Rumsfeld says Pentagon won't lie to public
Regional-USA, Politics, 2/21/2002

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has denied that the Defense Department's new Office of Strategic Influence has plans to place false and deceptive information in the U.S. or foreign press to advance the war effort.

"The Pentagon is not issuing disinformation to the foreign press or any other press," Rumsfeld said February 20 in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he was visiting troops assigned to provide security at the Winter Olympic Games.

But Rumsfeld made clear that the United States could use what he termed "tactical deception," designed to mislead the enemy as to particular military moves.

If an attack on an al-Qaida stronghold in Afghanistan is planned to be launched from the west, for example, "they may very well do things that will lead the people in that enclave to think they're coming in from the north," the secretary said.

He likened that to the situation in World War II in which the D-Day invasion of Normandy was preceded by "a whole series of activities that led people -- the Germans -- to believe they might land at Calais."

That sort of operation aside, Rumsfeld insisted, "government officials, the Department of Defense, this secretary and the people that work with me tell the American people and the people of the world the truth."

Questions about the role of the Office of Strategic Influence arose after the New York Times quoted unnamed military officials as saying that the Pentagon was "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."

Previous Stories:
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  Bush administration open to input from Arab-Americans   (2/15/2002)
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