Janine Wedel - Unaccountable - How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security

The concern Webb voiced about the think–tank-industry-government-media nexus is not the only area that raises questions; so does the COIN policy itself. But the MO, not its efficacy, is my focus. The conventional wisdom had it that COIN (along with a “surge” of forces) “worked” in Iraq. But given the adulatory coverage of COIN and Petraeus in the general press, buoyed by this nexus, it remains to be seen whether alternatives for policy toward Afghanistan received enough attention. 39

Enlisting Journalistic Firepower

The nexus encompassed a crucial component not featured in Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex: the media. The COIN idea had to be sold to policymakers and the public. And here, in true shadow-elite style, we see the conflation of roles and agendas, and the challenges to impartial reporting and accountability.

We just mentioned Robert Kaplan joining the Defense Policy Board. Kaplan, however, did not come from a policymaking background; he is a journalist, a prolific author, and a longtime foreign correspondent for the Atlantic . Kaplan was part of the other indispensable piece of the CNAS strategy for gaining influence: harnessing media power, both in old-fashioned media and new. As one blogger joked, “CNAS Whale Swallows National-Security Journalists Whole.” 40

CNAS’s then-CEO Nathaniel Fick, while not a reporter, is a telegenic presence. He took part early on in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as a Marine Corps infantry officer and then went on to become an author and, at one time, an on-air CBS News national-security consultant. 41(Interestingly, Fick is now CEO of Endgame, the cyber-defense company seeking to avoid the public eye.)

Among the CNAS writers-in-residence were well-known defense and intelligence print reporters: Eric Schmitt, Thom Shanker, David Sanger, David Cloud, Greg Jaffe, and perhaps most notably Tom Ricks. They worked at various times, sometimes with overlapping tenures, at the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times, among other outlets , each one either winning or serving on a team that won a Pulitzer Prize. 42

Why does this impressive roster potentially undermine accountability? Of course, journalists are always hungry for access, and with newspapers in free fall it’s no wonder that CNAS was able to entice so many prominent names. But at least three of the reporters named above continued reporting or blogging in traditional media outlets while at the same time affiliating with CNAS and writing books that would then be reviewed in . . . all those traditional newspapers or affiliated sites, often by like-minded COIN supporters. 43

Some of the reporters affiliated with CNAS have taken on full-fledged government roles. One of them, David Cloud, went on to serve as special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan in Kabul during 2009, before returning to journalism at the Chicago Tribune ’s Washington bureau. 44

How can we trust the efficacy of information from sources, however astute, whose journalistic missions are potentially compromised by their conflation of roles and support from the very parties promoting policies about which they are reporting?

Flouting the Chain of Command

The shadow-elite age is also characterized by sidestepping bureaucracy and the practice of informality. When Major General Michael Flynn, then the top intelligence officer in Afghanistan, wanted to deliver a blistering report in 2009 on the state of intelligence-gathering in the country, he did so through CNAS rather than through any official channel where it might have been buried. He enlisted the help of a former colleague of Tom Ricks— Wall Street Journal reporter Marine Capt. Matt Pottinger—as a co-author, who then used CNAS to release the bombshell report. 45

Take it from Flynn’s boss, General Stanley McChrystal, who said of Flynn once: “He never asks, ‘Why can’t we do this?’ He just busts down walls.” 46He wasn’t kidding. Not only did Flynn—at least in appearance—flout the military chain of command, but the think tank’s president acknowledged that “. . . it was an irregular way to disseminate an idea for a serving officer.” 47

This highly unconventional release sparked many questions: Was the release privately vetted, as some reporters suggest, by McChrystal, the top U.S. and allied commander? There was this one from Politico : “More headaches for CNAS co-founder Michèle Flournoy, now under secretary of defense for policy, about whether her influential think tank is back-channeling the generals and COIN mafia outside of the chain of command?” 48

While Flynn had informal relations with these think-tankers, who might have some role in making or shaping policy, they answer to no one. They are not under the same expectations and authority that a member of the military would be.

That flareup with Flynn didn’t deter CNAS or its old-media stalwarts; they also—wisely—didn’t neglect the new media.

Tom Ricks maintains a blog on Foreign Policy ’s website called “The Best Defense,” which at one point included a special feature he called “Travels with Paula.” The writer of these guest posts was the soon-to-be famous Paula Broadwell, “knocking around Afghanistan, checking out operations, and visiting some West Point buddies,” as Ricks described her. 49Ricks would later give Broadwell an endorsement “blurb” for the glowing biography she wrote about her apparent boyfriend General Petraeus, saying: “All In feels at times like we are sitting at his side in Afghanistan, reading his e-mails over his shoulder.” 50

Selling the Surge

CNAS was a prime mover in pushing a COIN-style surge in Afghanistan. It hosted a blog described by one writer as “the go-to [one] for the COIN set,” written by a former Army Ranger and young Middle East scholar named Andrew Exum. 51Exum was part of a group of think-tankers (CNAS and others) invited to travel to Afghanistan with General Stanley McChrystal in 2009 as part of a “strategic assessment team.” He and other think-tankers beyond CNAS filled the media echo chamber. 52

In fall 2009, Exum released a report from CNAS in which he defined the “best-case scenario” to be one in which “. . . the United States and its allies agree to a fully resourced campaign to provide security for key population centers and continue to develop effective security forces,” though it probably wasn’t the most likely scenario. 53Exum appeared on PBS’s Frontline , lavishing praise on McChrystal and Petraeus, calling them “our best and brightest commanders.” 54

Defense correspondent Nathan Hodge, in an article describing how the surge was sold, named think-tankers (other than those like Exum affiliated with CNAS) who provided their support via the media. Several of the reports featuring these think-tankers didn’t disclose their involvement in strategy-making or traveling with General McChrystal. 55

Exum that fall faced criticism after reviewing (and panning) a book critical of McChrystal while failing to mention that he, Exum, had been a very recent adviser and travel companion of the general’s. 56Exum’s defense was a real head-scratcher: he insisted that the Washington Post book editors had to know that he had been part of the assessment team because it had been covered, well, on the front page of the Post itself. The burden, he was saying, was on the Post to police all of that, though they pointed out that their contract calls for writers to police themselves for even the appearance of conflict of interest. This could have been a rookie error: Exum is young and perhaps was unaware that newspaper departments don’t always know every detail of reporting in other departments, even if it’s on the front page. 57