Media analysts in Syria debate have ties to defense contractors

[cqo_000]

Source: The Washington Post

Military analysts who made frequent media appearances during the recent debate over a possible U.S. strike on Syria have ties to defense contractors and other firms with stakes in the outcome, according to a new study, but those links were rarely disclosed.

The report by the Public Accountability Initiative, a nonprofit watchdog, details appearances by 22 commentators who spoke out during this summer’s Syria debate in large media outlets and currently have industry connections that the group says can pose conflicts of interest.

In several media appearances in September, Stephen Hadley, a former national security adviser to President George W. Bush, was a forceful advocate for strikes. He told Bloomberg TV that Republicans should back the president’s use-of-force resolution and argued in a Washington Post op-ed that failure to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people would damage U.S. credibility if military action were threatened over Iran’s nuclear program.

While Hadley’s role in the Bush administration was always noted, there was no mention of his ties to Raytheon, manufacturer of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which likely would have been fired from Navy destroyers stationed in the eastern Mediterranean in strikes against Syria. Hadley has been on the board of directors of Raytheon since 2009 and, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from June included in the new report, owned 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, now worth about $875,000. Hadley was also paid $128,500 in cash compensation by the company last year, according to a filing with the SEC.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/report-cites-conflicts-of-interest-by-media-analysts-in-syria-debate/2013/10/10/b2df6b50-3119-11e3-9c68-1cf643210300_story.html

[annm4peace]

1. thanks for posting

many in our peace community are split on Syria.. this coverage helps clear some things up

[Crowman1979]

2. Not surprised!

There are a lot of greedy asshole generals/admirals in the Pentagon that continue there bloodlust even after retirement.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. Not to overlook that their money lust is apparently also a prime motivator. n/t

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. Thank you for the OP. Special pleaders for war. Pretty disgusting.

[starroute]

4. Do they mention his role in the lying-us-into-war part of the Bush administration?

http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/58157:steven-hadley-met-with-source-of-forged-niger-docs

Tuesday, 25 October 2005

Italy's intelligence chief met with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley just a month before the Niger forgeries first surfaced.

In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then - Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones confirmed the meeting to the Prospect on Tuesday. ...

The paper goes on to note the significance of that date, highlighting the appearance of a little-noticed story in Panorama a weekly magazine owned by Italian Prime Minister and Bush ally Silvio Berlusconi, that was published three days after Pollari's meeting with Hadley. The magazine's September 12, 2002, issue claimed that Iraq's intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat, had acquired 500 tons of uranium from Nigeria through a Jordanian intermediary. (While this September 2002 Panorama report mentioned Nigeria, the forgeries another Panorama reporter would be proffered less than a month later purportedly concerned Niger.)

The Sismi chief's previously undisclosed meeting with Hadley, who was promoted earlier this year to national security adviser, occurred one month before a murky series of events culminated in the US government obtaining copies of the Niger forgeries.

[jsr]

5. Utterly shocking.

NOT.

[Wilms]

6. ^