In June, Reutersreported on a hitherto secret U.S. program connected with the Covid-19 pandemic. In the spring of 2020, as the coronavirus rapidly spread throughout the world, our government sought to respond to Chinese disinformation which attempted to deflect responsibility for the virus’s origin by claiming that it had originated in a biological research lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland. What was our government’s plan? To fight fire with fire.
This was at the same time that the then-president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, was making noises about a closer relationship to China, even hinting that if China prioritized sending vaccine to his country, he would cede territory in the South China Sea to Beijing. Simultaneously, an element within the U.S. military in the Pacific was agitating Washington about keeping the Philippines on side and fighting the deluge of Chinese propaganda.
As a result, the Pentagon authorized a covert disinformation campaign against China, focusing on discrediting Chinese vaccine and protective medical equipment like masks. The channels of propaganda would be Twitter (now X), Facebook, and other social media. The campaign appears to have worked: the Philippines ended up with a very low vaccination rate in international comparison (in spite of Duterte’s efforts), and a high death rate.
While it is generally acknowledged that the Chinese vaccine (known as CoronaVac or Sinovac) is less effective, it is hardly useless: typically a 60-70-percent effectiveness versus the roughly 90-percent effectiveness of Western vaccines. Thus, it could have saved lives in the Philippines but for the U.S. disinformation campaign.
It is one more reason why Trump and his appointees should never be entrusted with public office. Will Congress ever investigate this misbegotten operation and finally nail down the chain of events?
It’s all there in the Reuters article, and there is no need to expatiate on the obvious immorality of the operation, quite apart from its colossal stupidity—at the same time U.S. public health officials were tearing out their hair trying to combat domestic Covid-19 disinformation, and doctors and nurses were risking their lives caring for terminally ill vaccine refusers, their government was pumping the same ideological poison into the minds of innocent people abroad. The nonchalant statement of an unnamed Pentagon official says it all: “We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective. We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”
The report left a few dangling lose ends, however, that deserve further investigation by Congress and the Pentagon inspector general.
Are U.S. special forces out of control? The report says that the program was initiated after persistent lobbying by the then-commander of Special Operations Command Pacific, General Jonathan Braga. The article implies that he pleaded directly to Washington. Did his superiors at U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii know what he was doing? Did they approve? We know from Reuters that various U.S. ambassadors in Southeast Asia did not approve, and they would ordinarily have overruled the general because it was a stupid idea that could harm diplomatic relations. But because the then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper designated the propaganda campaign as a de facto wartime action, the diplomats’ objections could be disregarded.
U.S. special forces were vastly expanded during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and were given greater operational flexibility. They have also tended to produce loose cannons throughout the ranks. General Stanley McChrystal was special forces commander at the height of the Iraq war and later became commander of all coalition forces in Afghanistan. His career came to grief when he had the bad judgment to insult President Obama and other civilian leaders in front of a Rolling Stone reporter. Apparently, the civilian pukes in Washington lacked the general’s gung-ho attitude that with just a little more door-kicking and pyrotechnics, Afghanistan would be pacified—something that hadn’t happened since the Mongol invasions.
This kinetic mentality can get out of hand, as it did in 2017. Four Navy SEALs who were posted to the U.S. embassy in Mali, in a “juvenile” attempt to haze an Army special forces soldier, killed him. Their court martial, in a strange display of leniency, sentenced the most culpable perpetrator to only 10 years in prison, while one of the four defendants did not even receive a punitive discharge. The 10-year sentence was later vacated, with the defendant hiring a Trump lawyer to try to get him off the hook.
Ironically, vaccine refusal was the cause of another special forces stunt. Personnel from the Navy Special Warfare Command, including SEALs, not only declined to be vaccinated, but sued the Department of Defense. Their venue-shopping landed them in the Fort Worth court room of U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, a favorite destination for nutty conservative causes, and shockingly but not surprisingly, the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Ultimately, the Supreme Court blocked the judge’s ruling, but only insofar as it allowed the Navy to reassign, as opposed to discipline or discharge, the plaintiffs, while litigation continued.
What the personnel had done merited not merely reassignment or discharge, but potentially a court martial for the following: deliberately rendering themselves undeployable; endangering other service members; gross insubordination; and possibly even mutiny, as it was an organized action against their unit.
I have written before how religion is bandied about for political advantage by people whose own religious faith is ludicrously insincere. The justification of the SEALs—whose profession is to kill people—was a risible claim that deep Christian devotion prompted their refusal, advancing the heretofore undiscovered theological tenet that modification of their bodies by vaccine is an “affront to their Creator.” Apparently that doctrine exempts steroid abuse, which is common in the Navy’s special warfare community.
Even the military has begun to recognize that special forces may have become the tail that wags the dog—too big (bigger than the entire German army), diluted in quality, often operating outside the regular chain of command, and infected with a cowboy mentality. The mindless popular adulation, particularly of SEALs, has according to some observers had an adverse impact on civil-military relations. Perhaps we will always need door-kickers, but should they be overruling ambassadors in order to execute a cruel and asinine operation in a friendly country?
Who ultimately ordered the covert operation? The Reuters piece noted that Esper signed the directive to conduct the operation. The legality of his action rested on a provision in the 2019 defense authorization act permitting the military to conduct clandestine influence operations against other countries, including “outside of areas of active hostilities.”
This only raises more questions. Were the defense and intelligence committees of Congress, then controlled by the Democrats, duly notified of the disinformation campaign? If so, did the notification simply state that a covert psychological operation was underway, or did it provide enough details to make it clear that it was based on lies that could endanger the population of a friendly country? What was the reaction of Congress?
Perhaps we will always need door-kickers, but should they be overruling ambassadors in order to execute a cruel and asinine operation in a friendly country?
It seems unlikely that even as powerful a bureaucratic actor as the secretary of defense would order such a sensitive operation in defiance of the State Department without the guidance of those above him, or at least as a result of their signing off on his plan. The rules of Washington normally impel a person like Esper to seek cover for his actions. Accordingly, it is probable that he either notified the president directly or through the national security council of his order.
Then-President Trump had already directed the CIA in 2019 to conduct covert psychological operations inside China, so it is hardly a stretch to speculate that he would have had no problem approving DoD’s covert operation in the Philippines. It is one more reason why Trump and his appointees should never be entrusted with public office. Will Congress ever investigate this misbegotten operation and finally nail down the chain of events?
How do we know the operation did not blow back on the United States? The military is prohibited by law from conducting propaganda campaigns in the United States. But given the instant global connectedness of the internet, how could the Pentagon be so sure that its black propaganda campaigns in other countries wouldn’t leak back to the American population? They were, after all, using Twitter and Facebook accounts.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Filipino population in the United States was 4.4 million in 2020, the third-largest Asian-American group. It is inconceivable that none of them would have had contact with friends and relatives in the Philippines who might have been gulled by the American disinformation. Had their contacts made them vaccine-hesitant, it would have exacerbated the already epidemic anti-vaccine movement here.
Why did it take so long to shut down the program? Shortly after the inauguration, representatives from Facebook arranged a meeting with incoming Biden administration officials to complain about the covert program, which contradicted the company’s policy against spreading vaccine disinformation. The officials were properly horrified, but again, there are loose ends to the Reuters story.
Why hadn’t the new administration learned about the program through Pentagon channels already during the transition? Why did it take until the spring of 2021 to order DoD to shut it down? And in spite of the order, why did the program linger through the summer? Was the Biden administration lax in its follow-up, or was the Pentagon out of control?
Over the decades, the U.S. military has conducted numerous programs of breathtaking stupidity: the above-ground nuclear tests of the 1950s that
exposed draftees to atomic radiation, dumping thousands of tons of
Agent Orange defoliant over Indochina during the 1960s, the
toxic burn pits of the Iraq war. Civilian leadership in this country needs to shed its adolescent awe of martial exploits and gain firm control over a very dangerous weapon.
