See also: - www.lincolngroup.com | Senator, General Defend Iraq Propagada Plan | Military Admits Planting News in Iraq | The Pentagon's Vanity Press | Lobbyists Unseen

U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press
Troops write articles presented as news reports. Some officers object to the practice.
By Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi | Los Angeles Times | November 30, 2005

WASHINGTON — As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year.

The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.

The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption.

It comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." Standards vary widely at Iraqi newspapers, many of which are shoestring operations.

Underscoring the importance U.S. officials place on development of a Western-style media, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein. The hundreds of newspapers, television stations and other "free media" offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public to debate the issues of their burgeoning democracy, Rumsfeld said.

The military's information operations campaign has sparked a backlash among some senior military officers in Iraq and at the Pentagon who argue that attempts to subvert the news media could destroy the U.S. military's credibility in other nations and with the American public.

"Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it," said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.

The arrangement with Lincoln Group is evidence of how far the Pentagon has moved to blur the traditional boundaries between military public affairs — the dissemination of factual information to the media — and psychological and information operations, which use propaganda and sometimes misleading information to advance the objectives of a military campaign.

The Bush administration has come under criticism for distributing video and news stories in the United States without identifying the federal government as their source and for paying American journalists to promote administration policies, practices the Government Accountability Office has labeled "covert propaganda."

Military officials familiar with the effort in Iraq said much of it was being directed by the "Information Operations Task Force" in Baghdad, part of the multinational corps headquarters commanded by Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were critical of the effort and were not authorized to speak publicly about it.

A spokesman for Vines declined to comment for this article. A Lincoln Group spokesman also declined to comment.
One of the military officials said that, as part of a psychological operations campaign that has intensified over the last year, the task force also had purchased an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, and was using them to channel pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. Neither is identified as a military mouthpiece.

The official would not disclose which newspaper and radio station are under U.S. control, saying that naming them would put their employees at risk of insurgent attacks.

U.S. law forbids the military from carrying out psychological operations or planting propaganda through American media outlets. Yet several officials said that given the globalization of media driven by the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle, the Pentagon's efforts were carried out with the knowledge that coverage in the foreign press inevitably "bleeds" into the Western media and influences coverage in U.S. news outlets.

"There is no longer any way to separate foreign media from domestic media. Those neat lines don't exist anymore," said one private contractor who does information operations work for the Pentagon.

Daniel Kuehl, an information operations expert at National Defense University at Ft. McNair in Washington, said that he did not believe that planting stories in Iraqi media was wrong. But he questioned whether the practice would help turn the Iraqi public against the insurgency.

"I don't think that there's anything evil or morally wrong with it," he said. "I just question whether it's effective."
One senior military official who spent this year in Iraq said it was the strong pro-U.S. message in some news stories in Baghdad that first made him suspect that the American military was planting articles.

"Stuff would show up in the Iraqi press, and I would ask, 'Where the hell did that come from?' It was clearly not something that indigenous Iraqi press would have conceived of on their own," the official said.

Iraqi newspaper editors reacted with a mixture of shock and shrugs when told they were targets of a U.S. military psychological operation.

Some of the newspapers, such as Al Mutamar, a Baghdad-based daily run by associates of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, ran the articles as news stories, indistinguishable from other news reports. Before the war, Chalabi was the Iraqi exile favored by senior Pentagon officials to lead post-Hussein Iraq.

Others labeled the stories as "advertising," shaded them in gray boxes or used a special typeface to distinguish them from standard editorial content. But none mentioned any connection to the U.S. military.

One Aug. 6 piece, published prominently on Al Mutamar's second page, ran as a news story with the headline "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism." Documents obtained by The Times indicated that Al Mutamar was paid about $50 to run the story, though the editor of the paper said he ran such articles for free.

Nearly $1,500 was paid to the independent Addustour newspaper to run an Aug. 2 article titled "More Money Goes to Iraq's Development," the records indicated. The newspaper's editor, Bassem Sheikh, said he had "no idea" where the piece came from but added the note "media services" on top of the article to distinguish it from other editorial content.

The U.S. military-written articles come in to Al Mutamar, the newspaper run by Chalabi's associates, via the Internet and are often unsigned, said Luay Baldawi, the paper's editor in chief.

"We publish anything," he said. "The paper's policy is to publish everything, especially if it praises causes we believe in. We are pro-American. Everything that supports America we will publish."

Yet other Al Mutamar employees were much less supportive of their paper's connection with the U.S. military. "This is not right," said Faleh Hassan, an editor. "It reflects the tragic condition of journalists in Iraq. Journalism in Iraq is in very bad shape."

Ultimately, Baldawi acknowledged that he, too, was concerned about the origin of the articles and pledged to be "more careful about stuff we get by e-mail."

After he learned of the source of three paid stories that ran in Al Mada in July, that newspaper's managing editor, Abdul Zahra Zaki, was outraged, immediately summoning a manager of the advertising department to his office.

"I'm very sad," he said. "We have to investigate."

The Iraqis who delivered the articles also reaped modest profits from the arrangements, according to sources and records. Employees at Al Mada said that a low-key man arrived at the newspaper's offices in downtown Baghdad on July 30 with a large wad of U.S. dollars. He told the editors that he wanted to publish an article titled "Terrorists Attack Sunni Volunteers" in the newspaper.

He paid cash and left no calling card, employees said. He did not want a receipt. The name he gave employees was the same as that of a Lincoln Group worker in the records obtained by The Times. Although editors at Al Mada said he paid $900 to place the article, records show that the man told Lincoln Group that he gave more than $1,200 to the paper.

Al Mada is widely considered the most cerebral and professional of Iraqi newspapers, publishing investigative reports as well as poetry.

Zaki said that if his cash-strapped paper had known that these stories were from the U.S. government, he would have "charged much, much more" to publish them.

According to several sources, the process for placing the stories begins when soldiers write "storyboards" of events in Iraq, such as a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid on a suspected insurgent hide-out, or a suicide bomb that killed Iraqi civilians.

The storyboards, several of which were obtained by The Times, read more like press releases than news stories. They often contain anonymous quotes from U.S. military officials; it is unclear whether the quotes are authentic.

"Absolute truth was not an essential element of these stories," said the senior military official who spent this year in Iraq.
One of the storyboards, dated Nov. 12, describes a U.S.-Iraqi offensive in the western Iraqi towns of Karabilah and Husaybah.

"Both cities are stopping points for foreign fighters entering Iraq to wage their unjust war," the storyboard reads.
It continues with a quote from an anonymous U.S. military official: " 'Iraqi army soldiers and U.S. forces have begun clear-and-hold operations in the city of Karabilah near Husaybah town, close to the Syrian border,' said a military official once operations began."

Another storyboard, written on the same date, describes the capture of an insurgent bomb-maker in Baghdad. "As the people and the [Iraqi security forces] work together, Iraq will finally drive terrorism out of Iraq for good," it concludes.
It was unclear whether those two storyboards have made their way into Iraqi newspapers.

A debate over the Pentagon's handling of information has raged since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

In 2002, the Pentagon was forced to shut down its Office of Strategic Influence, which had been created the previous year, after reports surfaced that it intended to plant false news stories in the international media.

For much of 2005, a Defense Department working group has been trying to forge a policy about the proper role of information operations in wartime. Pentagon officials say the group has yet to resolve the often-contentious debate in the department about the boundaries between military public affairs and information operations.

Lincoln Group, formerly known as Iraqex, is one of several companies hired by the U.S. military to carry out "strategic communications" in countries where large numbers of U.S. troops are based.

Some of Lincoln Group's work in Iraq is very public, such as an animated public serv ice campaign on Iraqi television that spotlights the Iraqi civilians killed by roadside bombs planted by insurgents.

Besides its contract with the military in Iraq, Lincoln Group this year won a major contract with U.S. Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, to develop a strategic communications campaign in concert with special operations troops stationed around the globe. The contract is worth up to $100 million over five years, although U.S. military officials said they doubted the Pentagon would spend the full amount of the contract.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers
By JEFF GERTH and SCOTT SHANE | The New York Times | December 1, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - Titled "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq," an article written this week for publication in the Iraqi press was scornful of outsiders' pessimism about the country's future.

"Western press and frequently those self-styled 'objective' observers of Iraq are often critics of how we, the people of Iraq, are proceeding down the path in determining what is best for our nation," the article began. Quoting the Prophet Muhammad, it pleaded for unity and nonviolence.

But far from being the heartfelt opinion of an Iraqi writer, as its language implied, the article was prepared by the United States military as part of a multimillion-dollar covert campaign to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends, military contractors and officials said.

The article was one of several in a storyboard, the military's term for a list of articles, that was delivered Tuesday to the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm paid by the Pentagon, documents from the Pentagon show. The contractor's job is to translate the articles into Arabic and submit them to Iraqi newspapers or advertising agencies without revealing the Pentagon's role. Documents show that the intended target of the article on a democratic Iraq was Azzaman, a leading independent newspaper, but it is not known whether it was published there or anywhere else.

Even as the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development pay contractors millions of dollars to help train journalists and promote a professional and independent Iraqi media, the Pentagon is paying millions more to the Lincoln Group for work that appears to violate fundamental principles of Western journalism.

In addition to paying newspapers to print government propaganda, Lincoln has paid about a dozen Iraqi journalists each several hundred dollars a month, a person who had been told of the transactions said. Those journalists were chosen because their past coverage had not been antagonistic to the United States, said the person, who is being granted anonymity because of fears for the safety of those involved. In addition, the military storyboards have in some cases copied verbatim text from copyrighted publications and passed it on to be printed in the Iraqi press without attribution, documents and interviews indicated.

In many cases, the material prepared by the military was given to advertising agencies for placement, and at least some of the material ran with an advertising label. But the American authorship and financing were not revealed.

Military spokesmen in Washington and Baghdad said Wednesday that they had no information on the contract. In an interview from Baghdad on Nov. 18, Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, a military spokesman, said the Pentagon's contract with the Lincoln Group was an attempt to "try to get stories out to publications that normally don't have access to those kind of stories." The military's top commanders, including Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, did not know about the Lincoln Group contract until Wednesday, when it was first described by The Los Angeles Times, said a senior military official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Pentagon officials said General Pace and other top officials were disturbed by the reported details of the propaganda campaign and demanded explanations from senior officers in Iraq, the official said.

When asked about the article Wednesday night on the ABC News program "Nightline," General Pace said, "I would be concerned about anything that would be detrimental to the proper growth of democracy."

Others seemed to share the sentiment. "I think it's absolutely wrong for the government to do this," said Patrick Butler, vice president of the International Center for Journalists in Washington, which conducts ethics training for journalists from countries without a history of independent news media. "Ethically, it's indefensible."

Mr. Butler, who spoke from a conference in Wisconsin with Arab journalists, said the American government paid for many programs that taught foreign journalists not to accept payments from interested parties to write articles and not to print government propaganda disguised as news.
"You show the world you're not living by the principles you profess to believe in, and you lose all credibility," he said.

The Government Accountability Office found this year that the Bush administration had violated the law by producing pseudo news reports that were later used on American television stations with no indication that they had been prepared by the government. But no law prohibits the use of such covert propaganda abroad.

The Lincoln contract with the American-led coalition forces in Iraq has rankled some military and civilian officials and contractors. Some of them described the program to The New York Times in recent months and provided examples of the military's storyboards.

The Lincoln Group, whose principals include some businessmen and former military officials, was hired last year after military officials concluded that the United States was failing to win over Muslim public opinion. In Iraq, the effort is seen by some American military commanders as a crucial step toward defeating the Sunni-led insurgency.

Citing a "fundamental problem of credibility" and foreign opposition to American policies, a Pentagon advisory panel last year called for the government to reinvent and expand its information programs.

"Government alone cannot today communicate effectively and credibly," said the report by the task force on strategic communication of the Defense Science Board. The group recommended turning more often for help to the private sector, which it said had "a built-in agility, credibility and even deniability."

The Pentagon's first public relations contract with Lincoln was awarded in 2004 for about $5 million with the stated purpose of accurately informing the Iraqi people of American goals and gaining their support. But while meant to provide reliable information, the effort was also intended to use deceptive techniques, like payments to sympathetic "temporary spokespersons" who would not necessarily be identified as working for the coalition, according to a contract document and a military official.

In addition, the document called for the development of "alternate or diverting messages which divert media and public attention" to "deal instantly with the bad news of the day."

Laurie Adler, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln Group, said the terms of the contract did not permit her to discuss it and referred a reporter to the Pentagon. But others defended the practice.


"I'm not surprised this goes on," said Michael Rubin, who worked in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003 and 2004. "Informational operations are a part of any military campaign," he added. "Especially in an atmosphere where terrorists and insurgents - replete with oil boom cash - do the same. We need an even playing field, but cannot fight with both hands tied behind our backs."

Two dozen recent storyboards prepared by the military for Lincoln and reviewed by The New York Times had a variety of good-news themes addressing the economy, security, the insurgency and Iraq's political future. Some were written to resemble news articles. Others took the form of opinion pieces or public service announcements.

One article about Iraq's oil industry opened with three paragraphs taken verbatim, and without attribution, from a recent report in Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper. But the military version took out a quotation from an oil ministry spokesman that was critical of American reconstruction efforts. It substituted a more positive message, also attributed to the spokesman, though not as a direct quotation.

The editor of Al Sabah, a major Iraqi newspaper that has been the target of many of the military's articles, said Wednesday in an interview that he had no idea that the American military was supplying such material and did not know if his newspaper had printed any of it, whether labeled as advertising or not.

The editor, Muhammad Abdul Jabbar, 57, said Al Sabah, which he said received financial support from the Iraqi government but was editorially independent, accepted advertisements from virtually any source if they were not inflammatory. He said any such material would be labeled as advertising but would not necessarily identify the sponsor. Sometimes, he said, the paper got the text from an advertising agency and did not know its origins.

Asked what he thought of the Pentagon program's effectiveness in influencing Iraqi public opinion, Mr. Jabbar said, "I would spend the money a better way."

The Lincoln Group, which was incorporated in 2004, has won another government information contract. Last June, the Special Operations Command in Tampa awarded Lincoln and two other companies a multimillion-dollar contract to support psychological operations. The planned products, contract documents show, include three- to five- minute news programs.

Asked whether the information and news products would identify the American sponsorship, a media relations officer with the special operations command replied, in an e-mail message last summer, that "the product may or may not carry 'made in the U.S.' signature" but they would be identified as American in origin, "if asked."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times | Top
Senator, General Defend Iraq Propagada Plan
The New York Times | December 2, 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A key senator and the country's top military commander said Friday that a Pentagon propaganda program was part of an effort to ''get the truth out'' in Iraq.

Leaving a Pentagon meeting with Defense Department officials, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said the program, which pays to plant favorable stories with Iraqi journalists and newspapers, is a serious problem.

But Warner told The Associated Press that, ''Things like this happen. It's a war. The disinformation that's going on in that country is really affecting the effectiveness of what we're achieving, and we have no recourse but to try and do some rebuttal information.''

And Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that, ''We want to get the facts out. We want to get the truth out.''

Warner met with chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita and members of Pace's staff, but only bumped into Pace on his way out of the building.

Meanwhile, a Pentagon spokesman said Friday that it is not clear whether the program violated the law or Pentagon policy, a Defense Department spokesman said Friday.

''You can do something perfectly legal, but that is inconsistent with the policy or procedures of the department. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's the right thing to do,'' said spokesman Bryan Whitman.

He said the department is still gathering information on the matter.

Warner initially requested a Capitol Hill briefing for the committee, but committee spokesman John Ullyot said those plans were changed ''at the Pentagon's request.''

Whitman said the department was still gathering information about the program and the multimillion-dollar contracts that included paying Iraqi newspapers and journalists to plant favorable stories about the war and the rebuilding effort.

''We don't have all the facts,'' he said, including whether or not defense officials in Iraq knew exactly what was happening or whether they believed any of it was improper.

Military officials in Iraq say the program is a critical tool on the Iraq battleground.

''The purpose of this program is to ensure factual information is provided to the Iraqi public,'' Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, said in Iraq.

But Congress members and the White House have expressed concern.

''A free and independent press is critical to the functioning of a democracy, and I am concerned about any actions which may erode the independence of the Iraqi media,'' Warner said earlier.

One of the companies involved -- the Washington-based Lincoln Group -- has at least two contracts with the military to provide media and public relations services. One contract, for $6 million, was for public relations and advertising work in Iraq and involved planting favorable stories in the Iraqi media, Defense Department records show.

The other Lincoln contract, which is with the Special Operations Command, is worth up to $100 million over five years for media operations with video, print and Web-based products. That contract is not related to the dispute over propaganda and was not for services in Iraq, according to command spokesman Ken McGraw.

The Lincoln Group shares that Special Operations contract with SYColeman, a division of L-3 Communications, and Science Applications International Corp., a San Diego-based defense contractor.

The program came to light just as President Bush released his strategy for victory in Iraq. It includes the need to support a ''free, independent and responsible Iraqi media.''


''We're very concerned,'' said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. ''We are seeking more information from the Pentagon.''

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., characterized the program as a scheme that ''speaks volumes about the president's credibility gap. If Americans were truly welcomed in Iraq as liberators, we wouldn't have to doctor the news for the Iraqi people.''
• Copyright 2005 The Associated Press | Top |
Dec. 2, 2005
 LINCOLN GROUP PRESS RELEASE: TRUTH IN REPORTING -- www.lincolngroup.com

Lincoln Group has consistently worked with the Iraqi media to promote truthful reporting across Iraq. Our priority has always been, and continues to be, accuracy and timeliness.

Our clients, our employees and the Iraqis who support this effort have maintained a commitment to battle terror with a powerful weapon - the truth.

We counter the lies, intimidation, and pure evil of terror with factual stories that highlight the heroism and sacrifice of the Iraqi people and their struggle for freedom and security. We are encouraged by their sacrifice and proud to help them tell their side of the story
See also interviews on: PBS Evening News December 2, 2005 | Top
Military Admits Planting News in Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT | The New York Times | December 3, 2005

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - The military acknowledged Friday in a briefing for a ranking Senate Republican that news articles written by American troops had been placed as paid advertisements in the Iraqi news media and not always properly identified.

Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters after receiving a 25-minute briefing from officials at the Pentagon that senior commanders in Iraq were trying to get to the bottom of a program that apparently also paid monthly stipends to friendly Iraqi journalists.

Mr. Warner said there had been no indications yet that the paid propaganda had been false. But he said that disclosures that an American company, under contract to the Pentagon, was making secret payments to plant articles with positive messages about the United States military mission could undermine the Bush administration's goals in Iraq and jeopardize Iraq's developing democratic institutions. "I remain gravely concerned about the situation," he said.

He said he had been told that the articles or advertisements were intended to counter disinformation in the Iraqi news media that was hurting the American military's efforts to stabilize the country.

Under the program, the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm working in Iraq, was hired to translate articles written by American troops into Arabic and then, in many cases, give them to advertising agencies for placement in the Iraqi news media.

Some of the articles failed to carry a required disclaimer that they were paid for, Mr. Warner said.

Defense officials said it was unclear what the disclaimer was supposed to say, whether it had been left off by the Lincoln Group or by Iraqi publishers and whether the omission was deliberate.

Mr. Warner said the articles had been produced by the information operations staff under Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who oversees day-to-day operations in Iraq. The senator said a senior officer had reviewed all the materials that were provided to the Lincoln Group for placement, and that military lawyers checked all materials produced by the military or Lincoln.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Iraq, said contractors like the Lincoln Group had been used to market the articles to reduce the risk to Iraqi publishers, who might be attacked if they were seen as being closely linked to the military. "If any part of our process does not have our full confidence, we will examine that activity and take appropriate action," he said in a statement. "If any contractor is failing to perform as we have intended, we will take appropriate action."

On Friday, the Lincoln Group defended its practices, saying it had been trying to counter insurgent propaganda with accounts of heroism by allied forces. "Lincoln Group has consistently worked with the Iraqi media to promote truthful reporting across Iraq," Laurie Adler, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement.

But Congressional Democrats said the Lincoln Group activities were the latest example of questionable public relations policies by the administration. In an earlier case, payments were made to columnists, among them Armstrong Williams, who received $240,000, undisclosed at the time, for promoting No Child Left Behind, the administration's education initiative. In January, President Bush publicly abandoned this practice.

"From Armstrong Williams to fake TV news, we know this White House has tried multiple times to buy the news at home," Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said in a release on Friday. "Now, we need to find out if they've exported this practice to the Middle East."

Also on Friday, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, called on the acting Pentagon inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble, to investigate the Lincoln Group's activities to see if they amounted to an illegal covert operation. "The Pentagon's devious scheme to place favorable propaganda in Iraqi newspapers speaks volumes about the president's credibility gap, " Mr. Kennedy said. "If Americans were truly welcomed in Iraq as liberators, we wouldn't have to doctor the news for the Iraqi people."

Larry Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said General Vines and his staff in Iraq insisted that their activities with Lincoln had been "in accordance with all policies and guidelines." Mr. Di Rita said in a telephone interview that for now, the Lincoln Group would continue its efforts while military officials reviewed the overall program.

Mr. Di Rita said that military officials were also trying to determine what, if any, payments Lincoln made to Iraqi journalists. On its Web site, the Lincoln Group has noted its "thriving network of offices" in Iraq and its working relationships with "over 300 Iraqi journalists."

Mr. Di Rita acknowledged that parts of the Lincoln contract were classified, specifically procedures dealing with Iraqi personnel. Revealing the identities of Iraqis working for Lincoln or details of their work with the Americans could threaten their safety, he said.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times | Top
In addition to these news reports (initially by the Los Angeles Times, then by the New York Times), editorial comments were prompt -- and often funny:
The Pentagon's Vanity Press
By JOHN TIERNEY | Op-Ed Columnist New York Times | December 3, 2005

Now that the Pentagon has been outed for planting articles in Iraqi newspapers, we're faced with one of the easiest questions of the year: Is it proper for the government to manipulate public opinion through self-serving, one-sided journalism?

Of course not. In a free democratic society, biased journalism is the responsibility of billionaires, foundations and the reporters they buy.

The private sector could have done it cheaply and discreetly, but the Pentagon made a mess of it. It was caught not only planting articles but also - even more humiliating - paying newspapers for the privilege. The first rule of vanity publishing is to hide the money.

The Pentagon may want to blame this fiasco on the Lincoln Group, the Washington-based firm it hired to place the articles. P.R. pros are supposed to get stuff in the paper without straight payola. But in this case, they have an excuse.

If you've ever been a freelance writer, you know that trying to get an editor in America to accept an unsolicited article is humiliating enough. But the scribes at the Lincoln Group had to pitch stories to editors in a foreign country, and they weren't even hustling their own stuff. The stories were concocted by those masters of prose and narrative: Pentagon bureaucrats.

The Lincoln freelancers were offering stories with headlines like "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq," as Jeff Gerth reported in The New York Times. Gerth shared with me (free of charge) a stack of other stories flogged by the Lincoln Group, and after reading them I have new sympathy for these freelancers.

With a couple of exceptions - notably a piece headlined "Iraqi Forces Capture Al Qaeda Fighters Crawling Like Dogs" - this material is Mission Impossible. Try getting someone to take a piece called "Iraqi Soldiers Improve Leadership Skills" or "Renovated Facilities Help to Bolster Security in Mosul."

As I read them, I kept imagining rejection letters like:

Thank you for the opportunity to consider "Iraqis Electing the Future." It thoroughly differentiates the Coalition of Independent and Nonpartisan Election Monitors (CINEM) from the Civic Coalition for Free Elections (CCFE) and the Election Violence Education and Resolution project (EVER). Unfortunately, though, it's not quite right for our target audience.

Or:

We were intrigued by the headline of "An Iraqi Success Story." But we found the opening rather slow - "Telecommunications is arguably the sector most affected by the 2003 liberation of Iraq" - and then got bogged down in the key paragraph:
"And while there were initial disputes over the process that awarded Egypt-based Orascom Telecommunications (Iraqna), Kuwait-based MTC Atheer and Kurdish-owned Asiacell the first 24-month Iraqi cellphone licenses in December 2003, their growth can only be cited as an Iraqi success story."

Perhaps a rewrite could "punch up" the story to suit our needs, but we fear it still might not work. Have you considered a specialized business publication?

Or:

There is much to admire in your article on the Iraqi Security Forces. You memorably describe them "moving across the desert sands like the wind." But you do not introduce us to any of these "heroic" figures or describe their activities beyond a list of the weapons they seized.

You write that these soldiers "fight for freedom, wherever there is trouble," a revelation that would indeed be newsworthy to our readers across Iraq, not to mention the American military advisers. But our readers would remain skeptical unless you could provide more evidence.


After a few of these letters, any freelancer would look for a new strategy. Pentagon payola would be the only way to maintain your self-respect. I hope the Pentagon is getting out of the news business. But if the would-be journalists can't help themselves, they should at least do a good job of propaganda. No more stories headlined "Border Security Is in Full Swing on All Levels."

Go tabloid and start making money for a change:

"Osama's Orgy: The Tape Al Jazeera Won't Show You"
"Study: Handling I.E.D.'s Linked to Sterility"
"Drunken Zarqawi Cavorts in Vegas With Jessica Simpson"
"Iraqi Security Forces Cheer Tot With Kitten Rescue"
"Blackout Bliss: 101 Fun Things to Do When the Lights Go Out."
"Bomber's Report From Afterlife: No Virgins!"
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