Kenneth Allard

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Carl Kenneth Allard served as Special Assistant to the Army Chief of Staff (1987-90) and also was a Technical Advisor for the 1998 PBS Frontline program, "Ambush in Mogadishu." After retiring from the military, Dr. Allard became a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and a military analyst for MSNBC. In 1987, Col. Allard was Vice President of Potomac Strategies International, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying and consultancy firm.

Col. Allard was a member of the Pentagon military analyst program, was an NBC military analyst and taught information warfare at the National Defense University. Allard, according to the New York Times, "said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. 'This was a coherent, active policy.' ... As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.  'Night and day,' Mr. Allard said, 'I felt we’d been hosed.'

The Pentagon's military analyst program
In April, 2008 documents obtained by New York Times reporter David Barstow revealed that Allard had been recruited as one of over 75 retired military officers involved in the Pentagon military analyst program. Participants appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts, and/or penned newspaper op/ed columns. The program was launched in early 2002 by then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke. The idea was to recruit "key influentials" to help sell a wary public on "a possible Iraq invasion." The article was titled, "Message Machine: Behind Analysts, the Pentagon's Hidden Hand."

Pulitzer prize protest
In 2009, the New York Times article on the Pentagon's Military Analyst Program won reporter Barstow and the Times a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism. In May, 2009, Allard protested the award to the Pulitzer Committee and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), but not directly to the New York Times.

Allard disputed the accuracy, completeness and even-handedness of the Times article, citing in particular the reporter's failure to mention Allard's book, Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War, published in 2006, almost two years before to the publication of the Times article. In interviews with Allard, Barstow had indicated he had read the book closely, yet Barstow did not mention the book in the 7,800-word article. In a June 5, 2009 piece posted on RealClearPolitics.com, Allard wrote,

"That book revealed how the military analysts were created after 911, not by Donald Rumsfeld but by TV networks forced to cover a war few reporters understood -- military service never having been a prerequisite for journalistic advancement. WARHEADS extensively described the Pentagon program, inviting readers to accompany me inside those E-Ring briefings and even into the Iraqi war zone. Far from being anyone's surrogates, the military analysts were strong-willed, fiercely independent and utterly defiant of party lines -- whether propounded by the Pentagon or our own networks."

Allard protested that the Times story was "profoundly slanted" and "defamatory," and said Barstow's failure to discuss the book was "a deliberate omission." He further wrote, "I voluntarily testified to the Pentagon IG (Inspector General) that the wrong-doing alleged by the Times was without any foundation."

The New York Times stands by the story.

Lobbying
A search of the U.S. Senate Office of Public Records for "Allard, Kenneth" lists Allard on the following lobbying contracts:
 * With the firm Potomac Strategies International, for the client GTE Government Systems; the registration was filed in 1999 and terminated in 2003, with no work actually reported on the contract.
 * With Potomac Strategies, for the client Orbital Sciences Corporation, Fairchild Defense Divison; the registration was filed in 1999 and terminated in 2003, with no work actually reported on the contract.

Books
In 2006, Allard wrote a book about his experiences as a TV military analyst, called 'Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War.'

Allard authored Somalia Operations: Lessons Learned, (National Defense Univ Press, 1995), an after-action view of the U.S. mission in Somalia.

SourceWatch resources

 * Covert propaganda
 * Donald H. Rumsfeld
 * Psyops
 * U.S. Department of Defense
 * Victoria Clarke

Articles

 * Matthew Sheffield, "NBC Military Analyst Quits Network, Citing Left-wing Bias," NewsBusters, February 15, 2007.