I would like to read it — ping me to it if you can find it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Operations_(United_States)
It has doubtless not escaped the attention of the Obama Admin. and DOD that troop morale is lower than desired and approval of Obama and confidence in his legitimacy is also slipping as the Afghanistan push approaches.
It is illegal for the Army and CIA to conduct psyops against US citizens except in cases of “emergency.” But the skill-set and experience in applying these political manipulation techniques is there in the Army and CIA personnel. At a minimum, when those personnel retire or are not actively deployed, their skills could be solicited and employed by non-government entities to manipulate target portions of the US public.
Entities who could be hiring retired or non-active psyops-trained Army/CIA personnel could be cut-outs with plausible deniablility to US govenment entities or funded by parties with specific agendas. These agendas could be political or economic.
Of concern to me are advisers close to Obama who have declared that “conspiracy theories” should be actively suppressed in the media and on the internet blogs using paid operatives to post comments refuting what the government determines to be conspiracy theories. There appears to be circumstantial evidence that bloggers and commenters who investigate theories and share them have even been targeted with trojan viruses to cripple their computers in a kind of internet sniper attack.
WKA has been the linchpin of what I consider to be the psyops campaign by Obama’s team and if the DOJ/DIA felt that protecting Obama’s legitimacy for the troops was an emergency, then protecting WKA becomes a fight to the death.
LTC Lankin’s act of conscience may have generated an underground wave of support in active duty troops both in internet buzz and financial contributions that the WH/DOJ/DOD may be monitoring.
It is not hard to anticipate that a psyops operation might have been launched to post comments on sites where Lakin has some support, such as FR. An operative with prior posting history would be perfect.
The psyops operatives would post comments that would attempt to mock Lakin by claiming that WKA is settled law and validates Obama’s legitimacy because SCOTUS and the political establishment could have contested Obama’s NBC status, but didn't.
The psyops operative would attempt to delegitimize Lakin by accusing him of dishonorably attempting to avoid deployment.