Scientific Applications International Corporation
Scientific Applications International Corporation is a Fortune 500 corporation which amongst other things is a leading suplier of propaganda, psychological operations and information warfare for the US military and others.
Psyops in Iraq
- Towards Freedom was a stop gap to be replaced by a new television service for Iraq. In keeping with the philosophy of information dominance this was paid for by the Pentagon and supplied, not by an independent news organisation but, by a defence contractor, Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Its expertise in the area - according to its website - is in ‘information operations’ and ‘information dominance’. [1] The SAIC effort quickly ran into trouble however. Its Iraq Media Network, which cost $20million over three months, was not obsequious enough for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Within weeks ‘occupying authority chief L. Paul Bremer III placed controls on IMN content and clamped down on the independent media in Iraq, closing down some Iraqi-run newspapers and radio and television stations.’ [2] According to Index on Censorship ‘Managers were told to drop the readings from the Koran, the “vox-pop” man-in-the-street interviews (usually critical of the US invasion) and even to run their content past the wife of a US-friendly Iraqi Kurdish leader for a pre-broadcast check. The station rejected the demands and dug in their heels.’ [3] But this did not stop Bremer and further incidents have shown the preoccupation with control, culminating in a nine point list of ‘prohibited activity issued by Bremer in June 2003.
- It decreed that publishing material that ‘is patently false and is calculated to provoke opposition to the CPA or undermine legitimate processes towards self government’ would henceforth be prohibited. This is not too dissimilar to the Nazi press law introduced in German in 1933. It stated that journalists must ‘regulate their work in accordance with National socialism as a philosophy of life and as a conception of government’. [4]
- As Index on Censorship notes: ‘Bremer will "reserve the power to advise" the IMN on any aspect of its performance, "including any matter of content" and the power to hire and fire IMN staff. Thus the man in absolute authority over the country's largest, richest and best equipped media network is also his own regulator and regulator of his rivals, with recourse to the US Army to enforce his rulings.’[5]
Notes
- {^ ‘Exporting Censorship to Iraq: The press system we allow the
Iraqis is far from free.’ By Alex Gourevitch Issue Date: 1 October 2003 http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/9/gourevitch-a.html
- ^ Rohan Jayasekera Gives with one hand, takes away with the other Index on Censroship 11 June 2003 http://www.indexonline.org/news/20030611_iraq.shtml
- ^ Oron J. Hale (1964) The Captive Press in the Third Reich, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 86.
- ^ David Miller Information Dominance: The Philosophy Of Total Propaganda Control?, Spinwatch, 29 December 2003
