Pentagon begins revising DOD space policy. NOTE: This story was updated at 1. EST to reflect new information. COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. The changes may also incorporate a more thorough policy on offensive space tactics, they said. Doug Loverro, the deputy assistant defense secretary for space policy, said in an interview here April 1.
Space Strategic Portfolio Review. The changes will focus on mandating what the Pentagon calls “mission assurance” or “resilience” in which the Defense Department wants to ensure its satellites can operate no matter the situation.
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In recent months, Defense Department leaders have touted a September 2. Space Domain Mission Assurance: A Resilience Taxonomy,” as leading the Pentagon’s thought processes on future space architectures. That white paper was written by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security. During an April 1. Space Symposium here, Loverro alluded to several current policy debates within the national security space community, which government and industry sources say are some of the same topics the revisions would likely address.“Our job right now is to figure out how do we create policies that enhance rather than hamper” the Defense Department’s space capabilities, Loverro said. In recent years, the Pentagon has shifted billions of dollars in the Air Force’s budget to counter those efforts and caused a broad rethinking of how the Air Force operates in space.
Pentagon Officials Furious After Clinton Announces US Response Time for Nuclear Launch During Debate. The Pentagon is in the early stages of revising U.S. Get the latest on health, career, and relationships from the Lifestyle editors at Esquire.
Pentagon officials say part of that solution could entail better incorporating commercially available capabilities and increasing reliance on industry partners. Loverro said it was important for the Defense Department to “harmonize policy and the use of commercial space.” He added that current space policy is based on the fact that most satellite capabilities come from government- owned systems and not commercial companies. He also said the Pentagon is discussing export policy changes geared toward easing the transfer of certain space capabilities to international partners in the name of enhanced resiliency.“How do we take what was viewed as a national security risk previously, which is the export space capabilities, and turn it into a national security benefit?” Loverro said. The export of space capabilities “to our allies helps us far more than it hurts us.”Loverro said the Pentagon is also considering the implications of using international navigation satellites to guide U. S. We see it right around the corner,” he said.
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand. The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 1. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.
Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley. In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated.
Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access. A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.“It was them saying, .
Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said. Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”The Pentagon defended its relationship with military analysts, saying they had been given only factual information about the war. Whitman added, “a bit incredible” to think retired military officers could be “wound up” and turned into “puppets of the Defense Department.”Many analysts strongly denied that they had either been co- opted or had allowed outside business interests to affect their on- air comments, and some have used their platforms to criticize the conduct of the war.
Several, like Jeffrey D. Mc. Causland, a CBS military analyst and defense industry lobbyist, said they kept their networks informed of their outside work and recused themselves from coverage that touched on business interests.“I’m not here representing the administration,” Dr. Mc. Causland said. Some network officials, meanwhile, acknowledged only a limited understanding of their analysts’ interactions with the administration.
They said that while they were sensitive to potential conflicts of interest, they did not hold their analysts to the same ethical standards as their news employees regarding outside financial interests. The onus is on their analysts to disclose conflicts, they said.
And whatever the contributions of military analysts, they also noted the many network journalists who have covered the war for years in all its complexity. Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed.
But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,0. Iraq and Guant. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H.
Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.“Good work,” Thomas G. Mc. Inerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena.”The documents released by the Pentagon do not show any quid pro quo between commentary and contracts. But some analysts said they had used the special access as a marketing and networking opportunity or as a window into future business possibilities.
John C. Garrett is a retired Marine colonel and unpaid analyst for Fox News TV and radio. He is also a lobbyist at Patton Boggs who helps firms win Pentagon contracts, including in Iraq.
In promotional materials, he states that as a military analyst he “is privy to weekly access and briefings with the secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high level policy makers in the administration.” One client told investors that Mr. Garrett’s special access and decades of experience helped him “to know in advance — and in detail — how best to meet the needs” of the Defense Department and other agencies. In interviews Mr. Garrett said there was an inevitable overlap between his dual roles. He said he had gotten “information you just otherwise would not get,” from the briefings and three Pentagon- sponsored trips to Iraq.
He also acknowledged using this access and information to identify opportunities for clients. Garrett displayed an eagerness to be supportive with his television and radio commentary. Mc. Causland said. With a majority of Americans calling the war a mistake despite all administration attempts to sway public opinion, the Pentagon has focused in the last couple of years on cultivating in particular military analysts frequently seen and heard in conservative news outlets, records and interviews show. Some of these analysts were on the mission to Cuba on June 2. Guant. On the flight to Cuba, for much of the day at Guant. The analysts went on TV and radio, decrying Amnesty International, criticizing calls to close the facility and asserting that all detainees were treated humanely.“The impressions that you’re getting from the media and from the various pronouncements being made by people who have not been here in my opinion are totally false,” Donald W.
Shepperd, a retired Air Force general, reported live on CNN by phone from Guant. Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no clear connection to the Sept. Pentagon and White House officials believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome this resistance. Torie Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.” In a spin- saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent. And so even before Sept. Pentagon to recruit “key influentials” — movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr.
Rumsfeld’s priorities. In the months after Sept. Ms. Clarke and her staff sensed a new opportunity. Clarke’s team, the military analysts were the ultimate “key influential” — authoritative, most of them decorated war heroes, all reaching mass audiences. Photo Dining with Donald H. Rumsfeld, second from left, during his final week as secretary of defense were the retired officers Donald W.
Shepperd, left, Thomas G. Mc. Inerney and Steven J. Greer, right. The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war. Even analysts with no defense industry ties, and no fondness for the administration, were reluctant to be critical of military leaders, many of whom were friends.
Nash, a retired Army general and ABC analyst. But these were trifling compared with what Ms. Clarke’s team had in mind. Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2.
Journalists were secondary. Meyer said. The Pentagon’s regular press office would be kept separate from the military analysts. The analysts would instead be catered to by a small group of political appointees, with the point person being Brent T. Krueger, another senior aide to Ms. The decision recalled other administration tactics that subverted traditional journalism. Federal agencies, for example, have paid columnists to write favorably about the administration. They have distributed to local TV stations hundreds of fake news segments with fawning accounts of administration accomplishments.
The Pentagon itself has made covert payments to Iraqi newspapers to publish coalition propaganda. Rather than complain about the “media filter,” each of these techniques simply converted the filter into an amplifier. Krueger said, the military analysts would in effect be “writing the op- ed” for the war.