Thoughts and Googling on the NYT Analyst Article

(10 am – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Take a look at this paragraph from page 4 of today’s blockbuster NYT article:

Two of NBC’s most prominent analysts, Barry R. McCaffrey and the late Wayne A. Downing, were on the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an advocacy group created with White House encouragement in 2002 to help make the case for ousting Saddam Hussein.

Hmm.  Why don’t we have some fun with google?  This goes some interesting places.

Going to Wikipedia, we find this:

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) was described as a “non-governmental organization” which described itself as a “distinguished group of Americans” who wanted to free Iraq from Saddam Hussein. In a news release announcing its formation, the group said its goal was to “promote regional peace, political freedom and international security through replacement of the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations.” It had close links to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), important shapers of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

The Washington Post reported in November 2002 that “the organization is modeled on a successful lobbying campaign to expand the NATO alliance. Members include former secretary of state George P. Shultz, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.). … While the Iraq committee is an independent entity, committee officers said they expect to work closely with the administration. They already have met with Hadley and Bush political adviser Karl Rove. Committee officers and a White House spokesman said Rice, Hadley and Cheney will soon meet with the group.”

Did you see John McCain in that list?  I knew you did!

Continuing . . .

With the successful removal of Saddam Hussein, the committee appears to have disbanded, and its once-prominent website no longer exists. However, its offices still remain on Pennsylvania Avenue and 10th Street.

The film Syriana portrays a similar group, using the same initials, but bearing the name ‘Committee for the Liberation of Iran’.

Well, I guess in a conspiracy movie like Syriana, you can get away with naming a group “Committee for the Liberation of Iran” after you just got done having a group called “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.”

But not in real life.  That would be to conspiratorial.  So how about we form a group and call it the “Iran Policy Committee”?

Wiki sez:

The Iran Policy Committee (IPC), formed in February, 2005, is a pressure group meant to influence US government policy towards Iran. IPC is made up of former White House, State Department, The Pentagon and CIA officials as well as scholars from think tanks and academia.

Okay.  Well, who is on this Iran Policy Committee?

James E. Akins

Bill Cowan (CEO of private military corp the WVC3 Group, Inc.)

Paul Leventhal

Neil Livingstone

R. Bruce McColm

Thomas McInerney

Charles T. Nash

Edward Rowny

Paul E. Vallely

Well that’s interesting!  A lot of those names appeared in today’s New York Times article, too!

Paul Vallely, Thomas McInerney, and Bill Cowan were specifically mentioned in the NYT article as media military analysts.  Charles T. Nash I don’t see in the NYT article but is a Fox News military pundit.

So it looks like we had a lot of the media analyst-type people in on the policy-making to invade Iraq and then, lo and behold, there’s four right there on this group to invade Iran.

So what kind of access does this Iran Policy Committee have to Capitol Hill?

The IPC demonstrated its strong ties on Capitol Hill in April 2005 when it convened a briefing at the invitation of the Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus of the House of Representatives. Co-chairs of this caucus are Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA)

Two congressmen – Bob Filner (Democrat, California) and Tom Tancredo (Republican, Colorado) – chaired a April 6 Capitol Hill meeting of a think-tank called the Iran Policy Committee, US Newswire reported. Filner described the meeting as an effort by the Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus of the House of Representatives to learn more about Iran and to consider ways to confront it. Tancredo called for an end to the State Department’s designation of the Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO) as a terrorist group.

Radio Farda reported that the Middle East sub-committee of the US House of Representatives discussed legislation relating to Iran on April 13 in Washington, DC. The Iran Freedom Support Act (HR 282) defines its purpose as, “To hold the current regime in Iran accountable for its threatening behavior and to support a transition to democracy in Iran.” The legislation calls on the White House to support pro-democracy forces that oppose the Iranian regime.

And here is a summary of the Iran Freedom Support Act:

Iran Freedom and Support Act of 2005 – States that: (1) U.S. sanctions, controls, and regulations relating to weapons of mass destruction with respect to Iran shall remain in effect until the President certifies to the appropriate congressional committees that Iran has permanently and verifiably dismantled its weapons of mass destruction programs and has committed to combating such weapons’ proliferation; and (2) such certification shall have no effect on other sanctions relating to Iranian support of international terrorism.

Amends the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 to: (1) eliminate mandatory sanction provisions respecting Libya; (2) impose mandatory sanctions on a person or entity that aids Iran acquire or develop weapons of mass destruction or destabilizing types and numbers of conventional weapons; (3) revise multilateral regime reporting requirements, including provisions respecting sanctions on individuals aiding Iranian petroleum development; (4) enlarge the scope of sanctionable entities; and (5) eliminate the sunset provision.

The Iran Freedom Support Act had 62 co-sponsors in the Senate.

To recap: The Iran Policy Committee has at least 4 TV military pundits on its board.  It meets with Congress.  Congress drafts a bill to put the squeeze on Iran.  The bill gets 62 co-sponsors in the Senate.

It never passed because the Congress ran out of time.  But that’s hardly the point.

All I’m doing here is following a fairly obvious google trail from hit to hit.

Now, consider these passages from the New York Times article.  I have a point I want to make later.  Page 2 of the article:

Some network officials, meanwhile, acknowledged only a limited understanding of their analysts’ interactions with the administration. They said that while they were sensitive to potential conflicts of interest, they did not hold their analysts to the same ethical standards as their news employees regarding outside financial interests. The onus is on their analysts to disclose conflicts, they said. And whatever the contributions of military analysts, they also noted the many network journalists who have covered the war for years in all its complexity.

Page 11 of the article:

CBS News declined to comment on what it knew about its military analysts’ business affiliations or what steps it took to guard against potential conflicts.

NBC News also declined to discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts. The network issued a short statement: “We have clear policies in place to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest.”

Jeffrey W. Schneider, a spokesman for ABC, said that while the network’s military consultants were not held to the same ethical rules as its full-time journalists, they were expected to keep the network informed about any outside business entanglements. “We make it clear to them we expect them to keep us closely apprised,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Fox News said executives “refused to participate” in this article.

Look.

We’re willing to believe that the CEOs of the telecoms were engaging in collusion with the government, but the we balk at the idea that the CEOs of media companies are doing the same thing?  Why?  

Isn’t it at least worth asking whether this is a bullshit line?

CBS News declined to comment on what it knew about its military analysts’ business affiliations or what steps it took to guard against potential conflicts . . .

NBC News also declined to discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts . . .

Jeffrey W. Schneider, a spokesman for ABC, said that while the network’s military consultants were not held to the same ethical rules as its full-time journalists . . .

The New York Times casts this 11-page story as though it’s about the Pentagon duping the media with analysts who were bought off with contracts and access.  But that’s only about 1/4 of the story here.  The “analysts” are in fact just members of an overlapping group of circles of think-tanks, companies, and government officals who make policy for this country, and then go on TV to propogandize it.  It is simply missing the point to suggest that at least many of these people needed to be “convinced” or “bought” or “intimidated” into backing Cheney policy.  Cheney’s policy is their policy.

It is also worth asking, asking forcefully, the extent to which the powers-that-be at CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, and the newspapers knew about all of this, and let it go on, just as the powers-that-be of the telecoms let wiretapping go on.

Did I mention that John McCain, media darling, was on the Iraq Committee cited in the NYT article?

Perhaps I’m drawing connections too quickly here, and engaging in conspiracy mongering.  The details might be off.  But where is the line between conspiracy theory and everyday boring fact, anymore, in the Bush years?  All I did was a simple google search.

Syriana indeed.

I suppose we can entertain any number of reactions to the NYT article.  We can say “Wow!” or “Tell me something I don’t know” or “Finally the media is pointing out the obvious” or “It’s more deliberate than I thought.”  And I suppose each of those reactions is valid, and that there’s no reason to choose one as the “correct” one.  

But I want to point out that what the NYT article is actually doing is providing a window, however off-angle, however darkly, and however fleetingly, into a much larger conglemeration of power and influence than anything suggested by “manipulation of media analysts.”  And that is worth looking into.