JACK KEANE: I do believe that the air campaign that’s taking place in Iraq now will be expanded. But also we should expand immediately into Syria. He does not need congressional authorization for that. I’ll leave it to him whether he thinks he should get that or not, but the fact of the matter from a military perspective, we should be bombing Syria and Iraq simultaneously now.
retired General Jack Keane, speaking on Fox News Sunday. He is introduced simply as a think tank leader and a former military official. Again, what’s not disclosed is the range of his affiliations with Pentagon contractors. Keane is a special adviser to Academi, the contractor formerly known as Blackwater, and a board member of the military contractor General Dynamics. He’s also a venture partner to SCP Partners, an investment firm that works with military contractors.
Lee Fang talking:
We look at a number of prominent pundits, contributors to cable news networks, who have gone on television, appeared in the pages of different print outlets, submitted op-eds, and these individuals are only acknowledged or identified for their previous roles as officials at the State Department or former generals. Their current roles as advisers or board members to defense contractors have not been disclosed. Many of these individuals have called for an escalation in the region, arming different militant groups, calling for an increased air campaign for entering the conflict in Syria—many different military solutions to a very complex problem. But again, as you mentioned, these individuals have not—their ties to military contractors, that could benefit from these policies, have not been disclosed.
You talked a little bit about former General Jack Keane. Well, Jack Keane is the Fox News military analyst. He appears regularly on the Sunday programs and on prime-time television. And remember, Fox News is the largest cable network. They bring in over four million, sometimes 4.5 million, viewers in their prime-time news coverage. And in many cases, Keane is the only military voice, the analyst brought in to provide the military point of view, so many Americans are only getting his opinion without knowing that he works for many different defense contractors.
FRANCES TOWNSEND: Bombing ISIS targets in Iraq is not going to be enough, because all you’re going to do is push them back into the safe haven that Syria has become. And so, we need a strategic plan to absolutely wipe out ISIS completely. I would say this can’t just be an Iraqi operation, because if you do that, then you push ISIS into Syria, where they enjoy safe haven. So you’ve got to have a broader strategy that includes the safe have in Syria.
CNN commentator Frances Townsend is a former Bush administration official. She’s also a contributor to CNN, meaning she’s a regular guest, appearing almost every other day in some weeks. But she’s also an adviser to several defense consulting firms. She also works at a holding company, MacAndrews & Forbes, which owns several defense contractors. One of the largest is AM General, which makes Humvees and other armored vehicles. So, obviously, this is a company—AM General, in particular—that has benefited from the war in Iraq. They’ve sold many vehicles to the government there. So, when she goes on television and discusses military action in Iraq, and in many cases solely talks about the need to increase military involvement in that region, she’s not disclosing, again, how some of her current ties to military contractors could pose a conflict of interest.
We reached out to several of these pundits; they did not respond. If any of the networks or the pundits do respond, we’ll certainly update the piece. But, you know, the general you just played a clip from, Anthony Zinni, is a board member to BAE Systems, one of the largest defense contractors in the world, based in the United Kingdom. What’s interesting is that last—or, earlier this month, Bank of America released a research note explaining that BAE Systems, which is a stock that slumped throughout much of this year, they’re expected to rebound because of the conflict in Iraq and Syria and in the region. So, this entire military strategy, the military escalation, certainly benefits companies like Zinni’s firm, BAE Systems.
military opinion is not monolithic, but on many of these networks, you hear from a limited set of opinions. Again, for Fox News, if you watch their prime-time coverage, which is absolutely dominating it—it receives more viewers than the two biggest competitors, MSNBC and CNN, combined—you only hear from a very small set of opinions. Again, folks like retired General Jack Keane, they’re the only military experts brought on for some of these prime-time programs. And so, of course, if Americans are only hearing from a very select point of view, they aren’t hearing from a diverse array of expert opinion, that’s going to influence public opinion. And again, no one’s saying that we shouldn’t have some of these former generals speaking in the media. I think what many experts, media ethics professors and others, have called for is simply more disclosure.
— source democracynow.org
Lee Fang, investigative fellow with The Nation Institute and a contributing writer to The Nation magazine. His latest article is “Who’s Paying the Pro-War Pundits?”