June 27, 1997
Insert Foot into Mouth, Then Shoot
The Air Force Method of Public Relations
Just when I get good and primed to believe that the military's public relations problems are all the result of a liberal media which assigns reporters to cover the field who are so incompetent that they cannot tell the difference between a M-16 and a C-130, one or another branch will step forward to make a collossal public relations gaffe and remind me that even without the press' misrepresentations, there would be problems. This time the Air Force demonstrated exactly how not to conduct public relations.
The upcoming 50th anniversary of the Roswell incident provided the impetus for this case study in incompetence. The Air Force apparently intended to lay to rest as much as possible speculation that an alien spacecraft crashed near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 and that the Army Air Force and later the Air Force covered up the truth. By publishing not one, but two studies of the Roswell incident within the last three years, the Air Force created credibility for their opposition; the money, time and promotion involved in the creation and publication of the studies demonstrated the Air Force's respect of and fear of the believers of the Roswell alien theory. A more successful solution would have been to ignore the believers all together, instead of raising their level of respectability.
The studies previewed the quality of public relations to be seen in the press conference. The Air Force employs many talented and charismatic leaders who can deal adroitly with the press; for unknown reasons, the Air Force chose to avoid using them. Instead, the Air Force assigned a Colonel with no discernable public speaking abilities to make an internationally televised presentation.
Already looking unnerved upon entering press conference, the Colonel proceded to convey an increasingly unlikely story. The Colonel explained that actually only a weather balloon crashed at Roswell. Later, he explained that a weather balloon with a radar reflector crashed. Still later, the craft became several weather balloons wired together with several sets of instruments and a radar reflector. Even later, the Colonel explained that the craft resembled a spacecraft because the Air Force and NASA dropped numerous spacecraft prototypes. Eventually, the Colonel admitted that services launced those prototypes in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, not in 1947 when Roswell occurred.
The Colonel also proceded to explain away witnesses' statements that alien bodies were removed from the crash site. Actually, according to the Colonel, people were thinking about test dummies wrapped in body bags which the Air Force dropped in the Southwest to test various equipment. He did not explain why someone would put a test dummy in a body bag, but he did explain that people were possibly thinking not about test dummies, but rather actual Air Force personnel that died in two different crashes near Roswell. The Colonel could not explain how contemporaneously recorded witness accounts of the recovered bodies were a result of "temporal compression" of later events. He could not explain why after fifty years of investigation, this press conference became the first public airing of the test dummy theory. The Colonel did admit the first drop of the test dummies occurred in 1956, nine years after the Roswell incident, and he admitted that the first of the manned Air Force crashes which impacted near Roswell occurred in 1953, six years after Roswell. The Colonel further engaged in occassional weaving, bobbing and evasion of questions during the briefing.
The presumed goal of the press conference was to convince the public that there is nothing to the Roswell conspiracy theory. There were numerous inconsistencies in what was supposed to be an extensively prepared presentation after fifty years of investigation. When police investigate a crime or lawyers cross-examine a witness, they look for inconsistencies in testimony to demonstrate falsity in the story. While refined in these professions, the instinct to equate inconsistent versions of a story with lying is inculcated in our cultural education. I suspect that the bizarre presentation that the Air Force put on probably convinced many nonbelievers in the Roswell conspiracy theory that they were wrong and that there must be something to this conpiracy theory; it is an Occam's Razor explanation for the Air Force's behavior in this press conference.
The press can not be blamed for the public's perception of the Air Force explanations. The blame for the incompetency of the case presentation lies squarely with the service. On a matter that the Air Force decided was important enough to warrant an international press conference (mistake No. 1), they then executed so poorly (after 50 years of prep time) that the service likely convinced the audience of the opposite of the desired conclusion.
Related Sites: Air Force Public Relations Efforts on Roswell and the Responses
|
U.S. Army, Foreign Military Studies Office
Publications on Operational Arts & Tactics, Geo-Strategic Issues, Low-Intensity Conflict and Foreign Special Operations are available as well as book reviews and more than 780 links. The publications are excellent, and the site is kept current.
House Committee on National Security
Sponsored by the Committee on National Security of the U.S. House of Representatives, this site contains bills, reports, committee publications, press releases, and hearing schedules on national security issue.
National Security Website
An intriguing collection of national security policy papers from the Heritage Foundation.
The Chemical Weapons Convention Homepage
A superb site containing the treaty, the signatories, and detailed information on various chemical weapons.
Information Warfare and INFOSEC
A presentation that is highly informative on issues concerning one of the newest national security fronts: information warfare.
|
National Security
