The PAO Conversation:
Over at Mudville, I mentioned in the comments a sidebar conversation several of us had with the CENTCOM PAO who showed up to talk with us. For ease of reference, here's most of what I said:
Really two things: the degree to which MilBlogs should be embraced by the military leadership and ways in which they can be; and also some friendly advice on how PA and IO can and must be improved.
He came to talk to the first point, and got a bit blindsided by the degree to which we wanted to talk about the second. However, he was a good guy, and once he got out of his PAO "I need to turn this conversation back around to my talking points" mode and started to listen, which didn't take very long, he started climbing the learning curve fast.
My sense from several previous conversations is that we've got the guys in the field understanding what needs doing and how -- some of them are on the leading edge of developing these solutions. We've got the top level leadership, mostly, coming around -- Abizaid, Cartwright, Rumsfeld, and according to the PAO, Bush. We still have to move the hardest bunch, though, which is the middle level officers who are just removed enough from the war to be attached to regulations instead of effect, and just powerful enough to throw up bureaucratic walls that can stop things from happening even when the combatant commander wants it (e.g., "well, sir, the lawyers say..."). Once you can get that middle on board, you'll see things start moving fast in the right directions.
Our PAO also said the funding was finally coming on line, which I can believe. That will improve his capabilities -- so, if he also knows what to do with his newly funded capabilities, we can make things happen. One of the complaints I heard voiced was the degree to which MilBloggers have been "carrying the weight" of responding to charges, and it's true. If we can work together with PA, and especially if we can use their language resources to get these counterarguments pushed into the media space in the Muslim world (e.g., Malaysia, Indonesia, the Arabic world), we'll really be doing something to change the dynamic of the war.
C4 asked me to expand on this, but I don't have much more to say about the particulars of what we discussed. I would like to reiterate that the PAO was a good guy, and although he came with talking points, he came to work with us. He seemed genuinely surprised by how much we'd thought about how the relationship should work, and I think both sides learned a lot from each other.
What I would like to do, though, is describe the issues at work here and throw the floor open for comments. It's an area in which a wider degree of comment and involvement would be welcome -- not just by me, but according to the PAO, by Abizaid, Rumsfeld and Bush. They want to engage the MilBlogs, though they're still thinking about how to do it the right way. There are some legal and some ethical issues to work through, and a few practical ones also.
One issue at work is that there is a division in the military between two fields that overlap. There is a field called Public Affairs, and a field called Information Operations. These two fields are, as anyone who's dealt with bureaucracies will immediately understand, mutually hostile. This is precisely because their missions overlap at key points, and they are therefore constantly having to engage in turf battles for control over certain aspects of the operations, and the associated budgets.
Public Affairs has the mission of communicating with the public -- especially the American people. Their job is to explain the military's mission and perspective honestly and accurately, and objectively. They do this mainly by talking to the press, and therefore that's where their head is -- they spend their time thinking about how to remain credible with the press, how to build and maintain relationships with the press, and how to structure those relationships with the press (e.g., how to construct the embedding process).
Information Operations handles a wide variety of tasks some of which, like Public Affairs, deal with communicating messages from the military to a public audience. These missions are (in theory) distinct because they are designed not simply to explain what is going on, but to achieve some larger goal: PSYOPs are IOs, as is the tracking of mis- and disinformation. ("Misinformation," in military terms, is accidentally wrong information; "disinfo" is intentionally wrong information, that is being put out by hostile forces).
Whereas PA is "designed" only to convey accurate information, IO is "designed" to achieve some particular purpose. There are laws and rules governing military IO -- messages must be truthful, for example, and IO
may not target Americans. As a result, there is a legal separation of IO and PA, as any messages that are meant to be communicated to the American public has to go through the PA stream. This often means messages that aren't designed for the American people, but which are likely to enter the global media stream and get back to Americans.
In a war against an enemy ideology, especially one that puts out anti-American propaganda, IO is cricital. It is also, increasingly, problematic.
Problem #1: All media is now global. An example: the IO whereby the Lincoln Group placed favorable (and true!) stories in the Iraqi press. Some of the stories got back to America, as did the larger story that they were doing it.
As a consequence, the sphere in which these kinds of IO can operate is increasingly small.
Problem #2: The interdepartmental infighting previously mentioned.
PA, for legal reasons, has to handle the coverage of messages that occur in the American media space. IO tracks mis/disinformation. A major thing that PA needs to be responding to is exactly that mis/disinfo: an example we talked about at the conference was the Willie Pete story. MilBlogs did a great job of responding to that in the English language media sphere. We can't do much in the wider European/Arabic/Southeast Asian sphere. Since so much of this deals with arguments that overlap into the American space, PA has to handle the response, either by pushing our messages out, or by pushing their own.
They need language experts for that, and they are competing for those language experts both with IO and with Military Intelligence.
Additionally, these responses need to understand the process of creating/pushing disinfo, as a lot of these messages are intentionally hostile. Responding to them, and predicting the next enemy message/counterpropaganda, is IO work. That's where the experts are in this field.
So, PA and IO really need to work in integrated closeness. Because they are legally required to be separate, however, the bureaucratic infighting destroys that cooperation and trust. This is a disaster.
Problem #3: Just as there is internal military competition, there are other agencies in the government that have similar missions. So, at the macro level, there's even more bureaucratic infighting. The CIA, State, and the NSC all have fingers in this pie. There is some overlap even though the missions are somewhat different (e.g., like military IO, the CIA can't target Americans; unlike either military IO or PA, the CIA can lie). The NSC is supposed to be coordinating between them, but... well, let's say there's room for improvement.
Problem #4: Because these kinds of IO are designed to manipulate the viewer -- although, again, only through honest messages -- they are instantly distrusted when they are revealed as such. PA wants the wall to remain up, not just because the law currently requires it, but because they think it adds to the credibility of messages coming from military PA.
Those are the problems, more or less.
Here are some thoughts of my own. I invite, and encourage, you to share your own in the comments.
A) The separation between PA and IO is counterproductive. Every PAO I've ever talked to has mentioned the benefit of having the wall; and yet every one has also allowed that all their messages are
still taken as simple propaganda by the media, and to some degree by the public at large.
If that's true, there is no advantage
to the military of having a split between the operations. There are serious disadvantages, but no advantages. If everything you write is assumed to be propaganda anyway, you may as well take advantage of having the propaganda / misinfo / PSYOP people on board to help you.
In addition, to a large degree the "wall" is an illusion.
All group messages are designed to manipulate the receiver -- otherwise, there is no reason for an organization to convey a message. A man might tell a stranger something kind for no particular reason. A corporation will not. If a corporation says anything, there's a reason for it: to sell products, to improve public opinion of the company, to recruit talent, to lobby for desired changes of one kind or another. The military is in the same boat.
There is a strong public benefit -- as opposed to a military benefit -- from having strict rules about the type of manipulation that is acceptable. For example, we could say that we would approve
honest messages from the military to manipulate American public opinion for the following reasons only:
1) To recruit or retain soldiers,
2) To defend the military in cases when there is mis/disinformation that would tend to slander it;
3) To defend the military's or the nation's honor (this differs from the above in that it isn't a question of the information being right or wrong; it might be a case where the military is countering an opinion from an antiwar or Communist organ. Such opinions may not be "wrong," but might still be unfair and in need of answer).;
4) To suppress enemy recruitment;
5) To explain a military operation, either in progress, completed, or about to get underway.
All such messages would have to be honest and truthful, but that is already the case. We might also wish to stipluate that the precise acceptable purpose be spelled out at the top of the press release/article (e.g., "The purpose of this article is to spur recruitment.") That would tend to increase credibility: instead of people suspecting that you were trying to manipulate them, they would know you were, and furthermore what you wanted. Understanding that up front, they could greet the message as an honest communication, rather than a suspect one.
There are other difficulties that would have to be overcome, but I don't see that the separation is helpful to our war efforts.
B) PA should be able to engage the blogosphere. Currently they are structured around the media, as mentioned -- it's what they have mostly done for decades, so that's where their heads are. Ask Bill Roggio what that means for a blogger who wants to embed, say, without being a credentialed "journalist."
By the same token, PA should be able to pass useful messages from the blogosphere (esp. MilBlogs) through to other populations. They would need to figure out whether to rewrite but attribute (e.g., issue a press release saying, "We are here responding to the following wrongful claim of war crimes. Much of the investigation was produced by the Mudville Gazette"), or to simply start translating and publishing a "best of the MilBlogs" paper (as many Muslim countries are not as wired as ours) in local languages. I like the second idea much better.
C) One suggestion I made to the PAO was that its press releases need to be longer. MilBlogs will carry them, even though the MSM mostly excerpts (and misunderstands, so badly excerpts) their contents.
A good press release meant to communicate with Americans needs to remember that the average American has no military background. The message should therefore explain the meanings of all military terms, and give a basic tactical/strategic context and explanation of the subject of the release. In that way, we can begin to educate Americans about the business of the military, as well as conduct some very necessary public education in military science and history.
An example is Operation Swarmer. The press release referred to 'the largest Air Assault since...' etc. Neither the media nor most Americans knew what an air assault was; and more to the point, they didn't know what it signified. They interpreted it as a sign of major hostilities, when in fact it was nothing of the sort.
We've got to educate Americans about basic strategy and tactics, and remember to explain the context of any current conflict. This is not only important for mantaining public morale. It's important because in a 4th Generation conflict such as this one, the odds are that the enemy will bring the war home to us from time to time. We don't just need to start developing a citizenry that is engaged in the war. We need to start developing a citizenry that
knows how to think about war.
Comments are encouraged.
