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• Monday, December 1, 2008 09:05 AM

  Dialing it in?

  General McCaffrey has been absolutely committed to objective, non-partisan public commentary on national security issues since "911". He is proud of his association with NBC. His on-air commentary is based solely on his personal convictions and experience. -- RobertWeiner

  The focus of this post was not Gen. McCaffrey, it was the non-disclosure and stonewalling engaged in by NBC. Irrespective of Gen. McCaffrey's willingness or ability to disengage himself from his personal interests -- the news division at NBC should have known about those interests, and considered them in its choice of him as an expert commentator. There is a strong suggestion that they didn't. An oversight of that kind and that magnitude goes beyond venal.... into the realm of the outright stupid.

  You will find 14,000 hits nearly all hostile to the arrogance and mismanagement of the Rumsfeld War on Terror. Hardly the stuff of someone "shilling" for the Pentagon. Hardly the actions of someone trying to ingratiate himself with DOD contracting authorities on behalf of his business interests. -- RobertWeiner

  Rumsfeld came into the Pentagon talking big about right-sizing and streamlining the military. He was disliked and distrusted by MIC types from the get-go. There is nothing about being anti-Rumsfeld that is inconsistent with an overly cozy relationship with defense contractors. That is not to say that Gen. McCaffrey is therefore in the pockets of defense contractors, but there is nothing in your defense of him above to support the assertion that he is independent of them.

  General McCaffrey is not a lobbyist. His focus in business is on understanding and explaining the national policy environment. When he sees a concept that would support military interests - he does, of course, recommend it to national defense leaders. General McCaffrey is an expert on national security.... [and so forth]... -- RobertWeiner

  Look, you need to do a better job of assessing your target audience before posting. This is not the tone or the type of information best designed to mitigate what you perceive as an attack on your client. It reads like you are just "dialing it in" by cutting & pasting a few paragraphs of pre-written, standardized boilerplate copied off one of your webpages.

  I suspect he pays for something more adroit than this.

  —Holly McLachlan Read Holly McLachlan's other letters
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