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Did Army general use ‘psy-ops’ on senators?

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  • Did Army general use ‘psy-ops’ on senators?

    Congressmen exist in their own minds to be wined and dined - don't see the crime here.

    Did Army general use ‘psy-ops’ on senators?

    By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

    The Washington Post
    First published 3 hours ago
    Updated 3 hours ago Updated Feb 24, 2011 07:29PM

    The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan intends to order an investigation into whether a three-star general responsible for training Afghan security forces inappropriately used members of a psychological operations team to influence visiting U.S. senators into providing more funding for the war.

    The U.S. command in Kabul issued a statement Thursday saying Gen. David Petraeus “is preparing to order an investigation to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding the issue.”

    The investigation stems from an article published early Thursday on the website of Rolling Stone magazine alleging that Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, the head of the U.S. and NATO training operation for Afghan forces, used an “information operations” team to “manipulate visiting American senators” and other visitors, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.

    The article is based on the claims of a lieutenant colonel who served on a psychological operations team in Afghanistan last year and who alleges he was subjected to retribution when he resisted the assignment.

    A spokesman for Caldwell denied that he had done anything improper.

    Among the senators allegedly targeted by the team were John McCain, R-Ariz., Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. All four have been long-standing supporters of more funding for training Afghan security forces.

    The lieutenant colonel, Michael Holmes, who was assigned to Caldwell’s headquarters last year, said in the article that he was asked by the general’s chief of staff to find ways to manipulate the lawmakers. Holmes claims he was asked: “How do we get these guys to give us more people? What do I have to plant inside their heads?”

    Holmes said he objected. “My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,” Holmes is quoted as saying. “When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.”

    The article did not cite evidence of false or misleading information being provided to the senators and other visitors.

    Copyright 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune.
    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

  • #2
    unbelievable. maybe a lil prison time? wait, only sailors with Ecstasy gets jail time, but obstruction of our constitution, nothing happens, only understanding. :)
    sigpic

    Comment


    • #3
      Hell, kudos to the general for imaginative thinking! He needed more money and men for the ultimate purpose of less of his men dying. How is the general using Psyops to get something he wants any different than me sweet talking and schmoozing some Australian biddy into spending $1,000 on Dead Sea Cosmetics, or any other conceivable situation where something is desired and we work to get it? Is there a law that says thou shalt not manipulate congressmen?
      Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

      Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

      Comment


      • #4
        1. The LTC involved is not a PSYOPS officer (it's now called MISO, but that's irrelevant at this point). He does not have PSYOPS training. He was not assigned to a PSYOPS unit.

        2. The author of the article is the same author of the article on McChrystal. That doesn't make the article wrong or inaccurate, but it should give pause. Given the propensity of this journalist to only focus on the sensational, we should probably wait until the full story comes out.

        3. If the 15-6 investigation was motivated by retribution, then even if there was no "PSYOPS," there is still grounds for ending Caldwell's career. I suspect that this will be what's left of this piece after the full story emerges.
        "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Shek View Post
          3. If the 15-6 investigation was motivated by retribution, then even if there was no "PSYOPS," there is still grounds for ending Caldwell's career. I suspect that this will be what's left of this piece after the full story emerges.
          15-6 investigation?
          Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

          Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by bigross86 View Post
            15-6 investigation?
            15-6 is the Army Regulation that regulates official investigations.
            "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

            Comment


            • #7
              From Information Dissemination:

              Originally posted by Galrahn
              Not the Stuff of Bud Light Lime

              I've been reading the latest cover story of Rolling Stones by Michael Hastings titled Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators. This is a very well written article, so I encourage people to read it before reading further. Reading the article is quite necessary to understand what is actually happening here.

              Read it? Good.

              I have taken from the article all of the quotes from Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes that were used to frame the context of the story. Holmes is the leader of the information operations unit that works for Lt. Gen. William Caldwell. I have intentionally left out all the "context" Michael Hastings added to the story to frame the narrative.

              The way the article is written, one would likely get the impression some shenanigans were going on in Caldwell's office. Perhaps, however, if we add our own context to the very same statements, a different picture emerges.

              It starts with Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes describing in his words what his job as a social software internet messageboard warrior is in the Army.

              My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave"

              "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

              Facebook friending a House Armed Service Committee member is bad. Got it. No Farmville with the Senator from North Dakota. Got it.

              This is where it gets interesting, because this is where Lt. Gen. Caldwell assigns Lt. Colonel Holmes a job to do.

              According to Holmes, who attended at least a dozen meetings with Caldwell to discuss the operation, the general wanted the IO unit to do the kind of seemingly innocuous work usually delegated to the two dozen members of his public affairs staff: compiling detailed profiles of the VIPs, including their voting records, their likes and dislikes, and their "hot-button issues." In one email to Holmes, Caldwell’s staff also wanted to know how to shape the general’s presentations to the visiting dignitaries, and how best to "refine our messaging."

              According to Holmes, the general wanted the IO team to provide a "deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds."

              The team was also instructed to "prepare the context and develop the prep package for each visit."

              "How do we get these guys to give us more people?" he demanded. "What do I have to plant inside their heads?"

              In other words, Lt. Colonel Holmes and his IO team are being asked to take a break from their messageboard warrior time and Facebook friend time and being delegated to do staff nerd work, and their job is to prepare Lt. Gen. Caldwell for the dog and pony show of visiting VIPs. The ego of this Holmes guy is incredible, because he is making the suggestion through this Rolling Stones article that his skills with a keyboard are so l33t, the simple task of being assigned the role to prepare a General for a briefing with VIPs equates to an information operation against elected officials by deploying his Google searches and subsequent analysis as an influence weapon. The irony is, this kind of staff work is usually done by someone all the time, and the great offense here is that the IO Team, which is basically a social software debate club, is being assigned this work. The shame!

              How did Holmes approach his responsibility as a staff nerd?

              "We called it Operation Fourth Star," says Holmes. "Caldwell seemed far more focused on the Americans and the funding stream than he was on the Afghans. We were there to teach and train the Afghans. But for the first four months it was all about the U.S. Later he even started talking about targeting the NATO populations."

              Under duress, Holmes and his team provided Caldwell with background assessments on the visiting senators, and helped prep the general for his high-profile encounters. But according to members of his unit, Holmes did his best to resist the orders.

              In other words, being delegated to a mere research assistant was so offensive, that he lashes out at his boss for giving him the remedial task of providing "Caldwell with background assessments on the visiting senators" to help "prep the general for his high-profile encounters." Instead of doing the work assigned as ordered, because Holmes thinks his keyboard skills are lethal, he "did his best to resist the orders."

              Are you kidding me? A disgruntled Lt. Col. who normally does information operations in the Facebook fan club of Caldwell's social software shop gets assigned staff work for VIP visits, and the article frames that assignment to Holmes - leveraging his opinion of being assigned what he considers work beneath his keyboard skill set - as a crime? Yep, and that context is reinforced by the author with this statement in the article.

              In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesman for Caldwell "categorically denies the assertion that the command used an Information Operations Cell to influence Distinguished Visitors."

              That statement is accurate, because for it to be inaccurate we would have to believe that the research skills of Lt. Col. Holmes are so incredible that his background research alone can "influence Distinguished Visitors." Does Michael Hastings realize the insult he is delivering regarding the intelligence of Congressmen and Senators for that assertion of his to be true?

              Some are suggesting there needs to be an investigation. Based on what, the claim by Hastings that Holmes is so skilled at research that such research is influential to the point that it represents an information operation? Seriously, show me the allegation by Holmes that something illegal took place, because the article makes clear he was asked to do prep work for VIP visitors, and the implication being made here is that only because it was HOLMES who was asked to do that work is it somehow improper. Oh no, dude has to do work other than counter Jihad on the messageboards... oh the shame - the criminal shame!

              Sorry folks, but I don't see this as the stuff of Bud Light Lime. The only allegation being made is that Caldwell dared to ask this Holmes and his internet nerds to research and plan for a visit by VIPs for the purposes of briefing and prepping Caldwell for the visit, and the intent was so that Caldwell would be prepared to communicate more effectively his needs for more money and more people. Those are the specific allegations made by Holmes in the story, everything else in the story was the narrative that implied illegal activity added by Michael Hastings.

              All we have learned is that either Holmes of Hastings are excellent at PSY-OPs, because either Holmes pulled an excellent PSY-OP over Hastings to burn his former boss in Rolling Stones magazine, or Hastings pulled an excellent PSY-OP on Rolling Stones readers to suggest that Army staff work done for the purposes of preparing for VIP visits is criminal.

              What I see here is a disgruntled staff officer with an axe to grind against his boss, and a reporter willing to play along.

              Posted by Galrahn at 10:30 AM
              http://www.informationdissemination....semination%29#
              I enjoy being wrong too much to change my mind.

              Comment


              • #8
                Here's the best analysis I've seen so far on this.

                Ink Spots: Some thoughts on LTG Caldwell's probably-legal-but-still-wildly-inappropriate influence operations

                THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2011
                Some thoughts on LTG Caldwell's probably-legal-but-still-wildly-inappropriate influence operations
                Michael Hastings has another news-making piece in Rolling Stone today. In it, he alleges that "the U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in 'psychological operations' to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war" in Afghanistan. So far as I can tell, this is a lie. Hastings goes on to make a number of other specious assertions and allegations in the course of the piece. None of this changes the fact that this is a vitally important story, one that serves as a window onto the deeply disturbing trend of senior officers defining the appropriate role of the military in ever more expansive ways.

                Read the story. The rest of this post is written under the assumption that you understand the basic facts of Hastings' reportage. Now let's get some things straight:

                1. Michael Hastings is almost definitely a douchebag. Both this piece and the infamous McChrystal expose are filled with unsubtle editorializing. But there is no reason to believe that he is inventing sources or falsifying documentation. The Caldwell story is not made-up, and there are facts here that need to be considered. I don't know the details of this Holmes guy's career, his training, and so on, and I've seen rumblings this afternoon on Twitter that there might be a story there. But I'm writing this on the assumption that the basic facts as Hastings has conveyed them are not fabricated out of whole cloth.

                2. "The Army" doesn't order anyone to do anything, legal or illegal. Individual officers give orders that either accord with law and regulation, or that don't. Those orders are then followed, or they're not. If an unlawful order is followed, both the originator and the executor of that order are legally culpable.

                3. No one was ordered "to manipulate visiting American senators" in any way, at least not according to the evidence provided in the article. Instead it is alleged that certain personnel were ordered to perform background research and provide advice and expertise to LTG Caldwell on how he might be able to manipulate members of Congress.

                4. This directive was founded, of course, on the presumption that the persuasion of and exertion of influence on American political leaders is a legitimate function and recognized responsibility of the Commanding General of Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan/NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan. This presumption was a poor and unfounded one.

                5. CSTC-A/NTM-A is not a warfighting command. It is an element of ISAF that is focused on building the capacity and capabilities of our Afghan partners to operate independently and function without a massive coalition presence. It is a security cooperation office on steroids, an institution that exists to provide equipment, training, and advice to the Afghan government at the tactical, operational and strategic levels. There would seem to be precisely one remotely reasonable justification for the command to be augmented with information operations (IO) personnel, or for an organization that does not engage with the enemy to perform psychological operations (PSYOP, defined in part as efforts to "convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals") in any form or fashion: in order to influence Afghan audiences to more aggressively support U.S. capacity-building initiatives and speed the transition of security responsibility.

                6. Relatedly, Hastings alleges that "at a minimum, the use of the IO team against U.S. senators was a misuse of vital resources designed to combat the enemy." This is false. IO resources are not explicitly "designed to combat the enemy," but to support the accomplishment of operational objectives. It's possible to conduct legal, well-planned, legitimate IO that has exactly nothing to do with combatting the enemy.

                7. There is no reason to believe, as some have glibly suggested, that CSTC-A/NTM-A required PSYOP-trained personnel to conduct social media outreach, or that LTG Caldwell intended for those personnel to perform that function.

                8. IO officer LTC Michael Holmes conceives of his job as being "to play with people's heads," which is certainly a component of IO, and also "to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave." This too is part of IO and PSYOP, but not an appropriate role for CSTC-A/NTM-A, an organization that is not enemy-focused. Presumably ISAF has IO/PSYOP personnel whose mission entails influencing enemy perceptions and decision-making.

                9. Holmes further argues that he is "prohibited from doing that to our own people." Considering that PSYOP has a specific training pipeline to distinguish it from broader IO or strategic communication (which is comprised of IO and public affairs) writ large, this strikes me as a compelling and true statement. There does not seem to be any specific legal prohibition on PSYOP personnel providing technical insight about the mechanics of decision-making to inform public affairs efforts (and references to the Smith-Mundt Act are a stretch); but U.S. military PSYOP personnel receive dedicated training for the purpose of targeting foreign audiences, and Holmes is certainly correct to say "when you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman [sic], you're crossing a line."

                10. Even if Caldwell, Buche, and Breazile deny Holmes' claim that the assignment of IO personnel to DV pre-briefs was intended to provide "a deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds" or to answer the question of "how do we get these guys to give us more people?", it seems certain that LTG Caldwell believed PSYOP training had endowed his IO team with some special skill set that would facilitate more effective decision analysis and add value to his political messaging efforts. Otherwise he would simply have continued to use his dedicated public affairs staff to this end.

                11. The details of the alleged smear campaign against Holmes are one-sided and supportive of the message of scandal that Hastings clearly intends to convey, so it's impossible to evaluate their legitimacy. But it sure doesn't look good.

                12. Hastings further alleges that "Caldwell seemed more eager to advance his own career than to defeat the Taliban," supporting this accusation only with an unflattering quote from Holmes: "We called it Operation Fourth Star." This, to put it plainly, is just Hastings being a ****ing asshole. Such accusations are especially rich from a journalist who has surely faced similar charges from his own critics, someone who could quite easily be pegged as seeming more eager to advance his own career and make waves than to do good journalism and inform meaningful policy change in Afghanistan.

                13. Let's be clear about something: in the military, officers do not perform tasks they find unpleasant "under duress" from their superiors. They execute the orders of those appointed over them, or they refuse. And they are held legally and morally responsible for that decision. If Holmes did what he was directed to do "under duress" and he is still convinced that he "violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948" (an absurd claim, for what it's worth), then he should be asking himself why he failed to do what is required of him by oath and regulation: to refuse the unlawful order.

                14. The "Capt. John Scott" (Rolling Stone's editors' refusal to use correct, service-specific rank abbreviations makes it impossible to tell whether Scott is an O-3 or an O-6, though I don't suppose it matters) identified in the article as an attorney consulted by Holmes was exactly right to say that "using IO to influence our own folks is a bad idea and contrary to IO policy (pdf)," but I've got to be honest and note that this doesn't exactly constitute stellar legal advice.

                15. When a spokesman for LTG Caldwell "categorically denies the assertion that the command used an Information Operations Cell to influence Distinguished Visitors," that's not a semantic dodge. He's saying that Holmes is full of shit, that the whole thing's made up. He's not saying "the general used to IO cell to inform HIS efforts to influence DVs"; he's saying they played no part in such an effort.

                16. Hastings closes with what I imagine he believes to be an incredibly powerful parting shot:
                As for the operation targeting U.S. senators, there is no way to tell what, if any, influence it had on American policy. What is clear is that in January 2011, Caldwell’s command asked the Obama administration for another $2 billion to train an additional 70,000 Afghan troops – an initiative that will already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $11 billion this year. Among the biggest boosters in Washington to give Caldwell the additional money? Sen. Carl Levin, one of the senators whom Holmes had been ordered to target.
                But here he demonstrates either extremely bad faith or inexcusable ignorance: Carl Levin has long supported train-and-equip efforts as a substitute for U.S. troop presence, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's been tossing around the absurd "train host nation forces instead of keeping Americans boots on the ground!" canard, as if that constitutes a comprehensive solution, for much longer than LTG Caldwell's been at CSTC-A/NTM-A. A PSYOP O-5 didn't have a damn thing to do with Levin's support for ANSF funding. Hastings' concluding coup de grace is really just a totally specious bit of draw-your-own-incorrect-conclusion nonsense.

                I hope you're not disappointed, but those 16 points don't lead to any sort of really cohesive conclusion or judgment about right or wrong. If you need it boiled down to one sentence, I'd put it like this: all the talk of illegality is just trumped-up editorializing, but LTG Caldwell's actions -- if accurately described -- were inappropriate and suggestive of deeper problems with the way he conceives of his role.

                What deeper problems? Well, as noted up there in #4, this is all predicated on Caldwell's belief (underpinned by the support of the military establishment) that lobbying Congress is fair play and part of his job. The military, as you may have heard, tends to inculcate a can-do attitude. When given a mission, officers don't tend to sit around and think up reasons why they can't accomplish it, why it's going to be harder than they thought, or why it ought not really to be their job. They look for ways to get it done. They take stock of the resources they have at hand and figure out a way to effectively apply them against the problem. Sometimes that means doing things that are unconventional, and sometimes that means figuring things out as you go. (DoD didn't have a whole lot of useful guidance on how to run economic development projects in Iraqi cities in 2005, for example, but this type of attitude is what helped a bunch of field- and company-grade offiicers figure it out.)

                But this is also why we have laws and regulations: to dampen the aggressiveness and enthusiasm some of these can-do folks will invariably have for performing tasks that are not appropriately delegated to them.
                Sometimes that means running influence operations on your own bosses to talk them into the policy course you think is right, and enabling that with personnel who were specifically trained to deploy their skills against non-U.S. targets.

                There's a fuzzy line here, and I'm not going to pretend like it's a bright one. The Joint Staff says that the joint force needs to be able to conduct both IO (including PSYOP) and public affairs (pdf): to communicate, shape, and influence. The shaping and influencing is meant to be targeted at the enemy and the operational environment, while the communicating helps to win support for the mission with domestic audiences. Of course, this is all built on the idea that all a public affairs officer has to do is share the good news in order to get Congress and the public on his side, while acknowledging that there may be a little bit more art and nuance involved in persuading a foreign audience. (Why this should be true is never precisely explained, but it seems a bit like backwards reasoning: seeing as we're only allowed to tell the truth to Americans, we'd better hope the truth accomplishes the mission!) And if you've got that skill set in your force or in your command, that special ability not just to convey information but to tailor and target that information in such a way as to really influence the decision calculus and eventual behavior of your target audience... and if you're convinced a certain type of behavior by your higher will help get the job done... well, it's a hell of a temptation. And it looks like LTG Caldwell may have fallen victim to it.

                But really, it can't be this way. Our military leaders can't be viceroys, and they can't have carte blanche to skirt law and regulation in order to get the job done. This should be a reminder that constant vigilance is required to keep the proper balance in civil-military relations, and for civilian senior leaders to stay informed and engaged as best they can to ensure that happens.

                I hope this investigation happens, and I hope they find that Holmes and Hastings just made the whole damn thing up. I fear that's not the case, though, and I don't think we should be surprised if we find that it's not.
                "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by troung View Post
                  “How do we get these guys to give us more people? What do I have to plant inside their heads?”
                  Things don't grow in infertile ground. If these guys were capable of an idea we wouldn't be there in the first place.;)

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