Media's war analysts linked to contractors, guided by Pentagon

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantanamo Bay. The detention center in Cuba had just been branded "the gulag of our times" by Amnesty International, there were allegations of abuse from U.N. human- rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration's communications experts responded swiftly.

They put a group of retired military officers on a jet normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a tour of Guantanamo.

To the public, these men are part of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as "military analysts." Their service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about pressing issues in the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance, The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks. But collectively, the men on that plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.

The companies include defense heavyweights but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration's war on terrorism. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Several analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public.

"It was them saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,' " said Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst.

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University in Washington, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. "This was a coherent, active policy," he said.

As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Allard recalled, he saw a gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

"Night and day," Allard said. "I felt we'd been hosed."

The Pentagon defended its relationship with military analysts, saying they had been given only factual information about the war.

"The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.

It was, Whitman added, "a bit incredible" to think retired military officers could be "wound up" and turned into "puppets of the Defense Department."

Several analysts strongly denied that they had either been co-opted or had allowed outside business interests to affect their on-air comments, and some have used their platforms to criticize the conduct of the war. Several, such as Jeffrey D. McCausland, a CBS military analyst and defense industry lobbyist, said they kept their networks informed of their outside work and recused themselves from coverage that touched on business interests.

Some network officials, meanwhile, acknowledged only a limited understanding of their analysts' interactions with the administration. They said that although they were sensitive to potential conflicts of interest, they did not hold their analysts to the same ethical standards as their news employees regarding outside financial interests.

The onus is on their analysts to disclose conflicts, they said. And whatever the contributions of analysts, they also noted the many network journalists who have covered the war for years in all its complexity.