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| Pentagon Plan Would Sway
Opinion
Associated Press
February 19, 2002
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon is working on a plan
to influence public opinion in both hostile and friendly nations to help
the war against terrorism - a still-developing effort that critics say
could spread false information at home and abroad.
The Office of
Strategic Influence, set up after the Sept. 11 attacks, has come up with
proposals including the placing of news items - false if need be - with
foreign news organizations, a defense official said Tuesday on condition
of anonymity.
The office is considering having an outside
organization distribute the information so it would not be apparent it
came from the Defense Department, the official said.
The Bush
administration worries it is losing public support overseas, especially
among Muslims who believe the United States is hostile toward Islam.
``This is a battle for minds,'' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz said Tuesday in a speech to defense contractors. ``Our victory
on the ground in Afghanistan has already changed substantially how this
conflict is perceived, even in the Muslim world.''
Wolfowitz did
not comment on the proposed new campaign, and top U.S. officials have not
yet approved it.
At the State Department, spokesman Richard
Boucher said the department was aware of the Pentagon office but declined
to discuss its functions.
Asked the State Department policy,
Boucher said, ``We provide accurate and truthful information.''
The government has used covert tactics - including disinformation
- to undermine foreign governments in the past. But those mostly have been
super-secret CIA operations against enemies such as Iraq and Cuba.
Such covert action by the CIA requires presidential authority and
cannot be conducted against Americans.
The military also has long
conducted wartime ``psychological operations'' such as dropping leaflets
and broadcasting messages, as it did when fighting the Taliban in
Afghanistan.
The Pentagon plans, if approved, would significantly
broaden such information efforts.
Critics immediately said they
worried that any campaign including deliberate lies would both undermine
U.S. credibility overseas and circle back to dupe Americans, too.
``Anything they spread overseas will come back here, because
information travels so quickly. ... Our own population will then hear it
and believe it,'' said Shibley Telhami, a Mideast specialist at the
Brookings Institution. ``It will affect our decisions, and I see that as a
tremendous danger.''
Ted Galen Carpenter, a foreign policy analyst
at the Cato Institute, said he understands a desire to throw enemies off,
but he also said, ``Lies have a nasty way of being found out.''
``We're already viewed with a certain amount of suspicion,''
Carpenter said. ``If we're caught in blatant lies, that hostility will
increase.''
At the Pentagon, some officials said privately that
they worried any such campaign also could hurt the credibility of military
offices that provide information to reporters. Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld told reporters last fall that he would never lie to them.
Galen said, it is ``perfectly appropriate for the United States as
part of its diplomacy to make the best case we can for our policies.''
Since Sept. 11, the State Department has begun an aggressive
effort to promote American viewpoints and policies overseas. And the White
House has set up a ``war room'' to quickly respond to allegations
overseas.
But Rumsfeld said in mid-December that efforts to combat
anti-Americanism were one aspect of the war that lagged at first. He said
U.S. officials needed to think about how to more effectively promote
America's position.
In the late 1980s, former newsman Bernard Kalb
quit as the State Department spokesman after reports that the Reagan
administration had devised a misinformation policy. That policy included
leaking to reporters false information in an effort to convince Libyan
leader Moammar Gadhafi that the United States was about to attack. Kalb
said he never knowingly gave out false information.
Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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