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World - The New York Times
Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad
Tue Feb 19, 9:00 AM ET
By JAMES DAO and ERIC SCHMITT The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 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 policy makers
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 office would assume a role
traditionally led by civilian agencies, mainly the State Department.
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 has already hired a former advertising
executive to run its public diplomacy office, and the W
hite House has created a public information "war room" to coordinate the
administration's daily message domestically and abroad.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, while broadly supportive of the new office,
has not approved its specific proposals and has asked the Pentagon's top lawyer,
William J. Haynes, to review them, senior Pentagon offi
cials 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. Its multimillion
dollar budget, drawn from a $10 billion emergency supplement to the Pentagon budget
authorized by Congress in October, has not been disclosed.
Headed by Brig. Gen. Simon P. 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 opera
tions.
The new office "rolls up all the instruments within D.O.D. to influence foreign
audiences," its assistant for operations, Thomas A. Timmes, a former Army colonel and
psychological operations officer, said at a recent conf
erence, referring to the Department of Defense. "D.O.D. has not traditionally done
these things."
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.
General 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.
"It goes from the blackest of black programs to the whitest of white," a senior
Pentagon official said.
Another proposal involves sending journalists, civic leaders and foreign leaders
e-mail messages that promote American views or attack unfriendly governments,
officials said.
Asked if such e-mail would be identified as coming from the American military, a
senior Pentagon official said that "the return address will probably be a dot-com, not
a dot- mil," a reference to the military's Internet d
esignation.
To help the new office, the Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group, a Washington-based
international consulting firm run by John W. Rendon Jr., a former campaign aide to
President Jimmy Carter. The firm, which is being paid
about $100,000 a month, has done extensive work for the Central Intelligence Agency,
the Kuwaiti royal family and the Iraqi National Congress, the opposition group seeking
to oust President Saddam Hussein.
Officials at the Rendon Group say terms of their contract forbid them to talk about
their Pentagon work. But the firm is well known for running propaganda campaigns in
Arab countries, including one denouncing atrocities b
y Iraq during its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The firm has been hired as the Bush administration appears to have united around the
goal of ousting Mr. Hussein. "Saddam Hussein has a charm offensive going on, and we
haven't done anything to counteract it," a senior mi
litary official said.
Proponents say the new Pentagon office will bring much-needed coordination to the
military's efforts to influence views of the United States overseas, particularly as
Washington broadens the war on terrorism beyond Afghan
istan.
But the new office has also stirred a sharp debate in the Pentagon, where several
senior officials have questioned whether its mission is too broad and possibly even
illegal.
Those critics say they are disturbed that a single office might be authorized to use
not only covert operations like computer network attacks, psychological activities and
deception, but also the instruments and staff of
the military's globe- spanning public affairs apparatus.
Mingling the more surreptitious activities with the work of traditional public affairs
would undermine the Pentagon's credibility with the media, the public and governments
around the world, critics argue.
"This breaks down the boundaries almost completely," a senior Pentagon official said.
Moreover, critics say, disinformation planted in foreign media organizations, like
Reuters or Agence France-Presse, could end up being published or broadcast by American
news organizations.
The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency are barred by law from propaganda
activities in the United States. In the mid-1970's, it was disclosed that some C.I.A.
programs to plant false information in the foreign p
ress had resulted in articles published by American news organizations.
Critics of the new Pentagon office also argue that governments allied with the United
States are likely to object strongly to any attempts by the American military to
influence media within their borders.
"Everybody understands using information operations to go after nonfriendlies,"
another senior Pentagon official said. "When people get uncomfortable is when people
use the same tools and tactics on friendlies."
Victoria Clarke, the assistant secretary of defense for public information, declined
to discuss details of the new office. But she acknowledged that its mission was being
carefully reviewed by the Pentagon.
"Clearly the U.S. needs to be as effective as possible in all our communications," she
said. "What we're trying to do now is make clear the distinction and appropriateness
of who does what."
General Worden, an astrophysicist who has specialized in space operations in his
27-year Air Force career, did not respond to several requests for an interview.
General Worden has close ties to his new boss, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary
of defense for policy, that date back to the Reagan administration, military officials
said. The general's staff of about 15 people repo
rts to the office of the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and
low-intensity conflict, which is under Mr. Feith.
The Office for Strategic Influence also coordinates its work with the White House's
new counterterrorism office, run by Wayne A. Downing, a retired general who was head
of the Special Operations command, which oversees th
e military's covert information operations.
Many administration officials worried that the United States was losing support in the
Islamic world after American warplanes began bombing Afghanistan in October. Those
concerns spurred the creation of the Office of Stra
tegic Influence.
In an interview in November, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, explained the Pentagon's desire to broaden its efforts to influence foreign
audiences, saying:
"Perhaps the most challenging piece of this is putting together what we call a
strategic influence campaign quickly and with the right emphasis. That's everything
from psychological operations to the public affairs piece
to coordinating partners in this effort with us."
One of the military units assigned to carry out the policies of the Office of
Strategic Influence is the Army's Psychological Operations Command. The command was
involved in dropping millions of fliers and broadcasting sc
ores of radio programs into Afghanistan encouraging Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers to
surrender.
In the 1980's, Army "psyop" units, as they are known, broadcast radio and television
programs into Nicaragua intended to undermine the Sandinista government. In the
1990's, they tried to encourage public support for Ameri
can peacekeeping missions in the Balkans.
The Office of Strategic Influence will also oversee private companies that will be
hired to help develop information programs and evaluate their effectiveness using the
same techniques as American political campaigns, inc
luding scientific polling and focus groups, officials said.
"O.S.I. still thinks the way to go is start a Defense Department Voice of America," a
senior military official said. "When I get their briefings, it's scary."
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