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Hearts and Minds: Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Arena
December 13, 2004
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The Pentagon is engaged in bitter,
high-level debate over how far it can and should go in
managing or manipulating information to influence opinion
abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military
officers say.
Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive
techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse
an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns
aimed at neutral and even allied nations.
Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could
shatter the Pentagon's credibility, leaving the American
public and a world audience skeptical of anything the
Defense Department and military say - a repeat of the
credibility gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War.
The efforts under consideration risk blurring the
traditional lines between public affairs programs in the
Pentagon and military branches - whose charters call for
giving truthful information to the media and the public -
and the world of combat information campaigns or
psychological operations.
The question is whether the Pentagon and military should
undertake an official program that uses disinformation to
shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by
satellite television and the Internet, any misleading
information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by
American news outlets.
The military has faced these tough issues before. Nearly
three years ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld,
under intense criticism, closed the Pentagon's Office of
Strategic Influence, a short-lived operation to provide
news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign
journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion.
Now, critics say, some of the proposals of that discredited
office are quietly being resurrected elsewhere in the
military and in the Pentagon.
Pentagon and military officials directly involved in the
debate say that such a secret propaganda program, for
example, could include planting news stories in the foreign
press or creating false documents and Web sites translated
into Arabic as an effort to discredit and undermine the
influence of mosques and religious schools that preach
anti-American principles.
Some of those are in the Middle Eastern and South Asian
countries like Pakistan, still considered a haven for
operatives of Al Qaeda. But such a campaign could reach
even to allied countries like Germany, for example, where
some mosques have become crucibles for Islamic militancy
and anti-Americanism.
Before the invasion of Iraq, the military's vast
electronic-warfare arsenal was used to single out certain
members of Saddam Hussein's inner circle with e-mail
messages and cellphone calls in an effort to sway them to
the American cause. Arguments have been made for similar
efforts to be mounted at leadership circles in other
nations where the United States is not at war.
During the cold war, American intelligence agencies had
journalists on their payrolls or operatives posing as
journalists, particularly in Western Europe, with the aim
of producing pro-American articles to influence the
populations of those countries. But officials say that no
one is considering using such tactics now.
Suspicions about disinformation programs also arose in the
1980's when the White House was accused of using such a
campaign to destabilize Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya.
In the current debate, it is unclear how far along the
other programs are or to what extent they are being carried
out because of their largely classified nature.
Within the Pentagon, some of the military's most powerful
figures have expressed concerns at some of the steps taken
that risk blurring the traditional lines between public
affairs and the world of combat information operations.
These tensions were cast into stark relief this summer in
Iraq when Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in
Iraq, approved the combining of the command's day-to-day
public affairs operations with combat psychological and
information operations into a single "strategic
communications office."
In a rare expression of senior-level questions about such
decisions, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, issued a memorandum warning the military's
regional combat commanders about the risks of mingling the
military public affairs too closely with information
operations.
"While organizations may be inclined to create physically
integrated P.A./I.O. offices, such organizational
constructs have the potential to compromise the commander's
credibility with the media and the public," it said.
But General Myers's memorandum is not being followed,
according to officers in Iraq, largely because commanders
there believe they are safely separating the two operations
and say they need all the flexibility possible to combat
the insurgency.
Indeed, senior military officials in Washington say public
affairs officers in war zones might, by choice or under
pressure, issue statements to world news media that, while
having elements of truth, are clearly devised primarily to
provoke a response from the enemy.
Administration officials say they are increasingly troubled
that a nation that can so successfully market its cars and
colas around the world, even to foreigners hostile to
American policies, is failing to sell its democratic
ideals, even as the insurgents they are battling are
spreading falsehoods over mass media outlets like the Arab
news satellite channel Al Jazeera.
"In the battle of perception management, where the enemy is
clearly using the media to help manage perceptions of the
general public, our job is not perception management but to
counter the enemy's perception management," said the chief
Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita.
The battle lines in this debate have been drawn in a flurry
of classified studies, secret operational guidance
statements and internal requests from Mr. Rumsfeld. Some go
to the concepts of information warfare, and some complain
about how the government's communications are organized.
The fervent debate today is focused most directly on a
secret order signed by Mr. Rumsfeld late last year and
called "Information Operations Roadmap." The 74-page
directive, which remains classified but was described by
officials who had read it, accelerated "a plan to advance
the goal of information operations as a core military
competency."
Noting the complexities and risks, Mr. Rumsfeld ordered
studies to clarify the appropriate relationship between
Pentagon and military public affairs - whose job is to
educate and inform the public with accurate and timely
information - and the practitioners of secret psychological
operations and information campaigns to influence, deter or
confuse adversaries.
In response, one far-reaching study conducted at the
request of the strategic plans and policy branch of the
military's Joint Staff recently produced a proposal to
create a "director of central information." The director
would have responsibility for budgeting and "authoritative
control of messages" - whether public or covert - across
all the government operations that deal with national
security and foreign policy.
The study, conducted by the National Defense University,
was presented Oct. 20 to a panel of senior Pentagon
officials and military officers, including Douglas J.
Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, whose
organization set up the original Office of Strategic
Influence.
No senior officer today better represents the debate over a
changing world of military information than Brig. Gen. Mark
Kimmitt, an operational commander chosen to be the
military's senior spokesman in Iraq after major combat
operations shifted to counterinsurgency operations in the
spring of 2003.
His role rankled many in the military's public affairs
community who contend that the job should have gone to
someone trained in the doctrine of Army communications and
public affairs, rather than to an officer who had spent his
career in combat arms.
"This is tough business," said General Kimmitt, who now
serves as deputy director of plans for the American
military command in the Middle East. "Are we trying to
inform? Yes. Do we offer perspective? Yes. Do we offer
military judgment? Yes. Must we tell the truth to stay
credible? Yes. Is there a battlefield value in deceiving
the enemy? Yes. Do we intentionally deceive the American
people? No."
The rub, General Kimmitt said, is operating among those
sometimes conflicting principles.
"There is a gray area," he said. "Tactical and operational
deception are proper and legal on the battlefield." But "in
a worldwide media environment," he asked, "how do you
prevent that deception from spilling out from the
battlefield and inadvertently deceiving the American
people?"
Mr. Di Rita said the scope of the issue had changed in
recent years. "We have a unique challenge in this
department," he said, "because four-star military officers
are the face of the United States abroad in ways that are
almost unprecedented since the end of World War II."
He added, "Communication is becoming a capability that
combatant commanders have to factor in to the kinds of
operations they are doing."
Much of the Pentagon's work in this new area falls under a
relatively unknown field called Defense Support for Public
Diplomacy. This new phrase is used to describe the
Pentagon's work in governmentwide efforts to communicate
with foreign audiences but that is separate from support
for generals in the field.
At the Pentagon, that effort is managed by Ryan Henry, Mr.
Feith's principal deputy for policy.
"With the pace of technology and such, and with the nature
of the global war on terrorism, information has become much
more a part of strategic victory, and to a certain extent
tactical victory, than it ever was in the past," Mr. Henry
said.
However, a senior military officer said that without clear
guidance from the Pentagon, the military's psychological
operations, information operations and public affairs
programs are "coming together on the battlefield like never
before, and as such, the lines are blurred." This has led
to a situation where "proponents of these elements jockey
for position to lead the overall communication effort," the
officer said.
Debate also continues over proposed amendments to a
classified Defense Department directive, titled "3600.1:
Information Operations," which would lay down Pentagon
policy in coming years. Previous versions of the directive
allow aggressive information campaigns to affect enemy
leaders, but not those of allies or even neutral states.
The current debate is over proposed revisions that would
widen the target audience for such missions.
Mr. Di Rita, the Pentagon spokesman, says that even though
the government is wrestling with these issues, the standard
is still to tell to the truth.
"Our job is to put out information to the public that is
accurate," he said, "and to put it out as quickly as we
can."