Kevin Connor talking:
The report really maps out the extent to which the policy conversation on the airwaves around Syria was really dominated by individuals with ties to the defense industry. And these ties, as you laid out there, really were never disclosed—rarely disclosed, only 13 times out of 111 appearances that we identified during the Syria debate.
Now, the importance of that is that readers and viewers at home, who are, you know, seeing these people comment, are introduced to them as having gravitas and credibility—former secretaries of state, diplomats, generals with expertise. You would think these are independent experts who probably retired with a healthy pension, when in fact they’re representing interests that would profit from heightened military activity abroad in Syria. So that has a corrupting effect on the public discourse around an issue like Syria that’s so—so important. And it really goes back to the responsibility of media outlets to disclose these ties and also the individuals here who are implicated in the culture of corruption and the revolving door in Washington.
Anjali mentioned earlier, on the first segment, about the jobs program for the defense industry. And there’s a jobs program in place for the foreign policy establishment as they move out of their public positions onto the boards of these corporations. These aren’t—these are part-time positions, but they’re very high-paying positions. They have financial incentives and fiduciary responsibilities to companies that are profiting from war, profiting from current levels of defense spending. And this is something that viewers at home should be notified of. And it perhaps should preclude their involvement in debates like this, or perhaps they should not get the podium and platform they’re given for their views, given the fact that they have these conflicts of interest that are quite serious in some cases.
The Tomahawk missile that Raytheon produces was the one that was going to be used in the attack on Syria. When Hadley was making the rounds to the outlets you mentioned, he also published an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing strenuously for war, and at the time, as you mentioned, serves on the board of Raytheon, has nearly $900,000 worth of stock in that company, makes $130,000 a year in cash compensation, actually chairs the public affairs committee for Raytheon, which means that he has oversight of sort of the company’s public profile and image in the media and in policy circles. So this is really a quite clear conflict of interest, and it should have been disclosed to readers and viewers.
The Washington Post has also been criticized for failing to inform its readers about Stephen Hadley’s defense ties. On September 8th, the paper published an op-ed by Hadley that was headlined “To Stop Iran, Obama Must Enforce Red Lines with Assad.” The article described Hadley simply as a former national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.
conflicts of interest and ethical issues. This is a clear conflict of interest. The conflicts of interest actually raise the possibility of corruption, the corruption of one’s motives. There are relationships that might call into question one’s motives, and this clearly does. And nothing Hiatt said really, you know, defends against that. Hiatt might, you know, have special insight into Hadley’s inner thinking, given that they are perhaps in the same foreign policy circles. Hiatt has written glowing articles about Hadley in the past, so, you know, this is fairly standard for him in terms of his worldview and his sort of milieu.
— source democracynow.org
Kevin Connor, director and co-founder of the Public Accountability Initiative. He’s co-author of the report titled “Conflicts of Interest in the Syria Debate,” which was released last week.