Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho Responds to Media Manipulation Charge

3-stars respond to allegations of media manipulation
Army Times
By Kevin Lilley, Staff writer
October 1, 2015

"The primary purpose of the FOIA act is to find out what the government is up to,” Hodes said. “Nowhere does it say the government should be spinning what they’re up to. … The facts speak for themselves.”

The three-star generals at the center of a recent New York Times piece that alleges the service attempted to manipulate media coverage of medical issues have taken issue with the reporting — specifically, the Army's reporting.

In statements to the newspaper and to Army Times, both Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the Army's surgeon general, and Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, found fault with the Army-produced executive summary of their Sept. 17 meeting at the Pentagon. That summary was leaked to The New York Times, which quoted from the material in its Tuesday report.

Per the summary, Horoho recommended that Caslen not provide the newspaper with West Point concussion statistics requested under the Freedom of Information Act until her office published a related article that would include some of the data. She relayed an account of a prior media FOIA request where coverage was softened by a media event days before the data release.

"Timing is everything with this stuff," the summary reads.

Through a spokesman, Horoho denied ever advising anyone to delay the FOIA request. Caslen, in a statement initially provided to The New York Times and excerpted in the initial report, said "a member of my staff inaccurately portrayed my discussion with Lt. Gen. Horoho" and took responsibility for allowing the document to be "distributed without my review." read more here

Report Alleges Army Surgeon General Tried to Cover Up Concussion Data