[iwar] [fc:The.Message.Is.The.Thing]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-29 07:15:14
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 07:15:14 -0800 (PST)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:The.Message.Is.The.Thing]
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National Journal
October 27, 2001
The Message Is The Thing
By George C. Wilson
A sign hanging on a wall inside the Pentagon symbolizes how much information
policies have changed under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his public
affairs chief, Victoria Clarke. The sign reads "Director of Message
Development." It is located right across from the entrance to Clarke's
E-ring office.
Behind the sign is a two-room cubicle. The inner one is occupied by Marc A.
Thiessen, who was the conservative spin-meister for the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee when Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., was chairman. Thiessen
and his associates write Rumsfeld's speeches and many of the preambles the
Secretary gives before taking questions from reporters about the ongoing war
against terrorism.
"Ken Bacon was interested in facts," said one Pentagon insider in describing
the modus operandi of the former Wall Street Journal reporter who preceded
Clarke as information chief at Defense. "He kept us scurrying for answers.
Torrie [Clarke] is more interested in themes, in projecting the message."
Further proof of this change, of this obsession with message rather than
with facts-be they positive or negative-comes through in talking with the
Clarke deputy who arranges brainstorming sessions to project Rumsfeld
messages, especially beyond the Beltway. He is Christopher Willcox, who was
editor in chief of Reader's Digest until he was pushed out last year by the
magazine's new chief executive officer, Thomas O. Ryder.
Willcox, whose title is deputy assistant secretary of Defense for public
affairs, is now considered the Mr. Outreach of the Pentagon. His job is to
help Rumsfeld polish his messages and to project them to influential people
far and wide. Asked why as a seasoned journalist he wanted such a job,
Willcox replied: "I've always been a conservative and a Republican. I knew
Rumsfeld. I wanted to join the Administration." He said nothing else in
journalism beckoned.
As we talked, Willcox and his staff were putting the finishing touches on
arrangements for the latest in a series of private meetings Rumsfeld has
been holding with groups ranging from arms control specialists to labor
leaders. This meeting, scheduled for October 28, was to include William J.
Bennett, a conservative Republican commentator; Tommy Boggs, a lobbyist and
Democratic fundraiser; Michael Deaver, a Ronald Reagan intimate and
image-meister; and Howard G. Paster, a former Clinton White House official
and current chairman and chief executive officer of the public relations
giant Hill and Knowlton, where Clarke formerly worked as director of its
Washington office. Reporters were to be banned from this meeting, as they
were from earlier ones.
In other facets of the Rumsfeld-Clarke "outreach" campaign, Clarke and her
deputy, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, participate in radio roundtables and invite
reporters and editorial writers from out-of-town newspapers to ask them, and
sometimes Rumsfeld, questions over the phone. Asked to sum up the objective
of this new information offensive, Willcox replied: "To engage different
groups in our effort to fight this war on terrorism." Widening public
support for higher defense budgets, he said, was not an objective.
It has been obvious since the start of President Bush's war against
terrorism that Rumsfeld is determined to manage the news about it. He and
his hand-picked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen.
Richard B. Myers, have conducted the important briefings and provided
operational details themselves, rather than allowing the theater commander
to do this, as was the case during the Persian Gulf and Kosovo wars. In
presenting the war to the public, Rumsfeld plays a theme song: "Accentuate
the Positive, Eliminate the Negative." He has lectured the press about
revealing operational details that he has not chosen to release. He has
resisted clearing the way for reporters to see the war for themselves by
refusing to allow them to accompany operational units. He evidently fears
that the reporters would pass on their unmassaged, off-message observations
to the public and perhaps give away military secrets in the process.
In contrast to the public relations orientation of Clarke and her obsession
with "message," most of her predecessors had been in the news business long
enough to carry to the Pentagon the deep conviction that reporters, within
limits, had a right to see for themselves what the military was up to. Most
of these ex-journalists would fight in the upper councils of the government
for media access to military action. They often persuaded the Defense
Secretary to overturn the keep-out-the-press policies of generals and
admirals. Michael Getler, a former foreign editor of The Washington Post who
saw his reporters obstructed by the military in the Gulf War and who
received promises of reform from then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney only
after the fighting was over, is among the veteran journalists lamenting the
lack of a champion for the press in this Administration.
From the Rumsfeld-Clarke end of the telescope, the view probably looks
pretty good right now. Their news management and outreach efforts are
winning the battle for America's hearts and minds, so why worry about the
complaints of the press? The answer is that sooner or later in this chaotic
war, as was the case in Vietnam, there will be bad news. If the Bush
Administration keeps focusing only on message, if it continues to keep
singing "Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative," its credibility
will sink like a stone no matter how glittering a speech the director of
message development writes for Rumsfeld. 

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