Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1580-1599)
AIR VICE
MARSHAL MIKE
HEATH AND
WING COMMANDER
IAN CHALMERS
16 DECEMBER 2003
Q1580 Chairman: So is it a lead department?
Wing Commander Chalmers: Theoretically
our view is that the Foreign Office has a theoretical lead because
they provide the foreign policy under which we operate. We often
host meetings at Ministry of Defence because we have the space,
and also because we have a deliberate planning process which tends
to lead in many ways to the other departments, so we do not take
the lead but we ensure that we fit into the foreign policy at
the time.
Q1581 Chairman: And which were the key
events that led you to an improved approach, because Kosovo was
quite good, NATO was a catastrophe, we were very good, the Gulf
war before last was not very good, the Falklands war was a disaster—so
is it just those military experiences you have that leads change,
or is it a more rational incremental process?
Wing Commander Chalmers: I think
there are really three parts. Firstly, there are the lessons identified
of how we can do things better, and that goes on a routine basis
as we review our doctrine and our policy. Secondly, there is a
quite simple reason that it is best use of scarce resources. If
ourselves, the Foreign Office and DfID intend to transmit into
particular area, it makes sense for us to use the same equipment
and messages, so it is quite simple. Lastly, we moved away some
time ago from the wars of national survival to wars of choice
so it is extremely important that as government departments we
are in tune with each other as we represent ourselves to the various
target audiences, so I think these are the three main reasons.
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Adding
to that, if I may, when we created DTIO it was obvious that any
purely military action would be incomplete. It had to be a cross-government
activity so during the early months we spent considerable effort
persuading the Foreign Office that we were not their enemies,
we were actually their friends, and we shared a common goal in
terms of defence diplomacy and the delivery of war avoidance.
Once we had them alongside, a slightly more difficult tussle was
with the media ops folks, that we were bedfellows and we had a
common goal and coherence was necessary, and once we started to
make friends around Whitehall we made enormous inroads into persuading
other departments that dialogue was not just legitimate but necessary.
Q1582 Mr Blunt: You seem to imply that
it was initially quite difficult to get linkage with media ops.
Did I hear you say that correctly?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: That is
correct.
Q1583 Mr Blunt: Can I ask therefore about
the role of No 10 in this, who were obviously extremely central
to media operations and the campaign together. What linkage did
No 10 have on a regular basis, and how much were they effectively
in the lead on this?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Will you
forgive me if I digress for a second and then I will answer your
question, I promise? The problem with Information Operations,
and I would very much like to go on record with this statement,
is that most of the people who are peripheral or outside of the
art believe that a large element is focused on deception or deceit.
With the very specific exception of that bit where we would try
and lie or dissuade or persuade military commanders, the entire
art of Information Operations is based on truth.
Q1584 Mr Blunt: Perhaps that is why I
assumed No 10 would be involved!
Air Vice Marshal Heath: And that
is why media operations were very reluctant to talk to us, because
if you have this perception, "Well, you do not want to talk
to Mike Heath because all he is going to do is persuade us to
lie to the public or the press", then you are intuitively
at loggerheads, so we had to persuade people that my remit under
both law and the direction of my Secretary of State was that we
were to be truthful at all times. Once you have established that
then you move into a process of who has primacy. We forced our
way into the Campbell group because we felt that, if there was
going to be cross-government ownership of an information campaign,
it had to be led from the very top. If it was going to be married
in with government policy, then what better place to go and see
him, so we sought to be engaged in the Campbell group, and Alasdair
Campbell was welcoming and I think we added to the process. We
provided a matrix that allowed the Campbell group to become more
coherent. I am not suggesting in any arrogant sense that we directed
it but when we went there it was a purely media-driven function.
We demonstrated that there were key messages that should not be
released as soon as you had them, they needed to be crafted to
be released at certain times, and that is I think the strength
we brought to the Campbell group. So we went there largely on
receive, but we were able to give a military take on some of their
activities.
Q1585 Mr Blunt: Could you explain the
timing and the methodology by which you broke into the Campbell
group? Did you need to get the Secretary of State to say, for
example, that you needed to be on the Campbell group? How did
that work?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: No. We
went into the Cabinet Office and spoke to Desmond Bowen and said,
"We need your buy into this; we need you to own this process".
It was a good concept for a couple of weeks but then Desmond was
too busy with other things going on, but he by then had provided
the link to the Campbell group. Mr Chairman, I am not going to
offer you this document I have brought with me as evidence because
it has "Secret" stamped on it—
Q1586 Chairman: Well, there are cameras—
Air Vice Marshal Heath: We produced
this matrix which became the cross-Whitehall bible for developing
information and media strategy.
Q1587 Mr Blunt: Why is that secret?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: It identifies
who the key audiences were, and also what the themes and messages
that you should employ were. This was updated on a regular basis;
it became the Campbell group directive; it became the Foreign
Office and the Ministry of Defence directive; it was very much
a living document that we ran throughout. The answer to your question
why was it secret—
Q1588 Mr Blunt: Why is it secret now?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: It is
not now, in truth. We could downgrade this; it still is a living
document. It was secret at the time because there were times when
there were individuals named on it, and there were people at the
Campbell group who were not cleared for access to that, so it
was a way of controlling the release of the information it contained.
Q1589 Chairman: To save us getting a
video of these proceedings and then an expert in freeze-framing,
would you mind giving us a copy, please?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Of course.
I would be delighted.[1]
Q1590 Chairman: On the question of Psychological
Operations, can you tell us in more detail how Information Operations
differs from Psychological Operations? Is psyops really a part
of Information Operations, or is it better to understand it as
separate from Information Operations? Could you show us where
it fits into your overall scheme?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Yes. As
I said earlier on, I owned the strategic piece that fits above
the operational piece, and above the tactical piece, and below
that. Psychological Operations is very much a part of Information
Operations: its place really is at the tactical level, but without
the coherence of strategic advice, operational development and
then tactical practitioning, you do not have coherent psychological
operations. Psychological Operations, if you like, is the more
public part of military activity. It is specifically military
and I cannot say that about most of the rest of Information Operations—that
is cross-government. It is specifically tactical, and it is specifically
targeted by military means into target audiences, so I saw it
as the end instrument of what we were crafting in London.
Q1591 Chairman: Have you been able to
evaluate how successful psyops was?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Yes, we
have, and yes, it was successful, but can I give you a definitive
answer today in terms of percentages of people who were persuaded?
No, I cannot. We might return to this later, but measures of effectiveness
for Information Operations are immensely difficult. What I can
tell you is that prisoners of war who were interviewed were persuaded
by leaflets not to open valves in the oilfields: we saw battalions
that took up defensive surrender positions that came directly
out of the psyops messages; we had people in Basrah who, when
they were asked to go out into the streets and riot against the
Ba'ath Party, said, "No, the reason we are staying indoors
is because you have been telling us on the radio for the last
month to keep out of the way and we will be out of harm's way
and we will be safe". When we asked for Iraqis to come forward
to effectively act as radio presenters, we were inundated with
400 phone calls within the first ten minutes and we had to pull
the plug because we did not need any more volunteers. In some
small way I see those as measures of effectiveness. In terms of
the wider scale of how effective was the psyops campaign, I do
not have an answer today but the whole concept of measures of
effectiveness is taxing us and we are trying to come up with a
methodology.
Chairman: It would be helpful, certainly
to us, and whether this is open source published or not the Ministry
of Defence will decide, for you to look in your files and perhaps
talk to your superiors to see whether we can have a version or
look at that document, because obviously this is crucial. It is
obvious there were a lot of elements of success.[2]
Q1592 Mr Viggers: We are briefed that
the information campaign objectives are contained in an Information
Operations Annex to the CDS directive which will identify key
or master information campaign messages that must be put across.
It may be that was the document you showed us, but can you say
what were the key campaign objectives of Information Operations
within Operation Telic?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: I certainly
can, Mr Viggers, and I will refer to my notes to make sure I do
not miss anything here. Initially, the key objective was to deter
the deployment and use of weapons of mass destruction. It was
to deter wilful damage to the Iraqi infrastructure either by the
people or by the regime; it was to promote the coalition's aims
and objectives in terms of deterrents, potential hostile action
and the reconstitution that came afterwards. All three were equally
important. It was to prevent or limit civilian casualties, predominantly
through creating an understanding with the population that they
were not the target group if we moved into conflict, and how they
could remain relatively safe, and also to convey to military personnel
how they could surrender and remain safe throughout the process
once again if we went into conflict. Those, widely, are the grander,
strategic concepts.
Q1593 Mr Viggers: Were these encapsulated
in a planning direction to you from the Joint Force Commander?
Is that the way it works?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: No. It
was the other way around, sir. I worked directly for the Secretary
of State and CDS. CDS's directive reflected the Secretary's directive
from the government, and we informed PJHQ of what the strategic
requirements were. The Joint Force Commander then crafted his
orders to his forces which worked on the principle of never being
greater or offering more than the CDS directive, but he could
obviously constrain in terms of military action his commanders
in the field if he so wished.
Q1594 Mr Viggers: That sounds very much
like the United Kingdom working alone. How did this co-ordinate
with the rest of the task force?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: It was
anything but the United Kingdom working alone. We obviously had
our own national policy and our own national directives but I
was under remit to make sure, as I alluded to earlier on, that
we were as closely crafted to the Americans as possible, and to
flag up very early where I believed there could be any differences
that might subsequently cause problems if we moved into conflict.
An example of that would be that if the government had decided
not to say that regime change had become necessary or was appropriate,
then we would have had an entirely different target set and an
information campaign from the United States. As it happened that
was not the case, and therefore we were allowed to go along a
carefully crafted path where we were able to come up with a lot
of common themes and messages from the United States. So certainly
with that coalition partner we were totally on side.
Q1595 Mr Viggers: So you referred to
a reference by you up through to the CDS?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Yes.
Q1596 Mr Viggers: Did you work with your
American colleague, and was he similarly making recommendations
to his equivalent to the CDS?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Yes, very
much so, sir. During this work-out period I spent more time in
Washington than I spent in London. Once the conflict started I
was entirely tied to London but predominantly for the other part
of my job, the targeting part, rather than the information piece.
The reason I brought Wing Commander Chalmers today is that my
proper deputy was deployed at that time and Wing Commander Chalmers
was given acting rank, if you like, to act as my deputy, and that
is why he is here today. So he ran the information piece predominantly
through the campaign: I ran the targeting piece through the campaign.
Q1597 Mr Viggers: What were the pre combat
priorities for combat of the information you had in relation to
American attitudes, avoidance of conflict, distancing Gulf War
1 from Gulf War 2? How did these build on previous Information
Operations?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: I think
the truth is they did not build because in Gulf War 1 this was
not something we acknowledged as a legitimate military discipline,
and during Kosovo the target set and the needs were entirely different,
so we built on limited experience but we went into this conflict
very much apprised of the need to do everything we could to make
regional players, international audiences, the domestic audience
and the Iraqi people—and I have carefully chosen to put
them in that order because, perversely, the Iraqi people were
the lowest priority at this stage—understand that we believed
there was legitimate cause in law and international law for what
we were doing, to make sure they fully understood they were not
the target group and that we would do everything possible to make
sure they remained safe and, finally, to make sure they understood
that we were committed to the longer term and if we went to conflict
there would be a reconstitution and a resurrection phase where
we would look after the Iraqi people after it was all over.
Q1598 Mr Viggers: Did the whole of the
coalition have a coherent information strategy that you were able
to use in drawing up the British Information Operations campaign?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: The honest
answer to that is no, but coherent enough. We had an entirely
coherent information strategy with the United States. The truth
is—and I suspect there is a degree of arrogance or a degree
of necessity in what I am about to say—some of the smaller
partners were not consulted. They were offered the advice that
this was the combined strategy that we were providing but no,
I am afraid we did not go to all of the other nations and ask
them their opinion. There, frankly, was not the time to do it
anyway.
Q1599 Mr Viggers: What about the different
groupings within Iraq, the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shias? Did
you have different strategies in different parts?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Of course
is the glib answer. Perhaps I ought to say that, although I am
sitting in a Royal Air Force uniform today, I represent a microcosm
of the DTIO staff which is some 98 personnel. Within that staff
we have a psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst, an anthropologist, a
couple of Arabists—these are the people who are getting
inside the minds and understanding the Iraqi people, and understanding
the Iraqi people makes you quickly realise that you have at the
very minimum three distinct target audiences, so the way you deal
with the Shia is different to the Sunni, and certainly very different
to the way you deal with the Kurds. The truth is, as we went up
to the initial position of coercion or dissuasion, they were not
the target audience. The target audience was the regime and the
Ba'ath Party, so while we were doing a calming action, the priority
remained at the very early stages on the coercion or dissuasion.
Once we moved into conflict then the people became a predominant
part of the theming and messaging, and we tried as best we could
to craft our target audiences and our target messages to represent
their concerns, their religious beliefs or their tribal and ethnic
origins.
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