Analyst: 'Nobody directed what we said'

Former general counters story by N.Y. Times

Paul Vallely sees a high-profile New York Times story on military talking heads as a hatchet job.

Vallely, 69, a retired U.S. Army major general living in Bigfork, is one of those talking heads.

On April 20, the Times published an extensive story on military analysts hired by television news operations to voice their insights and opinions on the air.

The Times story said the analysts - mostly retired generals and colonels - merely relayed Pentagon talking points over the air and in newspaper op-ed columns as part of a concentrated Bush administration public relations push. The Times published some of those columns.

Vallely was interviewed for the Times story as one of almost 20 military analysts that the newspaper looked at.

On Tuesday, he criticized the story's conclusions.

"The American people will understand it's bullshit. It's bullshit coming out of the Times," Vallely said. "Nobody ever directed what we said."

Vallely, a supporter of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and an advocate for expanding military operations against Iran, has been a longtime critic of the Times' war coverage.

In an April 25 letter to the Times, he accused it of "thwarting American's ability to fight that war by any means available."

In Tuesday's interview, he described the Times as "liberal," "left-leaning," "anti-war" and "negative."

In the Times story, some interviewed military analysts echoed Vallely that the TV experts kept their independence.

But the story quoted other TV military analysts saying the Pentagon successfully camouflaged its talking points going through so-called independent experts, including themselves.

The Times story's other main points included:

. Pentagon briefings to the analysts did not always match what was happening in Iraq. "I felt we had been hosed," the Times quoted one former analyst, retired U.S. Army Col. Kenneth Allard.

. Some TV analysts have ties to defense contractors, who have a financial interests in selling to the military. Vallely, who is primarily an author and talk-radio host, does not have such ties. However, he belongs to at least one conservative think tank and some conservative associations that focus on the Middle East.

. The Defense Department monitored what the analysts said on television, and complained to some who criticized the Pentagon's positions.

On April 22, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and chairman of the Senate's Armed Services Committee, wrote a letter to the Defense Department calling for an investigation of the Times' allegations.

In the U.S. House, U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., called for a hearing on the subject before a subcommittee of the National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee.

The Times story caused the Pentagon to temporarily suspend briefings and trips overseas for the analysts as of last Monday - pending a review of the practices, the Reuters news service reported.

"I'm not happy with the Defense Department backing down because of the newspapers, especially the New York Times," Vallely said. "I think it makes it look weak."

Vallely is a West Point graduate who spent 32 years in the regular Army and Reserves. That career included two combat tours in Vietnam, earning a Ranger tab and airborne wings, and retiring in 1993 as deputy commanding general for the army's Pacific operations.

He specialized in psychological warfare - or "Psyops" - for much of his career.

One of Vallely's underlying beliefs is that the American media and public fell prey to enemy propaganda in the Vietnam war.

In 1980 as a psyops colonel, he co-authored a paper that said: "We lost the war - not because we were outfought, but because we were out-PSYOPed. Our national will to victory was attacked more effectively than we attacked that of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, and the perception of this fact encouraged the enemy to hang on until the United States finally broke and ran for home."

Later in the same paper, Vallely and co-author, then-Maj. Michael Aquino, wrote that psychological operations - which they renamed as "MindWar" - "must reach out to friends, enemies and neutrals alike across the globe … through the media possessed by the United States, which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth."

Later on the same page, the paper continued: "MindWar must target all participants if it is to be effective. It must not only weaken the enemy; it must strengthen the United States … by explaining and emphasizing to our people the rationale for our national interest in a specific war … It must be axiomatic of MindWar that it always speaks the truth."

In a follow-up paper in 2003, Aquino wrote: "Essentially, you overwhelm your enemy with argument … invoking as it does the most intense emotions and commitments of its audiences it must deliver the goods as they are judged by the target audiences. If the ethical values of those audiences are not respected - if MindWar is used only in the service of ulterior motives and objectives - the resulting 'disintoxification' can be socially shattering."

Fox News first approached Vallely to be an on-the-air analyst in 1996 after TWA Flight 800 exploded in the air near Long Island. At the time, speculation ran rampant that a terrorist missile shot down the airplane until an exploding fuel tank was pinpointed as the cause.

Fox liked Vallely's work and asked him back several times in the 1990s at $550 an appearance.

That mushroomed into a steadier relationship after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Vallely worked mostly with Fox - also making some appearances elsewhere - until 2007 when health problems and travel burdens led him to quit that job.

He and his wife, Marian, visited the Flathead in 2000, liking it enough to buy a part-time home in Bigfork. The Washington, D.C., couple moved permanently to Bigfork in 2003.

Vallely writes nonfiction books on terrorism and recently had his first novel published. He is working on a book on the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. He also has been a technology consultant for IBM.

He also is a partner in Osprey Media, which wants to build a big film-video-radio-animation complex at the Old School Station industrial park south of Kalispell.

And Vallely is the host of a talk radio show called "Stand up America," which is broadcast on the Internet. Some of his columns have appeared as guest opinions in The Daily Inter Lake.

On Tuesday, Vallely said he and the other military analysts voiced their own conclusions on the network and cable TV show independently of the Pentagon's wishes.

"Everyone told it like it was except Wes Clark, who had a political agenda," Vallely said.

Wesley Clark is a retired four-star general who led the allied forces in the Kosovo war. He was briefly a Democratic candidate for president in 2003-04. He currently leads a Democratic political action committee.

"We pointed out the negative as well as the positive," said Vallely, who was a critic of the army's Stryker vehicles, which are eight-wheeled armored infantry carriers.

Vallely said the TV military analysts did not blindly follow the Pentagon's talking points. "They're too smart. These guys have been there and through it. You can't bullshit these guys," he said.

The New York Times reported that in the run-up to the war, the Pentagon worried about public resistance to invading Iraq.

The newspaper said Torie Clarke, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, wanted to achieve "information dominance."

Times reporter David Barstow wrote: "In a spin-saturated news culture, [Clarke] argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent."

So the Pentagon began courting the networks' military analysts - seeing them, rather than reporters, as the best way to pitch the Bush administration's messages to the public, the Times said.

Pentagon officials briefed the analysts with instructions not to quote the briefers directly or describe their contacts with the Pentagon, the Times reported.

In the Times story, some analysts said the briefings were on target, while others described them as "a snow job."

The Pentagon routinely took the military analysts to the Middle East and the prison at Guant?namo Bay for tours and briefings.

Vallely went to Guant?namo Bay three times for three to five days each. He is writing a book called "The Myths of Gitmo: Torture, Abuse or the Truth."

He has visited the Middle East six times, including two trips to Iraq. Each trip lasted four or five days.

When asked how much he could effectively learn in two short Pentagon-controlled trips to Iraq, Vallely pointed to his 32 years of military experience. However, he acknowledged two short trips do not compare to months or years within the country.

He said his experience enabled him to read between the lines in briefings, and to pick up clues that would be apparent to a longtime soldier.

"I can walk in and tell in 20 minutes whether they know what they're doing," he said.

The Times story zeroed in twice on Vallely's actions as an analyst.

The first was Vallely's participation in a 2003 Pentagon-sponsored trip of analysts to Iraq. Valley said Fox picked up his tabs for all his trips.

The Times quoted Vallely telling Fox talk-show host Alan Colmes: "You can't believe the progress" in rebuilding Iraq. In that 2003 broadcast, Vallely predicted that the insurgency would be "down to a few numbers" in a few months, the Times reported.

But in an interview for the April 20 story, Vallely told the Times: "I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south."

The Times cited that as an example of an analyst following the Pentagon's script, rather than voicing an independent opinion.

On Tuesday, Vallely told The Daily Inter Lake that "going south" referred to his opinion of Paul Bremer replacing Jay Garner in 2003 as the U.S. czar of rebuilding Iraq.

Vallely supported Garner's call for quick elections in Iraq, and criticized Bremer's decision to disband the Iraqi army and to delay the elections. He contended that much of today's troubles in Iraq could have been avoided if the Iraqi army remained intact after Saddam Hussein's defeat.

The Times also cited Vallely's actions in response to the so-called "generals revolt" of 2006 when at least six senior generals - including three who previously held major commands in Iraq - called for Rumsfeld's resignation as defense secretary.

They said that Rumsfeld frequently ignored military recommendations on Afghanistan and Iraq, including setting troop strengths drastically less than what the generals believed were needed to successfully occupy Iraq. That stance mirrors what retired Gen. Colin Powell, who was secretary of state in 2003, had argued earlier.

The Wall Street Journal asked Vallely and his frequent co-author, retired U.S Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney - who has military contractor ties - to write an op-ed piece in defense of Rumsfeld.

Vallely had been a longtime Rumsfeld supporter. He believes that if the Iraqi army had been kept intact in 2003, today's occupation force would include fewer American troops while being big and savvy enough to be effective.

Vallely contacted the Pentagon to get information and statistics - comparing that to a reporter calling a source for a story.

McInerney and Vallely wrote that Rumsfeld met frequently with generals, followed their advice, and that his critics opposed his efforts to re-create the military into lighter and more mobile expeditionary forces for Iraq and elsewhere.

"Mr. Rumsfeld is arguably one of the most effective secretaries of defense our nation has ever had," Vallely and McInerney wrote.

Vallely took different stances in 2006 and today on whether the dissenting generals should have publicly called for Rumsfeld's resignation.

In the Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Vallely and McInerney somewhat echoed what Vallely and Aquino wrote about "MindWar" in 1980.

"We do not believe that it is appropriate for active duty, or retired, senior military officers to publicly criticize U.S. civilian leadership during war. At best, such comments may send a confusing message to our troops. At worst, they can also inspire and motivate the evil forces we seek to defeat," Vallely and McInerney wrote.

But on Tuesday, Vallely criticized the dissenting generals - not for voicing complaints, but for waiting until they retired to do so.

"They didn't bitch and stand up and be counted" in the war's early years, Vallely said.

Rumsfeld resigned in November 2006.

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com