Public Affairs and Information Operations

The "Flies in Amber" and "Dueling Information Operations" posts, regarding the decision of CJT-101 to aggressively get ahead of a story out of Afghanistan have produced some discussion on the issue of Public Affairs and Information Operations.  I for one have been pleased to see the change that started appearing when CJTF-82 was running the show has been continued, and arguably accelerated under Colonel O’Hara’s CJTF-101 PAO section.  I just wish they would write the stuff so as to be more readable and less stilted.

I invited Jack Holt, of the OSD Public Affairs office offer up his *personal*  view on the subject as an insider. As that was done as a comment to a post, I decided to make it a post – and to post Cannoneer #4’s response to Jack’s comment, as a favor to my 60-odd Twitterers and those who follow the blog via Facebook and RSS readers, to see if we can’t generate some more discussion on the topic. I invite those few professional wordsmiths who visit to weigh in as well – we’re all players in this, in some fashion or another. We’ll start with Jack, and he’s followed by Cannoneer #4.   Pass it around to your buddies and people with an interest in the topic, we’re looking for some discussion.

I now hope I was paying close enough attention in the "Negotiating a mine field" class…

And I also must caveat this with the disclaimer that this is my opinion only and not necessarily the view of the Dept. of Defense, and is based on my 20+ years in communication, public affairs, and the U.S. Army.

That said, let’s see if we can understand what’s going on …

We’re talking about perceptions and semantics, for the most part. First we must understand that public affairs is a function of leadership and information operations a function of, well, operations. In the organizational structure, public affairs works for the commander as part of the special staff, along with the Chaplain, the JAG and to some extent the Provost Marshall. IO is a function of the J/G/S-3. The terms "propaganda" and "counter-propaganda" are the language of IO. "Counter-propaganda" is NOT a responsibility of public affairs.

Now we get into the really tricky areas of discussion which is going on not only here, but in many different areas and levels of our government. I don’t have the room here to go into the history behind why some things are the way they are, and papers are in the process of being written both in government and academia laying this out, hopefully some will be published soon, but for now:

Public affairs derives it’s existence from Title 10 of the U.S. Code as a primary function of the offices of the various service secretaries. It is separated from "publicity" and "marketing" in the wording of the appropriations from Congress and the Code of Federal Regulations and is broken down into three specific focus areas: Public Information, Command Information, and Community Relations.

IO derives it’s existence from military doctrine and has many aspects all of which are operational in nature. For example when it comes to deception operations, a legitimate military operation targeting the population of a contested area, any documents released for that operation is not considered "public information" even though in this new Global Information Environment with our New Media technologies anything published can be replicated on the Web for all the world to see.

PA and IO must work together, but must also remain separated. For PA to engage in "counter-propaganda" it would give legitimacy to the adversary’s "propaganda."

The dynamics are changing and we are adapting, hence the DoDLive Bloggers Roundtables and the ability to release the video of the attack which has brought us to this discussion. Our recognition, as an institution, that we have the ability to show what actually happened and to release that video documentation in a timely manner is a great step forward in our attempts to streamline our communication abilities. 

Good to see you over here, Jack.  CJTF-101 did great coming out with a product so rapidly.  It is not my purpose to detract from the impact of this story. 

When I first read

One of Public Affairs’ primary responsibilities is to ensure factual reporting of events to the public and to counter enemy propaganda.

I thought I as a member of the domestic target audience was being strategically communicated with and assured that somebody is indeed conducting counterpropaganda, which has been a pet peeve and perpetual blog topic of mine for some time.  It was always my understanding that Psychological Operations conducted tactical and operational counterprop within an operational area and Other Government Agencies were supposed to perform the counterprop mission and attempt to mitigate some of the damage enemy propaganda does to the will and morale of the American people (domestic TA).  IMO, OGA’s have not covered themselves with glory on that, giving rise to civilian irregular virtual militias and People’s Information Support Teams in the Counter Insurgent Supportive blogosphere. 

Communication of operational matters to internal and external audiences is just one part of PA’s function. In performing duties as one of the primary spokesmen, the PA officer’s interaction with the IO staff enables PA activities to be integrated, coordinated, and deconflicted with IO. While intents differ, PA and IO ultimately support the dissemination of information, themes, and messages adapted to their audiences. PA contributes to the achievement of military objectives, for instance, by countering adversary misinformation and disinformation through the publication of accurate information.

I hope the young journalist at Bagram who slipped that new PA mission into the first sentence of the story doesn’t lose too much of his fourth point of contact over it.