McChrystal Gaffe Spotlights New Breed of Media Adviser

(June 23) -- A savvy young media adviser, a one-time journalist, a college stage actor. These were among the various professional incarnations of the man who inadvertently helped bring down the senior U.S. military leader in Afghanistan.

Duncan Boothby, a civilian media adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was identified as the first casualty of a Rolling Stone article that portrayed the general and his advisers as mocking senior administration officials.

Boothby, who reportedly helped broker access to McChrystal for the Rolling Stone magazine reporter, resigned Tuesday. McChrystal resigned today.

Precisely how Boothby ended up representing McChrystal is unclear, but the military in recent years has often hired former journalists from prominent newspapers to serve as "media advisers" and "strategic communications" experts, often working independently of uniformed public affairs officers. Rather than answering media queries or providing information to the public, they often work to pitch stories directly to the media or to set up interviews outside the normal public affairs operations.

Before advising McChrystal, Boothby had worked for Army Lt. Gen. William Caldwell in Iraq, according to John Donovan, an independent blogger. Donovan described Boothby as a sort of "Cardinal Richelieu" to Caldwell; when Caldwell returned to the United States to take over as the head of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Boothby went with him, according to Donovan, who attended a media seminar that Boothby was at in 2009.

"While at Leavenworth, anywhere Caldwell was, there too was Boothby, always neatly kitted out and acting as much like a media handler as an adviser, hence my characterization of him as the Cardinal Richelieu of strategic communications," Donovan told AOL News via e-mail.

Boothby worked for the Army as a contractor employed by a company called Babaricum LLC, according to Stephan Nolan, a spokesman for the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth. Boothby worked at the center from 2007 to 2009 as a strategic communications adviser, Nolan told AOL News.

Before that, Boothby had been in Iraq from 2006 to 2007, where he worked for a communications organization, according to Nolan, who was unsure of the specific company or job.

When asked how Boothby had performed at Fort Leavenworth, Nolan replied, "He was proficient."

But Boothby's earlier background -- including how he got to Iraq -- is mysterious. He told other journalists, and the Army, that he had once worked for Lou Dobbs at CNN, which AOL News was not able to independently confirm. He also apparently worked at one point for O'Dwyer's, a PR trade publication.

A 2003 article in an independent weekly describes Boothby as a "gifted young actor" involved in local theater productions in North Carolina. The registrar's office at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill confirmed that Boothby received a B.A. in 1993 with dual majors in psychology and radio, TV and motion pictures.

"We teased him about having a British accent," says Pete Corsen, an Atlanta resident who said he roomed with Boothby back in college, but hasn't keep in touch since. "We didn't know whether he was from England or not."

(Nolan, the Army spokesman, described Boothby as a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from the United Kingdom.)

Boothby did not respond to an e-mail sent to his personal e-mail account. A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan did not immediately return an e-mail query asking about his work.

One source involved in media relations who had met with Boothby a number of times described him as very interested in new media and eager to help recraft the Army's image. "It was very odd to see a civilian with a three-star general doing media," the source remarked.

Boothby, the source said, seemed interested in pushing interviews with unconventional media that would help broaden the Army's appeal. "Duncan wanted to push the envelope in the communications field," the source said. "So I wasn't surprised that he was behind this."

But that focus on new media, and the effort to shape the message, may be having a damaging effect on the traditional role of public affairs in the military, says retired Adm. Stephen Pietropaoli, former chief of information for the Navy.

"Commanders are reaching out to other providers who may not be as good as their institutional public affairs support at understanding the various pitfalls and challenges," he told AOL News in a phone interview.

Pietropaoli said he worries that in the quest for strategic communication, the military may have lost sight of the primary role of public affairs, "which is to communicate effectively to maintain the trust and confidence of the American people who give us their tax dollar and their most precious resource, their sons and daughters to go in harm's way on their behalf."

That role, according to Pietropaoli, is the No. 1 job of public affairs. "It's like 'Star Trek' and the prime directive," he said.