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Networks Still Hosting Military Analysts Without Identifying Massive Conflicts Of Interest
Major television networks continue to host retired generals as military analysts without alerting viewers to their extensive ties to defense contractors and the Pentagon.
NBC News military analyst and retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey has appeared on MSNBC at least 10 times in the past month to underscore the importance of training Afghan security forces. But neither McCaffrey nor the MSNBC anchors ever mentioned the fact that McCaffrey sits on the board of directors of DynCorp International, a company with a lucrative government contract to train the Afghan National Security Forces. Military strategy is a frequent topic on TV in the wake of President
Obama's announcement that he will send more troops to Afghanistan now
-- and start bringing them out by mid-2011. But few television viewers
have any idea that some of what they're hearing originates from men who
are literally profiting from the war.
One of these men in particular -- NBC News military analyst and retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey -- has appeared on MSNBC at least 10 times in the past month to criticize Obama's proposed troop-withdrawal deadline, to lavish praise upon Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, and to underscore the importance of training Afghan security forces.
But neither McCaffrey nor the MSNBC anchors ever mentioned the fact that McCaffrey sits on the board of directors of DynCorp International, a company with a lucrative government contract to train the Afghan National Security Forces. Nor did they mention that McCaffrey recently completed a report about Afghanistan that was commissioned by Petraeus and funded by the Pentagon.
On December 4, McCaffrey appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews, where he was introduced only as "retired General Barry McCaffrey." Upon being asked whether we are creating our own enemy in Afghanistan, McCaffrey said: "The key is, can we create an Afghan security force that in a couple or three years will replace us? That is the real question on the table."
He added, "I think there's some belief, strong belief on the part of General [Stanley] McChrystal and others, to include me, that yes, you can create an Afghan security force. I don't believe it's possible in a year. I see this as a 3- to 10-year effort, at the front end of which we're going to take casualties and spend a lot of money."
According to Forbes magazine, this 3- to 10-year effort in Afghanistan will generate about 53% of DynCorp's $3.1 billion in annual revenue, a fact that McCaffrey failed to mention.
McCaffrey describes the report he authored last week assessing security operations in Afghanistan as an "independent civilian academic contribution to the national security debate." In the report, McCaffrey effusively praises Petraeus and the top military officials in Afghanistan, calling them "brilliant" and the "absolute best leaders in uniform."
McCaffrey continues to be presented as an objective expert despite widespread, public evidence to the contrary. In late 2008, as part of a Pulitzer-Prize winning series about the relationship between retired generals, the Pentagon, and defense contractors, New York Times reporter David Barstow wrote an article that exposed McCaffrey for "consistently advocat[ing] wartime policies and spending priorities that are in line with his corporate interests."
According to Barstow's article, McCaffrey used his close relationship with Gen. Petraeus and his contacts at the Pentagon to secure lucrative, mutually beneficial defense contracts at corporations such as Defense Solutions and Veritas Capital. Armed with extensive ties to both the government and the private sector, McCaffrey exercises a third sphere of influence through his media exposure. He did not respond to repeated messages from the Huffington Post, requesting an interview.
McCaffrey is only one of several on-air military analysts with extensive, interconnected Pentagon and corporate relationships. Retired Gen. Richard Myers, who appeared on NBC's Meet the Press on October 11 to discuss Afghanistan strategy, sits on the board of directors of Northrop Grumman, the third largest arms manufacturer in the world. But David Gregory simply introduced him as the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gregory asked Myers whether it was necessary to escalate the Afghanistan war, Myers replied: "I think you probably do [have to escalate]," and later added that he thinks U.S. allies "should pony up as well."
Retired Gen. Robert H. Scales, Jr., an analyst for both Fox News and National Public Radio, is the president of Colgen, Inc., a consulting company specializing in issues relating to land power, war gaming and strategic leadership. Colgen's clients include the U.S. Military, the CIA and Special Operations Command. On December 1, Scales appeared on Fox News with host Bret Baier and disparaged Obama's plan to start troop withdrawals in 2010.
"Well, there's an old saying in the Army, Bret, that an operation must conform to the actions of the enemy and not to the clock or the calendar," Scales said. "My concern is we need to focus on the enemy, defeat the enemy in this region before we start talking about a timeline."
Not surprisingly, these "military analysts" on the boards of defense contractors with large potential for financial gain have consistently used their media appearances to make the case for escalation.
Last year, the Society of Professional Journalists called on NBC to sever ties with military analysts that could personally profit from the shaping of public opinion.
"By failing to be forthright and transparent, these networks -- which are owned by General Electric, a leading defense contractor -- are giving the public powerful reasons to be skeptical about their neutrality and credibility," said Andy Schotz, the chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists' Ethics Committee.
NBC has ignored the SPJ's call. A spokesperson from NBC said that McCaffrey's biography on the MSNBC website details his involvement with DynCorp and other corporations, but she declined to comment about why anchors do not identify McCaffrey as a Pentagon contractor or defense contracting consultant when he appears on their shows.
"The media are not legally obligated to disclose their connections," said Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "It's obviously a little misleading, though."
39 Comments so far
Show AllWait wait wait... let me get this straight... these are American retired generals who work in the US as military analysts... and ... our ...complaint... is... that..
... just so I'm getting this straight...
... that it's, er... not being revealed specifically that...um...
... that they have ties to the Pentagon?
I think the viewer at home figures that much.
The actual problems are:
1) The Pentagon is filled with people who both lie and make errors based in prejudices.
2) There's no counterpoint presented to these people.
"... that they have ties to the Pentagon?"
No, that misses it. It is that they have investments in war and are profiting from the war that they are pushing.
Yep, yep, yep. You got it buddy!
Who are the generals and military analysts who DON'T profit from war..?
As Michael Moore said what seems like centuries ago, "Get the US military out of our media!"
"I think the viewer at home figures that much."
I wouldn't bet on it.
"Major television networks continue to host retired generals as military analysts without alerting viewers to their extensive ties to defense contractors and the Pentagon"
Umm..what part of "Military-Industrial Complex" does anybody not understand these days?
The bit where the media is part of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Yes, thank you. Couldn't have said it better myself.
I prefer to call GENERAL STRIKE, tomorrow, 12/12/09, 1100 Hours, (I believe that's GENERAL) Lafayette ("We [the People] Are Here!") Park, Washington (a real general), DC!
I'll be there! Anyone else?
I'm sure glad that I kicked the habit and unpluged my propaganda box when Bush was in power.
It's still unpluged :)
Don't worry, my friends with the propaganda box still on, inform me that as of late it is mostly focused on the escapades of one well-known professional golfer.
Apparently, propaganda was even getting to be too much trouble for our "journalists" so they're trying to focus on just regular old titillating distraction instead.
Is there any kind of anti trust laws that would apply to military contractors?
I mean graft is graft, Thank goodness for the coming pole shift.
The coming pole shift? I'm kind of rooting for an asteroid about a third of the size of the moon. That ought to just about do it.
Sounds like Bill Clinton with Hillary outsourcing our industrial base to Foreign countries. Bubba now pulls in millions of dollars everyday from these Foreign countries. Where does
Bubba Stand on the Military Industrial Complex? Will he
warn us about it? Stay tuned.
Compare these stories..thirty bankers, two countries...this is so clear
*****Venezuela issues arrest warrants for 30 bankers
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:59:10 GMT
A court in Venezuela has issued arrest warrants for 30 bank executives over their alleged mismanagement of the country's financial affairs.
The court order comes days after the government of President Hugo Chavez nationalized seven banks due to their 'unregulated' transactions.
“A group of irresponsible bankers, of citizens crazed by ambition, started to use the public's money, private and public money in their banks, to commit crimes,” Chavez said on Monday before the arrest orders were issued.
However, the Venezuelan leader has always maintained that he only seeks to regulate banks and to bring a group of con men to justice and does not want to take over the entire banking sector.
-------------------------------------------------------------
*****Goldman Sachs scraps cash bonuses for 30 top executives
The Wall Street firm instead will give them stock and bar them from selling it for five years. Critics call the move window dressing instead of real reform.
By Walter Hamilton and Martin Zimmerman
December 11, 2009
Reporting from Los Angeles and New York
Facing persistent criticism of its huge pay packages, investment banking powerhouse Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Thursday that it would buck long-standing Wall Street tradition and pay no year-end cash bonuses to 30 top executives.
Instead, the firm will give those employees bonuses made up entirely of Goldman Sachs stock and will bar them from selling the shares for five years. The company also said it would give shareholders a formal voice regarding executive pay.
By implementing a number of compensation reforms that Wall Street critics have long championed, Goldman is acting to discourage its employees from taking excessive financial risks. Incentives for Wall Street bankers and traders to place dicey bets with the large sums at their disposal have been widely blamed for contributing to the mortgage meltdown and the global financial crisis.
But Goldman stopped short of the most dramatic step that critics have called for -- actually reducing compensation -- leaving outsiders to ask whether the latest move was little more than window dressing to tamp down the appearance of unbridled greed.
"This is as much a PR move as it is a move to change their pay structure," said Dan Pedrotty, the AFL-CIO's director of investments and a critic of corporate pay practices. "You still have this bottom-line issue that a firm that was just recently bailed out by the American taxpayer is paying out enormous sums of money."
Still, Wall Street has been loath to cede any ground in a years-long tussle over compensation. Goldman's action demonstrates the pressure on the New York company at a time of high unemployment and general suffering that many Americans blame on the country's big banks.
"I'm not surprised they're making this move in light of the scrutiny they're getting over their payouts this year," said Aaron Boyd, research manager at Equilar Inc., a Redwood Shores, Calif., firm that tracks executive pay.
Goldman spokesman Samuel Robinson called the reforms "perhaps the strongest in the industry."
"What we have announced today for the 30 most senior people at Goldman Sachs represents a closer alignment than there has ever been of incentives and compensation with the interests of shareholders and the public," he said.
Bonuses represent a vast majority of the compensation for Goldman senior managers.
The company, however, didn't commit to paying all-stock bonuses beyond this year, although Robinson didn't rule out the possibility.
Long admired on Wall Street for a seeming ability to mint money, Goldman is now reviled by much of the public for the same reason.
We should all buy Goldman stock. It will be going thru the roof soon even if only to allow the banksters that own it to cash it in and stick it to the rest of the suckers...again.
This is not surprising at all. Yea, they're lousy creeps, and that's being unduly kind to say that, they deserve a lot worse, but did anyone really think they weren't still at it? Doing this, and indifferent to conflict of interests, etc.?
"Network" news media is massive corporate greedy profit driven control-the-masses junk.
What tricks were they up to in Venezuela?
Old Generals never die--they just smell that way!
When you say "networks" you really mean FAUX, et al. and those are not networks but corporate parrots, including the MIC. Therefore, it would be unreasonable to expect that these shills would do the right thing and go against their masters
On Oct. 16, 1946, Julius Streicher was hanged.
Streicher was one of a group of 10 Germans executed that day following the judgment of the first Nuremberg Trial - a 40-week trial of 22 of the most prominent Nazis.
Each was tried for two or more of the four crimes defined in the Nuremberg Charter: crimes against peace (aggression), war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy.
All who were sentenced to death were major German government officials or military leaders. Except for Streicher.
Julius Streicher was a journalist.
Editor of the anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, Streicher was convicted of, in the words of the judgment, "incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitut(ing) ... a crime against humanity."
From Peter Dyer (Oct. 2008) at Consortium News:
"...Most jurisdictions have yet to recognize propaganda for war as a crime. However several journalists have recently been convicted of incitement to genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
"...Because there is stiff resistance, especially from the United States, the effort to criminalize war propaganda faces an uphill battle.
Full and unedited:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/101408d.html
** When will we hold the journalists and generals accountable for propagandizing us into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars??
It is only natural that generals will think in terms of military solutions. To give them the benefit of the doubt, they think of solving political problems by military means--that is their background. That is why we need other opinions. Personally, I believe, force never solves anything.
One could argue that there are no more conflicts of interest when the government and business are one...
War is the enemy.
CORP IS BORG.
some new slogans that america can be proud of:
WAR GIVES MEANING TO LIFE
WAR IS GLORIOUS
GIVE 'EM WAR
WAR IS NOT HELL...IT'S HEAVENLY
WHEN CAN WE HAVE ANOTHER WAR?
The eastern world, it is exploding
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’
But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
[Take a look around ya boy, it's bound to scare ya boy]
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for 4 days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace
And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve
Of destruction
Mm, no no, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
I read on this site about a year ago that more than half of the US congress hold stocks in "war industries' and thus profit from further invasions and occupations.
What if the law said you couldn't profit from war?
And no corduroy skirts!
These men are war profiteers and war criminals, pure and simple. They, the companies they represent,the corporate media that present them as "experts" and the politicians who follow their warped advice are responsible for the permanent state of war that are now suffering. Meanwhile, our infrastructure crumbles, people lose their homes, jobs are lost forever and hundreds of thousands of innocents in the poorest nations on earth suffer even worse fates. The U.S., once a shining example of freedom, democracy and prosperity is now a war machine that kills people across the globe from air conditioned offices just down the road from the local multiplex and Wal-Mart. I am ashamed to be an American. Oh, for the wacko trolls, I served in the Corps. How about you?
Actually it is better this way because:
1. It shows how much serious decision-making like whether or not to go to war are dominated by the profiteers who stand to financially benefit from such a policy decison.
2. It shows the superiority and supremacy of the military in our national life.
3. It shows the subserviance of the so-called "news media" to the corporate business interests who run and own them.
4. It demonstrates just how thoroughly most of the country has sold out their citizenship to these "masters of deceit".
That's quite a lot for a washed-up, retired old policy-whore like McCaffery to accomplish. Leave him alone, his presence is much more valuable right where he is.
Poet
By the by as acting chair of the JCS Richard Myers was the man in charge of the nation's defense on 9/11/2001. None of the planes was intercepted despite the fact that this had been routine practice for decades.
For this complete failure he was promoted several days later and now I see is "serving" as a richly paid board member of a "defense" contractor.
Curiouser and curiouser...
The more dangerous public war propaganda is the one practiced by active generals. Yes, these persons have in principle the constitutional right to say what they want but, in my opinion, should refrain voluntarily from speaking out until after they retire or when they testify in Congress.
It is also my opinion that General McChrystal's recent utterings were not only his war propaganda but also White House war propaganda. President Obama was aware what McChrystal wanted in terms of soldiers and funding. If he did not want this to be come public prematurely he should have told the general to remain silent except during congressional testimony.
There are only two possibilities. Either Mr. Obama wanted the General to air his view on Afghanistan or he did not but was angry when McChrystal went ahead and did air his views. In the second case we appear to have a woefully inexperienced president who covers his defect ad nauseam with daily "beautiful" but largely meaningless speeches. His Oslo lecture was also retchingly self-serving when he averred "do not blame me for expanding the war in Afghanistan because it is a just war". Mr. President, which living Christian saint (are there any?) has approved your war in Afghanistan to be "just"?
The vision of a boot stepping on the necks of American's forcing them to fund a hot war for oil instead of an all out effort for American energy independence is our reality. We are lighting a match in oil country with likely explosive results. So do we sit in our chairs quietly and watch the generals light the match to armageddon? I sense that there will not be a DO OVER this time. Act now or never/
Although not legally required to do so, leading medical journals demand full disclosure from authors submitting scientific articles for publication. This is done lest some author(s) with a proprietary interest in the pharmaceutical company (whose drug he or she is reporting on) gets tripped up by said conflict of interest, an outcome that could be injurious to the public, should, for example, a published article touting the clinical value of, say, drug X (at the same time downplaying its side-effects), not mention the fact that the author is on the payroll of the pharmaceutical company that manufactures said drug, an ommission that could be deadly. Likewise, the networks should demand full disclosure from these retired generals, lest one or more of them get tripped up by their conflicts of interest, something that could cost the lives of our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Which would make these generals what? Traitors, that's what, with the networks their enablers.
Bring America Back !!!!.....!!!!...When these War-Babies come up thru their military colleges, and are paid for their so called opinions===there is never, ever any consideration for the long lost concept of PEACE!!
****Peace is not what the US military industrial complex does, it is always war, war, war.
****There has been a grassroots petition for the establishing of a Dept of Peace==but signatories from food and music festivals can't get it into solid legislation.
Peace is now the antithesis of what the USA stands for !!!!
****What a Disgrace. It is a fact that the US Army preps these Military "experts" as part of the Psychological Operations against the American people, and to induce the major US Media to only present the War Alternative== Never
a Peace alternative !!!!
***The MI Complex rolls on and on, feeding upon itself, and
controls and jeopardizes the soul and character of the USA
around the Globe.
American Voters need to mightily Reject these military propaganda pushers, and regain their Concept that we stand
for Peace, Not War and that we reject Zion for its worldwide policy of Genocide==as in GAZA and as in Lebanon !!
One thing the media whores and presstitutes have correct, just the wrong interpetation, as these retired Generals are really experts; yeah experts of how to have endless wars to feed MIC, Dracula more blood to keep it alive and well; they are definately experts in brainwashing the American sheeple; and they are definately experts in keeping the racket of war an ongoing racket.
this in in keeping with other segments of our polity:
The entire corporate media is a giant conflict of interest
98% of Congress is a conflict of interest
98% of the Executive branch is a conflict of interest.
And I might be being generous here
On the other hand, this is good for business baby, what's the big deal?
When WJC destroyed so many of FDR's regulation laws he opened the gates to total corruption . We now have crooks on the air and law makers using tax payer's money to pay for their dalliances . The good Senator MB has been enjoying trips around the world with his sidekick on the tax payer's dime while holding up health care for thousands of dying Americans with the media doing a 24/7 wittling on TW who hasn't broken any laws . So thanks to deregulation , crime does pay . And those of us that do not commit crimes will be totured by sudden loud commercials until dead .
Yes, we can a third term for W, and we are right in the middle of it.
AD