Homeland Security memo exposes effort to manipulate media

An internal Department of Homeland Security memo leaked to Narco News sheds a bright light on how the U.S. government attempts to manipulate media coverage.

For people working in the media, this memo may not come as a big shock, as many have become reluctant participants in the sham. But for readers, this memo should be disturbing, as it demonstrates clearly how much of what you read in the mainstream media is scripted, right down to who talks to the media, what they say, and which media get to cover the story.

What is more telling is the news that is suppressed, that readers are not allowed to know because the heads of our government agencies deem it more important to spin the news than to provide critical information to citizens that is vital to the proper functioning of the democracy.

The memo provided to Narco News was distributed to local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices from ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C.

ICE, composed of special agents from the former U.S. Customs Service and U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, is the primary investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The DHS memo obtained by Narco News provides very specific instructions on how local ICE offices are to create a media event for Hispanic Heritage Month, which begins Sept. 15 and runs through Oct. 15. Following is an excerpt from the DHS memo:

Event Profile
Hispanic Heritage Month

Tasking

Public affairs officers will develop and host a targeted local media event to salute and demonstrate the contributions of Hispanic employees. Specifically, PAO (public affairs officers) will identify a senior and junior Hispanic ICE employee to participate in a pen and pad session with local Spanish language media outlet.

The topic of discussion will be “What it Means to be a Latino/Hispanic Within the ICE/DHS Family” and what it takes to be a member of the agency during the current period of transition.

If possible, the interview should be conducted in Spanish.

The employees should be agreeable to discussing with the press their personal and professional background, histories, sacrifices and success. They should be well versed in ICE topics so they can discuss how ICE functions within DHS.…

If resources and time permit, you should also offer up to six local media the employees for a “Day in The Life” feature piece relevant to the division the employee serves under ….

Employees should be qualified through the local leadership to ensure they are capable of articulating the communication objectives.

Performance

Contact the lead PAO at least four days prior to the planned event to confirm the event and outline. Guidance will be provided if requested.

Communication Objectives

The communication objects are to:

1.    Promote public awareness of ICE as a diverse agency committed to equal opportunity.

2.    Improve public awareness of ICE by explaining how the organization operates and by clarifying the interrelationships that exist among the various programs and projects.

3.    Demonstrate the agency’s forward vision during this period of transition.

Themes
Overarching:

“What it means to be a Latino within ICE”

Subordinate/Supporting themes:

Responsibility and membership in a federal law enforcement agency
Exhibiting the diversity of the civil service and its common underlying values
Key aspects of National/Homeland Security

ICE Representatives

Senior Candidate:

Select candidate(s) no later than Wednesday 9/8 and provide to headquarters.

Junior Candidate:

Select candidate(s) no later than Wednesday 9/8 and provide to headquarters.

NOTE: If possible, try to qualify both a male and a female employee.

Media Attending (Targeted List)

Provide targeted media list to headquarters at the same time the candidates’ names are submitted.

What should be seen as disturbing about this orchestrated media event is that the process being used to select the Hispanic “candidates” for the media is designed to assure they will not stray off the very calculated agency message.

Employees should be qualified through the local leadership to ensure they are capable of articulating the communication objectives.

And that message is to propagate the propaganda that ICE embraces its Hispanic employees and their culture and that ICE is a model of diversity and inclusion – despite facts to the contrary.

The communication objects are to:

1.    Promote public awareness of ICE as a diverse agency committed to equal opportunity.

Themes
Overarching:

“What it means to be a Latino within ICE”

In addition, the fact that headquarters wants to see the list of media being invited to the press conference -- prior to the event -- assures that no publication with a track record of asking tough questions is likely to remain on the list.

Provide targeted media list to headquarters at the same time the candidates’ names are submitted.

The icing on the cake is the little touches, such as the fact that the Hispanic candidates qualified for the orchestrated media event should speak Spanish, and ideally should include a male and a female.

This script, though seemingly intended to manipulate the media and readers, might be viewed as a benign tumor if it didn’t conceal what a number of Hispanic ICE agents contend is a malignant racism that is rampant within the federal agency.

As evidence, here are a few excerpts from past Narco News stories exposing the alleged racism within DHS:

Fed agents back congressional probe of discrimination claims

The largest federal law enforcement association in the country has thrown its weight behind a call for a congressional inquiry into an alleged pattern of racial discrimination within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA), which represents some 22,000 federal agents in 50 law enforcement agencies, has directed a letter to Congress in support of Ruben Gonzalez, a high-ranking supervisor within DHS' Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Houston. The letter, addressed to U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, stresses that FLEOA “supports any and all efforts to eliminate bias and inequities in hiring and promotion processes by Federal law enforcement agencies.”

Gonzalez is a catalyst behind the growing chorus of Hispanic agents calling for congressional action on the issue. Gonzalez's attorney, Ron Schmidt, claims the racial discrimination within ICE is so pervasive that it has fostered a dysfunctional agency culture that poses a real threat to national security.

Schmidt is representing a group of some 400 current and former Hispanic federal agents who have filed a class-action discrimination lawsuit against DHS. The litigation alleges that the Hispanic agents have endured a pattern of racial discrimination within ICE -- and its predecessor agency, U.S. Customs -- that has prevented the best and brightest from advancing within the agency. In addition to monetary damages, the Hispanic agents are asking the court to order the government to cease its “illegal and discriminatory conduct," the class-action lawsuit states.

DHS officials claim the discrimination charges are without merit….

Bilingual feds demand equal pay

A group of Hispanic Customs agents have filed a class-action lawsuit in a special federal court claiming that the government owes them money.

The special agents, who represent a class of more than 400 current and former bilingual Customs agents, contend the U.S. Customs Service -- and its successor agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- have denied them adequate compensation for their second-language abilities.

(This makes one wonder if the Spanish-speaking Hispanic agents who are being recruited for the ICE press conference being orchestrated in the memo will actually be fairly compensated for their language skills.)

Asa Hutchinson's "Retaliation Against Minority Employees"

… In fact, the seemingly pervasive pattern of racial bias has started to command the attention of the Hispanic law enforcement community nationwide. The mounting tension was focused in late 2002 on a nominee for a high-level post at the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). That nominee was Asa Hutchinson, who at the time was the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) -- which is part of the Department of Justice.

Hutchinson is a former Republican congressman from Arkansas and a graduate of Bob Jones University in South Carolina -- which, until 2000, maintained an open policy of prohibiting inter-racial dating among students. Hutchinson was tapped in late November 2002 by President George W. Bush to serve as Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security within DHS. The undersecretary post is charged with overseeing U.S. Customs, the Transportation Security Administration, Border Patrol and a number of other federal agencies that are being reshuffled and/or reorganized as part of the creation of the new bureaucracy.

The Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association (HAPCOA) has raised some serious concerns about Hutchinson’s track record at DEA, particularly as it relates to minorities. HAPCOA, which has about 1,100 members in the United States and Puerto Rico, represents command-level Hispanic law enforcement officers working on the local, state and federal level. One of the charges made in a 2002 resolution adopted by HAPCOA is that Hutchinson, as DEA administrator, was “party to continuing an insidious ‘good-old-boy’ network (in DEA) thus perpetuating an atmosphere of distrust, reprisal and retaliation against minority employees….”

… HAPCOA also sent a letter to President George W. Bush in early September 2002, which was signed by HAPCOA President Arthur R. Parra Sr. -- a captain in the Chicago Police Department. The purpose of HAPCOA’s letter to the President was to make him aware of the group’s resolutions concerning Customs and DEA and to also seek his help in bringing about needed changes to address the discrimination confronted by Hispanic federal agents.

Parra says HAPCOA members adopted the resolutions and sent the letter to Bush out of a sense of “frustration.” He says Hispanic federal agents have tried to cultivate a working relationship with their agencies, but “it hasn’t worked.”

“We have made numerous pleas to get a resolution to this problem, which has been going on for years, but we’re at a stalemate,” adds Parra, speaking for HAPCOA. “We wish we could do this another way. These agents love their country. They are only asking to be treated fairly.”

… Sandalio Gonzalez, special agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso, Texas, Field Division, says the letter sent to the President in September 2002 took on even greater relevance with Hutchinson’s nomination a few months later to the undersecretary post at the new DHS.

…Gonzalez, who was president of HAPCOA when the Customs and DEA resolutions were drafted in August 2002, says the White House did not respond to HAPCOA’s letter. (The resolutions called for fairer treatment of Hispanic agents at DEA and Customs, which is now part of DHS.)

“Our association (HAPCOA) is on the White House guest list, and I’ve been to two meetings at the White House as head of HAPCOA,” Gonzalez says. “It’s kind of like they use us when it’s convenient, but when HAPCOA raises an issue that is ugly, then they want us to go away. But this issue is not going away.”

Ironically, despite Asa Hutchinson’s track record with Hispanic agents at DEA and the continuing racial problems within DHS, he was recently appointed to a “civil liberties board” set up by President Bush in response to a recommendation of the 9/11 commission.

From an Aug. 31 report in Wired News:

In an executive order issued on Friday night, President Bush responded to a key 9/11 commission recommendation by creating a civil liberties board composed of high-level government officials tasked with making sure their agencies' programs do not violate privacy and civil rights laws.

Civil liberties advocates blasted the board, comparing it to the proverbial "fox guarding the hen house," and questioned how it could be effective without outside appointees and independent investigative powers.

The President's Board on Safeguarding Americans' Civil Liberties will be housed in the Justice Department and led by the Deputy Attorney General James Comey and the Department of Homeland Security's Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson.

…The board's official duties include advising the president on civil liberties, helping craft policy, requesting reports from federal agencies and reviewing a specific agency program when invited to do so by the agency in charge of that policy. The board could not initiate investigations on its own, however, and the order makes no mention of reports to the public.

What does all this mean? Well, one thing is for sure: Narco News isn’t likely to make the short list for any DHS press conferences in the near future.

Controlling the media, whether directly or through orchestrated deception, is a first critical step toward controlling the political thought of a nation. When a government employs such a strategy, it must be resisted and exposed.

But this is an old struggle; one that we must win if democracy is to survive.

From George Orwell’s Preface to Animal Farm, published in 1945:

… There is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who 'objectively' endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought.

These people don't see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you.

I believe this is the point being made by Hispanic agents within DHS. That’s why many of them have put their careers, and in some cases their lives, on the line to expose the cancer of racial discrimination within their agency.

They are like the canaries in the mine, warning us to wake up before it’s too late.