Vic Socotra

15 November 2007

Strategic Communications

?
Tory Clark, 2003

It is raining cats and dogs and I have to formulate a strategi plan to get my butt to Chantilly by eight this morning. It is scheduled to be a jam-packed day that cascades from a 0800 two-hour meeting into another session at a building in Fairfax fon unclassified intelligence. Then back tpo Arlington for a one o'clock on enhancing the company presence at a conference next March. It is a strategic initiative intended to position us in a new market spece.

That is one of the basic things that people do in business; figure out where you are, where you want to go, and then connect the dots on what you have to do to get there. I have always thought it curious that nation-states seem to have a problem doing that. In fact, the inability of our beloved United States of America to do that is a mystery.

Trying to figure out if there was the possibility of a strategic lunch in there someplace, I glanced at The Times, which told me solemnly that there is a complex debate going on between State and DoD about how to shape and transmit their messages.

Shoot, it is not a debate. it is war, and it has been going on for over six years.

This is not rocket science, and I am certainly not claiming that I am particularly bright in my opinions about it. I do know where to go to steal good ideas, and since there is nothing new under the sun in Washington, that can substitute for intelligence.

I walked into my Boss's office on a weekend in 2001 with a sheaf of papers that described the 1942 establishment of the Office of War Information- an organization that, for good or ill, actually packaged a consistent message about what America was doing, why it was doing it, and where it was going to go.

The WW II generation figured out the problem with the dissemination of information about a really big deal, put institutions in place, and beat Germany and Japan in the time these morons have had to realize that there is a problem.

The House Armed Services subcommittee on terrorism and unconventional threats will hold hearings on the matter this Thursday, so expect more static on the matter. They are going ask some tough questions on exactly what they think “strategic communications” might be, and how it might be done.

I guess it is time. The interim bill to pay for the War is wending it's way forward in the same House, and it contains controversial provisions on troop withdrawal from Iraq that will guarantee problems in the Senate, and veto from the President.

The bill is only needed because Congress has not done its job and passed the annual DoD appropriation for the fiscal year that began seven weeks ago. This is a great opportunity for some grandstanding, but I am pleased that at least someone has figured out that this needs some attention.

In 2002, Don Rumsfeld gave the problem to Victoria Clark, his public Affairs Officer, and an Air Force Brigadier General named Pete Worden for the “spooky” part. “Tory” Clarke was noted mostly for her colorful appearances at the Pentagon Podium, and the message of the United States of America came from the press Room in the basement of the River side of the Pentagon.

The spooky part was determined to be something else, and that lasted about twenty minutes, until failed when the media discovered the existence of the Office of Strategic Influence, which they thought was going to lie to them.

That wasn't quite true; the office was prohibited from lying to Americans, by WW II-era law, but the tricky bit about it was what happened if you lied to someone overseas and an American heard about it and brought it home?

At State, they had a brainstorm after the disaster at the Pentagon. They hired a slick Madison Avenue-type named Charlotte Beers to run a PR campaign to sell America's message to the Arab Street.

That suffered an embarrassment in the first campaign, as it appeared that Mad Ave didn't have much of a clue about the world beyond the Hudson and East Rivers. The White House formed the Office of Global Communications in 2003, but after the embarrassment attending Ms Beer's debut, it faded into a minor office within the national security staff.

The jihadis have a good branding strategy for their message, and they use it in print and on the internet. There was no question in my mind that they were winning the information war just as effectively as the North Vietnamese did after Tet.

They have more agility than the Rendon Group, a very interesting media consulting outfit that in its moment in the public stage was as unsavory as Blackwater is today. I worked with John Rendon briefly when I was still in the government. Better said, he was working me, since he knew precisely what he was doing, and I was about to be ground up in the battle between State, Defense and the White House.

President Bush appointed his Texas Confidante Karen P. Hughes to be Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in 2005, in a desperate attempt to counteract the awful media spin coming out of the prisoner abuse and Jihadi propaganda, but the last time I heard her name was the announcement that she really wanted to spend more time with her family in the Lone Star State.

This is a lot simpler than that, though. The debate is between two co-equal cabinet departments. The Office of War Information, like it or not, was pretty effective. it reported direct to the White House.

The reason that is not happening now is also nothing new. Remember Ollie North? He reported to the President, and is the man most reponsible for the Iran-contra Affair that almost brought down a President.

The latest work-around is the Counterterrorism Communication Center (CTCC), established in April of this year. The mission statement says the CTCC “is an interagency office, housed within the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs,” or the wreckage of what was the US Information Agency, which State devoured in the 1990s.

The center was set up to provide leadership and coordination for interagency efforts in the war of ideas, and to integrate and enhance the US government's “diverse public diplomacy counterterrorism efforts.”

Maybe they will, and maybe Defense will back off. Perhaps the Congress will help. It has been six years. Maybe we ought to do something next year.