Response to the OPSEC Education Fund

Presidential campaigns are always littered with attack ads, and two weeks ago, one of the most interesting thus far came from the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund. The group launched a campaign that criticizes President Obama for allegedly politicizing the killing of Osama bin Laden and leaking sensitive operational information.

The campaign is even more contentious as it is sponsored by “former intelligence and national security officers“. Since the first ads appeared on August 16 there has been much commentary on the validity of the group’s claims as well as more generally the role of the intelligence community in political campaigns.

We’ve generated a network from Recorded Future showing connections between and responses to the group during recent weeks. Click below to see the full size image or view the network live in Recorded Future.

A few interesting connections extracted from the above network:

• Adm. William McRaven, the head of Special Operations Command and the architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, speaking out against “using the ‘special operations’ moniker for political purposes”.
• Founder Scott Taylor, who is “a former SEAL from Virginia Beach, and reported affiliations between the group’s leaders with “Republican campaigns and Tea Party groups”.
• Criticism from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey including a statement saying, ‘If someone uses the uniform, whatever uniform it is, for partisan politics, I’m disappointed by that, because I think it does erode that bond of trust we have with the American people.’

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