Author: Patrick Lang

by Patrick Lang

I wrote the post quoted below the fold on 26 August. At that time there had begun to be talk around Washington in neocon circles of reviving the 20th Century French inspired counterinsurgency doctrine known as the “Oil Spot Method.”

Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His CV and blog are linked below the fold.

This method, worked out in the “school of hard knocks” in Indochina and Algeria essentially holds that it is control of the population that is the right goal in a revolutionary war situation and that combat operations are merely a “means” to that “end.”

In pursuit of that goal the development of the civil communities in the country and their self-perceived welfare has first priority. This is not to say that police and combat action will be especially benign during his process. In extremis, the theory would hold that negative methods of control will suffice if positive ones are not possible. The awfulness of what happened in the Casbah of Algiers in the mid-50s is an example.

We attempted to apply that doctrine in the 20th Century with success in some places and failure in others. Vietnam was the most spectacular failure at the national level.

Continued BELOW — “David Brooks on Vietnam and Iraq”:

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by Patrick Lang

In listening to the “Beltway/K St.” crowd discuss the ever widening Abuse of Power scandal surrounding the Bush Administration I am struck by the profound immorality of many of the statements being made by people who have served for decades at the right hand of presidents and members of Congress.

Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His CV and blog are linked below the fold.

“That’s just how the Game is Played,” or “Let’s not Criminalize Politics” would be samples of the kind of rhetoric floating around these days in the world of the “talking heads.” What is meant by that?

The idea implicit in statements of this kind by people like David Gergen and Pat Buchanan is that there is nothing wrong with using the power of the executive branch of government to manipulate the press to destroy the reputations and livelihoods of political opponents. The belief seems to be that pressurizing or seducing media executives to accept false and misleading statements about critics of the policies of the government of the day is just a form of “contact sport” and that, in fact, all is truly fair in love, war, and now politics. It seems that the “wise men” also believe that it is just part of the game to “recruit” reporters for the national print media and then use them as instruments of propaganda to deceive the public and contribute to the destruction of the “loyal opposition.”

If it is true that the politics of personal destruction are so widely accepted by the political establishment … Cont. below:

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by Patrick Lang

I had many levels of security clearance during my long government life as well as access to many “compartments” of information involving projects and intelligence “products” so dear to the state that access to them was limited to those on special “bigot lists.”

Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His CV and blog are linked below the fold.

I understood that with that access came an obligation to the state to protect the secrets of the American government. This obligation was entered into freely as a member of “the team.” At times a written undertaking of confidentiality was required before access was granted. I accepted that because I was a public servant.

It could be argued that as historic events recede in time this obligation becomes problematic when confronted with the need to complete the public record, but at the time when access is granted there was not and is not any doubt that someone who accepts secret information from the government, any government, has accepted the government as his/her master,

What then are we to make of the news that Judith Miller was granted some sort of security clearance by the Defense Department so that she could participate in the hunt for Iraqi WMD and presumably “write up” the successful result of that search when it occurred. She had previously written in breathless anticipation that such weapons would be found in Iraq after an American invasion, and now we know that the government provided her with access to classified information to facilitate a continuation of her attempt to validate the causes for which we fought. This continued validation was to be conducted in the pages of the New York Times (“All The News That Is Fit To Print”). This knowledge of her status as a “trusted person” in the eyes of the Bush Administration and her continued “stonewalling” of her colleagues at the Times with regard to the details of her relationship with Administration personalities leads me to the OPINION that her loyalties were divided in at least two directions.

Was she alone in this bifurcated allegiance (government and the news)? It hardly seems likely. There were other nationally know journalists who were treated in a very special way by the Bush Administration. They were welcome guests of the various people of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, were briefed there regularly, given access to serving military officers to make their “research” more authoritative. No. we should not believe that it was only Miller who in my OPINION owed the “right” story to the government.

In Kubrick’s brilliant film, “Full Metal Jacket,” “Joker” the enlisted “Stars and Stripes” reporter is told by the Saigon bureau chief, a marine lieutenant, that he is to go out and find good news because the “troops need it.” “Stars and Stripes” is a “house” newspaper for the armed forces.

Are the New York Times and other media who have gone out to find “good news because the troops need it? house media of the government?

How many more “Millers” are there?

Pat Lang

LIST of articles continued BELOW:

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by Pat Lang

Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His CV and blog are linked below the fold.

I have read the letter in English and looked at the Arabic on a “sampling” basis and my conclusion would be that it was writen by someone who was not a native speaker of Arabic but who had been well educated in the language. I would guess that an Iranian, A Pakistani or the odd Westerner with such a capability would be likely possibilities. (Download in PDF format.)

I would opt for the Westerner because it reads the way a Westerner with an education in Political Science would lay out strategic guidance and argumentation in sending a directive to a subordinate. All that stuff about – first we do this and then we do that and lastly we do such and such is a bit much for me and does not sound like your basic Islamic fanatic however well educated in Egyptian schools.
Also, the eagerness to list all those heroes of Islam with great concern for their patronimics seems excessive. They generally take such knowledge for granted. Doesn’t eveyone know who Nur ad-Din Zengi was?

I think it is a phony, but why it was written and by whom, I know not. I would not rule out a third world person educated in our methodology.
The Arabic is, to me, a little simplistic and too simple for the way an Egyptian like Zawahiri would write. This is the way I would write if trying to do this.

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by Col. Patrick Lang (Ret.)

“Ms. Miller’s revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003.

This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists and the New York Times (if it knew) should never have allowed her to become so compromised. It is all the more puzzling that a reporter who as a matter of principle would sacrifice 85 days of her freedom to protect a source would so willingly agree to be officially muzzled and thereby deny potentially valuable information to the readers whose right to be informed she claims to value so highly.

One must assume that Ms. Miller was required to sign a standard and legally binding agreement that she would never divulge classified information to which she became privy, without risk of criminal prosecution. And she apparently plans to adhere to the letter of that self-censorship deal; witness her dilemma at being unable to share classified information with her editors.” (Editor & Publisher)

Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His CV and blog are linked below the fold.

Folks who still adhere to the “Koolaid” version of history profess to despise the New York Times. They see the Times as a bastion of leftist influence in America. I don’t care for the Times much myself but in my case it is because it is a New York newspaper, a different complaint.

Judy Miller is/was part of the conspiracy that Mr Fitzgerald is investigating. That is why she is “playing games” with him. She has to camouflage a couple of things This is just opinion on my part.

1. She was an active participant in the plot to smear the Wilsons and discredit them in the eyes of the American people. She still is. Why? I really don’t know or am unwilling to give an opinion.

2. She used the NY Times as a vehicle for propagandizing the American people to whip them up for the Iraq war on the basis that Iraq was, in effect, Nazi Germany come again, and that this time the pseudo Nazis were going to provide the Jihadi nuts across the world with nuclear weapons with which to attack us at home. To obfuscate this point of performance, she went to jail for contempt hoping to emerge from this “soulless” place (down the street from my house in Alexandria and run by one of my neighbors, the sheriff) as a champion of press freedom for whom all would be forgiven.

She should be indicted along with her neocon Jacobin and Mayberry Machiavellian pals. They were all in this together.

She called me up once at the point in history at which her BS about the Iraqi WMD program was falling apart. She tried to get me to “sign up” to the idea that “it must have been true.” I told her that I did not wish to participate in her fantasy life. She was disappointed. Given Wilson’s experience, I have to wonder what she was trying to “set me up for.”

Just my opinion.

Pat Lang

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
Recommended Books || More BooTrib <a href="Posts

Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)


“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2

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