Photo, above: Hidden Woman by flickr.com user turboalieno, CC-licensed
The Inspector General of the US Defence Department defines three types of public relations activity:
- PsyOp (Psychological Operations) is “selective information” intended “to influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups and individuals.”
- Public Affairs is “truthful and factual unclassified information” intended for audiences that may include Americans.
- Information Operations (IO) are intended “to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp” an opponent’s “decision making while protecting our own.” Information Operations can incorporate PsyOp, but not Public Affairs.
A Pentagon official, cited by Aerospace Daily in 2009, defines three types of “miscellaneous foreign contractors”:
- signatories to classified contracts
- vendors, like translators, who might be put at risk if their work with the American military were made public
- small overseas transactions with vendors who do not have a unique business ID, called a DUNS number, on file with the US Government – “the donkey-rental guy in the middle of the desert,” for example
White desert near to Baharia, Egypt, photo by flickr.com user neijs, CC-licensed
Rendon company logo: not a donkey-rental guy
Imagine the confusion and amusing hijinks that ensue when some government PR contracts are redacted to replace the names of legitimate US companies with the generic term “miscellaneous foreign contractors”.
It is especially amusing when you realise the redactions are happening in the database that underpins usaspending.gov, a US Federal Government web site intended to increase the transparency of government decision-making and spending.
In fact, it seems spending on defence-related media and public relations contracts has become so transparent, it’s invisible.
In writing about these contracts Mark Prendergast consulted only public sources. No military, government or corporate official warned him off:
“Nonetheless, since detailed information was shared with various government officials in the course of making and explaining these inquiries, data that had been publicly accessible before has now been made more difficult or even impossible to find.”
Since 2000, US$41.6 billion has been paid out to “miscellaneous foreign contractors,” according to usaspending.gov. Tens of millions of dollars have been paid to PR companies for work in Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations. Prendergast points to several instances where the definitions above are being blurred or actively ignored by those contractors and the Defence Department that engages them.
Prendergast wrote four articles reviewing Stars and Stripes‘ coverage of the Rendon Group’s media-analysis work for the military in Afghanistan. The articles were published on 12 February, 24 February, 17 March and 12 July 2010. A fifth article was published on 15 July 2010 after the Pentagon protested that a recently-issued memo would not restrict public or Congressional access to defence-related information.
Related: in 2008 the New York Times published an article describing how retired Pentagon officials are employed as ‘military analysts’ to comment in mainstream media about the US Government’s military activities. These commentators’ financial ties to defence organisations are rarely, if ever, mentioned in relation to their commentary.
