THE OCTOPUS

I recognized a name that was mentioned in passing in today's big New York Times article about the Pentagon's program to turn retired military officers into on-air propagandists for the Iraq War:

... an internal Pentagon strategy memorandum ... led to a proposal to take analysts on a tour of Iraq in September 2003, timed to help overcome the sticker shock from Mr. Bush's request for $87 billion in emergency war financing.

... if the trip pounded the message of progress, it also represented a business opportunity: direct access to the most senior civilian and military leaders in Iraq and Kuwait, including many with a say in how the president's $87 billion would be spent....

Information and access of this nature had undeniable value for trip participants like William V. Cowan and Carlton A. Sherwood.

Mr. Cowan, a Fox analyst and retired Marine colonel, was the chief executive of a new military firm, the wvc3 Group. Mr. Sherwood was its executive vice president....

Carlton Sherwood -- anybody else recognize that name?

He was a sometime journalist, sometime propagandist, and sometime GOP bureaucrat who, the year after this trip took place, would release Stolen Honor, the anti-Kerry film he produced, which claimed that the words of Kerry and other anti-war veterans harmed U.S. POWs in Vietnam. This was the documentary that was scheduled to be broadcast nationwide on Sinclair stations just before the 2004 election (a program that largely focused on charges made in the film was aired instead). In September 2004, his group merged with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to release the film.

Sherwood, worked for The Washington Times in the 1980s and would go on to write a book called Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon; he has lied about the fact that the Unification Church exercised editorial control over the book. Later he did media work for Tom Ridge when Ridge was governor of Pennsylvania. Ridge, as Homeland Security secretary, would reward Sherwood by putting him in charge of developing the Web site FirstResponder.gov.

It was noted in 2005 that Sherwood's boss at wvc3, CEO William Cowan, in addition to being a Fox News analyst, was an adviser to the Lincoln Group, which paid to plant stories in the Iraqi media that had been written by U.S. military personnel.

Wheels within wheels....