Facts not enough to persuade people, US Pentagon considers fabrication of news
Regional-USA, Politics, 2/20/2002

"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 New York Times reported yesterday.

The program would assume functions currently done by civilian agencies, such as the State Department.

Headed by 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 York Times reported adding "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."

It is not clear what the implications of such a covert program by the Pentagon, a military institution, would have on public policy, and to what extent it would interfere with the domain of domestic political institutions.

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