Perception Management: From Psyops to Blowback

In the Reagan Era, it was known as public diplomacy. The Bush administration called it strategic influence. What both terms described is the U.S. government's ability to influence mass perceptions around the world and, when necessary, at home.

If you don't think it's been going on for years and continues to this very moment, well, then it's working.

Bread & Puppet outside the Hilton (1995)

As the Iraq war began, we did get a peak behind the curtain. Word leaked out that a new Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence was gearing up to sway leaders and public sentiment by disseminating sometimes false stories. Facing censure, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld publicly denounced and disbanded it. A few months later, however, he quietly funded a private consultant to develop another version. 

The apparent goal was to go beyond traditional information warfare with a new "perception management" campaign designed to "win the war of ideas" - in this case, against those classified as a terrorists.

It's actually nothing new. Beginning in the 1950s, more than 800 news and public information organizations and individuals carried out assignments for the CIA, according to The New York Times. By the mid-'80s, CIA Director Bill Casey had taken the practice to the next level: an organized, covert public diplomacy apparatus designed to sell a new product -- Central America -- while stoking fear of communism, the Sandinistas, Gadhafi and others.

Sometimes this involved so-called white propaganda, stories and editorials secretly financed by the government. But they also went black, pushing false story lines.

The U.S. Department of Defense describes perception management as a type of psychological operation. Traditionally, it's supposed to be directed at foreign audiences and basically involves conveying (or denying) information to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.

The goal is to influence enemies and friends alike, and provoke the behavior you want. During George Herbert Walker Bush's administration, the scope officially expanded to include domestic disinformation, using the CIA's public affairs office. This operation was charged with turning intelligence failures into successes by persuading reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests.

The Clinton era approach, outlined in Directive 68, was known as the International Public Information System. Again, no distinction was made between what could be done abroad and at home. To defeat enemies and influence minds, information for U.S. audiences was "deconflicted" through IPI's work. How appropriately Clinton-esque.

One strategy turned out to be inserting psyops -- the term of art meaning psychological operations -- specialists into newsrooms. In February 2000, a Dutch journalist revealed that CNN and the Army had agreed to do precisely that in Atlanta.

Once you realize that managing perceptions is standard procedure, some news stories take on a different meaning. For example, a popular storyline about post-war resistance in Iraq was that only a few Saddam loyalists and dead-enders were involved. Meanwhile, the opposition was sending videotaped messages, saying things like, "We are not followers of Saddam Hussein. We are sons of Iraq." For years, journalists and spokesmen stuck with a central assumption: that whatever problems we now face, leaving without "winning" would be worse.

Another approach is warping the facts to promote spin. Thus, in January 2004 USA Today could headline a story, "Attacks Down 22 Percent Since Saddam's Capture." Actually, the number of troops killed went up 40 percent during that period, but the U.S. military sources making the news preferred to focus on the number of incidents.

Or just fabricate the news -- from the Al Qaida-Saddam link to WMDs. And when something goes wrong? It's simple: just misplace the blame. Thus, when photos of soldiers humiliating Iraqi prisoners came to light, the first line of defense was to call it an aberration -- people somehow operating outside the chain of command -- and ignore reality.

During the first Gulf War, military intelligence officers didn't even need to ask: GIs routinely forced surrendering Iraqis to strip and pose for photos in groups. The new element was sexual humiliation, persuasive evidence that it was a psyop.

According to journalist Seymour Hersh, the abuse was part of a Pentagon operation called Copper Green, which used physical coercion and the sexual humiliation of Iraqis to generate intelligence about growing insurgency. The theory was that some prisoners would do anything -- including spying on their associates -- to avoid dissemination of shameful photos to family and friends. Not exactly the work of a few out-of-control grunts.

To most of the world, the photos from Abu Ghraib prison were evidence of potential war crimes, or at least punctured  U.S. pretensions about moral superiority. For those who orchestrated them, however, it was merely a psyop warfare tactic, a more violent form of perception management.

In terms of generating information that could reduce violence, Copper Green didn't work: the insurgency continued to grow and gave birth to ISIS. The un-intended consequences have been enormous. But in the psyop world, this happens so often that there's even a term for it -- "blowback" -- meaning an operation that has turned on its creators. Put another way, you reap what you sow.

(This column was originally published on June 21, 2004, UPI) 

Politics of the Possible: The Sanders Crusade

Progressive Eclipse -- Chapter Seven

IF A PSYCHIC had predicted in the 1970s that Bernie Sanders would someday stand on the White House lawn in support of an embattled Democratic President, or become a Democrat himself, people who knew him would have considered it a poor joke. Sanders would have called it “totally outrageous.”

But the idea that he would one day run for president? Now, that was a pretty safe bet. The real questions were when and how.



Sanders protesting outside City Hall, Burlington.

From the start, Sanders had his eye on one high office or another. In January 1972, a few years after moving to Vermont, he waged his first race for the US Senate. In a special election to replace deceased “native son” Winston Prouty, he got 2 percent of the vote as a Liberty Union Party candidate. Undaunted, he represented the state’s newest “third party” party again that fall, this time as its candidate for governor.

For Sanders, a key moment in that race came in September when he escorted Dr. Benjamin Spock, the famous and controversial pediatrician, during a Vermont visit. At the time Spock was running for President as the People’s Party candidate.

In two other statewide campaigns over the next four years, Sanders focused a righteous anger and his growing campaign abilities on monopoly capitalism, the superrich and their two henchmen – the major political parties. Running to replace retiring political icon George Aiken in 1974, he won his first union endorsements, but still only 4 percent of the vote. That race put Patrick Leahy, a young Chittenden County State’s Attorney, in the Senate.

Debating Republican businessman Richard Snelling and his Democratic opponent, Employment Commissioner Stella Hackel, on public television in 1976 in the race for governor, Sanders accused both of avoiding the real issues; his list included public ownership of utilities, doubling the corporate income tax, and eliminating the income tax for those earning less than $10,000. Decades before the Occupy movement, he foreshadowed its call: "the people of the State of Vermont have got to get off their knees and have got to stand up to the 2 or 3 percent who control the money.”

A year later, however, he sounded frustrated when announcing his resignation from Liberty Union. “Sad and tragic” was how he saw the five-year old party, yet offered little advice or encouragement before dropping out of sight.  “I don’t know about my future,” he admitted. Despite decent press coverage, union endorsements, and performing well in debates, he couldn’t come close to winning.

Celebrating his first victory, 1981

But two decades later, only hours after the US House of Representatives voted to impeach a President for the second time in the nation’s history, there was Sanders, now a former Burlington mayor and Vermont’s only Congressman, lined up with Democratic notables behind Bill Clinton outside the White House. Ten years after that he backed Barack Obama for President from a seat in the US Senate. By then, he had effectively neutralized any Democratic opposition in Vermont – without officially joining the party.

Viewing his “mini-filibuster” in the Senate on December 10, 2010 it’s easy to compare the event with the climax of Frank Capra’s Mister Smith Goes to Washington, and Sanders with Jimmy Stewart’s character. But there are major differences. For the movie’s hero, a naïve freshman, the moment was a desperate, spontaneous expression of frustration that led to a storybook ending. For Sanders, who had already served in Congress for 20 years, it was the latest version of a well-honed speech he’d been delivering since his first race.

Asked by a journalist about a run for president a few weeks later, Sanders carefully disavowed interest and claimed to be “very content to be where I am.” But he quickly added that he was “flattered by that kind of response.” In fact, the organizing had begun. A “Draft Bernie Sanders for President” effort was up and running in two months, conveniently coinciding with the release of a Sanders’ book, “The Speech.”

But there was still the timing. He didn’t want to run against Barack Obama, especially since he also needed to hold onto his Senate seat and had supported Obama in 2008. But a race against Hillary Clinton was another matter. And a 2016 race couldn’t be better timing. After cruising to re-election in November 2012 with 71 percent, he wouldn’t face another opponent until 2018, six years away. That meant he could devote the next four years to building a national campaign. All he needed to do was explain why, after decades as an Independent and socialist, a caustic critic of the two-party system, it now made sense to run as a Democrat.

The campaign to make the case was well underway in 2013. “Obviously if I did not think I had a reasonable chance to win I wouldn’t run,” he explained coyly to Politico in one of several interviews focused on defining the choice he faced. But if other candidates weren’t talking about the issues that mattered, “well, then maybe I have to do it,” he would say. What issues were those? For Sanders, the same as ever – growing inequality and the collapse of the middle class, along with a third, “global warming.”

Encouraging interviews in progressive media and constant exposure on cable news made it all but official by March 2014. Sanders was "prepared to run for President of the United States,” but only if he thought that he could win, a prospect he now linked to three things – a “political revolution,” raising money – not from “billionaires” but enough to be taken seriously, and getting sufficient public exposure. Visits to primary states began last May, but it took another year for the candidate to acknowledge the obvious. To run for President, he was ready to be a Democrat.

And what did that mean? It was hard to completely define, but one implication was clear --  support for the Democratic candidate if he lost, and no subsequent challenge in the general election. When asked about an Independent run by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week, Sanders was unequivocal: "No, absolutely not," he said. "I've been very clear about that."

It was one of the more remarkable journeys in US political history. An irascible “third party” outsider had become a player in the national political establishment. As the longest-serving Independent, as well as the only self-declared “democratic socialist” in Congress, Sanders had already entered the record books by the late 1990s. Celebrating his first Senate win in 2006, he defined it as part of an ongoing national crusade that was just getting started: “I believe that destiny has suggested that this small State of Vermont is, in fact, going to lead America in a very different direction. And the day is going to come when all over America people are going to say, ‘Thank you, Vermont’.”

An effective coalition-builder in Congress, he sometimes persuaded conservatives to play ball with liberals on specific legislation. But he also founded the Progressive Caucus, a congressional alliance that fought for tax reform, single payer health care, military spending cuts, and control of international financial institutions. Along the way, he proved virtually invulnerable to electoral attack.

As Sanders saw it, “My views about what I believe is right and what I want to see in this country have changed very little.”  Actually, that was an open secret of his success.

Sanders was nothing if not consistent, sticking with the same message for decades no matter what the political climate. His public image evolved – from aggressive, fast-talking radical in jeans and sandals, struggling aggressively to be heard, to self-possessed elder statesman mixing “class warfare” sound-bites with blunt sarcasm and pro forma acknowledgments of respect for political opponents and practical realities. But the message, however updated with current references, remained very much the same.

As he summed it up during a one-on-one interview in 1998, “You have two political parties that are controlled by monied interests. You have a corporate media. When you talk about consolidation, you are talking about oil and gas, banking, and perhaps most importantly, the media – where there are very few voices of dissent regarding our current position on the global economy."

“That gets to even the more fundamental issue – the health of American democracy," he said. "Do people know what’s going on? And how can they fight what’s going on? I fear that they don’t.”

But that was more than a decade ago, before making it to the Senate or becoming a presidential candidate. Today he sees a political revolution on the horizon and the right timing to lead it.

NEXT: Bernie's Paper Trail (1981-90)
VIDEO: The Sanders Crusade