Congressional Oversight of the 'Marketplace of Ideas': Defectors as Sources of War Rhetoric

Abstract

Many scholars have recently complained about congressional oversight of the Executive. This paper provides a context-specific example and flags three controversial issues — government funding of private publicity organizations; the distinction between government-financed messages that flow to foreign or domestic audiences; and the use of privately-constituted data in making foreign policy decisions. First, following the 1991 Gulf War, President Bush Sr. issued a covert order that led the CIA to create and ally with the Iraqi National Congress (“INC”), an interest group, and the Rendon Group, a “perception management” PR firm. Government officials allocated over $100 million of US taxpayer resources to “create the conditions for removal of Saddam Hussein from power.” For the first several years, operations recognized fifty-year-old rules (e.g. the Smith-Mundt Act of 1946, Congressional appropriations bills, and in the endeavors of the U.S. Information Agency and the Voice of America) that condoned disseminating U.S. government-funded messages to global audiences, but restricted the information from reaching Americans. Preceding the invasion of Iraq in 2003, defectors, frequently sponsored by the INC, made numerous allegations of Iraqi WMDs and ties to terrorism to three recipients — the media, the American Intelligence Community (“IC”), and government agencies. The first communication requires the media to decide whether to publish the source’s account directly for Americans. The second dissemination is vetted by IC analysts, who may deliver the classified information to top government officials, and top officials decide to publicly disseminate. The third communication is a direct disclosure to government agencies. The CIA oversaw the INC as it disseminated data to the IC and the media; the U.S. State Department contracted with the INC to directly publicize reports in the media to foreign audiences; and the Defense Intelligence Agency imposed contractual restrictions to classify the data and prevent direct publication in the media.