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Dave Barstow’s story on April 20 in The New York Times on how former military officers were being fed information by the Pentagon for their paid television appearances as unbiased analysts is unfortunately the latest example of how governments and intelligence services use propaganda to influence public opinion. In this case, defense contractors and the bloated Pentagon bureaucracy worked together to mislead the American public.

Brian Williams, who wrote a spirited defense of his friends Wayne Downey and Barry McCaffrey – the generals he used on the air – might try a little less blogging and a little more reporting so he and his colleagues stop being scammed by the Pentagon.

This is not just a matter of a few brown-nosing officers getting the networks on message to placate a White House in desperate straits because of an unwise war. To the bureaucratic overlords at the Pentagon, Bush and his team are merely part of Washington’s passing circus; another will soon come to town and will have to be whipped into shape. Selling the Pentagon has been their job for fifty years.

The brilliant part of the Pentagon partnership with its profit-driven contractors is that they have successfully convinced the American public and Congress that if you don’t fund and support everything we want, then you are unpatriotic. They have accomplished this feat and ingrained it into our consciousness generation after generation despite the fact that one of our greatest generals, Dwight David Eisenhower, actually warned us about them in December 1960. Ike’s speech – the best and most important of his presidency – detailed his fears about the military industrial complex. Now, nearly five decades later, the corporate arms industry has melded with the corporate media. In Brian William’s case, his bosses are one in the same.

Democrats and Republicans have all bought into the game. Contractors responsible for once only building weapons are now training troops, feeding them, vetting them, fighting with them, and even digging the latrines – anything for a profit. Hiring contractors was supposed to save the taxpayers money. Private companies were supposed to perform the duties cheaper and more efficiently. An outrage in 1990 was that the B-1 Bomber cost more than its weight in gold. The outrage now: That would seem like a bargain.

So how did the American public confuse patriotism with commerce? How did we get snookered into believing that a politician or reporter who questions a faulty weapons system or wants to know about contractor fraud is the enemy?

The answer is that military bureaucrats are in partnership with the corporations. There is no “revolving door.” The door is wide open to those who play the game to go and come as they please. Inside the door, they hand out the contracts. Outside the door, they collect the money. They give the media who play the game – just like their “message- force-multiplier” analysts –the illusion of access. They play the patriotism card to scare off aggressive reporters. The public knows no difference.

The Pentagon over the last 40 years has fulfilled all of President Eisenhower’s worst fears. The genius of the corporate partnership with the Pentagon is how they convinced Americans that support for outlandish spending equates with patriotism. The scale of the Pentagon effort is huge.

The National Security News Service has been exposing Pentagon media manipulation since 1990. Providing talking points to retired brass who have big time TV outlets was useful in selling Pentagon tactics and contractors’ weapons, but it is just a tiny part of a propaganda machine that puts Proctor & Gamble to shame.

It is easy to get news reporters and anchors to use former government officials as “experts.” But reaching the larger public who get their information from entertainment is even easier. The Pentagon and other government agencies have Hollywood offices. Slick, expense-accounted officers, cast for their Hollywood roles, meet with producers and writers and pitch them on the virtues of having the Pentagon on their side in film and series production. The dirty little secret, of course, is that in exchange for the big partner providing all the free gear and manpower, the writers and producers just have to sacrifice their creative souls and give the brass in Washington a little thing called “script approval.” In Hollywood, being able to offer up submarines, rockets, and aircraft carriers speaks to a studio’s bottom line. And General Electric –a large defense contractor – has a studio as well as a television network.

The Pentagon’s all time home run was Tom Cruises’ Top Gun. After that giant success for the Navy, admirals and generals got interested in this part of the public relations process. Flack schools and command structures changed. Flag officers were put in charge of public relations. Unfriendly media were targeted and reporters too good at their jobs were blacklisted.

David Barstow’s story demonstrated that it is not just greedy Hollywood types who have sold out for profit. The news executives at the networks called their friends at the Pentagon and received suggestions on who might be good on the air. The Pentagon facilitated networks hiring retirees who could comment effectively on the war. Think about it. Imagine the idea: News executive asking Pentagon PR buddies who they should hire to comment on a war the Pentagon is prosecuting.

The news executives who hired these officers should be banished once and for all to the PR world where they belong. They defend themselves by saying that they were assured that by hiring the high-level military retirees that these commentators had the knowledge and would get the access necessary to give their networks the real scoop in Iraq. Their real motives are that pro war meant higher ratings and the more pro war the network was the higher the year-end bonus. Even the embarrassing cable networks waved the flag to get the ratings. People were promoted for making their networks appear patriotic. Skeptics were quietly let go. In turn, the networks accepted the Pentagon rules. They didn’t go undercover to show the coffins coming home or cover the horrible treatment of veterans or other casualties of war.

The entire operation – the small army of now tarnished ex-Pentagon brass who took their media marching orders from a politically-motivated Pentagon PR machine to sell the Iraq war to willing reporters – has a long and ugly pedigree.

Manipulating the American public and media goes back to the Revolutionary War. The more recent and darker techniques were perfected under Major General Ralph Van Deman before World War I. Later as a retired general in San Diego, Van Deman used to share with favored reporters, politicians, and Hollywood executives his hundreds of thousands of secret files he had illegally collected on Americans. His goal was to ruin careers of suspected journalists, actors, personalities, and just about everyone who disagreed with him. Van Deman was the man behind the infamous “black list.” You see, the media and the entertainment industry have always been afraid of the government. You do not become a television news executive if courage is your strong suit. That went out with Edward R. Murrow.

The nefarious use of the media is not limited to the Pentagon. During the cold war the CIA actually convinced newspaper reporters and network types to work as intelligence agents. In the newspaper world the late James Copley was so generous he put his flagship newspaper in San Diego at the disposal of the Pentagon, the CIA, and FBI. He allowed Copley News Service to provide intelligence cover for the CIA all over Latin America. He was so smitten with the military, he hired an ex-Marine general nicknamed “Brute” Krulak to actually run his beloved San Diego Union.

Copley was not alone. A host of reporters, publishers, and editors all cooperated with the government. Yes, even The New York Times.

By 2002 the government did not need to recruit reporters to cooperate. The Pentagon and White House could easily “spoon feed” reporters information as if it were true, as we all learned with Judy Miller’s fanciful dispatches. The intelligence agencies call these reporters “tamed.”

There will be more to come on military media commentators. There will be stories about how they pushed the interests of their defense contractor bosses on the air. This story is not about mendacity or ego.  This is not about a small group of ex-brass who are attention starved and lap up being saluted by moronic TV anchors. This is not about getting that old feeling of “yes sir” back. This is about former senior officers putting in a good word for a company they are affiliated with to make a buck. The Pentagon gets a contract it may or may not need; the networks fill air time with cheap commentators with whom they feel comfortable; the former military officers get well-paid positions at companies or on their boards and are available to move back into the government whenever necessary to keep the whole process going. All of it courtesy of  the American taxpayers. We are paying to fool ourselves.

If you are a news professional, sometimes you just have to tell your bosses: “No.” Yeah, you might get fired. But that’s journalism. Either you’re pursuing the truth or you’re not.

The military’s latest PR effort is to create the illusion that the Pentagon and its contractors are green. The political head of the Pentagon – the Office of the Secretary of Defense – is letting out contracts not to just let Americans know that the contractors’ killer weapons are a great value, but also that they are environmentally sensitive.