Overseas support causes concern

WASHINGTON -- 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. \nThe 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. \nThe 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. \nThe Bush administration worries it is losing public support overseas, especially among Muslims who believe the United States is hostile toward Islam. \n"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." \nWolfowitz did not comment on the proposed new campaign, and top U.S. officials have not yet approved it. \nAt the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said the department was aware of the Pentagon office but declined to discuss its functions. \nWhen asked the State Department policy, Boucher said, "We provide accurate and truthful information." \nThe 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. \nSuch covert action by the CIA requires presidential authority and cannot be conducted against Americans. \nThe military also has long conducted wartime "psychological operations" such as dropping leaflets and broadcasting messages, as it did when fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. \nThe Pentagon plans, if approved, would significantly broaden such information efforts. \nCritics immediately said they worried that any campaign including deliberate lies would both undermine U.S. credibility overseas and circle back to dupe Americans, too. \n"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." \nTed 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." \n"We're already viewed with a certain amount of suspicion," Carpenter said. "If we're caught in blatant lies, that hostility will increase." \nAt 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. \nGalen said it is "perfectly appropriate for the United States as part of its diplomacy to make the best case we can for our policies." \nSince 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. \nThe Office of Strategic Influence is headed by an Air Force brigadier general, Simon P. Worden, and coordinates with a new White House counterterrorism office run by a retired general, Wayne Downing, who once headed the military's Special Operations command. The Pentagon office already has hired the Washington-based Rendon Group consulting firm, which has done extensive work for the CIA, The New York Times said in Tuesday editions. \nIn 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.