,  
although U.S. officials say they have encouraged Iraqis to be more  
aggressive in molding public support.

The Pentagon is sensitive to criticism that it has sometimes blurred  
the lines between public-affairs activities and unattributed  
propaganda. As information operations in Iraq expanded, some senior  
officers warned that they risked a return to psychological and  
deception operations discredited during the Vietnam War.

In 2006, the Pentagon's inspector general found that media work that  
the Lincoln Group did in Iraq was improperly supervised but legal. The  
contractor had prepared news items considered favorable to the U.S.  
military and paid to place them in the Iraqi media without  
attribution. Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters  
that his initial reaction to the anonymous pay-to-publish program was  
"Gee, that's not what we ought to be doing."

On Aug. 21, the day before bids on the new contract were closed, the  
solicitation was reissued to replace repeated references to  
information and psychological operations with the term "media services."

Senior military officials said that current media placement is done  
through Iraqi middlemen and that broadcast time is usually paid. But  
they said they knew of no recent instance of payment to place  
unattributed newspaper articles. The officials maintained that news  
items are now a minor part of the operation, which they said is  
focused on public service promotions and media monitoring.

But a lengthy list of "deliverables" under the new contract proposal  
includes "print columns, press statements, press releases, response-to- 
query, speeches and . . . opinion editorials"; radio broadcasts "in  
excess of 300 news stories" monthly and 150 each on sports and  
economic themes; and 30- and 60-minute broadcast documentary and  
entertainment series.

Contractors will also develop and maintain Web sites; assess news  
articles in the Iraqi, U.S. and international media; and determine  
ways to counter coverage deemed negative, according to the contract  
solicitation the government posted in May. Polls and focus groups will  
be used to monitor Iraqi attitudes under a separate three-year  
contract totaling up to $45 million.

While U.S. law prohibits the use of government money to direct  
propaganda at U.S. audiences, the "statement of work" included in the  
proposal, written by the U.S. Joint Contracting Command in Iraq, notes  
the need to "communicate effectively with our strategic audiences  
(i.e. Iraqi, pan-Arabic, International, and U.S. audiences) to gain  
widespread acceptance of [U.S. and Iraqi government] core themes and  
messages."

Lawmakers have often challenged the propriety of the military's  
information operations, even when they take place outside the United  
States. The Pentagon itself has frequently lamented the need to  
undertake duties beyond combat and peacekeeping, and Gates has  
publicly questioned the "creeping militarization" of tasks civilians  
traditionally perform.

In 2006, President Bush put the State Department in charge of the  
administration's worldwide "strategic communications," but the size of  
the military's efforts dwarf those of the diplomats. State estimates  
it will spend $5.6 million on public diplomacy in Iraq in fiscal 2008.  
A provision in the fiscal 2009 Defense Authorization Bill has called  
for a "close examination" of the State and defense communications  
programs "to better formulate a comprehensive strategy."

Some inside the military itself have questioned the effectiveness of  
the defense program. "I'm not a huge fan" of information operations,  
one military official said, adding that Iraqi opinions -- as for most  
people -- are formed more by what they experience than by what they  
read in a newspaper, hear on the radio or see on billboards.

"A lot of money is being thrown around," he said, "and I'm not sure  
it's all paying off as much as we think it is."

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