NEAL CONAN, host:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
In Iraq, the battle of ideas is critical to success, and as Vice President Dick Cheney conceded earlier this year, public diplomacy has been a very weak part of our arsenal. After the fall of Baghdad, the US government broadcast to Iraqis on openly American-run stations: Radio Sawa, al-Hurra television and Peace Radio. Now Congress is concerned that the information war may have gone too far. A couple of weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times disclosed a Pentagon program that secretly pays Iraqi newspapers to publish upbeat stories that appear to be written by fellow Iraqis but are in fact produced by American soldiers. The results of a Pentagon investigation are expected in a week or so, but the story raises questions about information warfare. What's legitimate? What's legal? What works? And what's wise? What should the US do to influence hearts and minds amid the flow of rhetoric from insurgents and al-Qaeda? Are some tactics counterproductive?
If you have questions about the Pentagon's covert information campaign in particular or the broader subject of propaganda in time of war, give us a call: (800) 989-8255, (800) 989-TALK. And the e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
Later in the program, as New Yorkers get set to trudge back home this afternoon, we'll hear about the history of strikes by public employees.
But first, Mark Mazzetti joins us. He's a defense correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and co-author of the report on the Pentagon's program to place upbeat stories in the Iraqi press. He joins us by phone from here in Washington.
And, Mark, nice to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION.
Mr. MARK MAZZETTI (Los Angeles Times): Thanks, Neal.
CONAN: And remind us, as the controversy goes ahead to Congress, a lot of the concern has been over whether these stories were meant to be identified up front as the product of the US military.
Mr. MAZZETTI: That's correct. A couple days after our story came out, Senator Warner, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was briefed by the Pentagon about the program. And what he told reporters afterwards was that he was assured by Pentagon officials that all of these stories that were produced by the information operations group in Baghdad were meant to be clearly identified as US government products. He said occasionally he was told they were not and the omissions were merely by accident. And we came out with a story this Sunday talking to several current and former members of the Lincoln Group, which is the company that--the contractor that the military in Baghdad hired to place the stories. And they all said actually the whole campaign was designed not to have any US fingerprints on it.
CONAN: Because they thought it would be counterproductive, that if Iraqis saw a story written from American sources, they would not put the same credence in it as if they thought it had been written by an Iraqi.
Mr. MAZZETTI: Right. It would stick out like a sore thumb in a Baghdad newspaper. And so the agreement between the military and the civilians doing the campaign was that it was better to have the stories translated into Arabic and fake bylines or no bylines at all that would attribute the stories to the US.
CONAN: And there was also concern over, well, whether these stories worked anyway. There was--some of your sources were saying, look, Iraqis can see through these anyway.
Mr. MAZZETTI: Yeah, there's a big question about whether even something that's translated into Arabic is all that believable. It's the way the stories are written, the different emphasis put on certain things. The people who talked to us for the story who were involved in the campaign said they stuck out like a sore thumb, that the Iraqis certainly knew which stories were legitimate and which were not. So they basically said even in the end this stuff was not all that successful or it didn't really do a lot to win the hearts and minds.
CONAN: Do you know what the reaction to this revelation has been in Iraq?
Mr. MAZZETTI: It's hard to say. You know, when our first story came out, we talked to some Iraqis, we talked to some newspaper editors and reporters, and they sort of reacted with a shrug. They say this thing goes on all the time. It's expected that people pay to plant stories. They didn't necessarily express outrage that it was going on, but some did express a certain degree of concern that, while on one hand, the United States is trying to prop up democracy in Iraq, the State Department is spending millions of dollars to train journalists in Western media ethics, and on the other hand, the Pentagon is paying off journalists to plant these stories.
CONAN: At the same time, of course, the United States is involved in a war in Iraq and trying to influence opinion throughout the country, but specifically in Sunni areas.
Mr. MAZZETTI: That's correct. And actually the story we wrote this Sunday talked about a $20 million campaign that the Lincoln Group was hired to undertake for two months in August and September of this year, specifically to target the Sunni communities in Anbar province, which is the province where Fallujah, Ramadi, some of the more troublesome areas of Iraq are. And the campaign was to do TV advertisements, newspaper products, pop-up Internet ads, all things that basically were trying to influence opinion in the side of the US and the Iraqi government.
CONAN: We're talking about propaganda in time of war. If you'd like to join us, our number is (800) 989-8255, (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
And let's talk on the phone with Jim, who's calling from St. Louis.
JIM (Caller): Hi. Yeah, I did something called psychological operations in Iraq, and this--what you're describing here was actually kind of the norm for us. In--but one of the main reasons that we did it was to start these newspapers up. They basically were starting a free press for the first time, and they had no other way of funding this other than US funds. And if--according to the newspaper people I spoke with, if they were publishing stories that were directly from us and they put that in there, they would lose all credibility with their people. They would just be seen as a talking head for the US government. So I would pull stories off of CNN.com or something like that and then we would just--we wouldn't change anything factual in them, but if there was something negative about the US in there or a negative connotation, we would just omit it.
CONAN: And then the stories would be placed in Iraqi newspapers with payment?
JIM: Absolutely.
CONAN: And so that was seen as a policy in a sense to support fledgling Iraqi media.
JIM: Well, that was part of it. I mean, we had to have a--instead of just throwing money at them, we had to have a reason to throw money at them, and it was specifically to place these things. Now we would also place different ads within the paper, but those were clearly identified. They would be more persuasive.
CONAN: Mark Mazzetti, what's the difference between what Jim is describing and what the Lincoln Group has been doing that you've been writing about?
Mr. MAZZETTI: Well, in some cases there's very little difference. What the Lincoln Group was doing was just providing the translation services and the placement services for this information operations task force in Baghdad. As your caller described, there were both advertisements, there were regular news stories, there were Op-Eds. Some information operations troops would write an Op-Ed in an American voice; it would then get translated in the voice of an Iraqi calling for Iraqis to speak out against insurgents. So sometimes it was straight translation; sometimes it was something that was--I guess you could say, took a lot more liberties.
CONAN: And, Jim, I wanted to ask, the editors you talked to said, you know, these stories would not have any credibility if they were seen as coming from American sources. Did anybody stop to ask, say, what happens when this policy is eventually made public?
JIM: Actually, you know, that was something that we had talked about over and over again, and basically we saw it as it was worth it because we kept the factualness from the story intact and we would show it as coming from a third source like CNN or something like that, but not necessarily with our hand in it, which we definitely did.
And I just wanted to say that this was extremely effective. And I thought it was the right thing to do at the time because of--I mean, literally some of it influenced people's lives and saved lives over there. So I thought it was extremely effective and worth it.
CONAN: Jim, thanks very much. We appreciate it.
JIM: Thanks.
CONAN: And, Mark Mazzetti, as this investigation goes ahead, as I understand it, the policy is still in place because the initial review of this says none of this is illegal.
Mr. MAZZETTI: Well, General Casey said on Friday that before he announced the investigation, they just did a very quick cursory review of the program and nothing jumped out at him as being against regulations or illegal. So that's why they continued the program even while it's under investigation. The investigation by Admiral Van Buskirk, which Casey said is going to be done within a week, that's going to essentially, you know, give the blessing of the US military or not. He's investigating whether there were any laws broken or regulations violated. Every indication we've got is that Van Buskirk is not going to find that.
CONAN: Mark Mazzetti, thanks very much for being with us today.
Mr. MAZZETTI: OK, thank you.
CONAN: Mark Mazzetti, defense correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He joined us by phone from his office here in Washington, DC.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Krohn served as an Army public affairs officer in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, and he joins us now here in Studio 3A.
And nice to have you with us on TALK OF THE NATION.
Lieutenant Colonel CHARLES KROHN (Retired; Army Public Affairs Officer): Thank you very much, Neal.
CONAN: And what either the caller or Mark Mazzetti was describing, does that sound at all unusual to you?
Lt. Col. KROHN: Well, with all respect, I think they're describing the symptom, not the cause. And I've been looking at the cause of this whole problem, failure to communicate with the Iraqi people, and I encountered that when I went over there in November of 2003 to work with the 20 or $18 billion infrastructure reconstruction program. And I wanted to make an announcement to the Iraqi people that if things went well or as we'd planned, that we'd be employing 50,000 Iraqis within the next six months. And I found that I had no real vehicle to reach the Iraqi people. And this came as somewhat of a shock to me.
And what I found was that when we captured Iraq, we took over Saddam's television station and called it Iraqi Media Network. And that was a terrestrial system, meaning that it worked with towers and talked to rabbit ears. But at the same time we captured Baghdad, we lifted Saddam's ban on satellite dishes. So all of the Iraqis, at least those of influence, went out and bought satellite dishes and they, for $200, bought a black box and a one-time payment. And you could see these satellite dishes all over the country as you flew over. So what I was told is that I could make my announcement to the Iraqi people, but that the only people who would receive it would be the few who had rabbit ears.
And I said, `Just a minute. We've been in this country now for eight months and you're telling me that we are sending our messages out that don't reach very many people?' And while all the people who had satellite dishes were receiving Al-Jazeera and virtually gave our enemies and our adversaries unfettered access to the people of Iraq. So we never really got around to telling the Iraqis--at least for the first eight months until al-Hurra fundamentally went on the air, we never got around to telling the Iraqi people why we invaded their country, why we ejected their government or why we were occupying their country.
In the meantime, Al-Jazeera is carrying messages non-stop that we were there to steal their resources, subvert their religion and pervert their culture. And so this is the very critical period. It just shows the magnitude of our neglect. So while the invasion of Iraq was very successful, the planning afterwards that would have incorporated this kind of thing simply didn't exist.
CONAN: We're talking about propaganda and the war of ideas being played out in Iraq today. (800) 989-8255 if you'd like to join us. We'll be back after a short break.
You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
We're talking about information to the Iraqi people, specifically about a story that emerged earlier this month about a Pentagon propaganda effort that pays to plant favorable articles in the Iraqi media, but also about the broader question of winning hearts and minds in time of war. What do you think? (800) 989-8255; (800) 989-TALK. E-mail us: totn@npr.org. Our guest is retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Krohn, who's with us here in Studio 3A, a retired Army public affairs officer who did time in Baghdad.
And interesting--we're talking about this policy of planting stories or paying to have stories placed in the Iraqi press. Did that work? Did it get the kind of feedback that was positive?
Lt. Col. KROHN: Well, the answer is I don't know. You know, if you look in the experience in this country, we have very sophisticated advertising campaigns and advertisers pay a lot of money for it. And these things work and they get feedback and they change and alter their messages. It's a very sophisticated process, but it's understood by the public relations community. And the question I would ask Mark Mazzetti, if he were still on: Was there any evidence that this $18 million that was spent in two months on television in Al Anbar province had any success? Now the one caller said it was very successful, and I hope it was. Taxpayers' money and so on. But without a feedback mechanism, it seems to me that the money could be squandered or could be spent well, and we have no idea which one it was.
CONAN: Well, let's introduce another voice into the conversation now. Dan Kuehl, director of Information Strategies Concentration Program at the National Defense University, also a retired lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force in this case. He joins us here in Studio 3A as well.
Nice of you to be with us today on TALK OF THE NATION.
Professor DANIEL KUEHL (National Defense University): Thanks for the invitation.
CONAN: As a specialist in information warfare, what's your take on these ghostwritten articles? Is this a standard practice?
Prof. KUEHL: I have, as I told Mark Mazzetti when the first LA Times article came out--I am less troubled by moral, ethical, legal issues on this, although all three of those are involved, than I am with the issue of the overall effectiveness. As the one caller alleged, this was a very successful effort. Well, what were the measures of effectiveness for declaring that effectiveness? I'm always very leery of looking at short-term effectiveness when you might have a long-term negative. I think that what we're seeing here as the allegations have come to light of the scope of this program is that the effectiveness that it sought to achieve is now being degraded by the discrediting of all the information that was put out there, and not only the information that was put out as a part of this program. Inevitably, that discrediting paints lots of other things as well. And so we have an overall negative to this.
CONAN: As Colonel Krohn was saying, if there was insufficient planning to look at media, among a few other things in Iraq but we'll stick to media just for the moment--if there was insufficient planning, does this have the air of something slapped together at the last minute?
Prof. KUEHL: Well, I think you could certainly argue that an effective and in-depth media analysis of the Iraqi environment was not done. Now this is something that the commercial sector does extraordinarily well because there's real money involved for them. What's the primary means that Iraqis receive information? And my sources indicate it's television, the world's most ubiquitous information medium, and primarily now satellite television. And as Charles observes, it took us several months to get into that process of using that means and that mechanism to start reaching that audience.
CONAN: To be fair, it was a moving target...
Prof. KUEHL: Yes, it was.
CONAN: ...as Iraqi sources of information were changing dramatically.
Anyway, let's get some more callers on the phone. This is Urban(ph). Urban's calling us from Creswell in Oregon.
URBAN (Caller): Yeah, hi. I really fail to see the reason for the uproar in this thing. I think historically the United States and England and whoever else, I mean, during World War II, World War I, you know, the government was feeding our population plus their population propaganda. And I think it's just one of the things of war. I think maybe with everything the biggest uproar is that we're actually having to pay for it this time. Maybe the Iraqis are a little bit smarter, you know, than everybody else and we're actually getting paid to do this. So...
CONAN: Well, I think one of the things you're hearing, Urban, is questions about is the money being spent effectively. But in any case, on the broader picture, Dan Kuehl, is this fundamentally different from World Wars I or II?
Prof. KUEHL: It is fundamentally different because the media environment is fundamentally different, as well as the nature of the struggle. In World War II, you could determine the effectiveness of the military effort day by day as the battle lines advanced. You don't have that kind of metric at work in an insurgency. Insurgencies generally, historically, take about a decade to win that...
URBAN: Yeah, but after World War II when we were in control of Japan and Germany, we were feeding their press all the good stuff, mainly because we had that bogeyman on the other side of the wall; we had the Russians that, you know, we were trying to worry about.
Prof. KUEHL: Again, diff...
URBAN: You know, we were doing exactly the same stuff then as we are now. The bogeyman has changed a little bit, but, you know, the fundamental process is exactly the same.
Prof. KUEHL: Again, it's a different environment, especially...
URBAN: I disagree.
Prof. KUEHL: ...it's a different environment politically in the United States.
URBAN: Well, that may be we're more touchy-feely, politically correct here and we've kind of forgotten some of the lessons that we've learned in history, you know, and that's bad for us. You know...
CONAN: Well, let me ask Charles Krohn. I mean, is what Urban is saying--does that apply for the situation you had in Iraq?
URBAN: Well, I'm not as concerned with this issue as some. I think it's the custom to pay for propaganda. I think a lot of people get hung up on the expression `propaganda.' As far--and from my understanding, propaganda's getting someone to change their behavior or their attitudes. If you look at our political campaigns in this country, they are pure propaganda, unadulterated propaganda. And we know what the source is, although sometimes there are testimonials that maybe camouflage it. But we digest that without going berserk. Certainly advertising itself is propaganda.
The one example we had was where it worked in the post-World War period was with Hungary when we were encouraging them and all the other satellite states of the Soviet Union to rise up. They did rise up in--What?--1957, asked for help, and all of a sudden we were silent. So I think we have to be very careful how we do this, but I think that our purposes are very high-minded, generally speaking, and certainly in Iraq.
CONAN: Let me ask you, Dan Kuehl, some terms. I mean, is there a functional difference between the terms propaganda, psychological warfare or war of ideas, information war, that sort...
Prof. KUEHL: The taxonomy of the issue is growing daily. Psychological operations, psychological warfare as we in the military use it is clearly a battlefield tactically oriented scheme of operations that is targeted on and against enemy military forces. That's not the same thing as propaganda. And unfortunately if you go into the dictionary and look for the definition, you won't find any reference to lies or deceit. It's trying to make your point of view.
CONAN: Lies or deceit--that would come under disinformation.
Prof. KUEHL: That would be disinformation. I enjoy telling my students that we Americans are the world's most voracious consumers of propaganda. It happens ever Super Bowl Sunday and we all know what the source is.
The war of ideas, however--this is a cat of a different color. This is absolutely crucial. I am convinced that when the history books a hundred years from now are written, and I'm a military historian, the Cold War is going to pale in comparison to the struggle that's under way now that we sometimes call the war of ideas. The foe that we are up against now is fundamentally different than the foe that was in the Kremlin. We could negotiate and sign treaties with those guys; not with these guys.
CONAN: Yes, Colonel Krohn?
Lt. Col. KROHN: Well, I was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan last year and I made the same message to my students who were kind of upset the way this war started and they thought there'd been a disinformation campaign in this country and they'd been misled. And what I tried to explain to them, the war we have now is not the war we started off with. The war we started off with, you can argue round or flat depending upon your point of view, but the war we have now is really serious. It is a clash of civilizations, it is going to go on for a long time, and any results we have in the short term, good or bad, are very likely to be ambiguous. But I fully support what we're doing there because I think that the long-term benefit will outweigh the risk and the cost.
Prof. KUEHL: Now the reason why I feel this is--the lack of effect of what has gone on is so important is that this is a generations-long struggle. And when we wrote the Defense Science Board Report on Strategic Communication last summer, our argument was that the critical audience in the world that must be swayed is the one billion plus Muslims that are somewhere in between active support of us and active terrorists. And doing things which harm the credibility of our message and our story works against the task of influencing that audience in the direction we need them to move.
CONAN: So it's not a question of whether to do it or not; it's doing it properly.
Prof. KUEHL: Doing it properly and effectively.
CONAN: All right, let's get another caller on the line. And this is Cynthia. Cynthia calling us from Vernon, New York.
CYNTHIA (Caller): Hi, Neal. Hi, guests.
CONAN: Hello.
CYNTHIA: I'm a librarian, and I am appalled at this conversation that's going on. And I'm an old person. And I remember the propaganda during World War II, Hitler's use of propaganda--we all know that. And then coming up in history, the very same thing happened in the 1970s with the CIA. There was a book written about it by Halberstam, David Halberstam, about, you know, these reporters planting these stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, pure propaganda. And then it resulted in the Frank Church hearings in the Senate in the '70s...
CONAN: A few other things resulted in the Frank Church hearings, not just that.
CYNTHIA: Pardon me?
CONAN: But that was one aspect of it, Cynthia.
And let me ask Dan Kuehl. Would that come under the category of short-term benefits but long-term deficits?
Prof. KUEHL: Exactly. And this is a point that I make to my students constantly, is the difference between the strategists must take the long-term strategic view. We did things in Southeast Asia for short-term advantage that came back, that have haunted us literally for decades. We saw that happen in 1968. We won an enormous battlefield victory in the defeat of the Tet offensive in 1968. However, in the battle of public opinion and in the battle of popular perception, we lost that. And it was an enormous loss on the pathway to overall defeat.
CYNTHIA: May I finish my point, please?
CONAN: I'm sorry, go ahead, Cynthia.
CYNTHIA: OK. OK. I also was in Iraq from October 2002 through April 2003. And there was a group who monitored young Iraqi people, intelligent young Iraqi people who wrote their own newspaper. They can write their own newspapers. They don't need to have stories written by Americans planted in the newspapers. The newspaper is the fundamental cornerstone of democracy.
CONAN: I'd argue the radio station first, but go ahead.
CYNTHIA: Now how can you say we're going over there to give democracy and we're writing their newspapers? That's not right. That's not right. That's all I wanted to say.
CONAN: Cynthia, thanks very much for the call. If you'd like to join the conversation, (800) 989-8255.
You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
And let's get another caller on the line. This is Mike. Mike, calling us from Oshkosh in Wisconsin.
MIKE (Caller): Yeah, hi. Thanks for the program. You know, if this were a perfect world and we had competing media outlets in Iraq, frankly, we'd be having a different discussion. But the reality is, and this is kind of redundant given what one of the previous guests just said, Al-Jazeera has almost completely dominated the press in that part of the world for a long time. The people there are predisposed to believe what Al-Jazeera says, so frankly, you know, to keep the costs down on this war, I think we do have to entertain some creative reporting to try to win the hearts and minds of some of the Iraqi people, 'cause we've got a long way to go given what Al-Jazeera's previously reported.
CONAN: Would you agree, Charlie Krohn?
Lt. Col. KROHN: I don't think that he said it hard enough. As I said for the first eight months, Al-Jazeera went uncontested because we weren't talking to the people who had the satellite dishes receiving the news. Now we've got to try and compensate. I understand that despite some reports that al-Hurra is doing very well. I suspect they're not as well-resourced in Iraq as Al-Jazeera is in equivalent areas. And what can I tell you? We've got to get in this game. We need the hearts and minds of the population that could swing either way.
CONAN: But is it--just following on, is it wise to do this openly and publicly, al-Hurra, or clandestinely, like planting articles in newspapers?
Lt. Col. KROHN: Personally, I tend to think it has to be done by Iraqis for Iraqis. I think that Iraqis respond to other Iraqis who understand the culture, who understand the problems there. We're dealing with a culture, after all, that's over 4,000 years old. We can hardly expect to compensate for that in occupation of a couple of years, and I think that what we have--I believe in propaganda of the deed, that we should be showing the Iraqis that we're on their side and that in the long term that there is more to be gained by working with us than working with the Islamic extremists who have a different agenda.
CONAN: Anyway, thanks, Mike, for the call. Appreciate it. Let's try now, see if we can squeeze one more in. Jeff--Jeff's calling us from Zanesville in Ohio.
JEFF (Caller): Hello?
CONAN: Hi, Jeff. Go ahead.
JEFF: The thing that--basically what the folks are doing is what the military has always been allowed to do. The mili--the way the legislation works for the military, the military, as long as they don't misidentify--they don't have to say who's writing for them, and that's what we did in Vietnam. Basically we did a lot of stuff, although we understood that Americans could never do it, and so all the stuff was written by Vietnamese, so the people could understand it. The thing that to me is interesting--I was assigned to the Special Operations Command for Desert Storm in psychological operations and a year later I was asked to review the effects of our propaganda effort against Iraqis and whether it had an effect in the Middle East. And the conclusion of that study, which was unclassified, was that we had absolutely no effect because we did not take into consideration the perspective that the people were working from. That was the only unpublished study from Desert Storm on propaganda.
CONAN: Dan Kuehl, would that surprise you?
Prof. KUEHL: I have a little bit different take. I think in--and I'm not sure what the targeted audience of the study referred to, but in terms of the PSYOP that was conducted against the active-duty Iraqi military had a tremendous effect, and we saw thousands of deserters before the offensive started and thousands of prisoners afterwards that clearly had listened to and had been affected by those battlefield PSYOP operations.
CONAN: But...
JEFF: Oh, absolutely. We were...
CONAN: Jeff, you were talking about the Iraqi public, though.
JEFF: Yeah, we were also--you know, that was one phase of the study. The other phase of the study was, you know, the population.
CONAN: Right.
JEFF: And the population not only in Iraq, but the population in the Middle East.
CONAN: Jeff, thanks very much for that. We appreciate it.
JEFF: OK.
CONAN: And I'm afraid we're running out of time, so I want to thank both of you for joining us today. Dan Kuehl, director of the Information Strategies Concentration Program at the National Defense University, retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. Here in 3A also with us, Charles Krohn, a retired lieutenant colonel and Army public affairs officer, also joined us in 3A. Thanks very much for being with us today.
Lt. Col. KROHN: Thank you very much.
Prof. KUEHL: Thank you very much.
CONAN: When we come back from a short break, we're going to be talking about the history of labor strikes by public employees. There's one going on in New York you may have heard about.
This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
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