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A Look at the Lincoln Group and the U.S. Military's Planting of Stories in the Iraqi Press

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday the Pentagon will review whether it is proper for the military to pay Iraqi news organizations to publish pro-American articles secretly written by U.S. forces.

Earlier in the day, Marine Corps General Peter Pace - chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - called for a formal review of the policy and said that the military should disclose when it pays for a story. He said, "The worst thing you can have is people feeling like somehow they've been snookered."

Last November, the Los Angeles Times first revealed that the US military was secretly planting stories in the Iraqi press. Articles written by U.S. military "information operations" are translated into Arabic and then placed in Iraqi newspapers with the help of Washington-based defense contractor the Lincoln Group. The articles are presented to an Iraqi audience as unbiased news accounts written by independent journalists. The Lincoln Group's contract is worth up to $100 million dollars over five years.

When the secret propaganda program was first revealed even the White House admitted it was "very concerned" about the practice. But earlier this month, the top Pentagon brass insisted it will go on. General George Casey said an internal review of the program had "found that we were operating within our authorities and responsibilities." Pentagon officials told the New York Times this week that the Lincoln Group remains under contract, and would continue its activities unless the military revises its policies.

In February, Rumsfeld gave a major address on information warfare at the Council on Foreign Relations. In it, he criticized the media's coverage of the Iraq war and defended the military practice of planting stories.

• Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, speaking on February 17, 2006 at the Council of Foreign Relations.
  Click for full transcript and video links

For more on the story we are joined by two guests:

• Andrew Buncombe, Washington correspondent for the London Independent.
• Col. Sam Gardiner, retired Air Force Colonel. He has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, AirWar College and Naval War College.

AMY GOODMAN: In February, Rumsfeld gave a major address on information warfare at the Council on Foreign Relations. In it, Rumsfeld criticized the media’s coverage of the Iraq war and defended the military practice of planting stories.

DONALD RUMSFELD: In Iraq, for example, the U.S. military command, working closely with the Iraqi government and the U.S. embassy, has sought nontraditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of aggressive campaign of disinformation, yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate. For example, the allegations of someone in the military hiring a contractor, and the contractor allegedly paying someone to print a story, a true story, but paying to print a story, for example.

The resulting explosion of critical press stories then causes everything, all activity, all initiative to stop -- just frozen. Even worse, it leads to a chilling effect for those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field. The conclusion to be drawn logically for anyone in the military who is asked to do something involving public affairs is that there is no tolerance for innovation, much less for human error, that could conceivably be seized upon by a press that seems to demand perfection from the government, but does not apply the same standard to the enemy, or even sometimes to themselves.

Consider for a moment the vast quantity of column inches and hours of television devoted to the allegations of unauthorized detainee mistreatment. Some additional photographs have come out just this week. This, of course, was an event where the policy of the President and the policy of the government was for humane treatment and was against torture, and there were some people on a night shift who engaged in mistreatment of detainees.

So this week, again, out of Australia, I guess, some same pictures, similar pictures, same event, of people on the night shift, one night shift in Iraq, who did some things that they have since been punished for under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But weigh the numbers of column inches and hours of television involving that event, for example, against the discovery of Saddam Hussein's mass graves, which were filled with literally hundreds of thousands of human beings, innocent Iraqis who were killed. That's the reality of the world in which we must operate and in which our forces are fighting. The terrorists are trained. We've seen the so-called “Manchester Manual.” They're trained to lie. They're trained to allege that they've been tortured. They're trained to put out misinformation, and they're very good at it.

AMY GOODMAN: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went on to stress the importance of information warfare.

DONALD RUMSFELD: We are fighting a battle where the survival of our free way of life is at stake, and the center of gravity of that struggle is not simply on the battlefields overseas. It's a test of wills, and it will be won or lost with our publics and with the publics of other nations. We'll need to do all we can to attract supporters to our efforts and to correct the lies that are being told, which so damage our country, and which are repeated and repeated and repeated.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on this story, we're joined by Andrew Buncombe, Washington correspondent for the London Independent, who has covered the Lincoln Group and the military practice of planting news stories. He's joining us in Washington, D.C. And on the phone from Virginia, we're joined by Sam Gardiner, retired Air Force colonel. He has taught strategy in military operations at the National War College, Air War College, and Naval War College. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Andrew Buncombe, we begin with you. Tell us about the Lincoln Group. Who started it? Who pays for it?

ANDREW BUNCOMBE: The Lincoln Group remains to this day a somewhat mysterious and hidden group based here in Washington. They were set up five or six years ago, essentially, by a young British guy called Christian Bailey. That wasn't his first name; his first name was Christian Jozefowicz. He changed his name whilst he was at university at Oxford, and since then, it seems his career has been one of shifting and moving and perhaps not being as forthcoming about the truth as one would hope.

He's only a young chap; he’s 30, 31. He’s got no experience in public relations, and yet last summer he landed a $100 million contract for planting faux news stories, should we say, within the Iraqi media. These weren’t technically false stories; they were technically true, but they portrayed an inaccurate and unbalanced picture of what's going in Iraq, essentially bribes, because the Iraqi journalists were being paid vast amounts of money, relatively vast amounts of money, to put these stories in, essentially out of the control of their editors.

JUAN GONZALEZ: So, how does a young person with no experience, even in the public relations field, manage to land a $100 million contract?

ANDREW BUNCOMBE: I think they call it “networking,” and as you probably know, Washington is the prime city for networking. What Mr. Bailey assiduously did since arriving in the U.S. in the late 1990s, first in San Francisco, then in New York, then in D.C., he very meticulously developed a network of contacts, up-and-coming young professionals, mostly linked to the Republican Party. He courted them assiduously. He's a very charming young man from all accounts, and he saw an opportunity. He made a partnership with a former Marine, a guy called Paige Craig, who took care of the Iraqi end of the business, and in the aftermath of the invasion back in the spring of 2003, they leapt on an opportunity to go and make their fortune, as many other companies across the U.S. and Britain have done, you know, on the spoils of the war.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, he also claims to have as a partner in his company a group called WCV3 Security. Could you tell us about them?

ANDREW BUNCOMBE: Well, if you look on their website, they list a number of groups and people and individuals who they say have been partners with them and have helped them over the years. A lot of those people have since pointed out that their partnership with Mr. Bailey and the Lincoln Group have been all but fleeting. They have since ceased and never really amounted to much. The one group that you mentioned, from memory, is a consulting firm out in northern Virginia. One of their senior executives was involved in the attempt during the last election – you’ll remember back in October -- sorry, the summer of 2004, I think it was August, -- the swift boat affair that was one of the things that severely damaged John Kerry's campaign. That was the group of veterans, which essentially portrayed a false picture of John Kerry's war record and questioned his claims about his service in Vietnam and the Cambodian border. That involved one of this group's chief executives, who took unpaid leave to go work on that project.

AMY GOODMAN: And that project, of course, was Stolen Honor, the famous film that was aired around the country.

ANDREW BUNCOMBE: That’s absolutely right.

AMY GOODMAN: Aimed at discrediting John Kerry. Andrew Buncombe with us, Washington correspondent for the London Independent. Also Colonel Sam Gardiner on the line with us, retired U.S. Air Force colonel, who is very familiar with PsyOps, with psychological operations. Can you respond to the Pentagon saying the Lincoln Group is doing a good job, even if right now General Peter Pace is saying they're going to review further what the Pentagon is doing, the whole issue of planting stories?

COL. SAM GARDINER: Sure, Amy. What -- if I had to sort of -- I would say they're doing some good things, but they’re doing bad things, and it may be the bad things come from their lack of experience or this attitude that seems to exist within the Department of Defense that it's better – it’s ‘the story is more important than what you do,’ which seems to dominate it.

The good things -- I mean, they're doing sort of typical psychological operations stuff. For example, they printed for the Marine Corps labels that went on water bottles that they handed to pilgrims in Iraq, and the label said, "If you see a terrorist, please call this phone number." Now, that's not bad, that's good psychological operations. It doesn't destroy democracy. It doesn't destroy the faith of the people. That's the kind of thing that they ought to be doing.

But when you begin to -- gosh, when I hear the Secretary of Defense talk about this, I worry that he doesn't really -- doesn't really want to defend democracy, because he doesn't trust it. And that is, when you have to make up stories to sell the thing that you're trying to defend, you've gone down a bad road. And that seems to be what he talks about, and that seems to be what – part of what we're seeing from the Lincoln Group.