Air Force Community - Air Force Times

Spin, doctored

This summer, the Army, National Guard and Defense Department issued requests to industry to hire contractors to analyze and monitor media reporting and make recommendations to the highest ranks of the service. I was part of one team that considered this work, thinking it could be lucrative and perhaps lead to more business at the heart of the services’ top management.

Since 2005, the Pentagon increasingly has contracted for everything from information warfare to reaction-force training to military logistics, and basically has supplemented our active forces in Iraq with contracted military forces. This is a vestige of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “military light” approach for Iraq, under which the U.S. hired contractors to deploy more forces than possible by just deploying active and reserve troops. We learned, however, that contractors cost three to four times more to deploy. That is, if you’re sure you can find enough contractors willing to go.

A couple of days before we were to bid, I called my partner. His company is a major defense contractor which, like me, saw the value in the new media-monitoring positions for the Army (22 jobs), the Army National Guard (about 10 to 12 jobs) and the Defense Department (about 20 to 25 jobs). But, by the end of our talk, we decided to let the opportunity pass us by.

Why? First, I suggested that it would be one thing to have reporters wandering by the core of the Army’s media operations room and ask, “Who are these guys?” and be told they are auditors from Booz Allen, KPMG or Deloitte & Touche. That would be unusual, but no huge deal.

But what if the answer was that they were with defense contractors such as Raytheon, Boeing or Lockheed Martin? That could mean the folks who bring you radars, warplanes or helicopters also were advising top brass on media coverage of operations and hardware decisions. We contacted the Army and said, “We’re not playing.”

Having defense-industry professionals monitor media coverage of military operations not only is an obvious conflict of interest, it raises concerns about how we build military leaders.

Since World War II, some of the military’s most promising officers have been assigned tours as public affairs officers. Reporters often complain that young PAOs have no sense of the media’s mission and are too rigid. Over time, however, those PAOs learn the tools of media relations and the importance of the media and the First Amendment to our way of life. They learn that media and the military can coexist. And the good ones learn to never, ever lie.

If the public affairs function is handed to contractors, many of whom possess decent PR credentials but no military experience, the result will be more adept spin control but less public understanding of how the battle is going, how the forces operate and who the troops are. Today, the soldier, sailor, airman or Marine at the podium is the face of the American military. There is no more credible spokesman, if the job is done right.

And top leaders, from master sergeants to generals, often become the authorities they are by mastering not only force structure, but the media, the world of diplomacy and the nuances of communications. That invaluable experience would be lost by contracting out to the corporate spinmeisters of Madison Avenue in New York City and K Street in Washington, D.C.

The Defense Department calls these contractor groups “strategic communications” cells. This term of art cropped up around 2002 as a way to blend what used to be highly secret “deception in warfare” techniques with traditional media-relations approaches to turn information into a weapon. This effort failed, but, even though the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence was shuttered, the residue remained — strategic communications.

In its most harmless and perhaps useful form, some of the techniques wrought by PR firms have improved military public affairs with practical approaches to overcome a longstanding lack of coordination in wartime between PAOs and operating forces. Today, war is more than tanks and soldiers and air sorties. In order to win the information side, PAOs and war fighters must coordinate and support each other in more effective ways.

There is increased risk, however, that public affairs officials with contractor ties would be motivated by commercial concerns to spin the truth and that they would operate outside a military chain of command. The next step after media analysis is a recommended course of action. It could prove too tempting to the wrong contractor to rig the analysis to gain a beneficial recommendation.

Last year, the Air Force issued a contract for a strategic communications cell like the three offered this summer. If the Pentagon turns media analysis over to contractors, it puts military credibility at risk and strips the services of a valuable method of nurturing well-rounded leaders.

These bids from the Defense Department, the Army and Army National Guard should be withdrawn. The proper function of strategic communications should be to serve the truth by balancing military objectives with the public’s right to know. Contractors should have a limited role, at best, in that mission.

.........

The writer, a former submarine officer and military affairs reporter for Military Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune, is a crisis communications and marketing consultant and trainer. He provides communications and business consulting services to the U.S. government and private-sector clients.