The Guardian, Bill Blanko, 24/4/2008

Bill Blanko is unsettled as an alarming number of his Westminster colleagues 'cross the line' to work as lobbyists or 'PR consultants'

Suddenly, in the time it takes the prime minister to perform a humiliating tax U-turn, the lobby has been plunged into a series of U-turns too.

No sooner are we back clinging safely to the bosom of the press gallery after the Easter recess, than we're rocked by job moves, a lobby brain-drain and – worse – defections to PR or lobbying.

I'm talking career U-turns here. It's a disturbing trend, I can tell you. Even I have been tapped up!

There I was, crossing the central lobby earlier this week when I was assailed by a former lobby correspondent now employed (it would be a lie to say working) in the grubby trade of lobbying. (No doubt he was waiting to grease the sweaty palm of some backbench MP who had nothing better to do than go out to lunch with a lobbyist.)

"Bill," my former colleague greeted me, slapping his hand on my shoulder in that spivvy way PR people do. "You could treble your salary by becoming a public affairs consultant."

"A what?" I said. "All right, a lobbyist," he said sheepishly.

"No thank you," I said, horrified. "I'm very happy at Red Top Towers, thank you," I lied. (All those rows with the editor over missed stories, run-ins with the managing editor over my expenses and all those Sundays and bank holidays I have to work suddenly flashed through my head.) "But don't tell Mrs Blanko."

But an alarming number of our colleagues are "crossing the line", as I believe they call it in the PR trade. I've always thought "crossing the line" had something to do with joining the Masons. But perhaps they're one and the same thing.

This week James Hardy, the Harry Enfield lookalike political correspondent of the BBC, held a soiree in the Marquis of Granby as he said goodbye to two-ways on College Green and outside 10 Downing Street, having signed up as head of news for wee Dougie Alexander's Department for International Development.

Good boozer, the Marquis. Big glass-fronted fridges behind the bar, well stocked with champagne. And they put a slice of lime, not lemon, in the gin and tonic. (I've had many a G&T heart-starter in there on the way to work.) But it's a sad loss. James was one of us, a royal correspondent and political editor of the Press Association and the Daily Mirror before joining the Beeb.

And before James, Guto Hari, the boyo from the Welsh valleys with the Max Boyce baritone voice, quit the BBC's political team for the lobbyists Fleishman Hillard. How could he?

I did hear in the press gallery bar – like you do - that the firm is advising, among others, the MDC in Zimbabwe. I expect that because their leader is called Morgan, Guto thought he was Welsh.

And now Jenny Scott, Andrew Neil's co-presenter on the BBC's Daily Politics show, is off to become PR chief at the Bank of England. Mind you, my man operating the autocue tells me she was begged by the suits at the Beeb to apply for Evan "Tinsel Tits" Davis's old job, economics editor, and then was hugely hacked off when they gave it to the posh Sloane from Newsnight, Stephanie Flanders, instead.

However, before you fret that the BBC has no political staff left, consider this: colleagues who were patrolling the committee corridor during Monday evening's "I get it" plea to the PLP by the Big Clunking Fist tell me there were no fewer than eight BBC political journalists among the hacks. (Nick Robinson + producer, James Landale, Michael Crick, Carole Walker, John Pienaar + producer and Iain Watson, since you ask.)

Another former lobby correspondent, former Western Mail, Daily Telegraph and Scotsman political correspondent Jon Hibbs, held a soiree the same night as James Hardy. Well, we didn't come into the lobby to pay for our own drinks, did we?

He's leaving the Department of Health, where he was deputy director (news) for a secondment as communications director for the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse. Yes, you read that correctly: substance misuse. I'm sure we didn't come into the lobby to misuse substances, either, whatever it means.

Now civil servants know a good boozer too. Jon bought the drinks at the rather classy Walker's Wine and Ale Bar, up near Trafalgar Square, just off Whitehall. It's a favourite of the Ministry of Defence chaps in their blazers and chinos, I'm told, and they serve a ferociously chilled sancerre and a very decent rioja Faustino.

I'm told that James's crowd included a few of those politically correct BBC types, while a few of the lobby's old guard were at Jon's thrash, including the Guardian's very own John Carvel, latest in a lobby dynasty, and Nick Timmins, former Times political correspondent, now public policy guru on the FT and the man with the untidiest beard in the lobby.

Ah, nostalgia isn't what it used to be. When I was youngster in the lobby (yes, some time ago, I confess) John's father Bob was political editor of the Evening Standard and one of a trio of lobby legends – along with the great Alan Watkins (still a living legend) and the late, great and much lamented Vincent Hanna of Newsnight - who used to descend on a byelection and terrorise hapless candidates.

In the days when the candidates and their minders from Westminster used to hold morning press conferences at byelections every day, (madness, I know) I remember Bob confronting one terrified young candidate in a Scots accent that was as rich and peaty as a fine single malt.

"Laddie," roared Bob. "Aa've been coverrring byelections fer forrrty yearrrs…" Pause. Silence. "And yer the worrrst candidate aa've everrr seen." A lost deposit followed, I recall.

Besides the BBC exodus, the Times is losing Greg Hurst, the softly-spoken vicar's son from Maidenhead and author of Charles Kennedy: A Tragic Flaw, who's off to work on the news desk at Wapping. A tragic sort of existence, if you ask me. I don't know which is worse, lobbying, PR or the news desk.

Oh dear. This is all very unsettling. A large chardonnay in there, please, Clive. Now, where's the phone number of my mate who said I could treble my salary…?

AlterNet, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, 25/4/2008

The Bush Administration has spent millions on deceptive PR to sell the war, as recently documented in the New York Times. Where's the fallout?

David Barstow of the New York Times has written the first installment in what is already a stunning exposé of the Bush Administration's most powerful propaganda weapon used to sell and manage the war on Iraq: the embedding of military propagandists directly into the TV networks as on-air commentators. We and others have long criticized the widespread TV network practice of hiring former military officials to serve as analysts, but even in our most cynical moments we did not anticipate how bad it was. Barstow has painstakingly documented how these analysts, most of them military industry consultants and lobbyists, were directly chosen, managed, coordinated and given their talking points by the Pentagon's ministers of propaganda.

Thanks to the two-year investigation by the New York Times, we today know that Victoria Clarke, then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, launched the Pentagon military analyst program in early 2002. These supposedly independent military analysts were in fact a coordinated team of pro-war propagandists, personally recruited by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and acting under Clarke's tutelage and development.

One former participant, NBC military analyst Kenneth Allard, has called the effort "psyops on steroids." As Barstow reports, "Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as 'message force multipliers' or 'surrogates' who could be counted on to deliver administration 'themes and messages' to millions of Americans 'in the form of their own opinions.' … Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war."

Clarke and her senior aide, Brent T. Krueger, eventually signed up more than 75 retired military officers who penned newspaper op/ed columns and appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts. The Pentagon held weekly meetings with the military analysts, which continued as of April 20, 2008, when the New York Times ran Barstow's story. The program proved so successful that it was expanded to issues besides the Iraq War. "Other branches of the

administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales, then the attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants, Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts."

Barstow spent two years digging, using the Freedom of Information Act and attorneys to force the Bush Administration to release some 8,000 pages of documents now under lock and key at the New York Times. This treasure trove should result in additional stories, giving them a sort of "Pentagon Papers" of Iraq war propaganda.

In 1971, when the Times printed excerpts of the Pentagon Papers on its front page, it precipitated a constitutional showdown with the Nixon Administration over the deception and lies that sold the war in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers issue dominated the news media back then. Today, however, Barstow's stunning report is being ignored by the most important news media in America -- TV news -- the source where most Americans, unfortunately, get most of their information.

Joseph Goebbels, eat your heart out. Goebbels is history's most notorious war propagandist, but even he could not have invented a smoother PR vehicle for selling and maintaining media and public support for a war: embed trusted "independent" military experts into the TV newsroom. As with most propaganda, the key to the success of this effort was the element of concealment, as these analysts and the Bush administration hid the fact that their talking points and marching orders were coming directly from the Pentagon.

The use of these analysts was a glaring violation of journalistic standards. As the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists explains, journalists are supposed to:

* Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.

* Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

* Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement,

public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.

* Disclose unavoidable conflicts.

* Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.

* Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

* Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money.

The networks using these analysts as journalists shamelessly failed to vet their experts and ignored the obvious conflicts of hiring a person with financial relationships to companies profiting from war to be an on-air analyst of war. They acted as if war was a football game and their military commentators were former coaches and players familiar with the rules and strategies. The TV networks even paid these "analysts" for their propaganda, enabling them to present themselves as "third party experts" while parroting White House talking points to sell the war.

Now that Barstow has blown their cover, the TV networks have generally refused to comment about this matter. Further compounding their violations of the public trust, they are blacking out coverage of the New York Times exposé, no doubt on advice of their own PR and crisis management advisors.

Since the 1920s there have been laws passed to stop the government from doing what Barstow has exposed. It is actually illegal in the United States for the government to propagandize its own citizens. As Barstow's report demonstrates, these laws have been repeatedly violated, are not enforced and are clearly inadequate. The U.S. Congress therefore needs to investigate this and the rest of the Bush propaganda campaign that sold the war in Iraq.

The attack and occupation of Iraq continues, with no end in sight. Estimates of the number of Iraqi dead range from the hundreds of thousands to more than a million. The cost to American taxpayers will eventually be in the trillions of dollars. More than 4,000 US soldiers have lost their lives, and this is just a part of the horrific toll of mental and physical disability that the war is taking on hundreds of thousands of troops and their families.

This war would never have been possible had the mainstream news media done its job. Instead, it has repeated the Big Lies that sold the war. This war would never have been possible without the millions of dollars spent by the Bush Administration on sophisticated and deceptive public relations techniques such as the Pentagon military analyst program that David Barstow has exposed. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Victoria Clarke, who designed and oversaw this Pentagon propaganda machine, now works as a commentator for TV network news. She may have changed jobs and employers since leaving the Pentagon, but her work remains the same.

The Independent, 26/4/2008

In the wake of the mysterious Israeli bombing raid on a Syrian facility last September, neither party wanted to talk about what had happened. But now the truth, or at least one interpretation of it, has come out on Washington's Capitol Hill.

American security officials this week presented members of Congress with evidence supposedly showing that Syria, with North Korean assistance, was building a nuclear reactor on the target site and that this facility was "not intended for peaceful activities". Pictures have been released allegedly taken inside the facility showing a reactor core being built as well as an image of North Koreans working there.

There is no independent way to verify any of this, especially since the installation has now been destroyed. We must rely on the integrity of the Israeli and US intelligence services. That is where we hit a problem. The former US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented similar evidence to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 showing what we were told was strong evidence of Iraqi storage of weapons of mass destruction. As we all know, that intelligence turned out to be bogus.

This is not to say that the Syrian government and the North Korean government were not indeed setting up a covert nuclear plant and thus breaking international law. But it does emphasise that the US security services have a severe credibility problem.

There is another question raised by all this. If the US and Israel were so convinced of Syria's malign intentions, why the secrecy? The head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei, has criticised the US for not passing on this information sooner. The IAEA also says Israel should have given its investigators a chance to investigate the purported reactor before they bombed it.

A further question is: why release this information now, having kept a lid on it for so long? One explanation is that it is part of an attempt to disrupt the present efforts to bring North Korea back into the international fold, a process some in the White House reportedly find difficult to stomach.

If so, this episode shows that elements in the US administration have learnt nothing from Iraq. They are still using intelligence for propaganda purposes. As for the Israeli bombing raid itself, apparently sanctioned by the US, it is hard to see in this anything other than a dangerous contempt for the autonomy of the IAEA and an enduring disregard for international law.

The New York Times, 24/4/2008

Resisting every inch of the way, the powerful National Association of Manufacturers has finally agreed to follow Congress’s new ethics law and disclose which of its members have been funding its lobbying operations on Capitol Hill.

Welcome to the sunshine club. Like other lobbying groups, the trade association must disclose to Congress and the taxpayers which of its 11,000 members have been essential to developing lobbying strategies or contributed payments of $5,000 or more each quarter to the effort. Until this week, N.A.M. has refused to do so, arguing that such disclosure somehow violates its privacy rights and its rights to free speech.

Tracking the quid pro quo money flow in Washington is an urgent priority and long overdue. Last year, Congress tightened disclosure requirements for lobbyists’ war chests — but only after a raft of scandals. It is encouraging that the courts have so far rejected N.A.M.’s arguments. The law was plainly written to smoke out stealth lobbying organizations, not to protect Washington insiders.

Unfortunately, sunshine remains only a sometimes thing in the capital. One of the biggest problems in the midst of this year’s billion-dollar campaign is the failure of the Federal Election Commission to write the rules for what was supposed to be another breakthrough reform: full disclosure of the multiple donations bundled by lobbyists to court candidates.

That has been stymied by the tooth-and-claw standoff in the Senate that has left the F.E.C. short four of its six members and without the quorum it needs to do its work. Senate Republicans demand that the F.E.C. vacancies be filled as a package, the better to protect a particularly unqualified party wheelhorse. That means there is no official referee for any of this year’s campaign mayhem. Let the voters beware.

The Guardian, Simon Tisdall, 28/4/2008

Here we go again: anonymous briefings, dubious dossiers and claims of secret weapons. Watch out, Iran

A shrill cacophony of Washington voices is once again attempting to ratchet up pressure on Iran over its "malign influence" in Iraq and its suspect nuclear activities. Although military options remain on hold, Bush administration officials have been briefing for the first time on possible targets inside the Islamic republic.

A dossier purporting to contain new evidence of Iranian assistance to Iraqi Shia militias opposed to the US presence is expected to be published in the coming days. The dossier, ordered by the US commander, General David Petraeus, will detail recently discovered caches of rockets, mortars, roadside bombs and armour-piercing explosives that the US says were supplied by Iran.

US officials claim increased rocket attacks on Baghdad's Green Zone, including one during last week's visit by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, are a result of Iran's accelerated efforts.

The defence secretary, Robert Gates, protested angrily last week: "What Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen inside Iraq." He also said Iran "is hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons".

Much of the new information was gathered during recent joint US and Iraqi army operations in Basra against Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army militia, which military officials said revealed the startling depth of Iran's influence there. Other evidence was reportedly obtained from alleged Iranian agents detained in Iraq.

In a series of briefings to American media, administration officials claimed Tehran had reneged on last year's agreement with Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to halt weapons supplies. Instead, they say, Iran has continued to train, equip and arm militiamen at camps inside Iran before sending them back across the border.

Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told a Pentagon press conference no military action was currently being contemplated. But he said Iran, which was showing no sign of backing off, should not underestimate the depth of Washington's concerns or its determination to resolve them.

A third Middle East conflict involving US forces, in addition to Iraq and Afghanistan, would be "extremely stressful", Mullen admitted. But in a clear indication of the form any future strikes might take, he went on: "I have reserve capability, particularly in our navy and our air force. So it would be a mistake to think we are out of combat capability."

In a show of possibly ill-advised complacency, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, remained undeterred two days later. "We see it as unlikely that they [the US] plan to enter a new disaster which they themselves believe will have unpleasant consequences for the region and the world," he said.

Yet two unidentified senior administration officials told the New York Times last week that the feasibility of attacks, presumably launched by air from US bases and ships in the Gulf, had already been discussed. The targets were training camps, safe houses and weapons storehouses inside Iran, they said.

Even limited attacks of this nature could nevertheless provoke a fierce Iranian response. That in turn would inevitably lower the threshold for subsequent US action against Iranian nuclear facilities, a development hawks in Washington and Jerusalem would welcome.

With tensions apparently set to rise, the pattern of US behaviour begins to look familiar: more or less justified claims about terrorism, secret weapons and mass destruction programmes; debatable intelligence, anonymous briefing, threats of unilateral action and the bypassing of relevant institutions such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN security council.

Not coincidentally, perhaps, the US produced another dossier last week, accusing Syria of building a nuclear reactor with North Korean help. Its failure to share its evidence with the IAEA brought a sharp rebuke from the agency. Syria, Iran's closest Arab ally, has frequently been accused by Washington of aiding anti-coalition forces in Iraq, and by Israel of fuelling Palestinian militancy.

Although the bellicose drumbeat is worrying, some regional experts suggest Washington's primary aim is to force Iran and Syria to back off in Iraq (and Lebanon and Palestine) and effectively isolate them, rather than to find an excuse to attack them. Reducing Iranian influence is seen as crucial to winning broad Arab support for the Maliki government, something Rice worked on during a Gulf visit last week.

EUobserver, honor Mahony, 24/4/2008

The European Parliament is to take steps to sever the close links it has with a business scheme that operates from within the Brussels assembly to boost contacts between MEPs and companies.

The European Business and Parliament Scheme (EBPS), whose patron is parliament chief Hans-Gert Poettering, has an office in the parliament and its employees share the same email address as euro-deputies.

The set-up - after two initial refusals because of lack of space - was approved on 26 September 2007 by the quaestors of the parliament, MEPs who look after the administrative affairs of the Brussels house.

The scheme's 28 affiliated companies include major internationals such as software giant Microsoft, and the energy companies BP, RWE and Gaz de France.

It provides a range of programmes including "company attachments" in which MEPs or other senior officials of the parliament can spend a day or two with a company to provide "an insight" into how the business works.

The official website of the scheme states that "costs such as travel, accommodation and other programme-related expenses are covered from the European Parliament and the EBPS budgets."

A meeting of the parliament's political group leaders on Thursday (24 April) decided to discontinue the office and email arrangements after the matter was raised by Italian MEP Monica Frassoni, co-head of the Green group, who asked in a letter "whether [EBPS] was engaged in some kind of lobbying activity."

Speaking to EUobserver, Ms Frassoni noted that the website was "very open" and there is "nothing evil" about the scheme but that it was the "wrong decision" by the quaestors to grant this sort of access.

She said it was "totally inappropriate" that a scheme of co-operation between parliamentarians and big multinationals has an "office and mail with an europa.eu address and on its web is written that training and meetings will be paid by the European Parliament."

"The conference of presidents decided to delete this authorisation of opening an office and a mail."

A spokesperson for Hans-Gert Poettering explained the European Parliament president has "granted patronage to very many things" and that being the EPBS patron and the set-up "are two completely separate things."

Frederick Hyde-Chambers, secretary-general of the European Business and Parliament Scheme, pointed out that the European Parliament as such does not make any "direct contributions" to the scheme.

The reference to payments on the website referred to money from MEPs allowances. If this is not enough, funds are supplied by companies, who pay a membership fee, he told the EUobserver.

Mr Hyde-Chambers said such a scheme between business and national parliaments has been in place around the world for thirty years - the International Association of Business and Parliament - and said that there is "quite a sophisticated mechanism" to ensure that it is not just a pure lobbying set up.

Thursday's decision comes in the context of wider moves by the parliament to clean up the workings of the house.

It recently revamped its pay system for MEPs making the travel reimbursement system more transparent, and it has pledged to regularise the allowances for MEPs' assistants after a damaging internal audit exposed cases of fraud.

In addition, a report on lobbying voted on in committee last month called for a mandatory register of lobbyists working in the EU institutions - a parliament spokesperson said it would be "not quite logical" to adopt the report in plenary next month with this organisation within the parliament's walls.

The Los Angeles Times, Judy Pasternak, 24/4/2008

WASHINGTON -- More than half of the scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency who responded to a survey said they had experienced political interference in their work.

The survey results show "an agency under siege from political pressures," said the Union of Concerned Scientists report, which was released Wednesday and sent to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson.

The online questionnaire was sent to 5,419 EPA scientists last summer; 1,586 replied, and of those, 889 reported that they had experienced at least one type of interference within the last five years.

Such allegations are not new: During much of the Bush administration, there have been reports of the White House watering down documents on climate change, industry language inserted into EPA power-plant regulations and scientific advisory panels' conclusions about toxic chemicals going unheeded.

But Francesca Grifo, director of the scientific integrity program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based nonprofit group, said the survey documented the widespread nature of the problem at the EPA. "What we've been up against until now is anecdotal evidence," Grifo said.

She acknowledged that scientists who were frustrated or upset might have been more likely than those who were satisfied to respond to her organization's survey, but added: "Nearly 900 EPA scientists reported political interference in their scientific work. That's 900 too many."

EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar noted that administrator Johnson had had a 27-year career as a scientist himself.

"We have the best and finest scientific community in the world at EPA," Shradar said. "All of the issues we deal with are issues that we all are very passionate about. It's important that we let the scientists do the science and allow policymakers to do the policy work."

The survey respondents were split over the impact of political interference on regulations. According to the report, 48% believed that the EPA's actions were "frequently or always" consistent with scientific findings, and 47% believed that agency policy "occasionally, seldom or never" made use of scientific judgments.

In optional essays, scientists repeatedly singled out the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, accusing officials there of inserting themselves into decision-making at early stages in a way that shaped the outcome of their inquiries. They also alleged that the OMB delayed rules not to its liking. EPA actions "are held hostage" until changes are made, a scientist from the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation wrote.

Some also accused members of Congress of inappropriate intervention.

All of the respondents remained anonymous.

J. William Hirzy, an EPA senior scientist and union official, said that politics trumped science at times during the Clinton administration as well but that "what we're seeing now is . . . the favoring of energy interests, coal-fired power plants. That's something different in this administration."

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) wrote to Johnson on Wednesday asking him to be prepared to respond to the findings at a hearing next month of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. 

The Guardian, Robert Fox, 22/4/2008

Revelations of US media manipulation highlight the major failings of intelligence in British and American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan

The news that the Pentagon ran a systematic information campaign to get favourable analysis on Iraq from military officers should hardly be news to many people. The New York Times has used the Freedom of Information Act in America to get some 8,000 pages of transcripts of emails and other communications in the Pentagon to reveal how Donald Rumsfeld waged the war of spin over Iraq, and lost it.

The high point came in 2005, when it was clear that things were really falling apart in Iraq. Chosen analysts, former generals and colonels to the fore, were given privileged access to information, which they then spun on through the media. Some were hired talking heads for mainstream channels like CNN and Fox News. In all, says the New York Times, some 75 officers were hired by Rumsfeld to do the job.

The most striking thing about this story about a story - and full marks to the NYT for uncovering it at last - is how badly the whole thing was done. It has not helped the administration's credibility over Iraq, nor America's standing in the world. As a campaign it has been less than victorious.

When former army general Montgomery Meigs claimed to NBC, that there "had been over $100 million of construction" at Guantánamo, he, and more to the point his editors, must have known that the increasing band of sceptics in the audience were unlikely to be persuaded. The general had been a part of carefully selected group of "analysts" allowed by the Pentagon into the Guantánamo complex.

Keith Allard, a former consultant to NBC and an instructor in information warfare at the National Defence University said that what the analysts were given in their "private" briefings bore little relation to the facts later uncovered by inquiries and reporters' books.

"Night and day," Allard told the New York Times, "I felt we'd been hosed."

The Pentagon spokesman who devised the whole programme of embedding journalists with forces in the Iraqi operations, Bryan Whitman, said "the intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people".

One of his colleagues at the Pentagon, Torie Clarke, a former public relations executive, started planning, well before September 11 2001, a scheme of "key influentials" to support the Rumsfeld plan and philosophy at the defence department. In similar vein, Scooter Libby in Dick Cheney's office took the same approach in feeding the NYT's Judith Miller about weapons of mass destruction.

And on these shores, village Westminster, with Alastair Campbell as town-cryer, has been no stranger to such methodology.

There is a much bigger issue behind this than the misspeaking or credibility of the retired brass hats talking on the American networks, the BBC, ITV and Sky. The issue is the much wider use of information operations in the American-British campaign in Iraq since 2003.

Much of the initial operation in Iraq was to be based on information, propaganda, and psychological persuasion. In total over a billion dollars must have been spent on the "information line of operations" as the military call it. Newspaper free-sheets and leaflets were distributed by the million. American aircraft and a British ship pumped out propaganda radio, and there were at least three television services beamed into Iraq.

The exiled leader of the Iraq National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, said it would be easy to persuade most Iraqis to ditch up Saddam and link up with the Americans and British to build a better Iraq. Emails were sent, and text messages to the mobile phones of Iraqi officials and commanders. Chalabi had told MI6: "at least 40% of the Iraqi army would come over and be usable."

So why was this colossal piece of electronic persuasion, arm-twisting and spin, such an utter failure? Few Iraqi soldiers actually surrendered to the invading force - and many chose to go home with their weapons to fight another day. I have read no detailed analysis, either in the public domain or in unpublished form, of why the information operation was such a comprehensive dud.

The failure of the information operations complemented the mess in intelligence. Intelligence gave little hint of the Sunni nationalist insurgency, and the unrest stirred by the Shiite militias, which came within a weeks of Saddam being overthrown and the arrival of the British and the Americans. Once the violence came, there seemed little that the elaborate apparatus of information operations of the collation forces could do to mitigate it.

Recently the British government appears to have adopted the approach of the Bush administration towards information and media operations. Each of the services used to have a senior officer at brigadier level who would direct their public relations - they were known as "DPRs". In a fit of pique, Geoff Hoon abolished the post because he caught the army DPR having a convivial lunch in the RAC Club with John Kay, chief reporter of the Sun.

Now the MoD vets correspondents who wish to "embed" with British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have also taken to allowing access to authors to forces on operations, provided they submit their books for vetting, line by line, before publication. While precautions on issues of genuine operational security are understandable, the authors are now expected to be on message politically. Such a concept of literary manoeuvre is hardly likely to cover the full complexities of what is really going on among the Afghan communities, for example, now caught up in the ragged and asymmetric conflict of Helmand and Kandahar. Strategically, this approach to propaganda warfare could be self-defeating.

The Nation, Ari Melber, 21/4/2008

The Sunday Times' article detailing the massive, secret coordinated campaign by the Pentagon and all the leading television news channels to sell and defend the administration's Iraq policy is a critical piece of investigative journalism. David Barstow provided meticulous and aggressive reporting, even referencing how The Times'amplified Pentagon "surrogates" without sufficient disclosure for readers. The Times also deserves credit, both for running the lengthy piece and suing the government to obtain related documents. (Read the whole thing here, or try this YouTube excerpt.)

The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel is urging Congress to investigate the program exposed by the article:

In its rigorous documentation of the relationship between the government, the networks and retired military analysts, the lineaments of the corrosive structure and impact of a new military-media-industrial complex are exposed. This corrupt complex demands investigation by all relevant Congressional committees...

Glenn Greenwald, who has written extensively about the media's pro-war bias and undisclosed conflicts of interest, flags the galling (non)-response of several news organizations, near the end of the article:

The most incredible aspect of the NYT story is that most of the news organizations which deceived their readers and viewers by using these "objective" analysts -- CBS, NBC, Fox -- simply refused to comment on what they knew about any of this or what their procedures are for safeguarding against it. Just ponder what that says about these organizations -- there is a major expose in the NYT documenting that these news outlets misleadingly shoveled government propaganda down the throats of their viewers on matters of war and terrorism and they don't feel the least bit obliged to answer for what they did or knew about any of it.... The single most significant factor in American political culture is the incestuous, extensive overlap between our media institutions and government officials.

The article reports that most of the news organizations either didn't know or didn't care about their paid analysts taking direction from the administration while claiming to neutrally assess its policies; or taking expensive trips paid by the administration; or meeting secretly with senior administration officials and plotting military or political strategy; or competing for military contracts.

So what does it take to disqualify a former general from on-air analysis?

Criticizing President Bush.

While the article does not cover this incident, CBS did fire Maj. Gen. John Batiste (Ret.) for criticizing President Bush's Iraq policy in a television ad. As the former commander of the Army's First Infantry Division, which was deployed to Iraq in 2003, Batiste had unassailable credentials, but his views were too much for CBS. This larger context is key, because while the Times exposed a sophisticated, deceptive domestic propaganda campaign for the administration, the flip-side is harder to document. But antiwar perspectives are routinely marginalized or scrubbed from televised debate, even when offered by our nation's brave military leaders.

As ABC News was reminded last week, the public expects more integrity and substance from these news organizations. They are egregiously late in even commenting on these new reports, let alone reforming their policies, which demonstrates why Congress must investigate this propaganda program -- and the marginalization of experts who are critical of the war or the government.

The Boston Globe, 22/4/2008

ANYONE who has watched the military analysts hired by TV networks has heard rosy assessments of the war in Iraq. The similarities between their judgments and the Pentagon's are not coincidental. As The New York Times demonstrated by suing the Pentagon to obtain 8,000 pages of documents, those analysts were enlisted by the Defense Department in a psychological warfare operation targeting the domestic audience. And, as the newspaper reported Sunday, many of the retired military officers appearing on news shows were using their access to the Pentagon and the airwaves to procure lucrative contracts for some 150 defense contractors, which employed them as consultants, board members, lobbyists, or executives.

This is no subtle attempt to influence public opinion. It is a government program to corrupt the free flow of information that serves, in a healthy democracy, to inoculate the public against official lies, bad policy, and misbegotten wars.

One straightforward corrective would be for TV news executives to require full disclosure of their analysts' business interests as well as their contacts and junkets with military and government officials. Ideally, the television news shows would not have to rely on paid outside experts. They should trust their own reporters to gather news from disparate sources, and to interview former and serving officers who can offer informed commentary from diverse viewpoints.

During the current Iraq war, a number of former military figures have criticized the Bush administration's decisions. Yet as the Times report shows, former President Dwight Eisenhower's famous anxiety about what he called the "military-industrial complex" still applies. The Times recounted how former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld invited some of the avid TV military analysts to meet with him in April 2006, when he had come under fire from a group of recently retired generals who castigated his stewardship of the war. Acting as his personal propaganda team, they fanned out to the networks and cable channels to assure Americans that there was great progress to celebrate in Iraq.

This is a tactic more suitable for Vladimir Putin's Russia. In fact, the Pentagon's manipulation of the media has been more deft than the Kremlin's because it was better hidden.

The Guardian, 21/4/2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - A former high-ranking Justice Department official is being accused of criminal conflict of interest in the latest case stemming from the investigation of disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Robert Coughlin was deputy chief of staff of the Justice Department's criminal division before his resignation a year ago.

In court papers filed Monday in federal court in Washington, prosecutors accused Coughlin of providing assistance to a lobbyist and the lobbyist's firm while receiving gifts from the firm and discussing prospective employment there. The lobbyist isn't named but The Associated Press has previously reported that Coughlin was lobbied during the period in question by Kevin Ring, a member of Abramoff's lobbying team who also is under investigation.

neurope.eu, 21/4/2008

The Guardian, Prem Sikka, 19/4/2008

Companies are boosting their profits through cartels and price-fixing strategies. It is time to jail their executives for picking our pockets

Companies increasingly take people for a ride. They issue glossy brochures and mount PR campaigns to tell us that they believe in "corporate social responsibility". In reality, too many are trying to find new ways of picking our pockets.

Customers are routinely fleeced through price-fixing cartels. Major construction companies are just the latest example. Allegations of price fixing relate to companies selling dairy products, chocolates, gas and electricity, water, travel, video games, glass, rubber products, company audits and almost everything else. Such is the lust for higher profits that there have even been suspected cartels for coffins, literally a last chance for corporate barons to get their hands on our money.

Companies and their advisers sell us the fiction of free markets. Yet their impulse is to build cartels, fix prices, make excessive profits and generally fleece customers. Many continue to announce record profits. The official UK statistics showed that towards the end of 2007 the rate of return for manufacturing firms rose to 9.7% from 8.8%. Service companies' profitability eased to 21.2% from a record high of 21.4%. The rate of return for North Sea oil companies rose to 32.5% from 30.1%. Supermarkets and energy companies have declared record profits. One can only wonder how much of this is derived from cartels and price fixing. The artificially higher prices also contribute to a higher rate of inflation which hits the poorest sections of the community particularly hard.

Cartels cannot be operated without the active involvement of company executives and their advisers. A key economic incentive for cartels is profit-related executive remuneration. Higher profits give them higher remuneration. Capitalism does not provide any moral guidance as to how much profit or remuneration is enough. Markets, stockbrokers and analysts also generate pressures on companies to constantly produce higher profits. Companies respond by lowering wages to labour, reneging on pension obligations, dodging taxes and cooking the books. Markets take a short-term view and ask no questions about the social consequences of executive greed.

The usual UK response to price fixing is to fine companies, and many simply treat this as another cost, which is likely to be passed on to the customer. This will never deter them. Governments talk about being tough on crime and causes of crime, but they don't seem to include corporate barons who are effectively picking peoples' pockets.

Governments need to get tough. In addition to fines on companies, the relevant executives need to be fined. In the first instance, they should also be required to personally compensate the fleeced customers. Executives participating in cartels should automatically receive a lifetime ban on becoming company directors. There should be prison sentences for company directors designing and operating cartels. That already is possible in the US. Australia's new Labour government has recently said that it will impose jail terms on executives involved in cartels or price fixing. The same should happen in the UK too. All correspondence and contracts relating to the cartels should be publicly available so that we can all see how corporations develop strategies to pick our pockets and choose whether to boycott their products and services.

Is there a political party willing to take up the challenge?

The Sunday Herald, Rob Edwards, 20/4/2008

Johann Lamont refused to call in £100m plan for government consideration 

A FORMER Labour minister rejected advice from senior officials to delay a deeply flawed and highly controversial £100 million plan for new schools and homes in Stirling and Dunblane, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

Top-secret documents disclose that the deputy communities minister in 2005, Johann Lamont, was strongly urged by government planners to call in the application for consideration by ministers. The plans were lambasted by advisers as "questionable", "worrying" and "poor".

Stirling Council, which promoted the development, was also accused of "procedural failings" and of maximising profit at the expense of decent housing. "Stirling Council's judgement in carrying out its statutory duty under the terms of planning legislation has been heavily clouded by its conflict of interests," warned the official advice to the minister.

All this, however, was brushed aside in a one-page email from Lamont, who gave the plans the green light because they would bring "wider community benefit". As a result the new schools have now been built, with the most contentious of them, Wallace High, due to open its doors to pupils this week.

Stirling Council, backed by a consortium of private developers, applied for permission to build four new high schools and more than 500 new houses and flats in mid-2005. The schools, three in Stirling and one in Dunblane, were all to be built on greenfield sites, while the old school sites were to be sold for housing.

The plan, which was funded under the previous government's Public Private Partnership (PPP) scheme, was for the profit from the housing developments to help finance the schools. But it provoked widespread opposition from politicians and community groups, who mounted a campaign for a public inquiry.

Campaigners were shocked when an inquiry was rejected by Lamont, who referred the application back to Stirling Council for it to go ahead.

Jim Thomson, an SNP councillor in Stirling, used freedom of information legislation to request the advice that had been given to ministers.

Despite being ordered to release the advice by the Scottish Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion, the then Scottish Executive kept it secret, taking the highly unusual step of appealing his decision to the Court of Session.

Last week, however, the new Scottish government decided to abandon the appeal, and released the advice to Thomson. "It's hardly surprising it was denied us," he said. "Every aspect of the planning approval was deemed flawed, including the funding arrangements. The entire process has proven to be a sham." Thomson accused the Labour councillors who ran Stirling Council at the time of putting their political interests before those of the communities they represented. Their failure had been compounded by Lamont's failure to heed the advice of her officials, he alleged.

He added: "The planning process has been brought into disrepute by the actions of Labour councillors and ministers. The democratic process doesn't seem to apply to PPP projects."

The released documents show that Lamont was advised by officials on September 9 and October 10, 2005, to call in the planning application. The housing plans were said to be "clearly and significantly contrary to the development plan and to national planning policy", while the schools were "contrary to development plan policies".

Stirling Council's planning assessment had been rendered "meaningless" by its backing for the project, said the formal advice. "It is of particular concern that the council has failed to even consider some key planning issues, such as whether there is indeed an identified need for the developments proposed."

The council was accused of trying to "cram" as many flats as possible in breach of its own and the government's policies on the provision of open space and affordable housing. "It appears that the plans have been drawn up in a way that would maximise the financial return from the sale of the land to a housebuilder," officials cautioned.

Objections to building the new Wallace High School on part of the green belt vulnerable to flooding had been ignored, they said. "A recurring theme throughout the council's assessment of these proposals has been its failure to address, or to simply gloss over, some legitimate grounds of objection."

Their advice concluded: "It is our concern that the council had already decided that the developments should proceed before the key planning merits of matters such as need for the developments, location, density, design, affordable housing, open space, flooding, etc could be assessed."

But Lamont rejected her officials' advice in an email on November 8, 2005. "While appreciating the range of planning issues raised by these proposals, some of which do not support these proposals, Ms Lamont considers that the wider community benefit gained by delivering these improvements to the school estate should carry significant weight," wrote her private secretary.

Stirling Council did not respond to a request to comment on Friday.

The council, which used to be run by the Labour Party in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, has been run by a minority SNP administration since March 13.

The Scottish government said it had withdrawn its court appeal against Dunion's decision in line with its commitment to open government. "It would be wholly unnecessary for either the government or the commissioner to incur the substantial costs of a full hearing to argue over an issue that no longer meets the government's approach to access to information on planning decisions," a spokesman said.

Dunion was pleased the information he requested had now been released. "It provides a detailed insight into a major planning application involving substantial sums of public money," he said.

The Sunday Herald, Paul Hutcheon, 20/4/2008

HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS, private prisons and corporations will all be subject to freedom of information (FoI) legislation if a new bill is passed at Holyrood.

LibDem MSP Robert Brown is to introduce a member's bill to extend the public's right to know to dozens more bodies that deliver public services, overriding many of the exemptions in the 2002 Freedom of Information Scotland Act, including state schools and hospitals.

Top of Brown's list is the Glasgow Housing Association (GHA), Europe's largest social landlord, which was created following the previous Scottish Executive's stock transfer policy.

GHA and other housing associations were never included on the government's FoI list, a loophole Brown wants closed. He also believes Kilmarnock prison, run by a private company, should come under the FoI ambit.

The LibDem MSP also wants to change the Act so that citizens will find it easier to obtain details of private finance initiative (PFI) projects in their area, reforming the Act's exemption for "commercial confidentiality".

Other public bodies to be included in the updated list are the office of the Children's Commissioner, the National Theatre of Scotland and arm's- length leisure companies set up by local authorities.

Brown will launch his bid to reform the law with publication of a pre-legislative consultation.

It is understood the Scottish government is sympathetic to updating the FoI list. Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill launched a consultation on extending the Act when in opposition, saying at the time: "The increasing use of the private sector in public services has raised concerns that areas that would have been open to public scrutiny by using FoI on a public body would be closed."

Information Commissioner Kevin Dunion said: "There is a strong argument to extend the scope of FoI to protect people's rights where changes in the way public services are being delivered put these under threat. For example, the transfer of housing stock from local authority control to housing associations can mean tenants are losing their rights to information at a stroke.

The New York Times, Robert Pear, 20/4/2008

The optimistically named Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 was supposed to prevent lobbyists from securing undue influence by taking members of Congress to intimate dinners at fancy restaurants.

But former Senator John B. Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana, said lobbyists had already come up with a way around the new law. They can make a political contribution to a member of Congress, and then have the member pay for the meal.

“If we call it a campaign contribution, that makes it legal,” Mr. Breaux said. “I can’t buy a $20 breakfast for a senator whom I’ve known for years, but I can give him a $1,000 campaign contribution.”

Starting Monday, Washington lobbyists must file detailed quarterly reports of their activities. In recent weeks, they have been hiring lawyers and going to seminars to decipher the law, passed in response to scandals involving the lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

But even as they try to figure out what the law requires, lobbyists are working to preserve the access and influence they have in Congress and at federal agencies.

Two top lobbyists, Tony and Heather Podesta, have brought in chefs from the famed California restaurant Chez Panisse to prepare fund-raising dinners at their home for two Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer of California and Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Lawmakers cannot accept free tickets from a lobbyist for a sports event. But the lobbyist can make a campaign contribution worth far more than the ticket.

The campaign committee for Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, is holding a fund-raiser with him at the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium just 15 blocks from the Capitol on April 24. The suggested contribution is $5,000 for political action committees and $1,500 for individuals.

Jan Witold Baran, a Republican expert on election law and government ethics, said, “One of the consequences of the draconian gift ban is to drive more and more social interaction between lobbyists and Congressional officials into campaign fund-raising, which is not subject to most of the gift rules.”

Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, said he was perplexed.

“You as a lobbyist cannot buy me a dinner for $40,” Mr. Ackerman said in an interview, as he nibbled finger food at a recent conference on government ethics in New York. “But if you give a contribution to my campaign, I can take you to dinner, and we can discuss politics or official business. You, the lobbyist, can give my campaign $1,000, and the campaign can pay for our dinner. That’s perfectly legal, and it’s perfectly dumb.”

For decades, lobbyists have registered with Congress, but compliance with reporting requirements has been spotty. They had little to fear if they understated their expenses or misrepresented their activities.

That changes in a big way this month. The comptroller general of the United States will audit a sample of lobbyist reports and can demand evidence to verify their accuracy. The new law quadruples the maximum civil fine, to $200,000, and provides up to five years in prison for failure to comply.

“Everybody is on pins and needles because we are dealing with a criminal statute,” said James B. Christian Jr., a partner at Patton Boggs, whose federal lobbying revenues rose last year by 22 percent, to $42.7 million. “Filing the reports will be very cumbersome and burdensome.”

It has not been lost on lobbyists that Congress, in turning off one spigot, may have opened another. Gary J. LaPaille, the president of mCapitol Management, which lobbies on appropriations and domestic security, recently warned his employees that if they violated the gift ban, they would be “subject to disciplinary action or possible discharge — not to mention the criminal penalties contained in the new Congressional ethics rules.”

But, Mr. LaPaille pointed out, he controls one of the largest political action committees maintained by any lobbying or law firm. And people who make campaign contributions, he said, “have an opportunity to get face time with a member of Congress at fund-raising events.”

Lobbyists have been inundated with invitations to fund-raisers.

“Everybody is asking all the time,” said Ms. Podesta, who reported that she was approaching the legal limit on individual contributions, $108,200 in this two-year cycle.

Lobbyists for the mutual-fund industry have organized a fund-raising breakfast on May 1 for Senator Robert F. Bennett of Utah, a senior Republican on the Banking Committee.

Other lawmakers find that the Nationals ballpark is an excellent site for entertaining. Representatives Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York, and Lynn Westmoreland, Republican of Georgia, plan to hold fund-raisers there, within days of Mr. Boehner’s event.

It is too early to say if the law will achieve the goal of “honest leadership and open government.” But, said Craig B. Holman, a campaign finance lobbyist at Public Citizen, “It has fundamentally changed how people do business on Capitol Hill.”

Deborah K. Sease, national campaign director of the Sierra Club, said the law had reduced the advantage that corporate lobbyists derived from entertaining members of Congress.

“Wining and dining and buying box seats at baseball games were never part of our stock in trade,” Ms. Sease said. “The new law has helped level the playing field.”

Restaurateurs are grumbling about a falloff in expense-account business.

“The aura of paranoia is palpable,” said Lynne Breaux, president of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, who is not related to the former senator.

Under prior House rules, lawmakers and their aides could accept gifts, including food and refreshments, from virtually any person or organization if the items had a value less than $50. New rules ban most gifts from lobbyists and their employers.

How much the gift ban has driven up lobbyists’ contributions will not be clear until July, when lobbyists must file a new type of report listing money they have contributed to a Congressional candidate, an event honoring a member of Congress, a charity designated by a lawmaker, a presidential library or an inaugural committee. As part of the report, lobbyists and their employers must sign “certifications” attesting that they have read and adhered to the new gift rules.

Kenneth A. Gross, a lawyer at Skadden, Arps, likened this requirement to a 2002 law under which corporate executives must personally certify the accuracy of their financial reports. “No tuna fish sandwich or cup of coffee is safe if a public official is involved,” Mr. Gross said.

While generally banning gifts from lobbyists, the rules make an exception for “food or refreshments of nominal value” provided outside a meal.

A new edition of the House ethics manual, issued this month, says this exemption applies to food offered “at a business meeting, reception or similar gathering,” but not to food eaten “in a one-on-one setting with a registered lobbyist.”

Lawmakers and their aides can accept hors d’oeuvres and drinks provided by a lobbying firm at a holiday reception. But, the ethics manual says, they cannot accept hot dogs because they constitute a meal.

Moreover, the ethics manual says, if a lobbyist invites a Congressional aide to Starbucks to discuss the status of a pending bill, “the staff person may not accept a cup of coffee from the lobbyist” because “the occasion is not a reception.”

The Senate has made an exception for the news media. In a recent bulletin, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics said senators could “accept a cup of coffee while appearing on a Sunday television news program — otherwise forbidden since the television networks employ lobbyists.”