GAO on Retired Military Officers as Media Analysts Controversy

The Government Accountability Office has issued an opinion on a fiscal law question related to the controversy over retired military officers acting as analysts for major news outlets. The opinion does not deal with standards of conduct issues, but it is of some interest to ethics officials. Here is the GAO summary:

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 mandated that GAO provide its opinion to Congress on whether the Department of Defense (DOD) violated the appropriations prohibition on publicity or propaganda in its 2002 through 2008 outreach to retired military officers (RMO) who served as media analysts. GAO concluded that the outreach program did not violate the publicity or propaganda prohibition. Although there is no doubt that DOD attempted to favorably influence public opinion with respect to DOD's war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan through RMOs with conference calls, meetings, travel and access to senior DOD officials, GAO found no evidence that DOD attempted to conceal its outreach from the public nor was there evidence that DOD contracted with or paid RMOs for positive commentary or analysis.

The opinion does not address questions raised about the RMOs' commercial ties and potential competitive advantage or possible compromised DOD procurement processes because those questions, while legitimate, did not, in our view, implicate the publicity or propaganda prohibition and, thus, were outside the scope of the opinion. For similar reasons, this opinion does not examine whether the RMOS disclosed to the viewing public or the networks whether they had commercial ties to DOD contractors or other possible conflicts of interests.

B-316443, Department of Defense--Retired Military Officers as Media Analysts, July 21, 2009.