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• Tuesday, May 13, 2008 11:00 AM

  @Holly M

  Thanks for that link, it worked okay for me. I've been reading through the pile, but it's great to see what other people think as they do, too. Isn't it?

  A couple things I keep thinking of while reading this:

  1. I got stuck on redaction detail once myself. There were a bunch of FOIA requests about Urgent Fury (Grenada) and a bunch of internal (TS) reports. I ended up with the job because a) I was the lowest ranking guy in our shop who had actually been in Grenada; and b) I had just gotten back from OCONUS and wasn't around to object when I was volunteered. Anyways. To do the job, I had to sit through a brief class reviewing OPSEC principles and telling me what I could and couldn't release, and what I was obliged to release.

  It was about what you would expect, except for one thing called the 'mosaic principle'. This said that if someone could conceivably reconstruct classified information from unclassified elements you would normally be obligated to release, you could biff those out of the package. Sometimes, in addition to redaction you could just rule a whole section of a document, or the document itself, off limits. The standard was pretty low; you just had to write a memo (which had to be releasable) invoking the mosaic principle and signing your name to it. (And be prepared to go to court if someone challenged it)

  So, I'm reading with mosaic in mind.

  2. It's clear that, as you said, this was a conscious, directed and programmed/resourced (there has to be a fundcite to buy those tickets to Gitmo, right?) propaganda effort. It's been tantalizing to think of it also as a PSYOPS program, especially with Vallely, a Psyops guy, among the analysts. That's the way I was thinking about it.

  But the more I read, the less it looks like psyops or even 'information operations', and the less valuable it is to try to identify those techniques in action. What this really looks like is product marketing; in fact, it's striking to anyone who's ever been a product manager gearing up for a launch just how strong the resemblance is. And once you see that, it makes sense ... Andy Card's quip about the war, that you don't launch a new product in August, was as we know now not really a quip at all but a reflection of the mental model in operation on the political side of the house.

  And I, for one, don't find it any less horrifying to think the Pentagon was marketing their war to me than I do that they would be performing psyops on me and my fellow citizens.

  —quickstrategy Read quickstrategy's other letters
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