Iran

Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon program, which clearly violated US law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers -- most of them with financial ties to war contractors -- into the TV networks as "message surrogates" for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences.

Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher notes that New York Times military reporter Michael Gordon, "who contributed several false stories about Iraqi WMD in the run-up to the U.S. attack in Iraq," has been writing about Iran's alleged involvement in attacks against U.S. service members in Iraq. Gordon's latest article, "Hezbollah Trains Iraqis in Iran, Officials Say," is "based solely on unnamed sources," notes Mitchell.

An article from McClatchy's Baghdad bureau also contradicts Gordon's New York Times piece. McClatchy reports that the Iraqi government "seemed to distance itself from U.S. accusations towards Iran." Iraqi government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh said the government had formed a committee to find "tangible information" about Iranian activities in Iraq, instead of relying on "information based on speculation." Al-Dabbagh also told Agence France-Press that there is no "hard evidence" of Iranian support of insurgents in Iraq.

Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner has seen this sort of poorly-sourced reporting before in the New York Times as part of the propaganda campaign that led America directly into the disastrous quagmire in Iraq.

The program's Ken Allard in actionIn addition to helping research the "Pentagon's pundits" on SourceWatch -- those retired military officers who took part in the Pentagon program to promote Bush Administration talking points on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Guantanamo detention center and wiretap surveillance programs -- there are other ways you can push back against what one participant called "psyops on steroids." Noting that the program wouldn't have worked without "the enthusiastic participation of the corporate media," FAIR is encouraging people to contact broadcast and cable news executives, urging them "to ensure that the news will no longer serve as a conduit for Pentagon talking points passed off as independent analysis." Free Press launched a campaign to press Congress to investigate the Pentagon program and "determine whether these acts violate federal law prohibiting 'covert propaganda.'"

On Sunday, the New York Times outed the Pentagon's "military analyst program," an extensive effort to cultivate retired military officers as "message force multipliers" or "surrogates" spouting Bush administration talking points on Iraq and other hot-button issues. We've compiled a list of known participants, and started SourceWatch profiles on each. Can you help us uncover more about the Pentagon's pundits? What did they say, on what news programs? Do they also lobby on behalf of defense contractors? More information on the program is here. The list of participants is also repeated here, with tips on how to investigate each. If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here, here and here. Thanks for your help!

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at Putin pushers, Coach in the classroom and how comic books promote Iraqi special forces. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at the Lincoln Group, spreading their spin beyond Iraq. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

"Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the January 6 US-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran's military aggressiveness," reports Gareth Porter. The incident, described by Pentagon officials as a "careless, reckless and potentially hostile" provocation by Iranian boats that nearly led to gunfire, was actually a nonthreatening, "almost routine" encounter that officials in Washington distorted. "The initial press stories on the incident, all of which can be traced to a briefing by deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in charge of media operations, Bryan Whitman, contained similar information that has since been repudiated by the navy itself," Porter writes. "Then the navy disseminated a short video into which was spliced the audio of a phone call warning that US warships would 'explode' in 'a few seconds.'"

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at how Wal-Mart is moving supposedly outside support in-house, the work of a government agency charged with protecting consumers, and how they aren't, and 2007 journalism that really reeks. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we tell you how drugs and rock n' roll connect Rudy Giuliani and George Bush. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

The New York Times reports, "When a Saudi court sentenced a young woman to 200 lashes in November after she pressed charges against seven men who had raped her, the case provoked outrage and headlines around the world, including in the Middle East. But not at Al Jazeera, the Arab world's leading satellite television channel, seen by 40 million people. ... For the past three months Al Jazeera, which once infuriated the Saudi royal family with its freewheeling newscasts, has treated the kingdom with kid gloves, media analysts say. The newly cautious tone appears to have been dictated to Al Jazeera's management by the rulers of Qatar, where Al Jazeera has its headquarters. ... The specter of Iran's nuclear ambitions may be particularly daunting to tiny Qatar, which also is the site of a major American military base. The new policy is the latest chapter in a gradual domestication of Al Jazeera, once reviled by American officials as little more than a terrorist propaganda outlet."

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we cover the reality behind oil companies' green rhetoric, who will replace Karen Hughes at the State Department, and the evolution of President Bush's statements on Iran. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we tell you how many steps it takes to get from U.S. public diplomacy to Burmese military repression. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

"It's an oddly familiar pattern of deception," writes Dan Froomkin. While President Bush continues to make ominous statements about Iran, since early August 2007 he has not made "explicit assertions of an Iranian nuclear weapons program." Instead, Bush has been "vaguely accusing [Iran] of seeking the knowledge necessary to make such a weapon." For instance, on March 31, Bush said, "Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon, and a major threat to world peace is if the Iranians had a nuclear weapon." On August 28, Bush criticized "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons." Froomkin writes that Bush's goal may have been to avoid "demonstrably false" statements while leaving "listeners with what he likely knew was a fundamentally false impression." A recent intelligence report concluded that Iran's nuclear weapons program ended in 2003. That news caused CNN to pull "We Were Warned -- Iran Goes Nuclear," a program scheduled to air on December 12. It featured "former high-ranking officials," including Christine Todd Whitman, playing out "a scenario set a few years in the future in which they responded to news of an Iranian nuclear weapons program," reports Philadelphia Daily News. Asked about the tenor of the show at a time when many are concerned about U.S. posturing towards Iran, CNN's Mark Nelson said, "We weren't fueling the fire."