PSYOPS & Major Glassford's work with Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
PSYOP belongs to Special
Operations, and when a “conventional” Army unit wants or needs PSYOP support,
Special Operations Command provides that support by assigning a PSYOIP unit to support the
other larger unit. In the mid-80s, Schwarzkopf was a 2-star commander of the 24th
Infantry Division then at FT Stewart, GA. I was an Intelligence Specialist and then the
Executive Officer of a Army Reserve PSYOP Company up in ST
Paul, MN. We
were given the mission of assisting the 24th Infantry Division—and Major
General Schwarzkopf—in PSYOP. I developed and gave PSYOP briefings to the General and
his staff, as well as provided PSYOP support to the 24th Infantry Division on
exercises and during training sessions. I also prepared PSYOP studies and products to be
used in case we and the division went to war. Much of the material used in DESERT STORM
was developed by the 4th PSYOP Group--then under the command of Col. Buzz Kriesel—with assistance from my Psyop
Company, the 19th PSYOP Company.
It’s ironic that less
than two years after I left the 19th for another assignment, they went to
DESERT STORM. I helped train and prepare most of the people in the company for just that
mission. Psyop was really coming into its own in the Army in the 1980s, and there were a
lot of growing pains that I and a small team from my company were heavily involved in. At
that there wasn’t even a Psyop specialty in the Army. We helped designed the training
courses and curriculum for the course. At one point you couldn’t find an Army
commander that wanted PSYOP support—today everyone wants it and there’s not
enough to go around.
From 93-96 I had daily management
and oversight—preparing plans and orders, providing briefings, arranging for
deployment, etc—all Civil Affairs and PSYOP in Europe, Africa, and
the Middle East. I
was a major planner for PSYOP in support of Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and
Bosnia-Kosovo.
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