WASHINGTON — Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, on Thursday called for an investigation into allegations that the commander of the American mission to train Afghan security forces ordered military personnel to manipulate visiting U.S. lawmakers into providing additional funding and support for the mission there.
Rolling Stone reported online that Lt. Gen. William Caldwell pressured soldiers trained in “psychological operations,” or psy-ops, in violation of federal law, “to target visiting senators and other VIPs,” including Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., as well as Adm. Michael Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Writer Michael Hastings, whose June 2010 profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal led to the general’s removal as the senior military commander in Afghanistan, cites Lt. Col. Michael Holmes, leader of an information operations unit at Camp Eggers in Kabul, as saying Caldwell’s chief of staff asked him how the unit “could secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge.”
“How do we get these guys to give us more people?” the magazine quotes the Caldwell staffer as saying. “What do I have to plant inside their heads?”
Hastings’ article is titled “Another Runaway General,” an allusion to his June 2010 piece on McChrystal, in which McChrystal’s staff frequently derided top civilian leaders, including special envoy Richard C. Holbrooke and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. It led to the immediate removal of the Army general by President Barack Obama.
Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the investigation into Rolling Stone’s latest revelations would examine “what actions took place and if any of them were inappropriate or illegal.” He said he did not know who would be appointed to lead the inquiry.
One of the senators allegedly targeted by Caldwell’s operation, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., issued a statement Thursday saying he was “confident that the chain of command will review any allegation that information operations have been improperly used in Afghanistan.”
“I have strongly and repeatedly advocated for building up Afghan military capability because I believe only the Afghans can truly secure their nation’s future. I have never needed any convincing on this point,” Levin wrote.
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