New York Times News Service: Pentagon's foreign media plan includes false reports
Link: www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0202190291feb19.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed 

From the Chicago Tribune 
Pentagon's foreign media plan includes false reports
By James Dao and Eric Schmitt
New York Times News Service

February 19, 2002

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly 
even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to 
influence public sentiment and policymakers in both friendly and unfriendly 
countries, military officials said.

The plans, which have not received final approval from the Bush administration, 
have stirred opposition among some Pentagon officials who say they might 
undermine the credibility of information that is openly distributed by the 
Defense Department's public affairs officers.

The military has long engaged in information warfare against hostile nations, 
for instance by dropping leaflets and broadcasting messages into Afghanistan 
when it was still under Taliban rule.

But it recently created the Office of Strategic Influence, which is proposing to 
broaden that mission into allied nations in the Middle East, Asia and even 
Western Europe.

The small but well-financed Pentagon office, which was established shortly after 
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was a response to concerns in the administration 
that the United States was losing public support overseas for its war on 
terrorism, particularly in Islamic countries.

As part of the effort to counter the pronouncements of the Taliban, Osama bin 
Laden and their supporters, the State Department already has hired a former 
advertising executive to run its public diplomacy office, and the White House 
has created a public information "war room" to coordinate the administration's 
daily message domestically and abroad.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, while broadly supportive of the new 
office, has not approved its specific proposals and has asked the Pentagon's top 
lawyer, William Haynes, to review them, senior Pentagon officials said.

Little information is available about the Office of Strategic Influence, and 
even many senior Pentagon officials and congressional military aides say they 
know almost nothing about its purpose and plans.

Headed by Brig. Gen. Simon Worden of the Air Force, the new office has begun 
circulating classified proposals calling for aggressive campaigns that use not 
only the foreign media and the Internet, but also covert operations.

The new office "rolls up all the instruments within DOD to influence foreign 
audiences," its assistant for operations, Thomas Timmes, a former Army colonel 
and psychological operations officer, said at a recent conference, referring to 
the Department of Defense.

One of the office's proposals calls for planting news items with foreign media 
organizations through outside concerns that might not have obvious ties to the 
Pentagon, officials familiar with the proposal said.

Worden envisions a broad mission ranging from "black" campaigns that use 
disinformation and other covert activities to "white" public affairs that rely 
on truthful news releases, Pentagon officials said.

Another proposal involves sending journalists, civic leaders and foreign leaders 
e-mail messages that promote American views or attack unfriendly governments, 
officials said.