Troops
write articles presented as news reports. Some officers object to the practice.
By
Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi
November
30, 2005
WASHINGTON
— As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly
paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an
effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.
The
articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops,
are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a
defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained
by the Los Angeles Times.
Many
of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts
written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work
of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to
rebuild the country.
Though
the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and
omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments,
officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi
newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis
Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year.
The
operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The
Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln
Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi
staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or
advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.
The
military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place
even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political
transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of
dictatorship and corruption.
It
comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism
skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled "The Role
of Press in a Democratic Society." Standards vary widely at Iraqi
newspapers, many of which are shoestring operations.
Underscoring
the importance U.S. officials place on development of a Western-style media,
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday cited the proliferation of news
organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster
of President Saddam Hussein. The hundreds of newspapers, television stations
and other "free media" offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi
public to debate the issues of their burgeoning democracy, Rumsfeld said.
The
military's information operations campaign has sparked a backlash among some
senior military officers in Iraq and at the Pentagon who argue that attempts to
subvert the news media could destroy the U.S. military's credibility in other
nations and with the American public.
"Here
we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we
give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first
principles of democracy when we're doing it," said a senior Pentagon
official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.
The
arrangement with Lincoln Group is evidence of how far the Pentagon has moved to
blur the traditional boundaries between military public affairs — the
dissemination of factual information to the media — and psychological and
information operations, which use propaganda and sometimes misleading
information to advance the objectives of a military campaign.
The
Bush administration has come under criticism for distributing video and news
stories in the United States without identifying the federal government as
their source and for paying American journalists to promote administration
policies, practices the Government Accountability Office has labeled
"covert propaganda."
Military
officials familiar with the effort in Iraq said much of it was being directed
by the "Information Operations Task Force" in Baghdad, part of the
multinational corps headquarters commanded by Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines. The
officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were critical of the
effort and were not authorized to speak publicly about it.
A
spokesman for Vines declined to comment for this article. A Lincoln Group
spokesman also declined to comment.
One
of the military officials said that, as part of a psychological operations
campaign that has intensified over the last year, the task force also had
purchased an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, and was
using them to channel pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. Neither is
identified as a military mouthpiece.
The
official would not disclose which newspaper and radio station are under U.S.
control, saying that naming them would put their employees at risk of insurgent
attacks.
U.S.
law forbids the military from carrying out psychological operations or planting
propaganda through American media outlets. Yet several officials said that
given the globalization of media driven by the Internet and the 24-hour news
cycle, the Pentagon's efforts were carried out with the knowledge that coverage
in the foreign press inevitably "bleeds" into the Western media and
influences coverage in U.S. news outlets.
"There
is no longer any way to separate foreign media from domestic media. Those neat
lines don't exist anymore," said one private contractor who does information
operations work for the Pentagon.
Daniel
Kuehl, an information operations expert at National Defense University at Ft.
McNair in Washington, said that he did not believe that planting stories in
Iraqi media was wrong. But he questioned whether the practice would help turn
the Iraqi public against the insurgency.
"I
don't think that there's anything evil or morally wrong with it," he said.
"I just question whether it's effective."
One
senior military official who spent this year in Iraq said it was the strong
pro-U.S. message in some news stories in Baghdad that first made him suspect
that the American military was planting articles.
"Stuff
would show up in the Iraqi press, and I would ask, 'Where the hell did that
come from?' It was clearly not something that indigenous Iraqi press would have
conceived of on their own," the official said.
Iraqi
newspaper editors reacted with a mixture of shock and shrugs when told they
were targets of a U.S. military psychological operation.
Some
of the newspapers, such as Al Mutamar, a Baghdad-based daily run by associates
of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, ran the articles as news stories,
indistinguishable from other news reports. Before the war, Chalabi was the
Iraqi exile favored by senior Pentagon officials to lead post-Hussein Iraq.
Others
labeled the stories as "advertising," shaded them in gray boxes or
used a special typeface to distinguish them from standard editorial content.
But none mentioned any connection to the U.S. military.
One
Aug. 6 piece, published prominently on Al Mutamar's second page, ran as a news
story with the headline "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism."
Documents obtained by The Times indicated that Al Mutamar was paid about $50 to
run the story, though the editor of the paper said he ran such articles for
free.
Nearly
$1,500 was paid to the independent Addustour newspaper to run an Aug. 2 article
titled "More Money Goes to Iraq's Development," the records
indicated. The newspaper's editor, Bassem Sheikh, said he had "no
idea" where the piece came from but added the note "media
services" on top of the article to distinguish it from other editorial
content.
The
U.S. military-written articles come in to Al Mutamar, the newspaper run by
Chalabi's associates, via the Internet and are often unsigned, said Luay
Baldawi, the paper's editor in chief.
"We
publish anything," he said. "The paper's policy is to publish
everything, especially if it praises causes we believe in. We are pro-American.
Everything that supports America we will publish."
Yet
other Al Mutamar employees were much less supportive of their paper's
connection with the U.S. military. "This is not right," said Faleh
Hassan, an editor. "It reflects the tragic condition of journalists in
Iraq. Journalism in Iraq is in very bad shape."
Ultimately,
Baldawi acknowledged that he, too, was concerned about the origin of the
articles and pledged to be "more careful about stuff we get by
e-mail."
After
he learned of the source of three paid stories that ran in Al Mada in July,
that newspaper's managing editor, Abdul Zahra Zaki, was outraged, immediately
summoning a manager of the advertising department to his office.
"I'm
very sad," he said. "We have to investigate."
The
Iraqis who delivered the articles also reaped modest profits from the
arrangements, according to sources and records.
Employees
at Al Mada said that a low-key man arrived at the newspaper's offices in
downtown Baghdad on July 30 with a large wad of U.S. dollars. He told the
editors that he wanted to publish an article titled "Terrorists Attack
Sunni Volunteers" in the newspaper.
He
paid cash and left no calling card, employees said. He did not want a receipt.
The name he gave employees was the same as that of a Lincoln Group worker in
the records obtained by The Times. Although editors at Al Mada said he paid
$900 to place the article, records show that the man told Lincoln Group that he
gave more than $1,200 to the paper.
Al
Mada is widely considered the most cerebral and professional of Iraqi
newspapers, publishing investigative reports as well as poetry.
Zaki
said that if his cash-strapped paper had known that these stories were from the
U.S. government, he would have "charged much, much more" to publish
them.
According
to several sources, the process for placing the stories begins when soldiers
write "storyboards" of events in Iraq, such as a joint U.S.-Iraqi
raid on a suspected insurgent hide-out, or a suicide bomb that killed Iraqi
civilians.
The
storyboards, several of which were obtained by The Times, read more like press
releases than news stories. They often contain anonymous quotes from U.S.
military officials; it is unclear whether the quotes are authentic.
"Absolute
truth was not an essential element of these stories," said the senior
military official who spent this year in Iraq.
One
of the storyboards, dated Nov. 12, describes a U.S.-Iraqi offensive in the
western Iraqi towns of Karabilah and Husaybah.
"Both
cities are stopping points for foreign fighters entering Iraq to wage their
unjust war," the storyboard reads.
It
continues with a quote from an anonymous U.S. military official: " 'Iraqi
army soldiers and U.S. forces have begun clear-and-hold operations in the city
of Karabilah near Husaybah town, close to the Syrian border,' said a military
official once operations began."
Another
storyboard, written on the same date, describes the capture of an insurgent
bomb-maker in Baghdad. "As the people and the [Iraqi security forces] work
together, Iraq will finally drive terrorism out of Iraq for good," it
concludes.
It
was unclear whether those two storyboards have made their way into Iraqi
newspapers.
A
debate over the Pentagon's handling of information has raged since shortly
after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In
2002, the Pentagon was forced to shut down its Office of Strategic Influence,
which had been created the previous year, after reports surfaced that it
intended to plant false news stories in the international media.
For
much of 2005, a Defense Department working group has been trying to forge a
policy about the proper role of information operations in wartime. Pentagon
officials say the group has yet to resolve the often-contentious debate in the
department about the boundaries between military public affairs and information
operations.
Lincoln
Group, formerly known as Iraqex, is one of several companies hired by the U.S.
military to carry out "strategic communications" in countries where
large numbers of U.S. troops are based.
Some
of Lincoln Group's work in Iraq is very public, such as an animated public
service campaign on Iraqi television that spotlights the Iraqi civilians killed
by roadside bombs planted by insurgents.
Besides
its contract with the military in Iraq, Lincoln Group this year won a major
contract with U.S. Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, to develop a
strategic communications campaign in concert with special operations troops
stationed around the globe. The contract is worth up to $100 million over five
years, although U.S. military officials said they doubted the Pentagon would
spend the full amount of the contract.