[Media-watch] Lies are part of Pentagon strategy - Knight Ridder - 8/12/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/10367781.htm

Posted on Wed, Dec. 08, 2004

Truth be told, lies are part of Pentagon strategy


By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY

Knight Ridder Newspapers


WASHINGTON - "The first casualty when war comes is truth." So said Sen. 
Hiram Johnson, a California Republican, in the year 1917.

There is a struggle inside the Pentagon over where to draw the line in 
conducting so-called information operations or propaganda in the wars in 
Afghanistan and Iraq and who will be involved. On one side are the 
information warfare activists, led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld 
and Assistant Secretary Douglas Feith. On the other are those who believe 
that telling lies to the media is wrong and military public affairs officers 
should never be involved in that.

The wrangling has been going on since soon after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 
when a Pentagon war planner, speaking anonymously, told a Washington Post 
reporter, "This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine. We're 
going to lie about things."

Not long afterward the Pentagon opened its controversial Office of Strategic 
Influence amid reports that its mission included planting false news stories 
in the international media. A public outcry led to the hasty shuttering of 
that office, but Rumsfeld served notice that while the office may have been 
closed, its mission would be continued by other entities.

The defense secretary told reporters on Nov. 18, 2002: "Fine, you want to 
savage this thing, fine. I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can 
have the name, but I'm going to keep doing every single thing that needs to 
be done, and I have."

This week the Los Angeles Times reported that CNN had been targeted in an 
information war operation three weeks before the start of the attack against 
Fallujah. On Oct. 14 Marine 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert, a public affairs 
spokesman, went on camera to declare that "troops crossed the line of 
departure" - that the Fallujah operation was under way.

It was not. The U.S. commanders obviously hoped that the false news 
broadcast by CNN would trigger certain moves by the insurgents and foreign 
terrorists holding the Sunni city - moves that then could be analyzed to 
gain information on how they would defend Fallujah.

Marine sources in Iraq flatly deny that Lt. Gilbert's statement to CNN was a 
deception operation or part of a larger psy-war operation. They say the 
distinction between public affairs and information operations is very clear 
and jealously guarded by the public affairs community.

Also this week the Washington Post brought new attention on the 
friendly-fire killing of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, a former NFL football star 
who gave up the spotlight to become a soldier. For days after the death of 
Tillman, military commanders and spokesmen both in Afghanistan and at Fort 
Bragg left out any mention of his having been killed by American bullets as 
they spun the story of a hero killed in battle.

That incident brought to mind the false stories about the rescue and heroism 
of Pvt. Jessica Lynch foisted on reporters during the opening days of the 
attack into Iraq. The official picture painted initially was of a young 
woman who fought to the last bullet before being wounded and captured. The 
truth was that Pvt. Lynch was injured when the vehicle in which she was 
riding crashed and she was knocked unconscious. She never fired a shot.

An investigation of the Tillman death and the information given to the media 
is presently under way, according to an Army spokesman. Defense Department 
spokesman Larry DiRita says he has asked his staff for "more information" on 
how the Oct. 14 Marine incident came to pass.

Critics point to one troubling recent development: the decision by 
commanders in Iraq in mid-September to combine information operations, 
psychological operations and public affairs into a single strategic 
communications office run by an Air Force brigadier general who reports 
directly to Gen. George Casey, the American commander.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote a letter 
in late September warning American commanders of the problems of lumping 
military public affairs in with information operations.

Myers warned that public affairs and information operations must remain 
separate. But his warning seems to have fallen on deaf ears in Iraq because 
civilian leaders in the Pentagon and the National Security Council insisted 
on a blended effort of both public affairs and psy-ops to woo Iraqi and Arab 
support for America's efforts in Iraq.

In the old days of the Cold War America's propaganda war was fought by the 
U.S. Information Agency, which was strictly forbidden from distributing any 
propaganda inside the United States. USIA was first gutted and then folded 
into the State Department during the mid-1990s.

Everyone involved in this argument would do well to heed Gen. Myers' warning 
against mixing the liars and the truth-tellers in one pot. That distinction 
was blurred during the Vietnam War and the image the American public carried 
away was of the Five O'Clock Follies, the daily official news briefing in 
Saigon where lies and spin were dispensed along with the facts.

Believe me, we do not want to go there again.
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