Did a Pentagon official set up his own rogue intelligence operation in Afghanistan? And did he divert cash from an open-source cultural research program to do it? The top national security story of the day in today's New York Times raises more questions than it answers.
Here's the short version: Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti of the Times tell the story of Michael Furlong, a defense official reporting to U.S. Strategic Command who may have hired private security contractors to serve as his own personal "Jason Bournes" to collect targeting intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And in a particularly interesting twist, he may have used money intended for a military-funded newsgathering operation as his own slush fund.
The whole scheme, apparently, irritated the CIA -- and may have crossed the line into contract fraud, if the Times account is correct. But it also sheds light on some lesser-known players like International Media Ventures, a "strategic communications" firm that seems to straddle the line between public relations, propaganda work and private security contracting.
"Strategic communications" firms have flourished in the strange new post-9/11 media environment. Unlike traditional military public affairs, which are supposed to serve as a simple conduit for releasing information to the public, strategic communications is about shaping the message, both at home and abroad. Why is that problematic? As Danger Room's Sharon Weinberger pointed out, "When a newspaper calls up a public affairs officer to find out the number of casualties in an IED attack, the answer should be a number (preferably accurate), not a carefully crafted statement about how well the war is going."
Afghanistan, in fact, has been a longtime laboratory for strategic communications. Back in 2005, Joshua Kucera wrote a fascinating feature in Jane's Defence Weekly about how one of the top U.S. military spokesmen in Afghanistan was also an "information operations" officer, who reported to an office responsible for psychological operations and military deception. That kind of dual-hatting continues today: Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the top military spokesman in Afghanistan, is also director for strategic communications in Afghanistan.
And then there's the military's interest in newsgathering-type intelligence on Afghanistan's social and cultural scene. As we've reported here before, the top U.S. intelligence officer in Afghanistan complained in a damning report that newspapers often have a better sense of "ground truth" in Afghanistan (and suggested that military intelligence needs to mimic newspaper reporting, or even hire a few downsized reporters, to get the job done). Furlong's scheme -- and again, the Times account is a bit muddled here -- may have shifted funds away from AfPax Insider, a news venture run by former CNN executive Eason Jordan and author/adventurer Robert Young Pelton. (Pelton has contributed commentary to Danger Room.)
Jordan's previous venture, IraqSlogger, didn't capture the private client base hoped for in Iraq. AfPax provided a similar kind of open source, news and information product, sold primarily to the military. Adm. Smith apparently put the kibosh on the funding the project, however.
And then it gets weirder. Furlong's intel-collection scheme also apparently involves a couple of security consultants who at one point were hired by the Times to help out in locating David Rohde, the Times reporter who was kidnapped in Afghanistan and later escaped, on his own, in Pakistan. It's not unusual for major news organizations to hire security consultants in hostile places, but it's also rarely mentioned. This story may provoke a bit more scrutiny of that practice.
Photo: U.S. Department of Defense
