ARTICLE: One Man's Military-Industrial-Media Complex, By DAVID BARSTOW, New York Times, November 29, 2008

I was stunned by the level of reporting on this piece on McCaffrey. The jump section extended across virtually two full pages, which is a huge investigative effort on the NYT's part.

Clearly, this is a follow-up to the piece months back on the generals being paid, secret spokesmen for the administration ("message multipliers") whereby Barstow found enough out about McCaffrey to justify what must have been a huge reporting effort on his part.

It will be interesting to see if this hurts McCaffrey at all. He is sort of a King Kong figure. You read his reports and they always reference his West Point status, but I was really surprised to see how many commercial entities he works for.

The phenomenon of retired generals doing this is well known. Some refuse the temptation of such synergy, and others go whole hog. McCaffrey, on all levels, seems to be in a class by himself.

What constitutes wrong here? Not easy to say. But clearly, McCaffrey loses the perception-of-conflict-of-interest battle here.

(Thanks: Thaddeus Jankowski)