Mid-January 2003: Pentagon White Paper Proposes Creation of a ‘Rapid Reaction Media Team’ to Control Iraqi Media

Two Pentagon offices—the Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict Office and the Office of Special Plans—prepare a white paper and slide presentation recommending the creation of a “Rapid Reaction Media Team” (RRMT) that would maintain control over major Iraqi media organizations while still projecting an Iraqi “face.” The first phase of the one-to-two-year “strategic information campaign” would last six months and cost $51 million. The paper states that the “RRMT concept focuses on USG-UK [“USG” stands for US government] pre-and post hostilities efforts to develop programming, train talent, and rapidly deploy a team of US/UK media experts with a team of ‘hand selected’ Iraqi media experts to communicate immediately with the Iraqi public opinion upon liberation of Iraq.” The “hand-picked” Iraqi experts would help “select and train the Iraqi broadcasters and publishers (‘the face’) for the USG/coalition sponsored information effort,” the paper explains. Media stories produced by this campaign would be based on US-approved information and would focus on topics like “the De-Baathification program”; “recent history telling (e.g., ‘Uncle Saddam,’ History Channel’s ‘Saddam’s Bomb-Maker,’ ‘Killing Fields,’ etc.)”; US government-approved “Democracy Series”; “Environmental (Marshlands re-hydration)”; “Mine Awareness”; “Re-starting the Oil”; “Justice and rule of law topics”; “War Criminals/Truth Commission”; “prisoners and atrocity interviews”; “Saddam’s palaces and opulence,” and “WMD (weapons of mass destruction) disarmament.” For its “Entertainment and News Magazine programming,” the plan says the media should do stories on “Hollywood,” “Arab country donations,” and “Sports.” According to the paper, “having professional US-trained Iraqi media teams immediately in place to portray a new Iraq (by Iraqis for Iraqis) with hopes for a prosperous, democratic future, will have a profound psychological and political impact on the Iraqi people.” It is not clear whether or not this particular plan is implemented. However, after the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon will contract a firm called the Lincoln Group to plant stories in the Iraqi media (see September 2004-September 2006) and will purchase an Iraqi newspaper and take control of an Iraqi radio station, using them to disseminate pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. [US Department of Defense, 1/2003 ; Inter Press Service, 5/9/2007]