2 Inquiries Set on Pentagon Publicity Effort

By DAVID BARSTOW
NYT

The inspector general’s office at the Defense Department announced on Friday that it would investigate a Pentagon public affairs program that sought to transform retired military officers who work as television and radio analysts into “message force multipliers” who could be counted on to echo Bush administration talking points about Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo and terrorism in general.

The announcement came a day after the House passed an amendment to the annual military authorization bill that would mandate investigations of the program by both the inspector general’s office and Congress’s investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office.

The G.A.O. said it had already begun looking into the program and would give a legal opinion on whether it violated longstanding prohibitions against spending government money to spread propaganda to audiences in the United States.

The Defense Department suspended the program last month, just days after it was the focus of an article in The New York Times. The article described an ambitious Pentagon campaign to cultivate dozens of military analysts as “surrogates” to generate favorable coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. The analysts, many with undisclosed ties to military contractors, were wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior government officials.

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