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Aw: Psychological Warfare and Mind Control 23 Sep 2009 23:43 #340

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Air Force Creates "Counter Blog" Response Plan To Quell Online Dissent
Detailed flow chart orders officers to respond to negative material

Steve Watson Infowars.net Friday, Jan 9th, 2009

The US Air Force has announced a “counter-blog” response plan aimed at fielding and reacting to material from bloggers who have “negative opinions about the US government and the Air Force.”

The plan, created by the public affairs arm of the Air Force, includes a detailed twelve-point "counter blogging" flow-chart that dictates how officers should tackle what are described as "trolls," "ragers," and "misguided" online writers.

Wired blog Danger Room summarizes how the chart lays out a range of possible responses to a blog post:

Airmen can offer a "factual and well-cited response [that] is not factually erroneous, a rant or rage, bashing or negative in nature." They can "let the post stand -- no response." Or they can "fix the facts," offering up fresh perspective. No matter what, the chart says, airmen should "disclose your Air Force connection," "respond in a tone that reflects high on the rich heritage of the Air Force," and "focus on the most-used sites related to the Air Force."

Another option offered by the chart is to "monitor the site for relevant information and comments" while reporting back to HQ.

Of course, the type of bloggers that Air Force officers will be able to respond to may be limited due to the fact that the Air Force actively blocks access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address.

No doubt the Web Posting Response Assessment plan is an offshoot of the Air Force's "national cybersecurity initiative", an ongoing $11 million project which is also seeking the capability to hack into, fully control and even destroy any form of computer or network in existence.

We have previously reported on similar efforts on behalf of the military and the government to quell online dissent, as well as more broadly control the information available to the American public.

Multiple programs are currently being rolled out by the Pentagon and its offshoot agencies such as DARPA, in a secret war with the internet that has been described as a $30 billion "electronic Manhattan Project".

Such ongoing efforts to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror are well documented.

CENTCOM has programs underway to infiltrate blogs and message boards to ensure people, "have the opportunity to read positive stories,"presumably about how Iraq is a wonderful liberated democracy and the war on terror really is about protecting Americans from Al-CIAda.

In May 2008, it was revealed that the Pentagon was expanding "Information Operations" on the Internet with purposefully set up foreign news websites, designed to look like independent media sources but in reality carrying direct military propaganda.

More recently the New York Times published an expose on privately hired operatives who have been appearing on all major US news networks promoting the interests and operations of the Pentagon and generating favorable news coverage of the Bush administration while posing as independent military analysts.

This operation was formally announced In 2006 when the Pentagon set up a unit to "better promote its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet". Again, the Pentagon said the move would boost its ability to counter "inaccurate" news stories and exploit new media.

The program represents another wing of the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence, publicly announced after 9/11 but simply the latest incarnation of a PR brainwashing scam that spans back decades. The OSI exploited legal loopholes by planting its propaganda in foreign newspapers that would later be picked up by U.S. newswires. In today's environment even that seems quaint, with the Pentagon openly and proudly shouting from the rooftops that they will knowingly violate the law to indoctrinate the American people.

Perhaps the most alarming case of the military's information tentacles burrowing their influence deep into media circles in recent years was in February 2000, when another branch of the same Pentagon propaganda bureau, Psychological Operations Command (PSYOPS), had placed their operatives "in the news division at CNN's Atlanta headquarters as part of an “internship” program starting in the final days of the Kosovo War."

FAIR speculated that the purpose was twofold, one to directly propagandize the American people via CNN and also potentially to allow the "military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against the network itself," because the "military needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations were taking place."

With the knowledge that government propagandists were utilizing U.S. news network hubs at CNN to run what was described as a "vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory," and that this took place almost eight years ago - just imagine how infested today's networks and newsrooms are with paid agent provocateur propagandists whose sole job specification is to orchestrate methods of mind control over the population of the United States.

In October 2005 Government Accountability Office investigators concluded that the Bush administration's secret policy to pay off influential journalists to plant fake news and positive spin on Bush's policies was illegal and that the "administration had disseminated "covert propaganda" in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban."

A study by media watchdog Center for Media and Democracy revealed that, over a ten month span, 77 television stations from all across the nation aired video news releases without informing their viewers even once that the reports were actually sponsored content.

Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted specific companies' products.

The consequences were not the drafting of new legislation that would clearly outlaw such actions in future, nor any form of criminal proceedings against the protagonists. The upshot of it all was a slap on the wrist for conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and a request that he pay back part of the money that the government had given him - not even all of it.

"Armstrong Williams is going to pay back $34,000 to the government for work he failed to deliver, but who's going to pay the taxpayers for the rest of the quarter million dollars Williams was paid for his propaganda services to the administration?," asked Congressman George Miller, as the Justice Department hurried a settlement and swept the whole sordid affair under the rug.

See the Prisonplanet archive on Government Use Of Fake News for more examples of these practices.

These operations equate to a formal declaration of psychological warfare on the American people. The military is engaging in direct propaganda and indoctrination.

Recent history clearly indicates this is just the latest outreach of an insipid brainwashing agenda that is totally unlawful and anathema to the U.S. Constitution.

The White House has made it perfectly clear that it will target American citizens for propagating information harmful to the interests of the U.S. government and classify them as enemy combatants. This is codified in sub-section 27 of section 950v. of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Bush's own strategy document for "winning the war on terror" identifies "conspiracy theorists," meaning anyone who exposes government corruption and its lies about major domestic and world events, as "terrorists recruiters," and vows to eliminate their influence in society.

We have even seen the proposal of legislation that would require bloggers to register with and regularly report their activities to Congress or face prison.

The eminently hypocritical tenet of the suggestion that the military and the Air Force need to "Fix the facts", correct "inaccurate statements" and "set the record straight" is borne out by the fact that they participated in the dissemination of the most lurid and damaging propaganda since Hitler's final speech - a deliberately fomented lie about weapons of mass destruction that has killed over one million Iraqis and thousands of American soldiers.

It is they who constitute the "ragers" and "trolls" and it is we the alternative media - the fifth estate - that should mobilize in the infowar to counter their spurious deception.

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Aw: Psychological Warfare and Mind Control 23 Sep 2009 23:45 #341

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Important: Bbc-scandal Of The 1980's, How MI5 took over the BBC-not in theory,but in practice...

pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=14258
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Aw: Psychological Warfare and Mind Control 23 Sep 2009 23:47 #342

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INFORMATION WARFARE
Prof George J. Stein, AWC

We need to state up front that much of what is discussed in this essay on information warfare is unofficial speculation. There is no official, open-source US government definition of information warfare. The Department of Defense calls its current thinking and approach to information warfare "command and control warfare" (C2W).1 There is little agreement among the services about either information warfare or C2W; and among civilian defense analysts looking at the issues of information warfare, there is even less agreement. Why, then, should we be thinking about this new and strange idea? The chief reason, of course, is that while we don't know just what we've got here, all the services agree that information warfare is something important.2 Was Desert Storm the first war of third-wave information warfare or the last war of mechanized second-wave industrial warfare?3 We're not sure, but a lot of people, including potential rivals, are trying to figure it out.4 This article attempts to make some sense of this new idea called information warfare. We'll look at four sets of ideas: (1) A definition of information warfare; (2) How we should start thinking about developing a strategy of information warfare; (3) Why current Air Force doctrine may be the best framework for developing a doctrine of information warfare; and (4) A very brief comment on the danger of failing to develop information warfare.
Defining Information Warfare

Information warfare, in its largest sense, is simply the use of information to achieve our national objectives. Like diplomacy, economic competition, or the use of military force, information in itself is a key aspect of national power and, more importantly, is becoming an increasingly vital national resource that supports diplomacy, economic competition, and the effective employment of military forces. Information warfare in this sense can be seen as societal-level or nation-to-nation conflict waged, in part, through the worldwide internetted and interconnected means of information and communication.5 What this means is that information warfare, in its most fundamental sense, is the emerging "theater" in which future nation-against-nation conflict at the strategic level is most likely to occur. Information warfare is also changing the way theater or operational-level combat and everyday military activities are conducted. Finally, information warfare may be the theater in which "operations other than war" are conducted, especially as it may permit the United States to accomplish some important national security goals without the need for forward-deployed military forces in every corner of the planet. Information warfare, then, may define future warfare or, to put it another way, be the central focus for thinking about conflict in the future.

Information warfare, in its essence, is about ideas and epistemology- big words meaning that information warfare is about the way humans think and, more important, the way humans make decisions. And although information warfare would be waged largely, but not entirely, through the communication nets of a society or its military, it is fundamentally not about satellites, wires, and computers. It is about influencing human beings and the decisions they make. The greatest single threat faced by the Air Force, and by the services in general, as we begin to think about information warfare is that we will yield to our usual temptation to adopt the new technologies, especially information technologies, as merely force multipliers for the current way we do business.6 It would be a strategic mistake of historical proportions to focus narrowly on the technologies; force the technologies of information warfare to fit familiar, internally defined models like speed, precision, and lethality; and miss the vision and opportunity for a genuine military revolution. Information warfare is real warfare; it is about using information to create such a mismatch between us and an opponent that, as Sun Tzu would argue, the opponent's strategy is defeated before his first forces can be deployed or his first shots fired.

The target of information warfare, then, is the human mind, especially those minds that make the key decisions of war or peace and, from the military perspective, those minds that make the key decisions on if, when, and how to employ the assets and capabilities embedded in their strategic structures. One could argue that certain aspects of the cold war such as Radio Free Europe, Radio Martí, or the US Information Agency were a dress rehearsal for information warfare. One could argue that certain current capabilities in psychological operations (PSYOP), public affairs and civil affairs, together with the intelligence agencies, satellite drivers, communications specialists, computer wizards, and the men and women in agencies like the Air Intelligence Agency or the new Joint Information Warfare Center, represent some of the key learning environments in which we'll develop some of the new capabilities for information warfare.7 And while the concept of information warfare in its computer, electronic warfare, and communications net version is most familiar in military operations involving traditional state-to-state conflict, there are new and dangerous players in "cyberspace"-the battlefield for information warfare. There has been a proliferation of such players- nonstate political actors such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, rogue computer hackers like the Legion of Doom, some third world "rebel" who stages a "human rights abuse" for the Cable News Network (CNN), or ideological/religious inspired terrorists with easy access to worldwide computer and communications networks to influence, to exchange information, or to coordinate political action on a global basis. All of this suggests that the military or governments of a traditional nation-state may not be the only serious threat to our security or the driver of our national security politics.8 Cyberspace may be the new "battlespace," but the battle remains the battle for the mind. There must be no confusion of the battlespace with the battle.

Let's take a look at this in a context we think we're familiar with: propaganda as an effort to influence national morale and support for the nation's armed forces. The Vietnam War taught us the consequences of winning every battle in the field and losing the information war on the home front. Before the advent of information warfare, propaganda was traditionally targeted through various mass media to influence a mass audience. One key change made possible by the new technologies is the potential for customized propaganda. Those who have received individually targeted political advertising from a company specializing in "niche" marketing research must have had a momentary shudder when they realized that there are private companies who seem to know everything about their buying habits and tastes, whether they support the National Rifle Association or attend Tailhook conventions, and what television shows they watch. Every credit card purchase adds data to someone's resources, and not everybody is selling just soap or politicians. Contemporary public and commercial databases and the constantly expanding number of sources, media, and channels for the transmission of information, essentially available to anyone with a bit of money or skill, have created the opportunity and "target sets" for custom-tailored information warfare attacks on, to take just one example, the families of deployed military personnel. Think about the morale implications of that for a minute. Computer bulletin boards, cellular telephones, video cameras, and fax machines-all of these provide entry points and dissemination nets for customized propaganda assaults by our opponents on military, governmental, economic, key civilian strategic structures, or even the home checking accounts of deployed troops.9 Operations security (OPSEC) is increasingly a most vital military security issue. However, information warfare should not be confused with or limited to just propaganda, deception, or traditional electronic warfare.

A major new factor in information war is the worldwide infosphere of television and broadcast news. Information warfare at the strategic level is the "battle off the battlefield" to shape the political context of the conflict. It will define the new "battlespace." We face an "integrated battlefield," not in the usual sense of having a global positioning system (GPS) receiver in every tank or cockpit but in the Clausewitzian sense that war is being integrated into the political almost simultaneously with the battle. Many people suspect that the national command authorities (NCA) are in danger of becoming increasingly "reactive" to a "fictive" universe created by CNN, its various international competitors, or even a terrorist with a video camera.10 This media-created universe we live in is fictive rather than "fictional" because although what we see on CNN is "true," it is just not the whole, relevant, or contextual truth. Nevertheless, this fictive universe becomes the politically relevant universe in which the government or the armed forces are supposed to "do something." Members of Congress, the national command authorities, and our mothers all watch the "instant news" followed by "instant" second-guessing commentary. This is increasingly the commander's nightmare. First, 15 congressmen are calling the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to ask whether retired admiral so-and-so's critical analysis on "Nightline" of the CINC's ongoing theater air campaign is valid. More importantly, 300 congressmen are also getting 10,000 calls, E-mails, faxes, and even letters from angry families who've just seen the television report (carefully "leaked" to French television by an unhappy defense contractor and innocently repeated by CNN) that the US military-issue antimalaria pills don't work in Bongo-Bongo. All this without the real "bad guys" trying their hand at information war. Use your imagination. Somalia gets in the news, and we get into Somalia despite the reality of equally disastrous starvation, disorder, and rapine right next door in Sudan. The truth is that there were no reporters with "skylink" in Sudan because the government of Sudan issued no visas to CNN reporters. We all know the impact of the pictures of the failed raid to capture Mohamed Farah Aidid in Somalia. The potential, then, for governments, militaries, parties in a civil war such as Bosnia, or even religious fanatics to manipulate the multimedia, multisource fictive universe of "the battle off the battlefield" for strategic information dominance should be obvious.11 The armed services are just beginning to think about how these new technologies of instant communication will change the battlespace, and, quite frankly, there are not many good answers yet.

Fictive or fictional operational environments, then, whether mass-targeted or niche-targeted, can be generated, transmitted, distributed, or broadcast by governments or all sorts of players through increasingly diversified networks. The information war potential available to states or other players with access to the universe of internetted communications to use the networks over which banking information is transmitted to suggest that a "hostile" state is about to devalue its currency could easily provoke financial chaos.12 Direct satellite radio or television broadcasts to selected audiences, analogous to central control of pay-per-view programs, again offers the potential for people in one province or region of a targeted state to discover that the maximum leader has decided to purge soldiers from their clan or tribe from the army. Your own imagination can provide many examples of how the increasingly multisource communications systems offer both the armed forces and the national command authorities countless new possibilities for societal-level information warfare to shape the information battlespace to our advantage.

Let us take just one example of how current technologies could be used for strategic-level information warfare. If, say, the capabilities of already well-known Hollywood technologies to simulate reality were added to our arsenal, a genuinely revolutionary new form of warfare would become possible. Today, the techniques of combining live actors with computer-generated video graphics can easily create a "virtual" news conference, summit meeting, or perhaps even a battle that would exist in "effect" though not in physical fact. Stored video images can be recombined or "morphed" endlessly to produce any effect chosen. This moves well beyond traditional military deception, and now, perhaps, "pictures" will be worth a thousand tanks. Imagine the effect of a nationwide broadcast in banditland of the meeting between the "digitized" maximum leader and a "digitized" Jimmy Carter in which all loyal soldiers are told to cease fighting and return to their homes. The targets of information warfare, remember, are the decisions in the opponent's mind, and the battlespace of the human mind is also the zone of illusion.

Let's play with this a bit. Through hitching a ride on an unsuspecting commercial satellite, a fictive simulation is broadcast. This may not be science fiction, and readers of Tom Clancy's latest novel Debt of Honor will suspect it's not. Simultaneously, various "info-niches" in the target state are accessed via the net. Some of the targets receive reinforcement for the fictive simulation; others receive slightly misleading variations of the target state's anticipated responses, and the whole of the opponent's military is subject to a massive electronic deception operation. What is happening here?

At the strategic level, this is the paralysis of the adversary's observation, orientation, decision, action (OODA) loop.13 The opponent's ability to "observe" is either flooded or very slightly and subtly assaulted by contradictory information and data. More importantly, his ability to "orient" is degraded by the assault on the very possibility of objective reasoning as we replace his "known" universe with our alternative reality. His "decisions" respond increasingly to our fictive or virtual universe, and, most importantly, military "actions" within his strategic structures become increasingly paralyzed as there is no rational relationship of means to ends. What he does is not based on reality because we've changed his reality. This is real war fighting. It would seem, then, that if we can develop a strategic vision and real capability for information warfare, we can bring American strategic power within sight of that elusive "acme of skill" wherein the opponent is subdued without killing as we destroy his ability to form or execute a coherent strategy. How, then, do we think about developing information warfare strategy?
Developing Information Warfare Strategy

Developing a strategy of information warfare starts with serious, creative, and "color-outside-the-lines" thinking about current information technologies and ways in which these might be turned to strategic purpose to serve the national command authorities and military use. This will involve thinking about information in new ways: What information is needed? What organizational changes would occur in the way we gather, process, distribute, and use information? What information-based operational changes could then happen?14 The services are starting this new thinking under the label "command and control warfare."15 This, however, is only the first step, as the "digitized battlefield" fails to revolutionize strategic thinking. Let's illustrate this with a bit of history. As Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich observed, some time before the American Civil War, the Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke was thinking about railroads and telegraphs:

If we used the telegraph to relay mobilization orders quickly and then used railroads to concentrate troops from bases scattered throughout Prussia, we could concentrate the main effort at the key battle location of a campaign. We wouldn't have to mobilize the army, then concentrate it, then march it to where we hoped the key battle would occur.16

Good insight. And this, unfortunately, is about where we are when we think of information warfare as only command and control warfare.17 That is, how does this technology permit tanks, ships, and aircraft to do what they do now a bit better. It was Moltke's next insight, argues Speaker Gingrich, that the Joint Staff and the services need to imitate:

But the Prussian army is not organized, nor does it operate in a way that would permit it to respond to telegraphed orders to get on trains and show up somewhere else. That's not how we organize, train, and equip. What I need to do is reform the way to get the information needed to do this, the way we're organized so we can use this information, and figure-out new ways to operate; what I need is a new General Staff system.18

So Count von Moltke realized that before he could make revolutionary use of the new technology, he had to solve the higher-order question of what changes in information, organization, and operations would be needed. This is the challenge we face now. The armed forces have a good idea that information technologies just might be the driver in future warfare, but we haven't yet articulated the strategic vision or identified the higher-order changes we need to make to really make this all come together.

Now, let's add another idea-this time from the Air Force heritage. In some ways, "info-warriors" are like Gen William ("Billy") Mitchell and the pioneer league of airmen. They see the potential. Mitchell's vision of the potential for airpower drove, at great cost to himself but great benefit to the nation, the development of a new form of warfare. Now here's the key point. Once the vision of strategic airpower was presented clearly, once people were able to say, "Yes, I see how this could change warfare," then the technologies followed: "Oh, air bombing-you'll need a bombsight." "Oh, enemy aircraft-we'll need some kind of detection system; let's call it radar." This is the point-the technology is not just a force multiplier. It is the interaction of strategic vision with new technology that will produce the revolution in military affairs and a new warfare form.

This, then, is the challenge of information warfare. Is there something about information and the information technologies that would permit us to create such a mismatch between what, when, and how we and our opponents observe, orient, decide, and act or such a level of "information dominance" that the opponent is helpless-and not just on the battlefield? Is there a way we could use information, like current theories of airpower, to create an "information campaign" that engages an opponent simultaneously in time, space, and depth across the full range of his strategic structures so that the result is strategic paralysis (he is deaf, dumb, and blind to anything except that which we permit him to hear, say, or see)?19 Not that we just blind him, but that he sees what we wish him to see without realizing that it's "our" reality, not his. Can we envision that kind of strategic information warfare? And, as was the case with airpower, technology will follow strategic vision. It's OK if we can't insert computer viruses by direct satellite broadcast-today; fry every air defense radar with an electromagnetic burst from a remote unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-today; transfer all the dictator's Swiss bank accounts to the internal revenue service (IRS)-today; project holographic images, complete with proper electronic signatures, of 15 squadrons coming in from the north when we're coming in the back door-today; or beam the Forrest Gump interview with "El Supremo" into every radio and television in banditland-today. Develop the strategic theory of information warfare, and the technology will come.
Information Warfare Doctrine

There is, of course, no official information warfare doctrine and the efforts of the various services to describe command and control warfare as the military application of information warfare remain incomplete. For the Air Force to focus almost exclusively on C2W that is defined as the "integration, coordination, deconfliction, and synchronization" of OPSEC, deception, PSYOP, electronic warfare, and physical destruction efforts targeted against the opponent's fielded military forces represents a failure to appreciate either air and space power or to appreciate how airpower doctrine could guide the development of an information warfare campaign. How, then, might we use current Air Force doctrine as presented in Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, as a template to start thinking about information warfare?

First, assume that information warfare is warfare in the information realm as is air warfare in the air and space realms. As the objective of air warfare is to control the air realm in order to exploit it while protecting friendly forces from enemy actions in the air realm, so the objective of information warfare is to control the "infosphere" in order to exploit it while protecting friendly forces from hostile actions taken via the information realm. Thus, as air control is usually described as counterair, with offensive and defensive counterair, so any strategy and doctrine of information control must address counterinformation in terms of offensive and defensive counterinformation. Offensive counterinformation, like offensive counterair, could be seen as involving information exploitation through psychological operations, deception, electronic warfare, or physical attack and information protection as, again, physical attack, electronic warfare (EW), and, often overlooked, public and civil affairs. Defensive counterinformation, like defensive counterair, would include active protection such as physical defense, OPSEC, communications security, computer security, counterintelligence, and, again, public affairs. Passive protection would include standard ideas like hardening sites and physical security.

If control, or dominance, of the information realm is the goal, like air control, it is not an end in itself but the condition to permit the exploitation of information dominance for, as in air doctrine, strategic attack, interdiction, or close "battlefield" support through C2W attack. Information dominance of both the strategic "battle off the battlefield" and the operational "information battlespace" is, like air and space control for traditional surface warfare, the key to strategic effect. The relevance of airpower doctrinal thinking for information warfare now becomes obvious. A review of the history of the airpower debates would show, in part, that those who insisted that airplanes were merely a force multiplier to provide close air support for the "real" effort would never recognize the strategic potential of airpower or support the acquisition of technologies for strategic air missions. As long as information warfare thinking is dominated by a doctrine that argues that the only information warfare mission relevant to the armed forces is command and control warfare and that C2W is merely a force multiplier against the communications and information assets of the fielded enemy forces, the potential for the exploitation of information dominance for strategic information warfare and, again, the identification and acquisition of key technologies will be missed. C2W, like close air support, is a vital military mission. It is, in fact, a central component of information warfare, but, like close air support and other "traditional" battle-oriented missions, not the whole story. The challenge is to use Air Force doctrine as the foundation to envision the "Information Campaign," which, like the "Air Campaign" in the Gulf War, is of strategic significance. What, for example, would "speed, precision, and lethality" be in an "info-strike?"
Epilogue: Danger of Not Developing Information Warfare Strategy

If the world really is moving into a third-wave, information-based era, failure to develop a strategy for both defensive and offensive information warfare could put the United States and the US military into the situation of being on the receiving end of an "Electronic Pearl Harbor."20 Information is fluid; the advantages we now have, and which were demonstrated in the Gulf War, could be lost because we have very little control over the diffusion of information technology.21 Second, it's a smaller world, and our potential opponents can observe our technologies and operational innovations and copy ours without them having to invent new ones for themselves.22 Remember, the biggest center for developing new computer software is not Silicon Valley but Madras, India. What will they sell to whom? Finally, and to return to an earlier point, if the US military approaches information warfare merely as a force multiplier and adapts bits and pieces of technology to just do our current way of warfare a bit better-if we "digitize the battlefield" for an endless rerun of mechanized desert warfare-the real danger will be that someone else will refuse to play the game our way. What if they, like Count von Moltke or General Mitchell, think real hard, purchase the dual-use technologies on the free world market, alter their whole strategic concept, and make the leap to a strategy of information warfare?

We do not yet have a strategy of information warfare, and we have not answered the higher-order questions of how we would reorganize, retrain, and reequip for third-wave warfare. But if any of this has made even some sense, you now know the urgent requirement for developing the vision that produces the strategy. The strategy will identify the technologies, organizational changes, and new concepts of operations. We must really become like von Moltke and Billy Mitchell-"If we could use this to do that, then we could. . . ."

Notes

1. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Memorandum of Policy 30, subject: Command and Control Warfare, 8 March 1993.

2. Gen Gordan R. Sullivan and Col James M. Dubik, "War in the Information Age," Military Review 74 (April 1994): 46-62.

3. Alan D. Campen, ed., The First Information War: The Story of Communications, Computers and Intelligence Systems (Fairfax, Va.: AFCEA International Press, 1992).

4. Mary C. Fitzgerald, "Russian Views on Information Warfare," Army 44, no. 5 (May 1994): 57-59.

5. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, "Cyberwar is Coming!" Comparative Strategy 12 (April-June, 1993): 141-65.

6. Carl H. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the Evolution and State of the U.S. Air Force , (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994).

7. "Information Dominance Edges toward New Conflict Frontier," Signal 48 (August, 1994): 37-39.

8. Winn Schwartau, Information Warfare: Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1994).

9. Peter Black, "Soft Kill: Fighting Infrastructure Wars in the 21st Century," Wired, July-August 1993; 49-50.

10. Douglas V. Johnson, The Impact of the Media on National Security Decision Making (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 1994).

11. John Arquilla, "The Strategic Implications of Information Dominance," Strategic Review 22, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 24-30.

12. H. D. Arnold et al., "Targeting Financial Systems as Centers of Gravity: `Low Intensity' to `No Intensity' Conflict," Defense Analysis 10 (August 1994): 181-208.

13. John R. Boyd, "A Discourse on Winning and Losing," 1987. Unpublished set of briefing slides available at Air University Library, Maxwell AFB, Alabama.

14. Maj George E. Orr, Combat Operations C3I: Fundamentals and Interactions (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1983); and Frank M. Snyder, Command and Control: The Literature and Commentaries (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1993).

15. Lt Col Norman B. Hutcherson, Command and Control Warfare: Putting Another Tool in the War-fighter's Data Base (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, September 1994).

16. Newt Gingrich, "Information Warfare: Definition, Doctrine and Direction," address to the National Defense University, Washington, D.C., 3 May 1994.

17. Joint Publication 3-13, "Joint Command and Control Warfare (C2W) Operations," second draft (Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, D.C., 15 January 1994).

18. Gingrich address.

19. John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1988).

20. Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Co., 1993).

21. V.K. Nair, War in the Gulf: Lessons for the Third World (New Delhi, India: Lancer International, 1991), see especially chap. 4, "Role of Electronics in the Gulf War," and chap. 5, "Desert Storm: Air Power and Modern War."

22. Jean Pichot-Duclos, "Toward a French `Economic Intelligence' Model," Defense Nationale, January 1994, 73-85 in Federal Broadcast Information Service: West Europe, 25 January 1994, 26-31.

Contributor

Dr George J. Stein (BA, Assumption College; MA, Pennsylvania State University, phD, Indiana University) is director, International Security Studies Core and professor of European Studies at the Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. Before joining Air University in 1991, Professor Stein had taught in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Miami University, since 1977. He was active in SPACECAST 2020 and continues his research in information warfare.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the US Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University



www.iwar.org.uk/iwar/resources/airchronicles/stein.htm
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Aw: Psychological Warfare and Mind Control 23 Sep 2009 23:52 #343

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TV- Fakery:


When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing
By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, Feb. 1, 1999

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm


When TV brings you the news as it didn't happen
Broadcasters are using virtual imaging technology to alter live broadcasts - and not even the news is safe from tampering
Monday, 24 January 2000

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/anal...t-happen-728236.html

July 2000
Lying With Pixels

Seeing is no longer believing. The image you see on the evening news could well be a fake - a fabrication of fast new video-manipulation technology.
By Ivan Amato

web.archive.org/web/20000711055157/http:...les/july00/amato.htm
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Aw: Psychological Warfare and Mind Control 22 Oct 2009 17:32 #384

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Pentagon used psychological operation on US public, documents show

By Brad Jacobson
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Figure in Bush propaganda operation remains Pentagon spokesman

In Part I of this series, Raw Story revealed that Bryan Whitman, the current deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, was an active senior participant in a Bush administration covert Pentagon program that used retired military analysts to generate positive wartime news coverage.

A months-long review of documents and interviews with Pentagon personnel has revealed that the Bush Administration's military analyst program -- aimed at selling the Iraq war to the American people -- operated through a secretive collaboration between the Defense Department's press and community relations offices.

Raw Story has also uncovered evidence that directly ties the activities undertaken in the military analyst program to an official US military document’s definition of psychological operations -- propaganda that is only supposed to be directed toward foreign audiences.

The investigation of Pentagon documents and interviews with Defense Department officials and experts in public relations found that the decision to fold the military analyst program into community relations and portray it as “outreach” served to obscure the intent of the project as well as that office’s partnership with the press office. It also helped shield its senior supervisor, Bryan Whitman, assistant secretary of defense for media operations, whose role was unknown when the original story of the analyst program broke.
Story continues below...

In a nearly hour-long phone interview, Whitman asserted that since the program was not run from his office, he was neither involved nor culpable. Exposure of the collaboration between the Pentagon press and community relations offices on this program, however, as well as an effort to characterize it as a mere community outreach project, belie Whitman’s claim that he bears no responsibility for the program’s activities.

hese new revelations come in addition to the evidence of Whitman’s active and extensive participation in the program, as Raw Story documented in part one of this series. Whitman remains a spokesman for the Pentagon today.

Whitman said he stood by an earlier statement in which he averred “the intent and purpose of the [program] is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American public.”

In the interview, Whitman sought to portray his role as peripheral, noting that his position naturally demands he speak on a number of subjects in which he isn’t necessarily directly involved.

The record, however, suggests otherwise.

In a January 2005 memorandum to active members of both offices from then-Pentagon press office director, Navy Captain Roxie Merritt, who now leads the community relations office, emphasized the necessary “synergy of outreach shop and media ops working together” on the military analyst program. [p. 18-19]

Merritt recommended that both the press and community relations offices develop a “hot list” of analysts who could dependably “carry our water” and provide them with ultra-exclusive access that would compel the networks to “weed out the less reliably friendly analysts” on their own.

“Media ops and outreach can work on a plan to maximize use of the analysts and figure out a system by which we keep our most reliably friendly analysts plugged in on everything from crisis response to future plans,” Merritt remarked. “As evidenced by this analyst trip to Iraq, the synergy of outreach shop and media ops working together on these types of projects is enormous and effective. Will continue to examine ways to improve processes.”

In response, Lawrence Di Rita, then Pentagon public affairs chief, agreed. He told Merritt and both offices in an email, “I guess I thought we already were doing a lot of this.”

Several names on the memo are redacted. Those who are visible read like a who’s who of the Pentagon press and community relations offices: Whitman, Merritt, her deputy press office director Gary Keck (both of whom reported directly to Whitman) and two Bush political appointees, Dallas Lawrence and Allison Barber, then respectively director and head of community relations.

Merritt became director of the office, and its de facto chief until the appointment of a new deputy assistant secretary of defense, after the departures of Barber and Lawrence, the ostensible leaders of the military analyst program. She remains at the Defense Department today.

When reached through email, Merritt attempted to explain the function of her office's outreach program and what distinguishes it from press office activities.

“Essentially,” Merritt summarized, “we provide another avenue of communications for citizens and organizations wanting to communicate directly with DoD.”

Asked to clarify, she said that outreach’s purpose is to educate the public in a one-to-one manner about the Defense Department and military’s structure, history and operations. She also noted her office "does not handle [the] news media unless they have a specific question about one of our programs."

Merritt eventually admitted that it is not a function of the outreach program to provide either information or talking points to individuals or a group of individuals -- such as the retired military analysts -- with the intention that those recipients use them to directly engage with traditional news media and influence news coverage.

Asked directly if her office provides talking points for this purpose, she replied, “No. The talking points are developed for use by DoD personnel.”

Experts in public relations and propaganda say Raw Story's findings reveal the program itself was "unwise" and "inherently deceptive." One expressed surprise that one of the program's senior figures was still speaking for the Pentagon.

“Running the military analyst program from a community relations office is both surprising and unwise,” said Nicholas Cull, a professor of public diplomacy at USC’s Annenberg School and an expert on propaganda. “It is surprising because this is not what that office should be doing [and] unwise because the element of subterfuge is always a lightening rod for public criticism.”

Diane Farsetta, a senior researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy, which monitors publics relations and media manipulation, said calling the program “outreach” was “very calculatedly misleading” and another example of how the project was “inherently deceptive.”

“This has been their talking point in general on the Pentagon pundit program,” Farsetta explained. “You know, ‘We’re all just making sure that we’re sharing information.’”

Farsetta also said that it’s “pretty stunning” that no one, including Whitman, has been willing to take any responsibility for the program and that the Pentagon Inspector General’s office and Congress have yet to hold anyone accountable.

“It’s hard to think of a more blatant example of propaganda than this program,” Farsetta said.

Cull said the revelations are “just one more indication that the entire apparatus of the US government’s strategic communications -- civilian and military, at home and abroad -- is in dire need of review and repair.”

A PSYOPS Program Directed at American Public

When the military analyst program was first revealed by The New York Times in 2008, retired US Army Col. Ken Allard described it as “PSYOPS on steroids.”

It turns out this was far from a casual reference. Raw Story has discovered new evidence that directly exposes this stealth media project and the activities of its participants as matching the US government’s own definition of psychological operations, or PSYOPS.

The US Army Civil Affairs & Psychological Operations Command fact sheet, which states that PSYOPS should be directed “to foreign audiences” only, includes the following description:

“Used during peacetime, contingencies and declared war, these activities are not forms of force, but are force multipliers that use nonviolent means in often violent environments.”

Pentagon public affairs officials referred to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” in documented communications.

A prime example is a May 2006 memorandum from then community relations chief Allison Barber in which she proposes sending the military analysts on another trip to Iraq:

“Based on past trips, I would suggest limiting the group to 10 analysts, those with the greatest ability to serve as message force multipliers.”

Nicholas Cull, who also directs the public diplomacy master’s program at USC and has written extensively on propaganda and media history, found the Pentagon public affairs officials’ use of such terms both incriminating and reckless.

“[Their] use of psyop terminology is an ‘own goal,’” Cull explained in an email, “as it speaks directly to the American public’s underlying fear of being brainwashed by its own government.”

This new evidence provides further perspective on an incident cited by the Times.

Pentagon records show that the day after 14 marines died in Iraq on August 3, 2005, James T. Conway, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, instructed military analysts during a briefing to work to prevent the incident from weakening public support for the war. Conway reminded the military analysts assembled, “The strategic target remains our population.” [p. 102]

Same Strategy, Different Program

Bryan Whitman was also involved in a different Pentagon public affairs project during the lead-up to the war in Iraq: embedding reporters.

The embed and military analyst programs shared the same underlying strategy of “information dominance,” the same objective of selling Bush administration war policies by generating favorable news coverage and were directed at the same target -- the American public.

Torie Clarke, the first Pentagon public affairs chief, is often credited for conceiving both programs. But Clarke and Whitman have openly acknowledged his deep involvement in the embed project.

Clarke declined to be interviewed for this article.

Whitman said he was “heavily involved in the process” of the embed program's development, implementation and supervision.

Before embedding, reporters and media organizations were forced to sign a contract whose ground rules included allowing military officials to review articles for release, traveling with military personnel escorts at all times or remaining in designated areas, only conducting on-the-record interviews, and agreeing that the government may terminate the contract “at any time and for any reason.”

In May 2002, with planning for a possible invasion of Iraq already in progress, Clarke appointed Whitman to head all Pentagon media operations. Prior to that, he had served since 1995 in the Pentagon press office, both as deputy director for press operations and as a public affairs specialist.

The timing of Whitman’s appointment coincided with the development stages of the embed and military analyst programs. He was the ideal candidate for both projects.

Whitman had a military background, having served in combat as a Special Forces commander and as an Army public affairs officer with years of experience in messaging from the Pentagon. He also had experience in briefing and prepping civilian and military personnel.

Whitman's background provided him with a facility and familiarity in navigating military and civilian channels. With these tools in hand, he was able to create dialogue between the two and expedite action in a sprawling and sometimes contentious bureaucracy.

Buried in an obscure April 2008 online New York Times Q&A with readers, reporter David Barstow disclosed:

“As Lawrence Di Rita, a former senior Pentagon official told me, they viewed [the military analyst program] as the ‘mirror image’ of the Pentagon program for embedding reporters with units in the field. In this case, the military analysts were in effect ‘embedded’ with the senior leadership through a steady mix of private briefings, trips and talking points.”

Di Rita denied the conversation had occurred in a telephone interview.

“I don’t doubt that’s what he heard, but that’s not what I said,” Di Rita asserted.

Whitman said he'd never heard Di Rita make any such comparison between the programs.

Barstow, however, said he stood behind the veracity of the quote and the conversation he attributed to Di Rita.

Di Rita, who succeeded Clarke, also declined to answer any questions related to Whitman’s involvement in the military analyst program, including whether he had been involved in its creation.

Clarke and Whitman have both discussed information dominance and its role in the embed program.

In her 2006 book Lipstick on a Pig, Clarke revealed that “most importantly, embedding was a military strategy in addition to a public affairs one” (p. 62) and that the program’s strategy was “simple: information dominance” (p. 187). To achieve it, she explained, there was a need to circumvent the traditional news media “filter” where journalists act as “intermediaries.”

The goal, just as with the military analyst program, was not to spin a story but to control the narrative altogether.

At the 2003 Military-Media conference in Chicago, Whitman told the audience, “We wanted to take the offensive to achieve information dominance” because “information was going to play a major role in combat operations.” [pdf link p. 2] One of the other program’s objectives, he said, was “to build and maintain support for U.S. policy.” [pdf link, p. 16 – quote sourced in 2005 recap of 2003 mil-media conference]

At the March 2004 “Media at War” conference at UC Berkeley, Lt. Col. Rick Long, former head of media relations for the US Marine Corps, offered a candid view of the Pentagon’s engagement in “information warfare” during the Bush administration.

“Our job is to win, quite frankly,” said Long. “The reason why we wanted to embed so many media was we wanted to dominate the information environment. We wanted to beat any kind of propaganda or disinformation at its own game.”

“Overall,” he told the audience, “we’re happy with the outcome.”

The Appearance of Transparency

On a national radio program just before the invasion of Iraq, Whitman claimed that embedded reporters would have a firsthand perspective of “the good, the bad and the ugly.”

But veteran foreign correspondent Reese Erlich told Raw Story that the embed program was “a stroke of genius by the Bush administration” because it gave the appearance of transparency while “in reality, they were manipulating the news.”

In a phone interview, Erlich, who is currently covering the war in Afghanistan as a “unilateral” (which allows reporters to move around more freely without the restrictions of embed guidelines), also pointed out the psychological and practical influence the program has on reporters.

“You’re traveling with a particular group of soldiers,” he explained. “Your life literally depends on them. And you see only the firefights or slog that they’re involved in. So you’re not going to get anything close to balanced reporting.”

At the August 2003 Military-Media conference in Chicago, Jonathan Landay, who covered the initial stages of the war for Knight Ridder Newspapers, said that being a unilateral “gave me the flexibility to do my job.” [pdf link p. 2]

He added, “Donald Rumsfeld told the American people that what happened in northern Iraq after [the invasion] was a little ‘untidiness.’ What I saw, and what I reported, was a tsunami of murder, looting, arson and ethnic cleansing.”

Paul Workman, a journalist with over thirty years at CBC News, including foreign correspondent reporting on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote of the program in April 2003, “It is a brilliant, persuasive conspiracy to control the images and the messages coming out of the battlefield and they've succeeded colossally.”

Erlich said he thought most mainstream US reporters have been unwilling to candidly discuss the program because they “weren’t interested in losing their jobs by revealing what they really thought about the embed process.”

Now embedded with troops in Afghanistan for McClatchy, Landay told Raw Story it’s not that reporters shouldn’t be embedded with troops at all, but that it should be only one facet of every news outlet’s war coverage.

Embedding, he said, offers a “soda-straw view of events.” This isn't necessarily negative “as long as a news outlet has a number of embeds and unilaterals whose pictures can be combined” with civilian perspectives available from international TV outlets such as Reuters TV, AP TV, and al Jazeera, he said.

Landay placed more blame on US network news outlets than on the embed program itself for failing to show a more balanced and accurate picture.

But when asked if the Pentagon and the designers of the embed program counted as part of their embedding strategy on the dismal track record of US network news outlets when it came to including international TV footage from civilian perspectives, he replied, “I will not second guess the Pentagon’s motives.”

Brad Jacobson is a contributing investigative reporter for Raw Story. Additional research was provided by Ron Brynaert.

rawstory.com/2009/10/bryan-whitman-2/
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Aw: Psychological Warfare and Mind Control 22 Oct 2009 17:37 #385

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Das Horrorkabinett des Dr. Herold

Udo Schulze 20.10.2009
Terrorfahndung bis zum Bruch des Grundgesetzes
"Bundesfahndungstage", Abriegelungen ganzer Städte, Täuschung und Manipulation der Bevölkerung, Spiele mit der Angst: Was die Spitzen bundesdeutscher Sicherheitsbehörden während der Zeit des RAF-Terrors an Fahndungsmethoden ersonnen und ausführen ließen, gleicht den Überlegungen eines Horrorkabinett. Allen voran Dr. Horst Herold, damals Leiter des BKA, dachten sich die Führungsgremien von Politik und Polizei die abstrusesten Aktionen aus. Bin hin zum Bruch des Grundgesetzes.
ls sei es ein Signal zum Aufbruch ins Uferlose gewesen, begann das Stuttgarter Innenministerium wenige Tage nachdem die CDU 1972 die baden-württembergischen Landtagswahlen mit 52,9 Prozent gewonnen hatte, eine Aktion, die bislang vor der Öffentlichkeit geheimgehalten wurde. Observationstrupps des LKA starteten zur Beobachtung eines Tübinger Rechtsanwalts, den sie der Unterstützung der damals noch "Baader-Meinhof-Bande" genannten RAF bezichtigten.

Doch nicht nur der Mann selber, auch seine Freunde gerieten in den Sog der Ermittlungen. Darunter eine Freundin des Anwalts, bei deren Observation die Beamten gegen das im Grundgesetz verankerte Trennungsgebot von Geheimdiensten und Polizei verstießen. Hand in Hand arbeiteten in diesem Fall Schlapphüte und LKA-Beamte zusammen.

Schlimmer noch: Die Kriminalbeamten waren dem Verfassungsschutz sogar unterstellt, ihm gegenüber also weisungsgebunden. Hier der Wortlaut des dem Autor vorliegenden, internen Schreibens (Die Namen der Betroffenen sind der TP-Redaktion bekannt): "Abt. III - SG, - Soko BM, Bundeskriminalamt, z. Z. München, den 21. Mai 1972. Betr.: Ermittlungsverfahren gegen RA XY, geb. 14. 3. 1940 in X, wohnh. in Tübingen, X-Str., wegen Verdachts der Unterstützung einer krim. Vereinigung u. a. Hier: Sporadische Observation vom 9. 5. bis 11. Mai 1972 in Stuttgart und Tübingen. a) RA XY, b) RA C, c) MM. Lage: Nach vertraulichen Angaben hatte die MM über RA XY Kontakt mit BAADER und ENSSLIN bekommen. Sie erhielt den Auftrag, eine geeignete Wohnung für die Bande in Stuttgart anzumieten. Von diesem Auftrag trat sie schließlich zurück und teilte den Entschluss dem RA XY mit.

Die Observation wurde bis zum 9. 5. 1972 durch das LfV Baden-Württemberg durchgeführt. Den Observationskräften waren Angehörige des LKA Baden-Württemberg zugeordnet. Die Einsatzleitung der kriminalpolizeilichen Observation lag in den Händen des LfV."

Zudem hatte sich die AG Kripo, eine Arbeitsgemeinschaft aller LKA-Chefs und der BKA-Leitung, eine Aktion "Rotlicht/Schranke" ausgedacht, bei der im Fall der Fahndung nach Terroristen allen Ernstes sämtliche Bahnschranken einer Stadt geschlossen sowie alle Ampeln zeitgleich auf Rot geschaltet werden sollten, um die Gesuchten an der weiteren Flucht zu hindern. Dabei nahmen die Teilnehmer der Runde auch das Steckenbleiben von Krankenwagen im Verkehr in Kauf. Erst als ihnen dämmerte, dass bei dem so entstandenen Chaos auch die Polizeifahrzeuge nicht mehr durchkommen würden, ließen sie von dem Gedanken ab.

Dafür ersann Horst Herold Mitte der 70-er Jahre ein Szenario, das möglicherweise auch in die Tat umgesetzt wurde. Mit Hilfe der Geheimdienste und der psychologischen Kriegsführung der Bundeswehr sollten Falschmeldungen über die RAF verbreitet werden, um Verunsicherung in die Bevölkerung zu tragen. Selbst an staatlich gelenkte Anschläge, deren Urheberschaft der RAF zugeordnet werden sollte, war gedacht worden. Herold zu den Teilnehmern der AG Kripo: "Das hat ein erhöhtes Gefühl der Eigenbedrohung bei der Bevölkerung zur Folge und erhöht die Akzeptanz für weitere polizeiliche Maßnahmen."


www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/31/31314/1.html
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