Air University

air force RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Communicating Airpower

Strategic Communication and the 

United States Air Force since 9/11

John A. Robinson

Air Force Research Institute

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112-6026

August 2008
ii

Disclaimer

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of 

the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air Force Research Institute, Air 

University, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government 

agency. Cleared for public release: distribution unlimited.

This paper is available electronically at the Air University 

Research Web site (https://research.maxwell.af.mil/).
iii

Contents

Page

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

A BRIEF HISTORY OF STRATEGIC 

COMMUNICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

AIR FORCE STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION

EFFORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL: US NAVY 

PUBLIC AFFAIRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AIR FORCE 

COMMUNICATION EFFORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

v

Foreword

During the Cold War, the Air Force had a fairly easy time 

explaining its mission to the American public. It also had a 

coherent public affairs structure to help execute that mission. The new threat environment in the aftermath of the 

9/11 attacks, combined with steep personnel cuts to its public affairs community, have dramatically altered the communication challenge for the Air Force. To effectively operate in 

this new climate with an emphasis on strategic communication, the Air Force has tinkered with a few organizational 

models to strengthen the communication function. 

The Air Force Research Institute (AFRI) asked the knowledgeable Washington editor John A. Robinson to analyze Air 

Force communications and provide some lessons that might 

help the Air Force communicate with the nation. Robinson 

is the managing editor of Defense Daily and is also a lieutenant commander public affairs officer in the Navy Reserve. 

He has a bachelor of arts in government from the University of 

Notre Dame, a master of arts in international affairs from The 

Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International 

Studies, and a master of arts in national security and strategic 

studies from the Naval War College.

As the ground campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan drag 

on, perceptions of the Air Force contribution to those efforts 

and the larger global war on terrorism will play an increasing role in how it is understood by the American public as 

well as leaders in the Pentagon and Congress. Robinson 

concludes that the Air Force needs to redouble its communication efforts. It needs to abandon the vague theoretical 

construct of strategic communication, rebuild the public 

affairs community, and focus on better explaining the relevance of airpower in current and future wars. He feels that 

it was an important story to tell, not only for the Airmen 

proudly defending the nation but also for the public, whose 

support is crucial. 
AFRI collected these thoughts from Robinson in order to 

distribute them to Air Force public affairs offices and those 

most affected by and interested in his observations. 

Daniel R. Mortensen

Deputy Chief of Research

Air Force Research Institute

vi


Introduction

“Robot air attack squadron bound for Iraq,” roared the top 

headline of the 15 July 2006 Drudge Report Web site.1 The exposure from such a high-visibility placement at the top of one 

of the most widely viewed Web sites would seem to be boundless.2 In fact, the Drudge Report’s collection of Web links is the 

top referrer of Web traffic to the Washington Post.

3 However, it 

is a Sunday afternoon, on the eve of a week dominated by debate over the Iraq War, when the robotic air squadron story 

surfaces. The only hardware mentioned during congressional 

discussions on Iraq that week is armored vehicles for American 

ground forces, with no mention of the Air Force’s uninhabited 

aerial vehicles. Armed flying robots would normally make an 

enticing story for the media to cover and the American people 

to follow, but this particular news was lost amid the noise of 

the Iraq debate inside the Beltway. 

About a month later on the presidential campaign trial, 

airpower is under assault. Senator Barack Obama tells a restaurant full of diners in New Hampshire that he will finish the 

job in Afghanistan by sending more troops “so we’re not just 

air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”4 While Obama’s remarks about 

airpower are swirling on political news sites, Gen George Casey, 

chief of staff of the Army, is talking to the National Press Club 

in Washington, DC. He methodically describes an environment 

of “persistent conflict” and the need to “reset” the Army for 

years to come, all of which is reported in the media.5

In the span of a month, one could draw some quick conclusions from these reports: the Air Force is participating in the 

Iraq War with a robotic armada about which no one is really 

interested, a top presidential contender is concerned that airpower is killing civilians in Afghanistan, and the Army is the 

service that needs the most help. Such news stories highlight a 

serious problem for the Air Force: it is widely misunderstood. 

To explore this disconnect between the Air Force and the American people, this study examines the service’s recent communication efforts. In so doing it will focus on the Air Force’s public 

affairs capability and the relatively new strategic communication 
concept. Public affairs is the primary communication organization of the service, similar to the public relations function of a 

large corporation. Strategic communication is a concept that 

has gained a lot of traction in the American government since 

9/11. Although many different definitions of the concept are 

still percolating in government, it typically refers to synchronizing and coordinating the many different activities of an organization in order to communicate with and influence important 

audiences. Thus, while public affairs activities are a part of this 

new concept, they are only a small piece of the whole strategic 

communication picture. 

This study first provides a brief history of the strategic communication concept, then covers its implementation in the Air 

Force, provides an alternative model for armed service communication by examining US Navy public affairs, and, finally, offers 

recommendations to help the Air Force better tell its story. It 

finds that Air Force leaders should begin rebuilding the public 

affairs community, end the focus on strategic communication, 

understand that no amount of spin or messaging can fix real 

problems, and assume a more proactive posture in communicating with the American people.

A Brief History of Strategic Communication

As with many of the sweeping initiatives undertaken by the 

US government in recent years, the sudden desire to drastically improve American communication efforts dates to the 

9/11 terrorist attacks. Faced with an asymmetric terrorist 

threat, US officials found they were starting from scratch to reshape their communication capabilities in a brand new strategic 

landscape. Soon this emphasis on improving the US government’s ability to influence through communication activities was 

adopted by the military branches, raising important questions 

about just who the American government should try to reach—

only foreign audiences with a message of American friendship, 

or the domestic audience as well with sound bites of armed 

service advocacy. This section covers the renewed interest in 

communication on the part of the US government following 9/11

and the birth of a new buzzword: strategic communication.
Post-9/11 Efforts to Improve Communication 

with Foreign Audiences

It was so much easier for the government to communicate at 

home and abroad during the Cold War. The American public, 

for the most part, understood the communist threat and seemed 

to tolerate overt attempts by the US government to influence 

foreign audiences. The US Information Agency (USIA), through 

programs like the Voice of America (VOA) radio network, transmitted news and other information about the United States to 

international audiences. The VOA’s mission, codified in law in 

1976, was to “present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.”6 During 

the Cold War, the radio network served as a centerpiece of 

American public diplomacy, a term used to describe a country’s 

promotion of its national interest through understanding, informing, and influencing foreign audiences. 

The American military during the Cold War also played some 

role in such influence efforts. As a component of wider US 

policy, the military often “communicated” with foreign audiences simply by moving conventional forces, generally as a gesture of support for an ally or to deter an adversary. During this 

time, military public affairs officials generally stuck to their 

knitting of keeping the American public informed on the “train 

and equip” aspects of the services, rarely delving into the world 

of public diplomacy. 

When the Berlin Wall finally came down in 1989 and Winston 

Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” began to fade away, the United 

States’ coherent government approach to communicating with 

foreign audiences started to unravel. The US public diplomacy 

budget was dismantled by steep cuts. According to one report, 

the State Department had slashed public diplomacy funding by 

26 percent and staffing by 35 percent during the 1980s and 

1990s.7 Today, the CIA information operations staff is onetenth the size it was during the 1980s.8

Perhaps most indicative of the loss of interest in communicating about the United States to foreign audiences was the 

disbanding of the USIA in 1999. In explaining the decision to 

fold the agency into the State Department and create an undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, the Pres. Bill Clinton 
administration noted that it put a “very high priority on public 

diplomacy,” seeing the move as a way to better integrate such 

efforts with foreign policy.9 The administration listed support 

for NATO enlargement, sanctions on Iraq, and addressing global 

climate change as examples of effective public diplomacy.10 In 

explaining these changes, the administration made no mention 

of the bubbling threat of Muslim fundamentalism and the monumental task of improving the US image in Arab and other predominantly Islamic nations. The terrorist attacks of 11 September 

2001 changed all of this. 

As US government leaders crafted their strategy to protect the 

nation against this new threat, improving the American image 

overseas was identified as a key task. However, these leaders 

found themselves working from a dead start given the drastic 

public diplomacy cuts since the Cold War ended. Early on, the 

Pres. George W. Bush administration saw some success by setting up the Office of Global Communications (OGC) to “coordinate strategic communications overseas that integrates the 

president’s themes while truthfully depicting American and 

Administration policies.”11 With offices in London and Pakistan 

as well as Washington, the office was designed to rebut disinformation put out by the Taliban and its sympathizers in the 

early days following 9/11. Widely viewed as a success by administration officials, the OGC would also mark the beginning 

of an enduring interest in having all facets of government, including the military, communicate “strategically.” 

However, the interest in such communication would suffer a 

temporary setback one year later. In an effort in late 2001 to fill 

the void left by the State Department’s lack of a capability to 

influence foreign audiences, the Pentagon formed the Office of 

Strategic Influence (OSI). The office closed months later in 2002 

after word of its existence leaked to the media, and many questioned whether the OSI was a blatant Department of Defense 

(DOD) propaganda arm.12 Still, the fascination with strategically 

communicating lived on in the Pentagon lexicon. Top DOD leaders, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claimed that 

“strategic communication” was needed to win the war on terror.13 This line of thought continues with Rumsfeld even today. 

In his first major public address since leaving the DOD, he called 

for the creation of a strategic communication agency in the 
government designed to battle radical Muslim ideology spread 

via the Internet.14 Tapping new Internet technologies, the 

agency would spread the message of democracy, much as the 

USIA did during the Cold War.15

Military Services Adopt Strategic Communication

for Domestic Audiences

Taking a cue from the Pentagon leadership, it was not long 

before the military services started referencing strategic communication in their own efforts. The joint doctrine on strategic 

communication describes it as “focused United States Government (USG) efforts to understand and engage key audiences in 

order to create, strengthen, or preserve conditions favorable for 

the advancement of USG interests, policies and objectives 

through the use of coordinated programs, plans, themes, messages, and policies synchronized with the actions of all elements of national power.”16 Lost in much of the enthusiasm to 

embrace strategic communication was the fact that, as used by 

Rumsfeld and other government leaders, its focus was often to 

sharpen the delivery of messages to foreign audiences. It was 

therefore most applicable to commanders operating in combat 

environments overseas. However, the military services adopted 

the concept to guide communication activities in support of 

their Title 10 “organize, train, and equip” duties to supply military forces to those combatant commanders. As such, the primary audience of the military service’s strategic communication programs became the American public and, by extension, 

Congress. To reference the thinking of the military strategist 

Carl von Clausewitz, the American public is the “center of 

gravity” for the military, which can’t survive, much less win a 

global war, without the public’s support. 

This melding of the foreign and domestic audiences poses a 

problem for the military, according to one former military leader. 

“The American public does not want to be communicated to 

strategically,” said S. R. Pietropaoli, a former Navy chief of information who is now the executive director of the Naval League 

of the United States. “They want straight talk.”17 Nevertheless, 

strategic communication quickly worked its way into the mili-
tary lexicon of all the services and began to influence the way 

in which they communicated with the American people. 

Continuing Efforts despite Confusion and Setbacks

Some seven years after strategic communication became a 

phrase du jour in military circles, little is settled on the topic, and 

there is some evidence its luster may be fading. Indeed, the Air 

Force last year quietly dropped the “strategic” from the title of its 

Office of Strategic Communication, renaming it the Directorate of 

Communication.18 However, numerous references to strategic 

communication abound in the new directorate’s products and in 

literature on the public affairs career field.19 As recently as last 

year, Rumsfeld lamented the “absence of a strategic communication framework” for the US government in a speech on the new 

media age.20 Rumsfeld added that the public affairs structure in 

the military was ill equipped to operate in the new demands of a 

24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week news cycle. This is especially 

true, he said, considering that America’s enemies require little 

organization or technology to get their messages out. He also criticized US military public affairs as “reactive, not proactive.” Given 

the constraints and expectations from the press for perfection in 

government, Rumsfeld said there was “no tolerance for innovation” in the area. Challenges for building a strong public affairs 

community are also daunting, he added. Oftentimes, public affairs officers are thrown into an operational environment with 

little training and background in facing the “realities of digital and 

broadcast media,” Rumsfeld said. He also admitted what many 

have thought for a long time: public affairs jobs “have not proven 

to be career enhancing.” Given the penalty military personnel can 

pay for saying the wrong thing and having it blasted around the 

world by the press, Rumsfeld noted that “military people are intelligent; they’ll move away from those careers.”21

Rumsfeld’s words are unlikely to help public affairs career 

field recruiting, but his low marks for military communication 

efforts do seem to be supported by recent research. Amid the 

growth in popularity of the strategic communication concept in 

the military since 9/11, the credibility of the military in the eyes 

of the US public has steadily declined in recent years.22 One explanation for the erosion in credibility may be the perception 
that the Iraq War is simply not worth the cost.23 Some critics of 

the war have latched onto President Bush’s now infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech, aboard an aircraft carrier at the 

conclusion of major combat operations, as a premature and misguided declaration of victory.24 One popular cable commentator 

frequently closes out his one-hour program by reminding viewers how many days have passed since Bush made the declaration.25 The American people may be transferring some of this 

dissatisfaction with the course of the war and its costs to their 

opinions of the military. 

It is also worth exploring whether the confusion over defining 

strategic communication—and precisely who the target audience is for this new concept—is why it may be falling out of 

favor. For example, Congress is starting to raise serious questions about the direction of strategic communication. In fact, 

two key congressional committees deleted a $3 million request 

from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) to implement 

the “Quadrennial Defense Review Strategic Communication 

Execution Roadmap” in 2007. The House Appropriations 

Committee denied funding simply because it was an “unsupported program initiative.” The Senate Armed Services Committee rejected the funding for a more revealing reason: that 

some of the components of strategic communication—public 

diplomacy, public affairs and information operations—are 

“separate and distinct functions.” It added that “any attempt 

to integrate them could compromise the integrity of each of 

these functions.”26

In another recent sign that the larger debate over strategic 

communication is just beginning, the new chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm Mike Mullen, has suggested a “course 

correction” for such efforts. In late 2007, he signed out a memorandum on the topic noting that he was “increasingly concerned 

with the military’s fixation” on the term “strategic.”27 In recommending several organizational changes to the DOD’s Strategic 

Communication Integration Group (SCIG), Mullen argues that 

having a professional communicator to lead the group is critical. He states that the military’s professional communicators 

need to be in charge of such an effort, much as naval aviators 

are properly charged with commanding aircraft carriers.28

Mullen acknowledges that putting a communicator in charge 
of the SCIG will be opposed by those who argue that strategic 

communication is bigger than public affairs but concludes that 

no one is better suited to lead an effort aimed at communicating effectively than a person who has spent an entire professional career doing just that.

Conclusion

Although the US Congress and Mullen may be having second 

thoughts about strategic communication, the concept has dominated American communication efforts since 9/11. Beginning 

with President Bush’s OGC and extending to the military services’ 

own efforts to explain their requirements to organize, train, and 

equip their forces, the idea of better coordinating communication 

efforts to influence various audiences is seen as a prerequisite for 

governmental success. However, this recognition of the importance of communication in theory has not been matched by success in practice. From Admiral Pietropaoli’s admonition that 

Americans just want “straight talk” to Rumsfeld’s public declarations of the impotency of DOD communication efforts, it appears 

the sudden interest in strategic communication may be shortlived. But as US senators and other governmental leaders ponder 

the future of the seven-year-old concept, the Air Force is still 

championing its own strategic communication efforts.

Air Force Strategic Communication Efforts

Historically, the Air Force approach to public affairs has 

not been radically different from the other services. For the 

most part, a senior career public affairs general officer led a 

community of Airmen charged with delivering truthful information to the American people, and sometimes foreign audiences, to enhance understanding of and appreciation for the 

service’s role in US national security. However, both the leadership of and approach to Air Force communication have 

changed since the beginning of the Bush administration in 

2001 as the service has experimented with different models 

for public affairs. This section explores Air Force communication efforts since 2001 and the Air Force’s adoption of the 

strategic communication concept.
Early Days: Trying the Corporate Model 

With a long record in private industry, Rumsfeld was enamored 

with applying useful corporate models to the DOD as part of 

his effort to transform the Pentagon. Public Affairs was not 

impervious to this line of thought. For the Air Force, the first 

major change to its communication activities occurred in March 

2002 when Gen John Jumper, Air Force chief of staff, pulled 

together the previously separate functions of marketing, public 

affairs, and the long-range issues team in order to improve the 

speed and accuracy of Air Force communication.29 Air Force 

secretary Jim Roche’s special assistant, Bill Bodie, was selected 

to lead the effort. 

Bodie had worked as a spokesman for Roche at defense contractor Northrop Grumman before the two came to the Air 

Force. Looking back to his time in the Pentagon, Bodie said the 

new corporate-flavored organization showed some initial success. He pointed to an effort that used traditional damage controls tactics to contain a friendly-fire incident involving an Air 

National Guard pilot and Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. In 

addition, he said that much of the fallout over various scandals 

at the Air Force Academy was kept in check by using traditional media relations tactics.30

At the time, the Air Force had a one-star career public affairs 

officer—Brig Gen Ron Rand—serving as director of public affairs 

under Bodie. Having a one-star public affairs officer was valuable, especially in generating coverage on sensitive military operations, Bodie said.31 During the buildup to Operation Iraqi 

Freedom (OIF), for example, Rand went to Saudi Arabia and 

was able to generate a limited amount of media coverage for Air 

Force operations. Rand deployed with then–lieutenant general 

T. Michael Moseley, the combined forces air component commander. A lower-ranking officer may have been less likely to 

persuade typically media-shy operators to provide media access, but Rand was able to convince the air operations center 

personnel of the importance of telling the airpower story. According to sources, Moseley was so pleased with the media coverage of the Air Force role in OIF that he remarked, “I wish I 

had 12 Ron Rands.”32
10

As in the first Gulf War, American airpower was on full display during OIF. But unlike the earlier conflict with Saddam 

Hussein, the Air Force had few publicized incidents of civilian 

casualties during the early major combat portions of OIF to 

draw worldwide criticism. Still, there were missed opportunities. Even though the top Air Force leadership fully supported 

media embeds, “we still had commanders not supporting the 

program,” Bodie said. “We were not as successful getting the 

word out [on the importance of the media embed program] in 

the chain of command.”33 In addition, there were diplomatic 

hurdles beyond the Air Force’s control that prevented getting 

media into Saudi Arabia. That country’s leaders were wary of 

publicizing the fact that the American Air Force was running 

the air campaign from their soil.34 The British also prohibited 

media coverage from Diego Garcia, a British territory that 

served as another operational hub for the Air Force in OIF.35

Though the Air Force was generally pleased with the publicity 

it received, its coverage paled in comparison to the images of 

ground combat embedded with soldiers and marines brought 

into American living rooms by media members. The Navy and 

Marine Corps were also able to generate more than their fair 

share of coverage thanks to an aggressive embed program for 

their ships. During the course of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan and OIF in Iraq, the Navy embedded more than 800 journalists on ships participating in combat operations.36 In OEF, embedded media accompanied the 

first conventional ground forces that traveled to Afghanistan 

from amphibious ships. During OIF, about 50 media were embedded on each of the six carriers that launched the initial 

strikes in Iraq.37

Lingering Damage from the Tanker Scandal

Later in 2003, the Air Force faced a challenge to its reputation 

as the tanker lease acquisition scandal unfolded. Just days after 

President Bush had signed into law an arrangement to lease 20 

aerial refueling airplanes from Boeing and buy up to an additional 80, the company fired Darleen Druyun, a former top acquisition official in the Air Force, for inappropriate conversations 

regarding her employment while she was still working for the 
11

service. Her firing, along with that of Boeing’s chief financial officer, touched off a massive scandal that continues to leave a 

dark cloud over the Air Force acquisition community. Looking 

back, Bodie acknowledged that the Air Force made “political 

errors” in trying to manage the problem that “made for an impossible situation” no matter how the communication function 

was organized. The scandal had wide-ranging consequences, 

prompting closer congressional scrutiny of the entire Air Force 

budget and even preventing a four-star Air Force general from 

being assigned as a combatant commander.38 The service’s 

reputation was now tainted in the eyes of one of its most important audiences: Congress. 

Bodie believes that “the real lesson of the tanker scandal is 

that an executive agency will not be able to take the offensive 

when it is opposed by a senior member of Congress.”39 In theory, 

the Air Force could have been more effective in educating the 

media and Congress on its innovative acquisition approach to 

modernizing its tanker fleet. To some extent, it had accomplished that. After all, a tanker deal had been signed into law 

before the corporate scandal unraveled and prompted a chain 

of investigations that ultimately killed the deal. In the end, 

Senator John McCain proved to be a formidable opponent unlikely to be defeated by even the soundest public affairs plan. 

The Air Force, to its credit, took some important steps to 

remedy the image of corruption. For example, it created a director of transparency position to advise the secretariat on procurement matters. Much of that progress was quickly undone, 

however, when the Government Accountability Office last year 

found infirmities in the competition for the Air Force’s search 

and rescue helicopter.40 Still carrying much of the baggage from 

the tanker scandal, the Air Force has been blasted by its detractors, ranging from opponents of Pentagon spending to longtime critics of the service.41 Citing the problems of the Air Force 

rescue helicopter program competition as well as the development of a Navy ship, McCain recently introduced acquisition 

reform legislation to fix what he sees as a “dysfunctional” acquisition process.42 McCain is also exploring whether there was 

collusion between defense contractor Boeing and the Air Force 

over extending the production line of the C-17 cargo aircraft.43
12

Fair or not, the notion that the Air Force has a corrupt acquisition culture gained momentum amid the C-17 investigation and 

later suicide of a top acquisition official. That tragedy occurred 

two weeks after a front-page story in the Washington Post raised 

questions about a financial arrangement the Air Force had set up 

for him.44 The day the story broke in the press, key influencers in 

Washington think tanks were already claiming the incident would 

continue to cast a cloud over the acquisition community.45 Perceptions worsened when the story made its way to the opinion 

pages of the New York Times in its Sunday edition. The opinion 

piece reminded the public that the “full story” of the tanker scandal “is even now still unknown.”46

At this writing, the Air Force still has done little to quell the 

rehashed tanker scandal stories brought back to life after the 

tragic death of the acquisition official. The incident shows that 

the emphasis on strategic planning is misguided when unexpected 

incidents can inflict far-reaching damage on the Air Force’s 

reputation. Before the Air Force can discuss how it is relevant 

to the future, it still has to do a better job explaining how it is 

fixing past problems. 

Air Force Public Affairs’ Bad Reputation

Bodie, who left the Pentagon in May 2004 amid the aftermath of the tanker scandal, sees a fundamental problem for 

the public affairs community, regardless of whatever organizational construct is put in place for Air Force communication. 

“Public affairs has a terrible reputation inside the Air Force,” 

he said. “The pilots really look down on the public affairs people, 

which is unfortunate.” It was not always this way. For a long 

time, Air Force public affairs was the envy of the other services. 

“When I came into this business in the 1960s, the Air Force 

was the best in the business, hands down,” said Kendell Pease, 

the former long-time Navy chief of information who is now the 

head of government relations and public affairs at defense contractor General Dynamics. Pease recalled taking his first media 

training course from the Air Force in the early 1980s. He said 

he had to pay his own way for the course because the subject 

matter was such a foreign concept to the Navy. “These guys 

had been doing this [media training] for years; they were way 
13

ahead of the curve,” Pease said. After completing the course, he 

became the first media trainer in the Navy.47

As Roche’s closest adviser during his tenure as Air Force secretary, Bodie frequently heard of frustration with public affairs 

from top general officers. There was an element of the fighter 

pilot über alles mentality at work, he said. Top Air Force officers were convinced that innovation and imagination—the 

types of skills that are highly effective in war fighting—could be 

applied to public affairs but were not going to be developed by 

a career public affairs officer. Bodie said that the Air Force has 

“a highly developed social hierarchy and public affairs is at the 

bottom of that list.”48 Given such a mind-set in the Air Force 

leadership, it is hard to see how the public affairs community 

can be effective no matter what the organizational construct. 

Despite the strong feelings for Rand in some corners of the 

Air Force, his role had been weakened in the corporate-model 

approach endorsed by Roche and Jumper. Even though Rand 

was still leading the community as a one-star general, he was 

a bit of an odd man out. As the Air Force’s top communicator, 

Bodie—not Rand—was the communication representative in 

high-level meetings. The public affairs community had thus 

lost that direct link to the leadership. Top operators had to pay 

attention to Bodie and the service’s communication efforts because they knew he had the ear of the secretary, but there was 

now a new administrative layer between Rand and the service 

leadership. There was also the obvious problem that, as a political appointee slot, Bodie’s position might only last until the 

end of the Bush administration. F. Whitten Peters, who preceded Roche as Air Force secretary, said he greatly valued having a seasoned public affairs officer like Rand directly advising 

him. In particular, he found the relationships Rand had developed 

with the Pentagon press over his career as “extremely valuable” 

in helping the Air Force get its message out.49

The Pilots Are Put in Charge

The bond between career public affairs officers and the Air 

Force leadership was soon to rupture even more. After Rand 

retired in January 2004, the Air Force selected Brig Gen Fred 

Roggero as his replacement. Roggero is a pilot who had no 
14

experience in public affairs, although he had recently led the 

Air Force’s advertising and marketing program. Whether there 

were qualified public affairs officers who could have replaced 

Rand is debatable. According to one retired senior public affairs officer, there were good candidates.50 However, Bodie said 

there were no public affairs officers in the community who 

would be competitive in the eyes of an Air Force one-star board. 

He supported Roggero’s selection. “The idea was to keep him in 

place to ‘mind the store’ while others got the appropriate ‘seasoning’ ” in other jobs to make them competitive in a general 

officer selection board, Bodie said. However, he did not expect 

pilots to continue to hold the top public affairs slot for three 

consecutive rotations, as later happened.51

One potential impact of such a trend is the effect it could 

have on retaining public affairs officers in the Air Force. An 

incentive for retention in many functional areas is the fact that 

the communities are led by a general officer of that discipline. 

Seeing an opportunity for advancement and feeling that their 

particular career field is valued by the Air Force, that community’s officers are thus encouraged to continue their military 

service. The fact that three consecutive promotion cycles passed 

over public affairs colonels is not likely to send a positive message to the community. 

Since 1975, the head of Air Force public affairs has consistently been a public affairs officer, with only three exceptions.52

Gen Merrill McPeak, one of the Air Force chiefs of staff who did 

not use a career public affairs general officer to lead the career 

field, said he did not think the director of the public affairs 

office merited a general officer billet. With fewer such billets to 

hand out at the time, he wanted the available assignments to 

focus on operations, the service’s core competency.53

Even though most in the public affairs community would prefer a career uniformed public affairs officer running the service’s 

communication activities, one option would be to have a career 

public affairs civilian in the slot, according to one retired senior 

Air Force public affairs officer. “Anything is better than having 

an operator in there,” he said. “That’s a failed structure.”54

Bodie, the only person close to the leadership with any public affairs experience, departed for the private sector in May 

2004, not long after Roggero arrived. That left the Air Force 
15

with a one-star operator reporting to the Air Force secretary 

and chief of staff on the service’s communication activities. 

This situation mirrored what had been occurring in Iraq, where 

operators were acting as primary spokespersons for the coalition since before combat operations started. As the war began 

to go badly, however, concern over improving the whole communication effort began to get closer attention from operational 

commanders. Maj Gen Erv Lessel recalled a 2004 meeting with 

his new boss, Gen George Casey, not long after he had been 

tapped as the military spokesperson for the coalition in Iraq. 

“[Casey] told me I needed to focus on strategic communication—

that it was broken and needed to be fixed,” Lessel said. “As I 

walked out of that office, my first question was, if I’m going to 

fix it, what is strategic communication?”55

The Air Force Takes on Strategic Communication

It was a domestic disaster and not the global war on terrorism 

that triggered the creation of the Air Force’s Office of Strategic 

Communication. As images of US Coast Guard and Navy helicopters rescuing the victims of Hurricane Katrina flooded television screens in September 2005, senior Air Force leaders 

wondered why the Air Force’s support to the recovery effort was 

not getting its due. New Air Force chief of staff General Moseley 

decided it was time for the service to “go on offense” to get its 

message out.56 In November, two months after Katrina, Moseley 

announced the official standup of the Office of Strategic Communication, which would coordinate the Air Force’s various 

communication career fields, to include those in the public affairs and multimedia functions. Moseley vowed that the current 56-person public affairs staff serving at the Air Force 

headquarters in the Pentagon would be doubled as part of the 

change, and the new strategic communication division would 

be headed by a two-star general.57 Moseley also pledged to “take 

strategic communication to the next level,” calling for all Airmen 

to be more aggressive in telling the Air Force story. In addition, 

he called on the service to better employ classic outreach efforts 

such as speeches in the community by senior leaders.58

To lead the new organization, Moseley selected Lessel, the 

same man whom the top US commander in Iraq had recently 
16

picked to fix his wartime strategic communication problems. 

Lessel, a career pilot who was the director of plans and programs at Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air 

Force Base, Ohio, when he was chosen, was soon to promote to 

two stars. Moseley also selected Col Michelle Johnson, another 

career pilot who would eventually be promoted to brigadier 

general, as Lessel’s de facto deputy and director of public affairs. 

Moseley described both as “wonderful people” who were “perfect” for the jobs.59 However, there was little professional communication experience in the background of either, other than 

Lessel’s brief stint in Iraq, that would suggest they were qualified to run a massive public affairs operation in a volatile 

media environment. The media landscape was more challenging than ever, with the ground war in Iraq dominating news 

headlines, and the Air Force was still reeling from the tanker 

acquisition scandal. 

The Air Force settled on a definition for strategic communication, seeing it as “actions of informing and appropriately influencing key audiences by synchronizing and integrating communication efforts to deliver truthful, timely, accurate and 

credible information.” The Air Force has since worked to embed 

this strategic communication mantra into its training materials. Its public affairs development and training guide puts a top 

priority in “developing . . . strategic communicators[s],” defined 

as people who are “not only able to ‘tell the story’ but [who] can 

actually shape the communication battle space using integrated, synchronized communication. They accomplish this by 

delivering truthful, credible, accurate and timely information 

that can appropriately influence key audiences.”60

In the period from the start-up of the new strategic communication office in 2005 and the holding of a “strategic communication summit” in late 2006, the headlines from Iraq only got 

worse. Much of the coverage focused on mounting casualties 

on the ground, the need to better protect ground forces there, 

and the mapping of a strategy to end the war. Even though the 

news was generally bad in Iraq, there was a feeling among Air 

Force leaders that there was a lack of awareness for the service’s contribution to the mission.61 “We make it look easy,” 

Moseley said. “It’s not easy.”62 The Air Force was a victim of its 

own success, added Air Force secretary Michael Wynne.63 Both 
17

leaders seemed to suggest that if only the Air Force tried harder 

to get its message across, its voice would be heard. To this end, 

the Air Force published “The Air Force Story,” a glossy 10-page 

brochure for all Airmen.64 The brochure essentially provided 

talking points about Air Force history, interesting facts and 

figures about the service, and capabilities the Air Force provides for the nation’s security today and into the future. 

At the strategic communication summit, Moseley urged Airmen to send a “constant and unrelenting” message about not 

only the service’s contribution to the current war on terrorism 

but also to the strategic defense of the country. Another overriding theme of the conference was the need to convince the 

public that a modernized Air Force was critical in sustaining 

Air Force dominance in the skies.65 The implication was clear: 

if the Air Force cannot effectively communicate the need to 

modernize, there would be long-term adverse implications to 

its budget and to national security. 

For all the talk of improved communication, very little was 

said at the summit by the senior Air Force leaders about bolstering the public affairs community. By putting a two-star 

general in the new strategic communication job, Moseley believed he was recognizing the government-wide emphasis on 

communicating better. However, he arguably undervalued the 

role of public affairs to carry out the task. In fact, the service 

was in the throes of carrying out a major reduction of personnel in the community. According to one flag officer, the Air 

Force totally misread the push into strategic communication. 

“[Strategic communication] is a philosophical process; it is not 

about creating organizations,” the official said. “The Air Force 

did not seem to understand that.”66

Experiments to Get the Message Out

“Our audiences don’t get us,” acknowledged Maj Gen Bill 

Chambers, the Air Force’s new director of communication, in a 

recent interview.67 A career navigator with no experience in 

public affairs, Chambers took the reins of the nascent communication directorate from Lessel after completing a year-long 

assignment in Afghanistan in 2007. The renaming of the Office 

of Strategic Communication to the Directorate of Communica-
18

tion marked the second significant reorganization of the office 

since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Moseley understands the communication challenges, Chambers pointed out, and is fond of 

saying, “I’ve been in the Air Force 35 years, and we’ve never got 

this right.” Chambers noted that the internal Air Force audience, which has weathered a significant drawdown in personnel in recent years, is one area of focus. He believes the Air 

Force reputation—and that of the military in general—is just 

fine in the heartland, according to recent polls the service has 

conducted.68 The primary “area of responsibility” for Chambers 

is Washington, DC, he said, because it plays such a tremendous role in how the Air Force’s future is shaped.69 The discussion in DC is ground-centric these days, which makes for a 

challenging environment as the Air Force gears up for difficult 

budget battles and a looming debate over roles and missions 

for the military.70

Under the organization Chambers oversees, he has an integrated planning division and a research and assessment division. Notably, the communication directorate has no direct 

oversight of Air Force public affairs, which is managed by the 

director of public affairs who reports directly to the secretary of 

the Air Force. The research and assessment division consists of 

two lieutenant colonels, neither of whom have a background in 

public affairs, and a small team of contractors. The division 

conducts a variety of surveys to gauge public perceptions of the 

Air Force. For example, if a special “Air Force week” is held in a 

US city, the division will conduct research before and after the 

event to monitor how perceptions of the Air Force may have 

changed. The division also performs in-depth media analysis of 

stories about the Air Force. 

The planning shop, which is headed by a career public affairs colonel, pulls together subject matter experts from across 

the Air Force to handle particular communication issues. For 

example, over the summer the office collected information to 

highlight the Air Force’s role in flying mine-resistant ambushprotected (MRAP) vehicles to Iraq. Col Marcella Adams, the career public affairs officer who leads the division made up of 

non–public affairs officers, says her group provides a capability 

public affairs has always wanted. “Now, we have bona fide 

analysis,” she said. “[In the past] we never had the resources.” 
19

Adams sees her division as a “facilitator” in “effects-based communication.” In the case of the MRAPs, the integrated planning 

division compiled a specific breakdown in the number of aircraft used to transport the vehicles. “We need to be able to talk 

about our piece of this,” she said.71 The implication of failing in 

that task is that the Air Force’s target audiences—to include 

Congress and the general public—might not understand the 

service’s contribution. 

For the Air Force, there is a larger budget debate about the 

need for strategic airlift that is obviously linked to the MRAP 

deliveries. The service is eager to grow its fleet of C-17 cargo 

aircraft, but the need for the planes is not clear to everyone.72

In the end, though, the outreach effort to showcase the value of 

the C-17 in deploying MRAPs has not paid off, at least so far. 

Despite the best efforts of the Air Force to get the word out on 

the need for more C-17s, the fiscal year 2009 DOD budget request included no additional funding for the airlifter, and it 

remains to be seen whether Congress will save the day for the 

plane in a future budget supplemental.73

Calling the Plays

Using a sports analogy, Chambers likened his role to that of 

a football offensive coordinator, calling the plays from the 

coach’s box in the stadium. Extending the analogy, Chambers 

said the athletic director is the Air Force chief of staff, who 

makes sure the larger service priorities are getting attention. 

The players running the plays on the field are the public affairs 

officers, doing the “blocking and tackling” basics of media engagement and crisis management, he added. As to why a public 

affairs officer is not designing and calling the plays, Chambers 

said the danger would be in losing the larger strategy in the 

daily tactics of fighting public affairs battles. As a two-star 

general, Chambers has relatively easy access to the top leaders 

of the Air Force, including the chief. This allows him to stay in 

tune with the service priorities.74

The office has not been around long enough to provide a definitive evaluation of its achievements. Nevertheless, it is hard 

to point to much success in either the tactical or strategic fronts 

these days. The Air Force was recently reminded that a Beltway-
20

centric focus can sometimes be myopic, as incidents far from 

Washington, DC, can inflict serious damage on the service’s 

reputation. An Air Force investigation, reported by the media to 

involve the inadvertent transportation of nuclear-armed cruise 

missiles, resulted in waves of bad headlines worldwide and may 

have temporarily shaken the Pentagon’s confidence in the Air 

Force.75 Any positive press from “selling” the Air Force contribution to the war in Iraq—for example, how many MRAPs it is 

transporting to the theater—is easily wiped out by such embarrassing episodes. Even the best public affairs team would have 

a tough time explaining the incident, but it is also worth noting 

how ill prepared the Air Force was for the crisis. When the story 

first broke, the Air Force did not have a public affairs officer on 

the scene at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, where the illfated flight began. Thanks to downsizing, the public affairs 

officer billet that had been assigned to Minot no longer exists. 

As a result, media queries were initially handled by a noncommissioned officer with a multimedia background and little 

to no public affairs training. Eventually, the Air Force mobilized a reserve public affairs officer to temporarily assist in 

the crisis.76 The Air Force–led investigation team did not 

include a public affairs representative, as is common for 

such high-profile incidents.77 Unsurprisingly then, the Air 

Force leadership did not foresee any press interest in the 

flap, according to an internal service document.78 It is hard 

to imagine anyone with any public affairs experience coming 

to that conclusion. In fact, the Air Force’s director of public 

affairs only received an executive summary of the investigation—not the entire report—two days before holding a press 

conference on the topic.79

One may be inclined to write off the incident as a fluke but 

could just as easily see it as a failure of strategic communication. It certainly fails the Air Force’s own definition of “synchronizing and integrating” communication efforts. The incident 

turned out to be damaging on several levels. On the one hand, 

the American public saw the service as bungling its responsibility of caring for the nation’s most sensitive weapons. A 

retired Air Force general described the munitions incident as 

one of the most “disturbing” in the history of nuclear weapons.80 There was international fallout as well. Some news outlets 
21

latched onto the incident, speculating that the weapons involved 

in the incident were intended to be used against Iran before 

well-intentioned Air Force officials quashed the plan by leaking 

word to the media.81 What may sound like a crazy conspiracy 

theory gained some credence due to the reputation and visibility of a former government official who fanned the conspiratorial flames on the Internet.82 As with Obama, this case 

suggests the Air Force is abdicating some of its responsibility 

to inform key audiences about how it operates and to correct 

inaccurate information. 

The episode leads to three possible conclusions. One is that 

the Air Force is simply not aware of how an incident like the accidental munitions transfer is perceived in different circles. 

Another possibility is that it knows but does not care. Lastly, it 

may know but simply does not have the resources to engage the 

media outlets putting out false reports. Ironically, the notion of 

the Air Force nuking Iran had actually already been raised by 

the mainstream media, such as in Robert Kaplan’s fawning piece 

on the B-2s stationed on Guam in Atlantic Monthly.

83 By contrast, it is hard to find much mention at all on the Internet of US 

submarines nuking Iran in any war plan, even though they are 

surely capable of doing so. Public affairs planning is important, 

but the same Air Force that is desperate to show how it is sending much-needed MRAPs to Iraq should never take for granted 

the trust of the American public, which can be tainted by incidents that no one really plans for. To ameliorate those incidents, 

a robust public affairs capability is needed.

Losing the Honest Broker

Choosing a non–public affairs officer to lead Air Force communication activities presents other problems for the service. 

One issue is that those currently leading the Air Force communication directorate and public affairs office are, by virtue of 

their career fields, eligible for promotion. When public affairs officers like Rand were in charge in the past, it was traditionally a 

terminal assignment. This is also typically how it functions for 

the Navy’s chief of information. However, for an aviator holding 

such a position, there are still many future opportunities in the 

Air Force for advancement. “The real Achilles’ Heel of the 
22

arrangement is that this person relies on the chief for future 

success,” said a former Air Force public affairs leader. “This person can’t get promoted unless he or she is seen as a success in 

the eyes of the chief.” The official said the job loses its ability to 

act as an honest broker and moves a step closer to being a publicist position. He recalled working for a four-star in Europe who 

was fond of saying to him, “You’re the only person on my staff 

who can tell me I have no clothes on.” Without such a check on 

a commander’s judgment with regard to public affairs, the new 

structure is a failed one because the person is going to be focused 

on getting promoted, he added.84

Despite deciding not to have a career public affairs officer at 

the general officer level, the Air Force has taken one step to 

shore up its in-house media expertise. In 2005, the Air Force 

communication directorate hired award-winning defense journalist Dave Moniz away from USA Today. Moniz’s new job is to 

find newsworthy stories in the Air Force and help the service 

pitch them to the media.85 He reports directly to the director of 

communication.86 One former senior public affairs officer, while 

supportive of the move to hire Moniz, said that it was a “tragic 

measure of what the Air Force communication team has lost.” 

In the past, the official noted there was a strong cadre of public 

affairs officers who understood the media and had good relations with civilian journalists. “[Moniz’s position] is no substitute for an officer with all the clearances fully integrated into 

the institution,” he said. The larger problem, he added, is that 

the vast majority of public affairs officers in the career field 

lack even a basic understanding of the basic conventions of 

journalism like deadlines, the need to balance stories, and the 

importance of subject matter experts. Basic rules of engagement, such as on the record, off the record, and background, 

are also widely misunderstood, he said.87

Effect of Personnel Cuts on Air Force Public Affairs

As part of a phased downsizing of 40,000 Airmen, the Air Force 

public affairs community is absorbing heavy losses. Under Presidential Budget Directive (PBD) 720, signed in December 2005, 

the public affairs community was projected to draw down from 

a force of 287 officers in 2005 to 190 in 2009.88 This is a record 
23

low number of public affairs officers. For example, the Air Force 

had 503 public affairs officers in 1989. The number began to dip 

significantly in the 1990s, falling to 335 in 1995. These raw 

numbers are deceiving and only tell part of the story. Of the 16 

colonel billets Air Force public affairs will be authorized in 2009, 

only 10 will actually be available to work in Air Force public affairs. The six unavailable are committed to joint assignments or 

tied up in other deployment requirements. Of the 10 colonel billets working directly for the Air Force and aimed at explaining to 

the American public and Congress the basic Title 10 functions 

of the service, the Air Force is only likely to have five colonels 

available to fill them.89

Additionally, the Air Force is unable to grow new colonels fast 

enough to fix the shortfall. As a result, many colonel jobs will be 

filled by lieutenant colonels, stressing an existing problem at 

that pay grade as well. For example, lieutenant colonel manning 

for the public affairs career field is currently only 64 percent. 

The Air Force is therefore likely to have pinned only half of the 

number of public affairs billets authorized in the plan. The gaps 

are even more formidable for midgrade officers.90 It is hard to 

underestimate the impact of this reduction on the Air Force’s 

ability to communicate with the American public. In a best-case 

scenario for the post-PBD 720 world, there will be 34 public 

affairs officers communicating on behalf of the Air Force—half 

will be major command public affairs directors or assigned to 

the secretary of the Air Force’s Pentagon public affairs office, 

and the other half will be first and second lieutenants. 

Fortunately, there are some signs that the Air Force leadership is revisiting its thinking on the reductions. The service 

recently halted voluntary separation pay incentives for public 

affairs officers, in effect acknowledging too many of them had 

been cut.91 In recent internal budget deliberations, the Air 

Force decided to restore 20 of the officer billets that were targeted for cuts in PBD 720.92 The senior Air Force leadership is 

also aware of the shortfalls in the public affairs community, 

which has a stated requirement of 300 public affairs officers.93

Unfortunately, it could be too little, too late. Much of the 

Air Force’s young public affairs talent has already departed 

and will not return. In fact, the Navy recently absorbed as 

interservice transfers five Air Force captains who were af-
24

fected by PBD 720 reductions in order to meet shortfalls in its 

own public affairs requirements.94

Conclusion

In recent years, the Air Force public affairs community has 

weathered various organizational models amid steep manning 

cuts. None of the models seem to have worked particularly well. 

As the service looks to the future, it now is faced with the task 

of rebuilding the public affairs community. The Air Force might 

do well to look to another branch of the armed forces—the US 

Navy—for a benchmark as it approaches this complicated and 

daunting task. Like the Air Force, the Navy has not exactly 

been the centerpiece of the ongoing military efforts in Iraq and 

Afghanistan, yet its role in national security appears well understood and its place at the strategic leadership table of the US 

government seems very secure. And perhaps most surprisingly, 

its communication structure finds more in common with the 

Air Force public affairs community of old rather than the new 

strategic-communication-laced models implemented since 2001.

An Alternative Model: US Navy Public Affairs 

The only military service right now with a flag-level career 

public affairs officer running its public affairs community is 

the Navy. Like the other services, it has been influenced by the 

DOD-wide push into strategic communication, but it has not 

been subsumed by it. The community is thriving in numbers 

and holds many key public affairs jobs throughout the military. The Air Force and Navy are the only services whose public 

affairs officers predominantly stay in that career field for their 

entire time in service, but the two services have taken very different approaches to bolstering their capability in recent years. 

The Navy, then, is a good model for comparison with the Air 

Force, and as such this section examines the Navy’s success in 

communicating its role in national security as well as its approach to public affairs. 
25

A New Era with Admiral Mullen?

With Admiral Mullen’s appointment as the new Joint Chiefs 

of Staff chairman, changes to the strategic communication 

construct could be afoot. Mullen played a largely unnoticed 

role in reshaping the direction of the communication effort in 

Baghdad this year. During a visit to Iraq last Christmas, Gen 

David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, told Mullen 

how well Navy public affairs officers were performing there. As 

a result, Mullen offered to send over a team led by his chief of 

information, Rear Adm Greg Smith, to strengthen the communication efforts. That plan was rejected, but Petraeus did request that Smith lead an “assessment team” to examine his 

command’s communication efforts. The team made dozens of 

recommendations, nearly all of which Petraeus accepted. Smith 

said the most important recommendation of the team was to 

put seasoned public affairs officers in key leadership positions.95 Not long after most of the recommendations were implemented, Petraeus asked Smith to lead the public affairs operations in Iraq after the current spokesman, Rear Adm Mark 

Fox, completed his tour.96 The decision signaled an important 

shift as the trend of line officers in the chief spokesman role 

was ended. The Iraq communication office is still called “Strategic Effects,” but a public affairs officer will be in charge for 

the foreseeable future. In short, Petraeus fixed a communication problem with a public affairs officer, not an operator. 

Smith, whose tour will be up in May 2008, will be replaced by 

another Navy one-star who will be selected in the fall, according to Pentagon sources.97

Notably, Mullen is a believer in the Navy public affairs model 

in which a one-star public affairs officer leads the community. 

Mullen has also given up a second line-officer billet to a public 

affairs officer to fill a communication job in the OSD. Rear Adm 

Frank Thorp, a public affairs officer who had served as the director of joint communications in the OSD, replaced Smith as 

the Navy’s chief of information during Smith’s tour in Iraq. In 

theory, those two billets could be filled by operators, as do the 

rest of the services. Mullen also heavily relied on public affairs 

in his major initiatives as chief of naval operations. Mullen took 

a keen interest in humanitarian operations after he saw posi-
26

tive opinions of the United States soar in some of Asia’s Muslim 

nations following the tsunami relief efforts there.98 Last year, 

he sent the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship, on a four-month 

deployment to South America to perform medical goodwill missions in several countries, generating rafts of favorable publicity.99 One of his priorities leading the sea service was to develop 

a 1,000-ship navy based on global maritime partnerships as a 

way for countries to provide aid for each other in a time of disaster. The relationships would foster security and stability, as 

well as deter terrorism.100 Mullen, according to one source, believes the military should be “doing good things,” though he is 

not necessarily convinced a special strategic communication 

construct needs to be set up to describe those things.101

Furthermore, there are some who believe the whole strategic 

communication concept will be tossed out by the Pentagon 

as a failed transformation relic of the Rumsfeld era after the 

next presidential administration is in place. Either way, the 

end for strategic communication could be near.

Navy Gets the Gravy?

Given Mullen’s interest in public affairs and Petraeus’s appreciation of the Navy’s approach to communication, it is instructive to review the Navy’s recent efforts in this regard since 

9/11. The Cold War’s end, the global war on terrorism’s emergence, and the continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan 

have all presented unique challenges to the Navy, just as they 

have the Air Force. Notably, the Navy has not engaged in a major sea battle since World War II. However, the service does not 

seem to share the same frustration the Air Force has for not 

getting “credit” for current operations. The Navy’s power inside 

the Beltway is in many ways the greatest in recent memory, 

despite the DC discussions of protracted ground wars. With the 

ascension of Mullen to chairman of the joint chiefs, the Navy 

now holds the top job in the US military. In addition, another 

Navy admiral, William Fallon, is the combatant commander for 

US Central Command and responsible for the conflicts in Iraq 

and Afghanistan. A third Navy admiral is in charge of US Pacific Command and responsible for the world’s largest area of 

operations, to include potential peer competitor China. Navy 
27

leaders control three of the eight unified commands overall, 

while the Air Force only holds two—US Transportation Command and US Strategic Command. 

According to one analyst who predicts the trend will continue, several factors help explain why the Navy is so effective 

in getting these top assignments. For one, senior Navy leaders 

have stood out as less parochial and more imaginative. Over 

the years, the Navy has also attracted top-notch civilian leaders from both political parties, to include Senator John Warner 

and former secretaries of the Navy John Lehman and Richard 

Danzig. In addition, the Navy has not really tried to reinvent 

itself as an expeditionary force, despite its pledge to assist the 

ground effort in Iraq. Admirals tend to view their expeditionary 

strike groups less as blunt instruments of military force and 

more as “versatile tools in a global strategy.” The analyst concludes that because the Navy thinks strategically rather than 

tactically, its leaders are more comfortable with the nuances 

and ambiguity of political processes than war fighters in the 

other services. As a result, Navy leaders get along better with 

political appointees, ascending to the top jobs.102

Navy Public Affairs Model

No communication strategy alone could have engineered the 

Navy’s recent successes. However, it is useful to explore its 

communication structure for the purpose of comparison with 

the Air Force. Since 1971, the Navy public affairs community 

has been led by a flag-level public affairs officer. There was a 

brief exception to this arrangement, when a one-star line officer held the post in the mid-1970s. From 1993 to 1998, Kendell 

Pease led the community as a two-star admiral. The public 

affairs community has thus been successful, with one exception, in fending off attempts to install a line officer in charge of 

the community during the entire period since it named its first 

flag officer.103 Adm Vern Clark, the longest serving chief of naval operations in recent history, said the current Navy model 

works well. He said the leader of the public affairs community 

should be “a real professional, not someone trying to learn on 

the job. That leads me to believe that the Navy is being well 

served with their current approach . . . a professional field 
28

focused on the life-long development of people who know what 

needs to be done and how to do it.” Clark added he would not 

rule out the possibility that an operator would be up to the task 

but said it would be “very difficult” for somebody without an 

extensive background in public affairs to perform in the 

current media environment.104

While the Navy controls many of the leadership jobs in the 

combatant commands, it has an even firmer lock on the public 

affairs jobs for those commands. The senior public affairs officers for US Central Command, Pacific Command, Transportation Command, European Command, Joint Forces Command, 

and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are all Navy captains. To meet its growing requirements in the fleet as well as 

in joint assignments, the Navy last year decided to significantly 

grow the size of its public affairs force. Navy leaders approved 

adding 60 public affairs billets to its current end strength of 

209 billets.105 In addition, the Navy is merging the photo 

limited duty officer community into the public affairs community, thereby adding 47 billets to the public affairs end strength. 

In all, the public affairs officer community will swell to 316 

billets by 2010, a move the Navy chief of information described 

as a “historic and significant move forward.”106

Conclusion

The Air Force and Navy have taken different approaches in 

recent years to their public affairs communities. The Air Force, 

once considered the proud owner of the jewel of military public 

affairs, has seen its communication prowess suffer amid 

leadership and organizational changes. Notably, the Air Force 

has selected three consecutive pilots to lead the public affairs 

community since its last career one-star communicator retired. 

The Navy, meanwhile, continues to be led by a career public 

affairs flag officer. Additionally, it has selected two career public affairs officers for promotion to flag rank since 1999 to serve 

in the OSD.107 Although having more public affairs officers 

from a particular service in top jobs may not automatically 

improve that service’s reputation with the American public or 

inside the Beltway, the Navy model does seem to resonate with 

two of the most influential US military officers today—the 
29

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commander of 

operations in Iraq. Their conclusions: keep the communicators 

in charge of communication.

Recommendations for Air Force 

Communication Efforts

The coming years present a host of communication challenges 

for the Air Force as well as the other services. The American 

public and lawmakers eventually will focus on rebuilding the 

military as the conflict in Iraq settles, and each military branch 

must be ready to effectively communicate its strategy for the 

future. Several steps should be taken to put the Air Force on a 

better course for presenting its case to its key audiences.

Get off the Strategic Communication Bandwagon 

The next administration, Republican or Democrat, is very 

likely to bail from the strategic communication construct soon 

after taking charge due to persistent confusion over the concept. Two senior Air Force public affairs officers acknowledged 

in interviews that the biggest problem for strategic communication is that nobody agrees on its meaning. Communication—

good or bad—certainly can have strategic consequences, but 

the focus of strategic communication seems to be improved 

planning and coordination of various service activities with 

public affairs. “[Strategic communication] is just really good 

staff work,” one admiral said. The Air Force would be hard 

pressed to point to much “good staff work” in some of the recent media storms it has weathered. 

As seen in the 2007 budget cuts for strategic communication 

noted earlier, Congress is finally taking notice of the confusion. 

Dropping the concept would be a good way of getting ahead of 

the political curve. Furthermore, it is hard to definitively link 

many Air Force successes to strategic communication. If it is 

only a process, as the term is defined, then it is a broken process. It was a good first step for the Air Force to drop the “strategic” from the formal title of the Directorate of Communication. It needs to go a step further now and strip the term from 

its career planning literature for public affairs. Investing in the 
30

public affairs community, rather than exerting more energy on 

a confusing and unfruitful concept, is the better path for the 

Air Force.

Rebuild the Public Affairs Career Field 

Thanks to deep manpower cuts and questionable leadership 

changes, it appears that the Air Force public affairs community 

is broken. It should either be rebuilt in a serious way or dismantled altogether. Right now, it is somewhere in between. If 

Moseley still wants “12 Ron Rands,” he will not get them from 

the current structure. It is difficult to see how any successful 

communication strategy could be carried out without a strong 

corps of public affairs officers, the only Air Force cadre specifically trained and educated to communicate effectively. If the 

military intends to start treating public affairs more as a capability like logistics or close air support, as top Pentagon leaders 

have frequently said, then the public affairs community needs 

to be a strong, integral part of any communication effort. 

In this respect, the Air Force is expending much effort on 

communication, but whether the capability is improving is debatable. As in any other career field, developing this capability 

takes time and a career of assignments. A little cross-training 

will not cut it. It is unlikely that pilots, intelligence officers, or 

medical doctors would settle for a similar “dumbing down” of 

their career path, so one wonders why public affairs officers 

should be any different. An important step in growing the career field would be to separate public affairs officers from the 

rest of the line community for promotions, as they are in the 

Navy and in the Air Force’s judge advocate general and medical 

fields. In the current arrangement, public affairs officers have 

limited leadership and command opportunities, important prerequisites for moving up the promotion ladder. The system is 

slanted against them. Shuffling in talented operators who are 

good leaders to command the public affairs community is not a 

good alternative. The best way to send a signal that the service 

is serious about creating a strong career field is having someone lead the community who has spent the majority of his or 

her career in that field. No functional area in the military should 

settle for anything less. 
31

Additionally, the Air Force should set aside a two-star billet 

for public affairs if it is indeed serious about elevating the communication function. The description of the director of communication as an “offensive coordinator” does not hold up to serious analysis. Putting somebody in charge of all service 

communication when it is his or her very first job in the communication field is shortsighted. To reference Chambers’ 

analogy, it would be like a football team hiring an offensive coordinator who has never previously played in or coached a football game. Bodie said one of the things he was unsuccessful in 

seeing through when he was director of communication was 

elevating the Air Force public affairs office in the Pentagon to 

the same level as the Air Force’s legislative liaison office, which 

is run by a two-star general.108 The current organizational construct assumes the congressional audience is more important 

than the larger American audience, a debatable stance. 

With the media field undergoing rapid transformation right 

now with a proliferation of Internet publications, blogs, and 

other new media, the Air Force should also consider a direct 

commissioning program to bring in media experts off the street 

who could make an immediate contribution to the career field. 

It all starts with building a community. If the Air Force decides 

that communication is something that can be developed on the 

fly, then it might as well outsource the function to contractors 

altogether. As preposterous as it sounds, such a move would 

free up a lot of money that could go toward important modernization efforts and allow some of the intelligence officers and 

logisticians currently learning to be strategic communicators 

in midcareer to be better used in their core war-fighting competencies. This would be a terrible move but a logical one if the 

Air Force really does believe effective communication can be 

viewed as a pickup game.

Messages Alone Do Not Cut It 

The establishment of the resources and analysis group in the 

communication directorate has in recent years enabled the Air 

Force to conduct thorough research on many hot topics. This 

is an increase in the communication capability that should be 

maintained. One thing, however, is clear: in many cases, the 
32

messages coming from the leadership in Washington, DC, and 

from Air Force commanders in the field are often not aligned. 

For example, the specific requirements for the next-generation 

tanker aircraft seemed to vary among different commander remarks.109 Space, another Air Force acquisition area that has 

been controversial due to its high cost, has experienced an improvement in some of the media coverage it has received, according to an Air Force official. The reason for the positive coverage is not simply Air Force officials staying “on message” but 

mostly because the programs are actually performing better. “It 

is more than the messages,” the official said. “You have to have 

something to back them up.”110 It is certainly important to effectively communicate with simple, clear, and understandable 

messages, but one should recognize that facts will win over 

messages every time. Real problems cannot simply be spun 

away with some sort of public relations magic, something the Air 

Force must understand if it expects to influence any audience. 

Go on the Offense 

For any branch of the military, the next crisis could always 

be just around the corner. Today such dangers are more 

pronounced because each branch of the military is actively 

involved in combat operations around the world. Operational 

mistakes will occur, and program cost estimates will miss their 

mark. The more the American public is informed on how the 

military operates, the more likely it will understand the 

dangers inherent in such operations and the challenges of 

modernizing. For the Air Force, the most pressing issue is 

better explaining airpower, not just to the American public but 

also to key influencers inside the Beltway. It still has a long 

way to go. Tellingly, Obama never backed down from his misguided comments on the campaign trail despite some public 

pressure to soften his remarks about airpower destroying villages 

in Afghanistan.111 It makes one wonder if after the incident his 

office was offered a basic airpower briefing by the Air Force. 

In the recent crop of the nine top-tier presidential candidates 

from both parties, only one—McCain—is a veteran.112 Although 

McCain now appears to have sewed up the Republican nomination, there had been a distinct possibility the upcoming presi-
33

dential election would have been the first since World War II in 

which neither candidate at the top of the ticket had military 

experience.113 All the presidential candidates should be offered 

thorough briefings from the Air Force on how it operates in an 

area like Afghanistan. News outlets should be routinely briefed 

on Air Force acquisition programs, and the service’s director of 

transparency should be very visible in discussing how the 

service is responding to the challenges of program development. 

There is no time to waste. The winner of the 2008 election 

will almost certainly face a Congress with a historic low number of legislators with military experience. Currently, only 29 

percent of the Senate and 23 percent of the House have served 

in the military.114 In 1991, 68 percent of the Senate and 48 

percent of the House were veterans.115 The new data on lack of 

military experience for the ruling political class suggests a new 

strategic landscape for the military, a challenge that can only 

be met with an aggressive education campaign. The communication directorate’s effort in the fall to explain to the public the 

Air Force’s role in transporting new mine-resistant vehicles to 

Iraq was clearly well intentioned, but one wonders if such a 

one-day story is truly strategic or if it qualifies as the “blocking 

and tackling” Chambers said was a tactical public affairs job. 

The recent film Transformers showed off the newest Air Force 

military equipment, to include the F-22 fighter. In one scene in 

the movie, one of the characters says, “We don’t go to war without the Air Force.” The Directorate of Communication has gone 

so far as to draw up a briefing slide on Transformers to pass 

around to senior Air Force generals, pointing to the film as an 

example of the creative ways the Air Force is getting its message out. If you assume the Air Force has a good story to tell, 

then such additional exposure cannot hurt. Getting a decent 

shot of publicity every now and then in a movie or a sound bite 

from a Beltway pundit is not a bad thing for the Air Force, but 

most of the Air Force’s victories—such as the exposure in 

Transformers—thus far are tactical. 

The larger strategic challenge will always be staying in tune 

with the American public, and there is new research indicating 

that public attitudes toward the military are shifting. It is only 

a matter of time before those views have an effect on the entire 

military. According to a recent poll, 49 percent of the public 
34

believes military strength is the best way to ensure peace.116

That is the lowest level of positive responses to this question in 

over two decades of polling public attitudes.117 Ironically, this 

trend could be a sweet spot for the Air Force, which performs a 

variety of humanitarian missions around the world. A recent 

Washington Post story on the Navy’s hospital ship USNS Comfort provided all sorts of interesting data on cavities filled and 

limbs fixed during the ship’s humanitarian deployment to 

South America. At the end of the story, the author pointed out 

how crossing the equator was an interesting experience for Air 

Force medical personnel participating in the mission.118 What 

was a humorous aside for the story’s author is emblematic of 

the potential good-news stories that currently exist in the Air 

Force. There is no reason the Navy needs to be the only one 

getting the credit for these types of missions. 

Conclusion

As the military continues to be engaged in one of the most 

protracted periods of armed conflict in US history, the Air Force 

faces a unique challenge to get its message out. In recent years, 

the service has experimented with different organizational models to improve communications efforts. A corporate model dissolved in the aftermath of the tanker scandal and gave way to 

a government-wide push into strategic communication. Though 

the Air Force leadership put a lot of faith in an organization 

dedicated to this concept—even selecting a two-star general officer to run it—strategic communication could never quite live 

up to its billing. Meanwhile, service-wide cuts took a big slice 

out of the public affairs force, making the implementation of 

these new models that much more challenging and compounding existing Air Force communication problems. In addition to 

this manpower loss, the service has elected to have operators, 

not career public affairs officers, running both the public affairs community and the strategic communication directorate 

in recent years. 

By contrast, the Navy has continued to have career public 

affairs officers lead its community as one-star admirals. It has 

also picked career public affairs officers to serve in the OSD, 

also as flag officers, in communication jobs. This approach has 
35

been blessed by both Admiral Mullen, the top military officer in 

the United States, and General Petreaus, the top American military officer in Iraq and mastermind behind recent military successes there. 

To improve its communication efforts, the Air Force needs to 

first rebuild the public affairs force by restoring downsized billets, improving promotion opportunities, and putting a career 

public affairs brigadier general in charge of Air Force communication. The Air Force also needs to distance itself from the 

confusing construct of strategic communication, a concept that 

has never been understood well in the military and that has 

started to fall out of favor in the US government. Additionally, 

the Air Force must proactively communicate about its role in 

national security and its needs to defend the nation. In doing 

so, it must also understand that “messaging” is not a panacea, 

that audiences are best influenced by facts, and that no amount 

of spin can fix real problems.

The Air Force does not need such public relations trickery 

because it has an amazing story to tell. Airpower’s role in defending the nation may be somewhat obscured by the groundcentric operations in Iraq and Afghanistan today, but the Air 

Force’s vital role in current and future operations across the 

spectrum of conflict can hardly be questioned. By fine-tuning 

its processes and valuing its communicators, the Air Force can 

once again regain its title as the service with the best military 

public affairs corps and, in so doing, help the American people 

understand the service and commitment of the proud Airmen 

defending the nation today.

Notes

(Some interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of those 

interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. The author takes full 

responsibility for any citation or content discrepancies.)

1. Charles J. Hanley, “Robo Air Attack Squadron Bound for Iraq,” Associated Press, 15 July 2007, http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/ 2007/ 

07/15/20070715_235911.htm. 

2. Intermarkets, which manages advertising sales for the Drudge Report, 

claims that on 7 Nov 2006, election day, the site broke its own traffic records, 

with 25.1 million page views reaching over 2.3 million unique visitors. 
36

3. David S. Hirschman, “Washington Post Editor Downie: Everyone in Our 

Newsroom Wants to Be a Blogger,” Editor and Publisher, 6 Oct 2006. 

4. Phillip Elliott, “Obama Gets Warning from Voter,” Associated Press, 

13 Aug 2007.

5. Jen DiMascio, “Casey: Army Too Consumed with Current Conflict,” 

Defense Daily, 15 Aug 2007.

6. The complete VOA charter can be read at http://www.voanews.com/

english/about/FastFacts.cfm.

7. Edward P. Djerejian, Changing Minds, Winning Peace: A New Strategic 

Direction for U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Arab & Muslim World (Washington, 

DC: Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, 1

Oct 2003), 25.

8. J. Michael Waller, “Losing a Battle for Hearts and Minds,” Insight Magazine, 1 April 2002.

9. International Public Information (IPI) PDD 68, “Reorganization Plan 

and Report, Submitted by President Clinton to the Congress on December 

30, 1998, Pursuant to Section 1601 of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, as contained in Public Law 105-277.”

10. Ibid.

11. See its Web site for more information, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ogc.

12. Eric Schmitt, “Bush Seals Fate of Office of Influence in Pentagon,” 

New York Times, 26 Feb 2002.

13. Ann Scott Tyson, “Rumsfeld Urges Media to Fight Terror,” Washington 

Post, 18 Feb 2006, A7.

14. William Matthews, “Rumsfeld: U.S. Needs Online Strategic Communications Agency,” 23 Jan 2008, DefenseNews.com.

15. Ibid. 

16. Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Operations Planning, 26 Dec 2006.

17. Telephone interview, 15 July 2007. (unattributed interview)

18. Maj Gen William “Bill” Chambers (director of communication, Office of 

the Secretary of the Air Force, Pentagon, Washington, DC), interview by the 

author, 29 June 2007.

19. US Air Force Public Affairs Center of Excellence and the Eaker College 

of Professional Development Public Affairs Intermediate Leadership Course 

Syllabus, US Air Force Public Affairs Development and Follow-On Training 

Guide, June 2007.

20. Ann Scott Tyson, “Rumsfeld Urges Media to Fight Terror,” Washington 

Post, 18 Feb 2006, A7. 

21. Ibid.

22. Michael Dimock, “Who Do You Trust for War News,” Pew Research 

Center for People and the Press, 5 Apr 2007.

23. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll 20–22 Jan 2008 found that 59 

percent of Americans did not think getting rid of Saddam Hussein was worth 

the casualties and financial cost of the war. 

24. To read a copy of the speech, go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/

releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html.
37

25. The running daily total number of days is mentioned several times a 

week on MSNBC’s Countdown.

26. Sebastian Sprenger, “Congress Balks at DoD’s ‘Strategic Communication’ 

Plans,” Federal Computer Week, 14 Aug 2007. 

27. Christopher J. Catelli, “Mullen: ‘We Need To Be Better Listeners’ in 

Global Discourse,” Inside the Pentagon, 10 Jan 2008. 

28. Ibid. 

29. “Air Force Reorganizes Communications Structure, Bodie to Head 

New Operations,” Defense Daily, 12 Mar 2002.

30. William “Bill” Bodie (special assistant to former Air Force secretary 

James Roche), interview by the author, Arlington, VA, 2 July 2007. 

31. Ibid.

32. Former senior Air Force public affairs officials, interview by the author, 31 July 2007. (unattributed interview)

33. Bodie, interview, 29 Oct 2007.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Capt Jeff Alderson (Navy’s Fifth Fleet public affairs officer during the 

two campaigns who ran the embed program), telephone interview by the author, 30 Jan 2008.

37. Ibid. 

38. Amy Butler, “Despite Losing PACOM, Martin Says He Remains Focused 

on AFMC,” Defense Daily, 10 Dec 2004.

39. Ibid.

40. Dana Hedgpeth, “A Mission to Rebuild Reputations: Upcoming Deals 

to Test Reforms at Air Force, Boeing,” Washington Post, 17 Jan 2008, D1.

41. Ibid.

42. Jen DiMascio, “SASC Bill Likely to Include Portions of McCain Acquisition Reform Bill,” Defense Daily, 24 May 2007.

43. Hedgpeth, “Mission to Rebuild Reputations,” D1.

44. Robert O’Harrow Jr., “Air Force Arranged No-Work Contract,” Washington Post, 1 Oct 2007, A1.

45. Gayle S. Putrich, “Official’s Death Puts Harsh Light on USAF Acquisition,” Defense News, 29 Oct 2007.

46. Frank Rich, “Suicide Is Not Painless,” New York Times, 21 Oct 2007, 14.

47. Telephone interview, 6 Aug 2007. (unattributed interview)

48. Bodie, interview. 

49. F. Whitten Peters (former Secretary of the Air Force), telephone interview by the author, 10 Aug 2007. 

50. Telephone interview with retired senior Air Force public affairs official. 

(unattributed interview)

51. Bodie, interview. 

52. Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “Air Force Aims for Fresh Image with Public 

Affairs Overhaul,” National Journal, 17 Feb 2006.

53. Gen Merrill McPeak, USAF, retired (14th chief of staff of the Air Force), 

e-mail response to author, 8 Aug 2007.
38

54. Telephone interview with retired senior Air Force official. (unattributed interview)

55. “The Military-Media Relationship 2005,” McCormick Tribune Conference Series Conference Report, 108.

56. Interview with Air Force official, 17 Sept 2007. (unattributed interview)

57. Nicole Gaudiano, “USAF Chief Seeks Boost in Intel Presence,” Air Force 

Times, 22 Nov 2005.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid. 

60. For examples of the strategic communication concept in Air Force public 

affairs documents, see the US Air Force Public Affairs Development and FollowOn Training Guide; and Air Force Instruction 35-101, Public Affairs Policies and 

Procedures, 29 Nov 2005. 

61. SSgt Julie Weckerlein, “Air Force Officials Take Strategic Communication to Next Level,” Air Force Print News, 22 Dec 2006.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. The brochure can be viewed at http://www.af.mil/shared/media/

document/AFD-060919-007.pdf

65. Weckerlein, “Air Force Officials.”

66. Interview with senior DOD public affairs official. (unattributed interview)

67. Chambers, interview.

68. Ibid.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid.

71. Col Marcella Adams (public affairs officer), interview by the author, 

9 Aug 2007.

72. Ibid.

73. Jen DiMascio, “Air Force Seeks $143.9 Billion In FY ’09 Dollars,” 

Defense Daily, 5 Feb 2008.

74. Chambers, interview.

75. Thomas E. Ricks and Joby Warrick, “Tough Punishment Expected for 

Warhead Errors,” Washington Post, 18 Oct 2007, A9.

76. Interview with Air Force public affairs official, 17 Sept 2007. (unattributed interview)

77. Interview with senior Air Force public affairs official, 17 Oct 2007. 

(unattributed interview)

78. Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus, “Missteps in the Bunker,” Washington Post, 23 Sept 2007, A1.

79. Interview with senior Air Force public affairs official, 17 Oct 2007. 

(unattributed interview)

80. Ibid. 

81. Larry Johnson, “Staging Nukes for Iran,” The Coffee House, 5 Sept 2007.

82. Johnson, a former counterterrorism official for the State Department, has been very visible in recent years on cable television and even 

provided a democratic response to President Bush’s weekly radio address 

on 23 July 2005.
39

83. Robert D. Kaplan, “The Plan That Would Bomb Iran,” Atlantic Monthly, 

September 2007.

84. Interview with former senior Air Force public affairs official, 2 Aug 

2007. (unattributed interview)

85. Peters made a similar move, hiring Jim Wolf, editor of Air Force Times, 

as a media adviser.

86. Interview with former senior Air Force public affairs official, 2 Aug 

2007. (unattributed interview)

87. Ibid.

88. Background briefing on reductions were disclosed in a 17 Sept 2007 

interview with senior Air Force public affairs officials. (unattributed interview)

89. Ibid.

90. Ibid.

91. Bruce Rolfson, “Too Many Cuts, So No More Bonuses for PAOs,” Air 

Force Times, 19 Oct 2007.

92. Brig Gen Michelle Johnson, director of public affairs, memorandum, 

16 Nov 2007.

93. Ibid. 

94. Interview with Navy public affairs official. (unattributed interview) 

95. Interview, 10 Sept 2007. 

96. Ibid.

97. Interview with Navy official. (unattributed interview)

98. Geoff Fein, “CNO Calls for New Maritime Strategy to Take on Effects of 

Globalization,” Defense Daily, 16 June 2006.

99. “USNS Comfort Brings Free Medical Care to Latin America,” American 

Forces Press Service, 24 July 2007.

100. Geoff Fein, “Global Maritime Partnership Gaining Steam at Home 

and with International Navies,” Defense Daily, 26 Oct 2006.

101. Interview with Pentagon source. (unattributed interview)

102. Loren Thompson, “Why Do Navy Dept. Alumni Get the Pentagon’s 

Plum Jobs?” Lexington Institute, 31 July 2007.

103. Kendell Pease (former Navy chief of information; head of government 

relations and public affairs, General Dynamics), telephone interview by the 

author. 

104. Adm Vern Clark, e-mail response to author, 10 Aug 2007.

105. Rear Adm Frank Thorp, Navy chief of information, memorandum, 

14 Nov 2007. 

106. Ibid.

107. In addition to Admiral Thorp’s stint in DOD joint communications 

from 2005 to 2007, Rear Adm Craig Quigley served as deputy assistant secretary of defense from 1999 to 2002.

108. Bodie, interview. 

109. Interview with official in Air Force research and assessments division 

of CM, 20 July 2007. (unattributed interview)

110. Ibid.
40

111. Bill Sammon, “Obama’s Comments on Afghanistan Draw Sharp Rebuke 

from Romney Campaign,” Washington Examiner, 14 Aug 2007.

112. Peter Baker, “2008: The Year of the Civilian,” Washington Post, 

24 Aug 2007, A3.

113. Ibid.

114. Ibid. 

115. Ibid.

116. Andrew Kohut and Carroll Doherty, “Permanent Republican Majority? 

Think Again,” Washington Post, 19 Aug 2007, B1.

117. Ibid.

118. Steve Vogel, “Getting to the Heart of a Medical Mission,” Washington 

Post, 16 Aug 2007, T15.
Commander, Air University

Lt Gen Allen G. Peck

Commander, Curtis E. LeMay Center for

Doctrine Development and Education

Maj Gen Stephen J. Miller

Director, Air Force Research Institute

Gen John Shaud, Retired