Pentagon abandons public sentiment idea

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon's flirtation with a high-level office to influence public sentiment abroad came to an abrupt end Tuesday, when the fledgling effort was ingloriously disbanded in response to pressure from the White House and dissension within the Defense Department.

But with or without an Office of Strategic Influence, the Pentagon intends to continue its long-standing practice of dispensing misleading information to enemies in wartime, officials said.

That means telling the truth to reporters -- but not necessarily the whole truth -- conducting and publicizing military exercises with the express purpose of misleading foes about future military operations, and keeping the details of new weapons systems under wraps. All have been routine practice at the Pentagon for generations.

"We're going to preserve our option to mislead the enemy about our operations," said Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy who oversaw the office.

What the Pentagon will not and never intended to do, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said this week, is to consciously plant false stories about its operations in the press.

Established in November, the Office of Strategic Influence was described as an effort to consolidate various functions such as psychological and information warfare that until now had been spread through the Department of Defense. It grew out of the Pentagon's frustration over early backlash in the Islamic media against the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

But the operation came under fire last week when the New York Times said the office, headed by Air Force Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden, had proposed spreading false information to foreign journalists as a means of furthering the war on terrorism.

Rumsfeld and others responded that the Pentagon would never lie. The Pentagon's public affairs office, which coordinates news media coverage of the military and works with journalists daily, expressed its reservations publicly, with officials telling reporters they feared the new operation would undermine their credibility. Inside the Pentagon, pressure became intense to dismantle the office.

"I can't say anything more than that the biggest disinformation campaign was leveled at us," said Lt. Col. Marty France, a spokesman for the office.

The idea was to "make sure that all our efforts among all the agencies are better coordinated, not conflicting or stepping on each other's feet," France said. "We're interested in getting the facts out to foreign audiences that are prevented from receiving them."

When the controversy broke, Rumsfeld professed to know little about its mandate. But on Tuesday, in disclosing that the office would be shut down, he said criticism of the office had been "off the mark" and had made it impossible for the agency to do its job. He appeared to blame the press.

"The office is done. What do you want, blood?" Rumsfeld asked reporters.

The military has several agencies charged with conducting various types of information warfare. Most are kept under wraps, but one, the Army's 4th Psychological Operations group at Ft. Bragg, N.C., has been widely publicized recently for the leaflet campaigns and radio broadcasts it has conducted.

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