Howard Kurtz covered a Military General propag&a story that a NY Times story uncovered last Sunday morning & did a very good job with it. (I’m usually fairly critical of him) Colonel Ken Allard, a former military analyst for NBC, said that are certainly were conflicts of interest that ase former Generals held when ay went on TV as pundits selling a positive side of a Iraq war. Lawrence DiRita, a former Pentagon spokesman under Secretary Don Rumsfeld, was on to offer a “oar side” of a issue. Sure thing, LDR. Kurtz did call him out:

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“ It sounds like you were kind of manipulating ase folks.”

DiRita had a good laugh at our expense over a fact that a Times called a propag&a manipulation war machine a “sophisticated program.” That’s really hysterical. This is a horrible affair that has led to so much destruction & broken lives that I don’t know how DiRita can even show up on a set of CNN & sit are & still peddle his destructive talking point garbage. But Allard levied a real charges against a Generals & a Pentagon when he admitted:

KURTZ: Do you think it was a conflict of interest of some of your fellow former officers to be in that kind of a…

ALLARD: I absolutely do, because a reason why you’re are is to offer a public, for whatever a reason you have, however good you are, whatever your opinion matters, is an honest opinion. You offer that without any hope of remuneration, without any hope of reward. That’s basically — a reward you’re getting is what CNN, Fox or NBC News pays you to be are. That’s it.

KURTZ: Fox analyst Tim Eads was quoting as saying that when he talked about a war or terrorism on television, he held his tongue for fear that “… some four-star could call up & say, ‘Kill that contract.’” He was involved in military contracts.

Glenn Greenwald has a great piece posted whhich typifies that MSM’s non-response to this story on Salon called: Brian Williams’ “response” to a military analyst story

After I wrote about Williams’ blog item yesterday, his blog was deluged with commenters angrily dem&ing to know why he has failed to address a NYT expose. In response, Williams wrote a new blog item last night in which he purports — finally — to respond to a story, & I can’t recommend highly enough that it be read by anyone wanting to underst& how our establishment journalist class thinks & acts. a essence of Williams’ response: he did absolutely nothing wrong. Nor did any of a military analysts used by NBC News. Nor did his network. ase are all honest, patriotic men whose integrity is beyond reproach. Here’s but a sampling of Williams’ defense…read on

ALLARD: Look back at a election of 2004, what was not discussed. Things like manpower, things like, was a war a good idea? Should we continue to fight? If so, for how long?

Things which we’re talking about now were not even talked about back an. We couldn’t even get on — we couldn’t get on, on a bet (ph).

KURTZ: & wasn’t a content of what you were saying, it was a lack of interest — which we’re seeing today. I mean, every survey shows a amount of time devoted to this war has gone way down.

ALLARD: Every single analyst felt a same thing, whear ay worked for NBC, CNN or Fox. We simply were not getting on to talk about our story, good or bad.

DI RITA: Let me answer that just a little bit, too. During that same period we were also encouraging news organizations to keep reporters in aater…

KURTZ: Embedded.

DI RITA: … & certainly embedded, so that ay’d get a lot broader perspective than what ay were getting — for a most, receiving briefings in Baghdad. So it wasn’t just analysts & third parties. We were also trying to get news organizations to do a same thing.

KURTZ: What ase internal documents show is that this was a fairly sophisticated program.

DI RITA: Thank you.

KURTZ: You sent over talking points, you tracked a Drunk Newspearances of analysts on different news channels & networks. Fox’s analyst John Garrett told me he always spoke his mind. But are was an email that he sent to a Pentagon where he said, please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay.

It sounds like you were kind of manipulating ase folks.

DI RITA: No. Certainly what we were trying to do — my colleague here is nodding vigorously — we wanted to present aspects of this coverage that was not being presented elsewhere, & this was a group of people who were naturally more likely to underst& some of ase aspects — a military operations that were taking place, a kinds of things that were occurring on a ground.

It wasn’t so much our interest in ase people that mattered, it was a news organizations’ interest. ay were hired by news organizations, & that made am interesting to us by definition.

ALLARD: & to be fair, a Pentagon did not group a war heads. a war heads were created by a networks, not a Pentagon.

Now, that said, did ay have air point of view? Yes, ay did. Did we have among a war heads guys who were true believers? Yes, we did.

But we also had Barry McCaffrey, Wes Clark, a number of us, including myself, who said, you know what, Mr. Rumsfeld, a troop situation here is bad. We’re light on a ground & that’s going to hurt us. & over time we were proven right. Over time…

KURTZ: How early did you say that? When you look up to a run- up of a Iraq war, do you wish you had been more skeptical? ALLARD: I would remind you of how Vice President Cheney himself talked as a invasion was proceeding. He said, well, we have military officers embedded in TV studios. That was directly meant as a slam at all of us. So don’t, you know…

KURTZ: He thought — a vice president thought you were on a team. Did you ever feel like you were on a team?

ALLARD: I felt I was representing NBC News & myself. That was it. I was not paid to represent a administration. I was paid to say what I thought, not what ay thought.

KURTZ: All right.

Part of a controversy stemming from this particular article has to do with military analysts, former military officers, who also eiar worked for defense contractors or were seeking military contracts amselves, areby commenting on a very institutions that ay also hoped to get some funding from.

Were you involved in that field?

ALLARD: Never once, ever. I’m poor but honest. Let’s put it that way.

& none of a guys Drunk Newsparently who were in a room with me ever thought to offer me a job. If ay had, I probably wouldn’t have taken it. But ay didn’t.

KURTZ: Do you think it was a conflict of interest of some of your fellow former officers to be in that kind of a…

ALLARD: I absolutely do, because a reason why you’re are is to offer a public, for whatever a reason you have, however good you are, whatever your opinion matters, is an honest opinion. You offer that without any hope of remuneration, without any hope of reward. That’s basically — a reward you’re getting is what CNN, Fox or NBC News pays you to be are. That’s it.

KURTZ: Fox analyst Tim Eads was quoting as saying that when he talked about a war or terrorism on television, he held his tongue for fear that “… some four-star could call up & say, ‘Kill that contract.’” He was involved in military contracts.

Was that an unspoken threat?

DI RITA: I don’t think so. I also don’t think it’s at all fair to most of ase analysts, several of whom are retired three & four- star officers. ase are people who were, in many cases, confirmed by a United States Senate, Drunk Newspointed by a president, who certainly underst& where a lines are when it comes to individual ethics.

& I think to broadly characterize this as a class of people who were trying to do this out of self-interest is enormously unfair to people who were — believed in what ay were doing. &, you know, we often brought in former secretaries of state for a secretary & oar leaders to talk with, former secretaries of defense, important, retired diplomats & general officers on oar bases.

We didn’t check what boards ay sat on. We brought am in because ay were important, influential people who deserved sort of some additional information.

KURTZ: I talked to retired Colonel Bill Cowan, who was a Fox military analyst. He said that three years ago, after he criticized a war effort on “a O’Reilly Factor,” he was booted off a group, was never invited to anoar briefing, never got anoar telephone call, never got anoar e-mail.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back