The Lincoln Group Does Not Do Propaganda
Today's Washington Post features an article that gets into the spooky area of information operations. You may be thinking, "don't they do that every day on instructions from above"? Yes, you would have a valid point, but today's piece is actually about info-ops conducted by the Lincoln Group, the shadowy DOD contractor which plants stories in the Iraqi media.
Lincoln doesn't call what they do propaganda.
"We call it 'influence,' " says (Paige Craig, the West Point dropout and former Marine intelligence specialist who is the Lincoln Group's president), whose business has 12 U.S. government contracts totaling more than $130 million.
The Lincoln Group even has a "senior director for insight and influence." His name is Andrew Garfield...
The company has been contracted by a psyops division of the U.S. military, but Garfield insists that Lincoln's work cannot be considered psyops. That word, Garfield protests, refers to a military operation. And Garfield is very familiar with military psyops, as he is a former British military and intelligence official who regularly teaches a course at the U.S. Army base at Fort Bragg -- a course on . . . psyops...
Words can change what people think. Add some emotional punch and piercing imagery, and words can change how people behave. Repeat these words and images over and over, and they can define a culture. That's the info war -- far more intense than mere "spin" -- and it's been raging in the United States since the words "war on terror" were uttered in public and the national zeitgeist became one of fear.
The editors at the Post must have included this expert opinion as an inside joke:
"Part of the beauty of real successful propaganda is it works without you knowing that it works," says Anthony Pratkanis, co-author of "Age of Propaganda" and a professor of social psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Ho ho ho.
The article goes into the controversy about the DOD's use of the Lincoln Group, and the operational failure that the effort became public.
In a way, this is the price to be paid for not going covert all the way. Had the program been conducted completely undercover, it would have been better, says Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer and now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
"You can compliment the Pentagon for at least trying," he says of the military's outsourcing to Lincoln. "I think the agency [CIA] should have been engaged in this a long time ago."
"I suppose the historical parallel would be the agency's efforts during the Cold War to fund magazines, newspapers and journalists who believed that the West should triumph over communism," he says. "Much of what you do ought to be covert, and, certainly, if you contract it out, it isn't."
That's why they are not contracting out the anti-Iran info-op.
Lincoln doesn't call what they do propaganda.
"We call it 'influence,' " says (Paige Craig, the West Point dropout and former Marine intelligence specialist who is the Lincoln Group's president), whose business has 12 U.S. government contracts totaling more than $130 million.
The Lincoln Group even has a "senior director for insight and influence." His name is Andrew Garfield...
The company has been contracted by a psyops division of the U.S. military, but Garfield insists that Lincoln's work cannot be considered psyops. That word, Garfield protests, refers to a military operation. And Garfield is very familiar with military psyops, as he is a former British military and intelligence official who regularly teaches a course at the U.S. Army base at Fort Bragg -- a course on . . . psyops...
Words can change what people think. Add some emotional punch and piercing imagery, and words can change how people behave. Repeat these words and images over and over, and they can define a culture. That's the info war -- far more intense than mere "spin" -- and it's been raging in the United States since the words "war on terror" were uttered in public and the national zeitgeist became one of fear.
The editors at the Post must have included this expert opinion as an inside joke:
"Part of the beauty of real successful propaganda is it works without you knowing that it works," says Anthony Pratkanis, co-author of "Age of Propaganda" and a professor of social psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Ho ho ho.
The article goes into the controversy about the DOD's use of the Lincoln Group, and the operational failure that the effort became public.
In a way, this is the price to be paid for not going covert all the way. Had the program been conducted completely undercover, it would have been better, says Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer and now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
"You can compliment the Pentagon for at least trying," he says of the military's outsourcing to Lincoln. "I think the agency [CIA] should have been engaged in this a long time ago."
"I suppose the historical parallel would be the agency's efforts during the Cold War to fund magazines, newspapers and journalists who believed that the West should triumph over communism," he says. "Much of what you do ought to be covert, and, certainly, if you contract it out, it isn't."
That's why they are not contracting out the anti-Iran info-op.
posted by Effwit at 1:37 PM
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