MESSAGE MACHINE; Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand

...A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

''It was them saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,' '' Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. ''This was a coherent, active policy,'' he said.

As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

''Night and day,'' Mr. Allard said, ''I felt we'd been hosed.''

The Pentagon defended its relationship with military analysts, saying they had been given only factual information about the war. ''The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people,'' Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

It was, Mr. Whitman added, ''a bit incredible'' to think retired military officers could be ''wound up'' and turned into ''puppets of the Defense Department.'' ...