Two Sundays ago, my wife and I were riding our respective couches doing a little Sunday night lounging. After a period of channel surfing, we finally settled on 60 Minutes. I rested the remote next to me and lay back to watch Steve Kroft report on the upcoming primary in Ohio. It was the usual fare, nothing ground breaking or extraordinary - let's put it this way - nothing I didn't already know. Next up was a story entitled "The Pentagon's Ray Gun".
As the story began, My wife and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes.
What if we told you the Pentagon has a ray gun? And what if we told you it can stop a person in his tracks without killing or even injuring him? Well, it’s true. You can’t see it, you can't hear it, but as CBS News correspondent David Martin experienced first hand, you can feel it.
Both of us being anti-war, we take "non-lethal" weapon stories with a healthy dose of skepticism. The story continued,
The targets at the base are people, military volunteers creating a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq, like angry protesters advancing on American troops, who have to choose between backing down or opening fire. Off in the distance, half a mile away, the operator of the ray gun has the crowd in his sights.
At that point the proverbial alarm bells started blaring. My wife said to me, "Hey pick up the remote and roll that back (we have DVR). That doesn't remotely resemble an anti-American protest in Iraq, that's a freaking UFPJ march in Washington! Here watch it again." I sat up, rolled it back and pressed play.
Martin: The targets at the base are people, military volunteers creating a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq
Martin's voice over and the images on the screen had no relationship to each other. The scenario looked nothing like what our soldiers encounter in Iraq. It looked more like what the New York police department encounters on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq; people protesting the war.
My wife got out the digital camera, snapped a couple shots off the TV, and within minutes I had a diary up with pictures. The post got a lot of traffic, there was much speculation about why the Pentagon and 60 Minutes decided to demonstrate the Active Denial System (ray gun) on folks holding signs that said "World Peace" and "Peace not War."
I decided to not to let the issue die when the diary rolled off. I emailed "60 Minutes" hoping to get a response - nothing. I found a website that listed most of CBS's fax numbers. I got faxing. To my surprise, I quickly received two calls from California saying that there was no David Martin at the LA office. One extremely nice person suggested that I call the main line in NY and the switchboard operator might be able to connect with someone from "60 Minutes." I called and asked for one of the senior producers. Amazingly she gave me the person's direct line. I called and left a voice mail.
Then nothing for about a week. Last Monday, I sat down at my desk and started to drain my voice mail. Low and behold, there was a message from this producer at 60 Minutes. I call the producer back - here's roughly how the conversation went:
Mahler 3: Thanks so much for returning my call.
Producer: I'm so sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, I was out of the office last week. So what's your question?
Mahler3: Well, I was watching your story, and I noticed when you demonstrated this ray gun on these volunteers...
Producer (interrupting): They weren't volunteers.
Mahler3: Right, I mean soldiers, airmen, whatever. In the piece Martin describes the demonstration as "a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq." Why then are the "protesters" carrying signs that say "Peace not War" and "World Peace?"
Producer: First of all, we didn't have anything to do with the signs. You need to call Moody about that. Besides, in Iraq the protesters often carry signs written in English.
Mahler3: Signs that say "Peace not War" and "World Peace?" I don't remember Iraqis carrying signs like that.
Producer: Well they did at the beginning of the war. That's besides the point, they set up the terms and conditions. We had nothing to do with the signs.
Mahler3: But surely you had some input, 60 Minutes heavily vets it stories, it doesn't just put anything on...
Producer: No, no. We had nothing to do with the signs. You know we forced them to do this story. We said to them, "If you're going to deploy this system - the American people need to know."
Mahler3: Really. Hmmm.
Producer: They didn't want to do this story at all.
Mahler3: You understand why this concerns me, it seems like this story is directed at people who attend protests against the WTO or the occupation of Iraq. They threatened to use some sort of sound cannon for crowd control at 2004 GOP convention. Besides I know someone who was in Iraq during the war and he met Iraqis who claimed that they witnessed the use of experimental weapons - weapons that appeared to function using a similar principle - that killed people. The situation simulated for your cameras didn't really seem like anything our soldiers might encounter in Iraq.....
Producer: In the script, we made mention of the signs, we said something like "their signs are about as real as their anger", I mean I don't remember the script exactly. But we alluded to the signs. Who are you by the way?
Mahler3: I'm just a person.
Producer:Ok (sounding more annoyed)Look, you need to call Moody Public Relations about the signs. We got there, we had no control over the signs.
Mahler3: Moody Public Relations, what's that?
Producer: The public relations department at Moody Air force Base.
Mahler3: Ok will do. I know you're busy, and you've been really nice to take my call, just one more question - What did you guys think of the signs when you saw them?
Producer: We thought they were very lame.
Mahler3: Ok, thanks for your time. I'll call Moody.
Producer: Great, have a good one. Bye.
Well I took the producer's advice and called Moody. After a couple days of playing phone tag with one of their PR guys, we finally connected:
Mahler3: Thanks for getting back.
Moody PR: Sorry we've been playing phone tag. You wanted to ask a few things about the "Active Denial System."
Mahler 3: I watched the CBS story, "The Pentagon's Ray Gun" and was concerned. I wondered why, when you demonstrated the device to illustrate it's crowd control abilities, the "protesters" were holding signs that said "World Peace" and "Peace not War?" It didn't really make sense.
Moody PR: Well let me see if I can explain this, we wanted to create a scenario that was somewhat realistic. The "Active Denial System" was developed for use by a unit like the 820th Security Forces downrange in deployed areas so we didn't want to single out any peoples or cultures in particular. So when we were talking about the signs we wanted something that was general enough to get the point across you know, so that people wouldn't say what the heck are these guys doing but that wouldn't single anyone out.
Mahler 3: That's why the signs weren't in Arabic.
Moody PR: Right, or any other language. The 820th Security Forces are often deployed in many different places not just in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mahler3: I see. But why didn't you just paint the signs red, blue, green, different colors instead of having phrases like, "Peace not War" and "World Peace?"
Moody PR: Well you see sometimes there's a protest and mostly it's peaceful but then they're a few people who are terrorists or trouble-makers inside that protest and it might start to get violent. That's why we had the slogans you're talking about on the signs. If you're interested in learning more about the Active Denial System, there a website I can give you, Jnlwp.com.
Mahler 3: I understand. It just seemed weird that you'd use a bunch of white guys holding up peace signs in English to demo a system for use oversees. Seems to me that this could easily be a message to Americans that the-powers-that-be might use this device at home; at protests domestically rather than abroad.
Moody PR: Well I can't really speak to that, we're not R&D, we're the Air force and the 802 is deployed overseas.
Mahler 3: The Taser was developed for military use and now cops are using them on Americans.
Moody PR: Again, I can't really speak to that, because we don't really deal with that.
Mahler 3: You know 60 Minutes claimed they forced the military to reveal the Active Denial System to the public with this story. I spoke to a producer over there and they said you didn't want them to do the piece.
Moody PR: I don't know about that, we had a large press event with media outlets from around the world in January of 2007. It was also featured on the Discovery Network.
Mahler 3: "Future Weapons"
Moody PR: Yup. That's the one.
Mahler 3: So 60 Minutes didn't reveal anything new or secret then?
Moody PR: No, not to my knowledge.
Mahler 3: Ok, well thanks for your time. I really appreciate it.
Moody PR: No problem, G'day.
It was interesting to hear the two perspectives. The 60 Minutes producer was very defensive about the story. From the discussion I surmised 60 Minutes knew they had a problem with the signs and had some talking points prepared for potential critics of the piece. I find it hard to believe that they had zero control over Moody's set up. If they objected to the signs they could have told the guys at Moody to spend five minutes making new ones. The producer admitted that the signs were "lame" but decided not to black them out or scramble them digitally. In the end, they had to make a decision in the editing suite- piss off a small portion of the public - or leave it in and please the Pentagon. They choose the later because the intent of report was to promote the capabilities of the Active Denial System rather expose the risks of using it. The central premise of the piece - the ADS has the potential to save lives if only those overcautious bureaucrats at DOD would just deploy the darn thing.
I found the conversation with the PR guy from Moody to be fascinating. He was nice guy who spent a long time with me. And you know what; I applaud DOD for attempting not to reinforce cultural stereotypes. That's fine. I might even buy the PR guy's explanation that some protests start peacefully and then get out of hand. What I don't buy is that Moody did everything they could to portray the protest in a neutral light. The fact is these guys hate anti-war protesters and that's crystal clear from the piece. If you ask most of these guys what they think about protest and dissent, they'll probably recite some platitudes about "freedom of speech". They'll proclaim their mission to "protect the constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic." But in their hearts of hearts they loath anti-war protesters with a passion - maybe even more than they hate the enemy. This brief moment in a story promoting one of their fancy new weapon systems put that fact in stark relief.
The debate about whether this is a safe, non-lethal weapon that our military should be using valuable tax dollars to develop, is probably one for a different diary. That said, I'll leave you with a couple thoughts on the subject: Raytheon, the manufacture of this device has created a smaller version of Active Denial System called "The Silent Guardian". The company received a FCC license in 2004 to market the weapon to law enforcement agencies. In tests of the device they asked human subjects to remove glasses, metal objects such as necklaces, and contact lenses raising suspicion that Raytheon was covering up potential hazards of the weapon. It is possible that the device will be tested, like the Taser before it, as crowd control on the "undermenschen" of the 3rd world. As long as The Active Denial system doesn't create too many casualties over there - it won't be long before The Silent Guardian will be placed in the hot little hands of domestic law enforcement.