When I agreed to expand my participation in WorldNetDaily, Joseph Farah -- WND founder and big kahuna -- eventually settled on three flavors of Geoff Metcalf:

• I would continue writing my weekly column as I have since January 1998.
• I would contribute an in-depth interview once a week which would consist of questions and answers. This has become a Sunday feature.
• ... And this is still a work in progress. ... Joe wanted me to submit straight news stories about once a week. I also wanted the freedom to dig deeper and spend more time developing stories my talk show and column could not accommodate.

 

 

New Media is going through a growth spurt. Nowhere is that more evident than with the recent rapid explosion right here. I have often written and talked about the symbiotic relationship between talk radio and the Internet -- hell, I live it everyday. Although this symbiosis may have been born on the concept of mutual exploitation, it is synthesizing into something that is new, and something that frankly is superior to the parts of the whole.

Recently, I sent a 565-word story that frankly underwhelmed me. It was interesting but hardly earth shaking. CNN employed some Army PSYOP soldiers.

Actually in the wake of CNN's reputation for overt, vast left wing conspiracy spin control, it seemed oxymoronic. I mean come on. ...

• CNN Honcho Rick Kaplan is more than a mere friendly ear to the Clinton administration. Kaplan is a S.O.B. charter member (Supporter of Bill's)
• CNN continued to defend the indefensible with their "Tailwind" story long after the horse was dead
• Even when they begrudgingly ate crow and discarded the requisite sacrifices, it was badly handled and hollow
• Peter Arnett (enough said)

 

 

I haven't had as strong a response since I first wrote about Monica (days before the mainstream broke the story). One of the keyboard soldiers wrote, "I feel you article was an example of poor journalism. It is obvious you know very little about Psychological Operations, and that you did not make much effort to become informed. I feel your attempt to portray this program as a government conspiracy is deplorable."

On the other side of coin, a retired lieutenant colonel wrote, "I would like to inform you that this article just hit a sensitive nerve. I went through the school ... and I was assigned to the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg for two years. The first hour of the Psyops School was the Federal Law, which prohibited us from ever using Psyops on the American People. They read us the riot act and told us what would happen if we ever violated the law. We would get a nice vacation in the Federal Pen. Sorry I don't remember the number of the Federal Law but I'm sure a Lawyer could find it rather quickly. How did these people get away with this?" A former PSYOP officer (and personal friend) wrote, "Not that surprising to me. Mass communication media are a big part of what PSYOP is about. ... It's natural that they'd want to learn the 'state of the art' on how it's done. ... The big question, of course, is whether this kind of training and experience could be misused here. That could never happen, of course, any more than military training provided to the FBI and other agencies could ever be misused. We had military special-ops folks 'training' on the ground at Waco, too -- what could go wrong?"

It has been fascinating to read the e-mail (increasingly obvious) which is coming in from PSYOP soldiers "insulted," "offended" and "appalled" at my lack of everything from brain cells to integrity. It is amusing to see these would-be word warriors expend their written ordinance. Many of the vilifying phrases are strikingly similar. My gross ineptitude at referring to the craft as "Psyops" instead of the correct nomenclature of PSYOP is an affront approaching sacrilege. No less than a dozen focused on this as proof of my incompetence. However, what I found disappointingly obvious were the common threads that connect so many of these critics of frankly a pretty minor story:

• Common points of outrage: Pysops vs. PSYOP and Airmobile vs. Airborne
• Common phrases ridiculously in pretty much the same sequence
• All but two of the PSYOP veterans used anonymous e-mail accounts

 

 

In the spirit of mutual exploitation and quid pro quo, I suggest Rick Kaplan and his 12 most senior managers be sent to Fort Benning or Fort Bragg to attend any NCO school to learn the fundamentals of leadership. They should each be required to memorize FM22-100 (leadership field manual) and run five miles a day while carrying their laptops at high port arms.