WASHINGTON, DC – Sen. John Kerry sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office today, asking them to investigate the legality of the Pentagon’s alleged covert practice of providing special access to military contractors in hope that they’d make sympathetic statements about Administration war policy over the airwaves.

Kerry asked just how widespread this practice actually was, who knew about it, how it affected defense contracting deals and whether these military analysts or the DoD were breaking propaganda laws. Media reports have asserted that over 150 military contractors, lobbyists, senior officials, and board members were involved in these operations, many of whom had significant financial interests vested in the Administration’s wartime policies.

“Americans need to be able to trust that defense contractors secure government contracts based on how well they protect our soldiers, not how closely they follow Pentagon talking points. I look forward to hearing from the GAO about the legality of this alleged covert practice, who was involved, how it operated, and its impact on media coverage.”

The text of Kerry’s letter is below:

April 28, 2008

The Honorable Gene Dodaro
Acting Comptroller General,
United States Government Accountability Office
441 G St., NW
Washington, DC 20548

Dear Mr. Dodaro:

Recently, the New York Times reported that the Department of Defense (DoD) led a covert effort to cultivate military analysts with distinguished service records to produce favorable press coverage of the Administration’s wartime policies.

There is great public concern that DoD would systematically enlist military analysts, many of whom had business interests tied to the Administration’s war effort, to spread its message over the airwaves. At a time when confidence in Washington is at an all-time low, there is a very real worry among Americans that when they turn on the television to hear objective analysis from a military commentator they might instead be hearing what they would deem to be “propaganda.”

Collectively, this cadre of analysts may represent over 150 military contractors as lobbyists, senior officials, and board members. The analysts’ business relationships raise legitimate concerns as to whether some of them were encouraged to tailor their commentary in order to maintain their companies’ good standing with DoD. In fact, some analysts reportedly echoed message points they sometimes suspected to be inaccurate or false for this reason.

So that Congress may understand the full reach of this alleged operation, as well as what steps may be necessary to prevent a similar effort in the future, I ask that your office pursue a full investigation into this matter. I ask that this investigation consider the following:

• The names of all senior Pentagon officials involved in this effort, and the extent of that involvement;
• The extent of the contact between Pentagon officials and the military analysts in question regarding what was said by the analysts over the public airwaves;
• The extent to which the military analysts involved had personal financial interests that were in some way linked to their analysis, including a list of federal contracts that are in any way linked to the companies that employ any of the analysts in question;
• The extent to which the personal financial interests of the analysts were known, and potentially used, by the Pentagon to promote misleading, inaccurate or false information through the media;
• The extent to which the personal financial interests of the analysts were disclosed to the public and to the media outlets that employed their service;
• Whether the actions taken by Pentagon officials to recruit and employ the military analysts were in fact illegal, and if so, whether those involved were made aware at the time that they were breaking the law;
• What procedures are in place to ensure that military analysts with close ties to government officials or information are not using preferential access to senior officials to further business opportunities; and
• What steps need to be taken by Congress and by the Pentagon to ensure that this type of effort is not repeated.

As the answers to these questions will do much to address the level of doubt and cynicism created by these actions, I ask that you pursue this request with a sense of urgency and report your findings to Congress as expeditiously as possible.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.
Sincerely,

John Kerry

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