McChrystal's History of Media Blunders

To those who have followed Gen. McChrystal's handling of the media, his recent downfall should not be a surprise.

General Stanley McChrystal’s Rolling Stone controversy may have caused shock, disbelief, and outrage across the United States, but to those following the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan since the beginning of his tenure, his recent downfall should not be a complete surprise. After all, in terms of mishandling the media, McChrystal is a repeat offender.

In September 2009, General McChrystal allowed a Washington Post reporter to accompany him and a seven-member NATO fact-finding team to the otherwise closed-door meetings with German troops and Afghan officials investigating a deadly Bundeswehr-ordered U.S. air strike on two Taliban-hijacked tanker trucks. Jumping on this golden opportunity, the Post promptly published an insider’s account of the ongoing NATO investigation in its Sunday edition, just two days after the air strike had happened, relaying estimates concerning the associated Taliban and civilian casualty figures, etc.

German political leaders and senior military officers were outraged at McChrystal’s decision to bring a journalist to these internal, classified briefings, which took place just hours after the air strike. “It stinks to high heaven,” one unnamed Bundeswehr officer told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper, which also reported that German commanders accused the U.S. army of “deliberately leaking misinformation about an ongoing investigation”. Chancellor Merkel was certainly not happy about the “Washington Post” story either and sharply criticized those who immediately pointed the finger at Germany’s military leadership, stressing that she opposed making premature judgments and jumping to conclusions before all the results of the NATO investigation were known.

In the months following the Kunduz air strike, General McChrystal was able to repair strained relations with Berlin and also seemed to have established a good personal connection with German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. However, the bottom-line is: The Rolling Stone story was not the first time that General McChrystal had mishandled the media by giving a journalist unwarranted access to internal meetings and discussions. The first time around, of course, there were no immediate negative consequences for McChrystal, who may have wanted to use the Washington Post story to “reprimand” the Germans over the Bundeswehr’s perceived violation of his zero civilian casualties policy. Whatever McChrystal’s ultimate motivation, what goes around comes around and last time I checked, the term “Schadenfreude” was German.