TV News Military's Best Intel Network

[E-Nice]

TV News Military's 'Best Intel Network'
InsideDefense.com NewsStand | Christopher J. Castelli | June 28, 2006
Though Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly bashed the media's continuous coverage of insurgent bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan, it turns out the Pentagon's command center relies very heavily on such press reports to gather real-time intelligence.

The National Military Command Center, a windowless underground facility located beneath the Pentagon, must constantly provide information about current events to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the defense secretary and ultimately the president.
The center has many military means of gathering intelligence, including classified computer networks and space-based systems, but standard television news reports are often the best way to stay abreast of events in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Rear Adm. Ronald Henderson, deputy director of operations for the Joint Staff.

“Perhaps our best source of information is the television,” Henderson said June 19 during a panel discussion in Washington sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

“And in fact, if you were to come into the command center, you would see six big, giant TV screens,” he said. “Now I spend a lot of time watching TV because -- if you think about it -- it's the best intelligence network in the world.”

Henderson continued, “There are reporters all over the place and they're very heavily seeded throughout our area of concern right now, Iraq and Afghanistan, and when something happens they see it and they pick up their cell phone and they report it.”
The command center also relies “very heavily, obviously, on the plain old Internet,” he said. The center relies heavily on classified networks -- including secret, top secret and compartmentalized intelligence systems -- to communicate with U.S. military combatant commanders, he said. Phone calls are also essential, he noted. In addition, the center is tied in with the North American Aerospace Defense Command as well and space-based systems.
However, the Pentagon -- and by extension, the White House -- often learns about important events first through television news, he explained.

Describing what he called a “typical scenario,” Henderson said, “We'll be sitting there with our feet up watching TV and across the bottom it will flash on CNN, ‘Explosion in Baghdad. Thousands feared dead.' And I can bet a beer on this, within 15 seconds the phone will be ringing and it's the White House and they want to know what we know about the explosion in Baghdad. And of course, my answer is always that I know about as much as they do and we'll get back to them. Our operational reporting lags that event by many hours.”

The U.S. military probably has the technology to match the reporting speed of the press, but there are a few obstacles, he noted.

“We're hampered by our requirement to be correct; they are not,” Henderson quipped.

In addition, official military accounts of events must be vetted at every level, which takes time, he noted.

“Because the military is a hierarchical bureaucratic organization, every stakeholder in the organization is very concerned about information that flows from his or her headquarters to higher headquarters.” Henderson said.

Henderson said he promptly learned about the July 7, 2005 London subway bombings from CNN when he was on watch early that morning.

But it was several hours before Henderson received U.S. European Command's report on those attacks. “Now that's not a slam on EUCOM,” he said. “They knew what was going on.” The delay was due to the bureaucratic process, he said.

Despite the Pentagon's reliance on media reports, Rumsfeld has been critical of the headlines that tend to follow terrorist attacks.
“Interestingly -- particularly to this audience -- the terrorists have media relations committees,” the defense secretary said in remarks at the National Press Club in February. “Think of that -- they get up in the morning, have committee meetings and think about how they're going to manipulate the world's press to their advantage. They have repeatedly proven to be highly successful at manipulating the world's media here in this country as well as elsewhere and they carefully plan attacks to garner headlines in their effort to try to break our will.”

In March, during an interview with the cable network Plum TV in Colorado, Rumsfeld noted, “What gets in the paper or the television is something that's dramatic. If you put a generator into a hospital and save people's lives, it's not newsworthy. If all the clinics are open, and if the stock market's open, and if in 14 of the 18 provinces in Iraq it's peaceful, that's not newsworthy. What's newsworthy is when some terrorist straps himself up with a suicide vest and goes in and kills a bunch of innocent Iraqis, and that gets in the press.”

[Nyteshade]

Sad but true. Paperwork in the military is one pain in the ass I don't care to remember. Also, the insurgents are more likely to talk to reporters than military. This makes it to where the intel guys can use the news feeds to figure out where the insurgents are holed up.