[Infowarrior] - Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law

[Richard Forno]

Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on Mon, 04/28/2008 - 19:04.


The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week's exposé by
David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It
violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing
in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those
restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other
Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United
States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research
Service, "publicity or propaganda" is defined by the U.S. Government
Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public
officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) "covert propaganda." By
covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the
government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a
third party.

These concerns about "covert propaganda" were also the basis for the GAO's
strong standard for determining when government-funded video news releases
are illegal:

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http://www.prwatch.org/node/7261