Fox News
05.02.2009
AP
WASHINGTON– As it fights two wars, the Pentagon is steadily
and dramatically increasing the money it spends to win what it calls
“the human terrain” of world public opinion. In the process, it is
raising concerns of spreading propaganda at home in violation of federal
law.
An Associated Press investigation found that over the past five
years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home
and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year,
according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents. That’s
almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006.
This year, the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for
recruitment, advertising and public relations — almost as many as the
total 30,000-person work force in the State Department.
“We have such a massive apparatus selling the military to us, […]”
says Sheldon Rampton, research director for the Committee on Media and
Democracy, which tracks the military’s media operations. “As the war has
become less popular, they have felt they need to respond to that more.”
Military leaders say that at a time when extremist groups run Web
sites and distribute video, information is as important a weapon
as tanks and guns.
On an abandoned Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas, editors for the
Joint Hometown News Service point proudly to a dozen clippings on a
table as examples of success in getting stories into newspapers.
What readers are not told: Each of these glowing stories was
written by Pentagon staff. Under the free service, stories go
out with authors’ names but not their titles, and do not mention
Hometown News anywhere. In 2009, Hometown News plans to put out 5,400
press releases, 3,000 television releases and 1,600 radio interviews,
among other work — 50 percent more than in 2007.
The service is just a tiny piece of the Pentagon’s rapidly
expanding media empire, which is now bigger in size, money and power
than many media companies.
In a yearlong investigation, The Associated Press interviewed more
than 100 people and scoured more than 100,000 pages of documents in
several budgets to tally the money spent to inform, educate and
influence the public in the U.S. and abroad. The AP included contracts
found through the private FedSources database and requests made under
the Freedom of Information Act. Actual spending figures are
higher because of money in classified budgets.
The biggest chunk of funds — about $1.6 billion — goes into
recruitment and advertising. Another $547 million goes into public
affairs, which reaches American audiences. And about $489 million more
goes into what is known as psychological operations,
which targets foreign audiences.
Staffing across all these areas costs about $2.1 billion, as
calculated by the number of full-time employees and the military’s
average cost per service member. That’s double the staffing costs for
2003.
Robert Hastings, acting director of Pentagon public affairs,
Hastings says. “There is no place for spin at the Department of
Defense.”
But on Dec. 12, the Pentagon’s inspector general released an audit
finding that the public affairs office may have crossed the line into
propaganda. It also found that while only 89 positions were authorized
for public affairs, 126 government employees and 31 contractors worked
there.
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