Nicola Calipari’s death
If the tragic death of ‘Nicola Calipari’, the international oper-ations chief of Italy’s military intelligence service, in March 2005, was, as has been alleged, a deliberate act rather than misadventure, it is one of the most recent examples of extreme PR ‘message management’ I can think of. ([1]) ‘Public relations’ is about communication; its method of transmission is not always words.([2]) Assuming the allegations are correct, such despicable conduct is an example of persuasion at its most ‘effective’; which is to say, its worst. ([3]) I call this sort of persuasion ‘Command PR’.
In war, Command PR can be signalled by the execution of a secondary ally if the latter’s success is unhelpful to the main protagonist. It is always ‘expensive’: Chief ‘Calipari’s’ death, ‘cost’ the US that part of the Italian public which it had not already lost following its illegal invasion of Iraq; as well as, presumably, the goodwill of Chief ‘Calipari’s’ colleagues and government. ([4]) However, such ‘losses’ can be heavily offset by the ‘benefits’. One of these is the fact that, as a result of Chief ‘Calipari’s’ death, the US administration can successfully enforce a non-compete covenant. ([5]) (I assume that Italy will not be able to recreate his Middle Eastern experience/expertise quickly and that rebuilding his team will take months, if not longer, not least because of poor morale. His death acts as a warning to all ‘allied’ public servants, their sources and agents. It also means that similar public servants may become risk averse if their governments’ operational pursuits conflict with those of America. All of which adds up to ‘perfect’ persuasion.) ([6]) Additionally, it means that the US possibly unable to ‘grow’ its own intelligence network organically can stay ahead by shutting-down, ‘raiding’ or ‘poaching’ Chief Calipari’s assets. ([7])
Irrespective of the extreme ‘messaging’, and assuming that the Americans now control or have dismantled Chief ‘Calipari’s’ network, what amounts to little more than cut throat recruitment ([8]) will not sustain the US in Iraq indefinitely. There are no shortcuts because the basis of the espionage relationship is the deep emotional attachment that exists between ‘good’ case officers and ‘good’ agents/sources. ([9]) Above all, the espionage relationship is about friendship. It has special status, particularly in the Middle East, because it can override family ties. Developing it requires standards, time, patience, respect and empathy. Brutal Command PR, which maximises short term gain but not influence, will not achieve this. ([10])
Validated Espionage Risk-Adjusted Data
Some ‘good’ for intelligence officers and their contacts could come out of Chief Calipari’s death: e.g. it could kick-start the collation of validated risk-adjusted data for espionage operations. In Chief Calipari’s case, this could have included correct evaluation of America’s determination and ability to thwart his team’s success. (If you have your ally’s goodwill, operational risk is lower than if you are up against an ally which wants you to fail. However, ‘determination’ is not the same as ‘ability’ and carries a different score.) This could lead to the development of a system which predicts outcome by analysing the risk factors presented by individual operations. In due course, the developed score could evolve into an important safety tool for officers and agents alike. Without such data, there can be no satisfactory governance or quality control.
I believe that in due course, ‘good’ agents will have to be offered informed choice, including the individual mortality rates of their proposed case officer, and the proportion of high and low risk operations the latter have undertaken. Understandably, some case officers may resist these developments for fear they may be stigmatised as worse than others when the truth may be that they take the harder jobs. This may make some case officers shy away from the riskier cases. (Case officers feel especially accountable for poor results even if these might be caused by other members of the team.)
Sarbanes-Oxley culture and its impact on US espionage
If shooting an ally is an extreme ‘messaging’ method, treatment of detainees can be an example of a ‘low level’ one. America’s shortcomings in this respect have led to such an international outcry that, in the hope of minimising further PR damage, it has contracted out some of the worst of its work. I call this the ‘Sarbanes-Oxley’ impact on espionage. ([11]) Commercially, the US act of corporate governance (Sarbannes-Oxley) makes directors personally and financially liable for mismanagement. As a result, they are off-loading ever more responsibility onto outside ‘consultants’. This is also what appears to be happening in espionage. It is a relatively new development and, presumably, runs parallel to traditional use of outside contractors for deniable operations.
Sarbanes-Oxley is designed to prevent another Enron and maximise shareholder values. (As many including lobbyists growing fat on fighting it have pointed out, it will not do so.) In espionage, an example of ‘maximising shareholder values’ can translate as licence to torture: participating torturers know their job’s exclusive worth. There are relatively few, if any, inhibitions in place to temper the inevitable abuses arising. Reform if this is in hand will be thwarted if those to whom terrible work is contracted face a threat to their income. However, without reform, ‘benign’ US persuasion is unlikely to grow. In the scale of things, the death of an intelligence officer in Iraq is minor when compared to the loss of the thousands of innocents. However, and accepting that most intelligence officers and those with whom they liaise in conflict situations accept the adverse conditions and recognise they can be pawns in national/international games, he had the right to operate secure in the knowledge that he would not be shot by an ally intent on delivering its ‘message’.
‘Mission Accomplished’
Meantime, the Church of Rome continues to offer one of the best guides to effective international persuasion there is. For example, the depiction of the Crucifixion of Christ is one of the finest ‘Mission Accomplished’ statements to be found. ([12]) The image is uncluttered, the victim/hero takes centre stage, and there is no pope emoting over Christ’s shoulder. (Real power is when you do not even need to be in the picture.([13])) Contrast this to President Bush’s busy, visually over-detailed ‘Mission Accomplished’ proclamation made from a battleship, after the ‘end’ of US hostilities in Iraq. This was no more than ‘Triumphalist PR’. Its staging was driven by three imperatives: creating ‘history’ that could translate well in Hollywood; silencing forever those who opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq by aggressive flaunting of ‘success’; and, far more importantly, the requirement to dictate the agenda: i.e. the triumphalism was a sign of insecurity the very opposite of what the battleship set was designed to promote.([14])
Vatican political marketing
Students of ‘modern’ political marketing techniques could do well to study Vatican PR. Recognising the importance of ‘celebrity’, it creates saints and, in much the same way as the old Hollywood studios controlled their stars’ profiles, manages their stories. This is not a casual process. The religious celebrities selected are designed to cater to different mass audiences: e.g. mothers of young children (the Madonna and Child) or huge geographical areas from the destitute of Calcutta to the revolutionaries of South America. (But only some of the latter.) Compare this to a US Administration attempt at the same thing: e.g. the celebrity status conferred upon a severely injured, blameless, beautiful American girl-soldier following her ‘rescue’ from an Iraqi hospital by a US military snatch-squad. The hagiography, before it unravelled, was designed to unite the nation, engender national pride and a ‘feel good’ factor. ([15]) Executive ‘Celebrity PR’ has several uses, including endorsement, entertainment, message management, product placement and merchandising.([16])It can be one of the ‘carrots’ of population control, to balance the ‘sticks’. (The Vatican has ensured that there are countless delightful images of Mary and the baby Jesus. ([17]) ) Similarly, Hollywood is making a movie about the young woman soldier in Iraq. One of the ‘messages’ in the former is that ‘young women should have (Roman Catholic) babies’; and, presuming it gets made, in the latter, could be ‘young women should join the US army’.([18])
Distraction
Another common PR tactic is ‘Distraction’. The best example of this is the Garden of Eden set-piece: the serpent was the danger. However, Eve was demonised. As a result, Adam was not responsible for events.([19]) A modern equivalent of this was the US Administration’s declaration that ‘foreign fighters’ were the cause of the insurrection in Fallujah, Iraq. In fact, so far as I am aware, those resisting the American military invaders were Fallujans, as well as courageous Iraqi nationalists from all over the country and abroad who tried to help, and some non-Iraqis.
‘Distraction PR’ can rely on ‘association’. This can be negative or positive. Historically, most branches of the Christian church, including the Vatican, have used negative subliminal ‘association’ techniques against, principally, the Jews. ([20]) A modern version of how ‘association’ works, is illustrated above when, in an attempt to maintain national/international ‘fusion’ the US Administration used the term ‘foreign fighters’. To the American public, ‘foreign fighters’ meant Al Qaeda, synonymous with the tragedies of 11 September 2001. Nobody, internally or externally, could argue against the association because this could be seen to condone the horrors.
In its deceit, ‘Association PR’ is one of the vilest forms of persuasion. Today, ‘entertainment’ can be used as its sometimes subliminal message transmission vehicle. It is particularly effective with passive audiences, such as television/ cinema-goers: e.g. movies on the death of Christ which invariably blame the Jews; or on the Crusades, which usually condemn the Muslims. (Christendom has still not forgiven the Ottomans for getting to the gates of Vienna.) ([21]) Children are particularly targeted: e.g. villains in some US cartoons have ‘oriental’ (Chinese?) features.([22])
Another political marketing technique is ‘Displacement PR’. The Vatican’s fierce condemnation of the novel The Da Vinci Code is an example.([23]) (The book is not a real problem. Deep, non-related, issues within the Church of Rome are.) Another ‘Displacement PR’ example is the US Administration’s attempt to blame insurrection in Fallujah on Iraq’s porous borders which allowed in the ‘foreign fighters’ mentioned above: i.e. we are supposed to believe that geography was responsible for the breakdown of law and order in the country, not the failures of the invading American forces.
Traditional versus minimal
Vatican PR really comes into its own when compared to expressions of secular power. The allure of the former is testament to clever branding, meticulous attention to detail and a self-consciously decadent style of selling: cathedrals are luxuriously appointed with stained glass, dim lighting and golden ornaments and not that different to, say, Windsor Castle or the Palace of Westminster. All are ostentatiously and reassuringly expensive. The problem for Britain, however, is that the Head of State and her Parliament no longer have an empire to run. The Vatican does. As a result, the latter imposes a straightforward consumer choice on its world-wide congregations: traditional ostentation versus ‘minimalism’; e.g. the Protestant churches. Both exploit, as well as reinforce each other; and, incidentally, are allies against some Evangelist churches. ([24])
Those born into/opting for ‘ostentation’ get a slick package. Unlike Britain’s Parliament which accommodates more politicians than people, the Vatican ensures that, every Sunday, its cathedrals not all are empty do the reverse; and, moreover, shrewdly involve worshippers in part of the action. (Singing hymns, taking the Sacraments.) In ‘political’ terms, it is a bit like holding a party conference every week.([25])Much more cleverly, cathedral choirs make ‘celebrities’ of boys and, today, sometimes girls too and, along with adult singers, central to prestige. As a result, worshippers are beguiled into believing they are participants rather than the ‘bums on seats’ they really are. The Vatican also secures ‘brand loyalty’ by offering ‘entertainment’ in which, crucially, the people are the stars (e.g. weddings), as well as factoring in, as part of the deal, the prettiness of the packaging.
If the above are ‘carrots’ of control, the Vatican also does a good line in ‘message management’. Cross it, and the result can be excommunication a formidable ‘stick’. Even the threat of it causes untold grief witness the distress caused to many modern Roman Catholic thinkers investigated by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on suspicion of heresy.
Executive panic
In the second half of the twentieth century, persuasion devices as opposed to, say, economic ones used by western governments to dominate populations internally, and/or incite insurrection externally, included: religion, fear, ideology, secularism, and distraction such as war, aspirationism, consumerism, single issue politics and entertainment (sport/ celebrity). What appears to have happened in the first five years of the twenty-first century, and I think it is unique, is that some western governments are now trying to use all the persuasion methods described above to control populations, at the same time and even if the tactics employed conflict. It is a measure of executive panic.
Notes
[1] I believe, if the shooting was deliberate, the media misread the story because they assumed that the journalist/hostage was the main target. I do not think this was the ‘message’ the US was delivering, although I am sure the US was happy with the media’s assumption that it was: i.e. I think journalists have already been ‘persuaded’ what could happen to them in Iraq, given how hostile/cavalier the US has been to some from the media. I think the media believed the journalist/hostage was the main target because they are not necessarily aware of the implications for espionage if a senior intelligence officer is shot. I believe the US was trying to ‘persuade’ other allied intelligence officers and/or their governments of what could happen to them too …….. I am astonished that, in the British press, so far as I am aware, none of the specialist ‘spook’ journalists commented on ‘Nicola Calipari’s’ death. In PR terms, if the shooting was deliberate, it could come under the heading ‘event management’, with all this implies.
[2] En route to Baghdad International airport, the Italian public servant was shot following the safe hand over which Chief ‘Calipari’ had negotiated of hostage Giuliana Sgrena. I assume this was not his real name, any more than the photographs released of him were a true likeness.
[3] It would not have been ‘PR’ if Chief ‘Calipari’ had been executed ‘quietly’, which I assume he could have been at any time during the months of hostage negotiation. (‘Silent PR’ is far more sophisticated and requires a long-term strategy.) Instead, it happened at its most public, and at a time when Dr Condoleeza Rice was due in Europe on a US bridge-mending PR mission. (The EU caved in to US demands not to sell arms to China. This is why Dr Rice’s visit, and the timing of the death of ‘Nicola Calipari’ in Iraq, if it was not unlucky circumstance, could have been something other than coincidence.)
Few in Italy/Iraq are likely to give the Americans the benefit of the doubt any way, whatever the US report says, not least because the ‘message’ imparted, irrespective of US innocence or guilt, was one the US were likely to favour. Similarly, and, crucially, if the Americans are indeed innocent, they are likely to put the unhappy event to ‘good’ use, since the opportunity now exists for them to do so.
[4] When espionage choices multiply as I assume they have in Iraq with so many piling in ‘advertisers’ (e.g. the US Administration) must ‘spend’ more to remain top-dog. Expensive ‘advertising’ also helps to ‘reassure’ which is to say, intimidate those already working for the Americans that they have made the right decision.
[5] Despite the trashing of the CIA’s reputation, the US has spent an enormous amount of energy and investment in ‘building’ its brand. ‘Nicola Calipari’s’ success could have threatened this overall. However, I would guess that a possible US espionage trend not least because the US may not have the necessary networks itself could be less about remaining a branded global espionage name and more about controlling several. One reason for this, and assuming the impact on the spook market of the rise of the Chinese, Korean and Indian economies is considerable, other countries can match what the US can offer. The CIA could consider selling off its name while its brand recognition, in an ever more crowded market, remains high. Watch out for CIA merchandise!
[6] US irritations with the Italian government included its links with Libya, and the announcement that Rucco Buttiglione, Italy’s Minister for Europe, a senior Christian Democrat and friend of Pope John Paul II had said he was ready to go to Baghdad and testify as a character witness in the trial of Tariq Aziz.
[7] ‘Poachers’ usually have the upper hand because people move on pretty quickly when a network is shutdown, and there are no non-solicit clauses. The best the previous associates can do is limit the benefits the poached can bring to the new employer except in Italy’s case they cannot since the person who could have done so is dead…..
[8] I believe the US spooks are so panicked by their poor capabilities, they have been ‘persuaded’ that commercial culture provides solutions. If this is correct, there is an irony: some ‘modern’ business methods, including some management tomes and training manuals, modelled themselves on ancient military tactics: e.g. Sun Tzu or Machiavelli’s ‘The Art of War’. These, modernised, could now be feeding back into the state sector from the private; i.e. they could have come full circle…….
[9] The use of the word ‘handler’, rather than ‘case officer’, is pejorative. It diminishes the agent because it implies there is no equality in the relationship.
[10] As an experienced but relative minnow, Italy’s network is likely to have been a good one. All ‘allies’ recognise they are working in a laissez-faire espionage market, even if they pretend otherwise. In contrast, the US are likely to want ‘enemy’ espionage networks in Iraq for example those run from Teheran to stay in place, rather than ‘raiding’ or ‘poaching’ from them, since ‘intelligence’ can be about awareness of networks and/or co-opting them in some circumstances, rather than closing them down or disturbing them. The latter can have the effect of doing little more than redistributing remaining personnel.
[11] Its development could be a ‘twin’ to the ‘head-hunter’ culture explained above that could now be driving US spook recruitment. Cultural contamination from the commercial sector is inevitable because the US is so in thrall to business. This is a tragedy for principled members of its public sector who are not; and who, moreover, know the culture to be inappropriate, in some circumstances, to public and/or wider good.
[12] Crucifixion PR: Christ as victim and hero is a perfect PR ‘trick’. Christ is a ‘victim’ because the ‘mob’ decided his fate: the subliminal messaging perfect for all autocrats includes ‘people get things wrong’. A ‘victim’ needs defending. This gives the Church which gets things right (!) a job in perpetuity. Depictions of the Martyrdom of Christ can also be called a ‘recruiting agent’. It is one of the few ‘reassuring’ images to be found where the inevitability of failure is celebrated. (This is one of many reasons why it still has resonance: today, youngsters are taught ‘failure is not an option’. This sets impossible goals and implies that those who do fail are responsible for their own misfortune. The torture and death of Christ, on the other hand, assures them otherwise.) More cynically, and in ‘recruitment’ terms, Crucifixion images are also a demonstration of the ‘worst’ that can happen if you ‘sign up’, a sort of ‘don’t blame us, we did warn you’ get-out clause. The same ‘Crucifixion PR’-type callousness, relying on a similar get-out clause, is used by secular powers. Countless recent examples have come out of Iraq: e.g. detachment from the fate of locally recruited and courageous interpreters working with ‘the Allies’. All Crucifixion PR is disingenuous: Christ was a dissident. This is usually slanted/omitted from autocratic script.
[13] An example of a ‘good’ modern equivalent, is the iconic photograph of Che Guevara once sported on T-shirts: Che is dead. However, his unpictured supporters have ‘won’. (T-shirts can have the same impact as religious merchandising.)
[14] ‘Triumphalist PR’ can ‘work’: e.g. Mao/Stalin/Hussein standing on balconies taking the salute from wave upon wave of troops. It can also unite a nation in celebration: e.g. Britain’s Royal Family with Prime Minister Churchill on the balcony of Buckingham Palace following the end of the Second World War.
[15] The Nativity play has the same intent. It has other PR ‘merits’, including faux-humility: although the ‘spin’ is homage to the baby, its real purpose is to flatter ‘ordinary’ people. (A bit like President Bush saying ‘the American people are the boss’.) It is one of the best examples of ‘fusion’ there is rich/poor/animals/the heavens united in reverence not least because the ‘real’ status quo are not in it. A brilliant secular equivalent of Nativity-type fusion could be Coca Cola’s one-time advertising campaign ‘I would like to teach the world to sing’. (Photo-ops, such as pictures of Britain’s head of state having tea in a council house, try to do the same.)
Note: many objected to Madame Tussaud’s depiction of the Nativity, December 2004. This was, in media terms, a classic ‘spoiler’. Hypocrisy, however, is rampant: so far as I am aware, Prime Minister Blair, in Palestine at the same time, did not, in public at least, mention the plight of Bethlehem or the Church of the Nativity.
[16] Endorsement: possibly because of the western collapse of status symbols e.g. there are too many private jets/boats around to give ‘status’ to their owners some, particularly ‘celebrities’, are acquiring status through their religious choices. This can endorse the religion they favour. (It would have been a considerable coup and much more besides if Princess Diana had abandoned the Anglican Church for the Roman one, as, shortly before her death, it was rumoured.)
[17] The targeting of mothers in Britain’s 2005 General Election was identical to the Vatican’s emphasis of the Madonna and Child. The ploy is subliminally wicked: old crones/barren women are unimportant. The flattery implying a mother’s inherent superiority over all others, including men no more than deception. (British politicians are also saying nice things about pensioners. Again the Vatican is ahead of them: all those paintings of elderly beggars having their feet washed.)
[18] Product placement and Hollywood merchandising is well understood. An example of Roman Catholic simultaneous message/product placement could be the Crucifix; and, of religious merchandising, the Rosary which was usually worn for adornment. (The latter, in Baghdad, was made of cedar-wood from the Holy Land; in Tripoli, in endless coils around the wrist, of pearls or coral; and, worn as a necklace, of silver in Damascus; jet or gold in Beirut and Istanbul.)
[19] Garden of Eden story: a brilliant example of layered protection of the status quo. If you get beyond the demonisation of Eve, the status quo is still protected by external fear (the serpent). As a result, the bit for which the status quo is responsible (Garden of Eden/country we live in) avoids scrutiny.
[20] There is considerable talk these days ‘spin’ about the Judaeo-Christian inheritance. It is ‘pure’ i.e. it has the merit of being factual but is still PR because it is attempting to overwrite the fact that the Christians, over centuries, have tried to wipe out the Jews. I assume the phrase could be driven by the American Church, and some American Jews, in an attempt to unite Jews and Christians against the outside ‘menace’: i.e. Palestine/Islam. The ‘Association PR’ ploy may have worked in the USA. There is no evidence to suggest it will do so with the British, European or Eastern Churches. Rather, the opposite could happen since these deeply dislike the American Church. (One of the problems for Jewish PR is that it has a topdown ‘driver’: Moses and the Ten Commandments, the lawgiver. The Christians, on the other hand, have the humility/sufferings of Christ. This is a brilliant illustration of how PR works: i.e. the opposite of the truth which is that, over centuries, the Jews did the suffering, and the Christians made the rules.) Note: those following the emergence of latest phrasing, may have noticed the ‘water is the new oil’ one. I think I first heard it about ten years ago, although it could be older. It seems to be everywhere now, sort-of shorthand for the next phase of international relations. It is almost obscene PR, and a typical example of Western arrogance: water is the only oil in some parts of the world and has been for decades…..
[21] I assume that the Fox/Ridley Scott movie ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, on the Third Crusade, released May 2005, will have some heavy messaging. It could annoy the Vatican (in the same way as Mel Gibson’s movie annoyed the American Church and others). It will be interesting to see the multi-messaging vis-à-vis Islam.
[22] Two friends in the US before Christmas 2004 watching children’s cartoons on television independently observed that it was full of villains with ‘slitty eyes’. Obviously the US does not want to sell its cartoons to China! Another movie market the US is losing is Russia: ‘An action film glorifying the exploits of Russia’s secret police (!) is playing to packed cinemas…….. its success reflects disenchantment with Hollywood’s depiction of Russians as villains…’. Sunday Times 16 January 2005.
[23] The Vatican believes the book to be a ‘response’ to the success of the Mel Gibson movie. (The Vatican loves conspiracies.) Note the language used: ‘We are clearly facing a formidable distribution stratagem here’. (Archbishop of Genoa, The Times, 15 March 2005.)
[24] ‘Seduction’ has always played its part in religion and secular politics. An example of the latter was the promise (now imploded) that all Americans could attain the American Dream. The Vatican’s equivalent was that if you were ‘good’, you would go to heaven. You could not get more aspirational than that. The link between the two was the subliminal message firstly, that anybody could beat the system (the ‘Lottery’ uses the same sort of messaging); and secondly, you had a head start if you were lowly. When reality intruded – i.e. poor saps recognised that, actually, everything was stacked against them – US politicians turned to single issue ‘bribery’ as a distraction instead: e.g. promises made to, for example, the US gun lobby. The Vatican did the same: e.g. the abortion issue. In addition, both offered supporters the larger ‘bribe’ of being part of a movement that was bigger than themselves: e.g. together we will defeat Communism/terrorism etc.
[25] Baptism can be seen as an example of clever religious political marketing. It provides the priest with a regular photo-op: fabulous clerical dress and an infant cradled in priestly arms. (Politicians would give their right arm for a similar weekly opportunity.) The one-on-one confessional could be described, in political terms, as control and market research