Congressional Committees Raise Concerns Over Pentagon's Strategic Communications

Lawmakers are voicing concerns about the Pentagon's strategic communications programs, through which the military aims to win over civilians and erode support for adversaries in countries around the world. The programs have grown too fast and are spread through the Defense Department budget in a way that hampers oversight, complain the House and Senate Armed Services committees and the House Appropriations Committee. They also suggest that the military is producing propaganda and other materials that mask U.S. government sponsorship and focus "far beyond a traditional military information operations." The Pentagon spends nearly $1 billion a year on its strategic communications, its contribution to the "war of ideas" that until recent years had been the sole province of the State Department's public diplomacy effort. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in the military getting money more easily than the diplomatic corps, and the dominance of military personnel in those countries has led to an increasing military role in information operations. Several of the 10 classified programs "should be terminated immediately," said the panel, and it threatened to withhold funding for all 10 for next year until Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates reports to the committee about their "target audiences, goals, and measures of effectiveness." It also cut $500 million from the Pentagon's overall total for strategic communications.