Whether flying over the Iraqi desert in a gutted-out cargo plane, or working at CNN headquarters in Atlanta, US army radio deejays of the Psychological Operations Group drop propaganda bombs.
US Army Psychological Operations groups dropped 500,000 leaflets from airplanes over two Iraqi cities in the no-fly zone on Jan. 2, 2003.
The leaflets tell Iraqis to tune in to the radio station operated by members of Psychological Operations personnel, who broadcast propaganda messages from inside modified US military cargo planes.
It was the latest of 12 such leaflet drops in the past four months.
With the motto on their army logo reading “Persuade, Change, Influence,” the purpose of US Army’s Psychological Operations Unit has always clearly been to spread selected information.
News pieces that promote the interests of the military are enthusiastically distributed to press agencies worldwide, while news that could jeopardize military objectives is suppressed through a number of methods.
More divisions of Psychological Operations are expected to ship out to the Middle East in preparation for war with Iraq. Their purpose will be to convey pro-American messages, mainly through media such as radio and television stations, to the Iraqi populace in order to minimize resistance in a time of war.
In Feb. 2000, journalists at a military intelligence conference in Arlington, Virginia, heard about five Psychological Operations Group personnel working at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta. They came from the largest of the group’s units, the Fourth Group, which consists of 1,200 soldiers based in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The Dutch news magazine Trouw originally broke the story in their Feb. 17, 2000, issue, quoting Major Thomas Collins of the US Army Information Service.
“Psyops personnel, soldiers and officers, have been working in CNN’s heaquarters in Atlanta through our program ‘Training With Industry,’” Major Collins said. “They worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in the production of news.”
No major press agency or news network ever reported the story. After a number of independent journalists picked up on it, CNN issued a response denying they knew about the program.
Alexander Cockburn, a freelance journalist and editor of the Internet news magazine Counterpunch, was the first writer in the U.S. to report on CNN’s ties with information warfare.
After being asked by The Guilfordian whether he thought the military was influencing the media, Cockburn reflected on the story. “Probably the army figured they ought to learn as much as possible about the news operations, make friends, so they pitched the intern scheme, the guys at CNN said ‘it can’t hurt,’ and then they were off. The abiding concern of CNN is access to military operations in wartime. If you can’t get your crew to the front, using military choppers etc., you’re screwed. So they’re currying favor all the time, worried that the Fox guys will get the front seat to the next blood bath.”