Office of Strategic Influence (Office of Propaganda)

Watching you folks go at these threads is entertaining, and sometimes depressing.

Anyhow....one side doesn't like the idea, believes that truth is the best way to go since it should be on our side anyway, so there is no need for such an office.

The other side also believes truth supports us, and that this is only a possibility that hasn't even been approved anyhow, so isn't even worried about this article, because there is no need for such an office.


.....


What the hell are you arguing about again?

 

Rokkit,

That's what I was trying to get at here. Guess it wasn't too effective!

 

What he said.

Do you remember that story during the Gulf War about the Iraqi soldiers killing babies in a hospital? Do you remember that after the war this was shown that it never happened, that it was disinformation, propaganda? This is one of the main reasons that nobody really trusts CNN anymore. They didn't cook it up I'm sure, but they were had by somebody, and they're still paying the price.

 

I haven't read the entire thread, so apologies if I am repeating an idea already stated, but I think this story was leaked by someone inside the Defense Department so it would get shot down. The new information office that was set up in the DoD already has a $10 billion budget and might be getting too big for its bureaucratic britches.
There are legitimate concerns besides liberal handwringing from folks like me...if a disinformation campaign gets into, say, a foreign news service like Reuters, an American newspaper can pick this information up and report it to the country. There is a law against domestic disinformation campaigns and this could fall into these parameters. Anybody want one more series of congressional hearings?
Anyway, why give anybody the impression that we have to lie, or be disingenious if this is a noble cause? Why add fuel to the fire? For example, there was currency in a lot of the Arab world that Jews were behind the 9-11 attack. This is obviously clear BS, but the many Muslim versions of Oliver Stone would get some great ammunition if we fabricated stories, or lied about their origin to promote a war with Iraq. It just is not worth what little we could gain. I think someone in government is trying kill this idea in the cradle.

 

Nicely put. Some has been said and some not.

I, again, am not against it as it is intended, but I do see and fear potentials.

 

February 20, 2002

HEARTS AND MINDS
Bush Will Keep Wartime Office Promoting U.S.
By ELIZABETH BECKER and JAMES DAO

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 — President Bush has decided to transform the administration's temporary wartime communications effort into a permanent office of global diplomacy to spread a positive image of the United States around the world and combat anti-Americanism, senior administration officials said today.

"The president believes it is a critical part of national security to communicate U.S. foreign policy to a global audience in times of peace as well as war," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director.

While discussions are at a preliminary stage, officials said there was general agreement in the administration that the intense shaping of information and coordination of messages that occurred during the fighting in Afghanistan should become a permanent feature of national security policy.

The White House office to be created to carry out the policy will coordinate the public statements of State, Defense and the other departments like the Voice of America to ensure that foreign correspondents in Washington as well as foreign leaders and opinion-makers overseas understand Mr. Bush's policies.

"What is important is we want to do a better job of using the government seamlessly to give direction to the president's global diplomacy," a senior administration official said.

Officials said the new office would be entirely separate from a proposed Office of Strategic Influence at the Pentagon, which would use the media, the Internet and a range of covert operations to try to influence public opinion and government policy abroad, including in friendly nations.

That office is contemplating plans, which are being reviewed by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, to disseminate information, and possibly even disinformation, in foreign media as part of an aggressive campaign by the military to promote American policies overseas.

Today, the president of the Radio- Television News Directors Association, Barbara Cochran, wrote a letter to Mr. Rumsfeld objecting to any plans involving the spread of false or misleading information by the Pentagon.

Like the office of Homeland Security, the efforts to centralize public diplomacy following the Sept. 11 attacks have grown in importance and urgency in the last six months.

So far, the new White House office has no name, no director and no budget, though officials say Mr. Bush has said money will be no obstacle in pursuing the effort. The earlier White House push to create a more positive image of the United States after Sept. 11 was led by Karen P. Hughes, senior adviser to the president and is known as the Coalition Information Center.

The major goal, officials said, is to stem what the White House sees as a rising tide of anti-Americanism.

"A lot of the world does not like America, and it's going to take years to change their hearts and minds," said a senior official involved in the discussions.

The president broached the possibility of a permanent mission in a meeting with the top people who speak for the administration in September. "He told us that we were going to be at this for a long, long time," one participant said, "that we were setting a template for future presidents, that we had to think big, strategic, historic thoughts."

Global diplomacy as envisioned in the new office will inject patriotism into the punishing 24-hour, seven-day news cycle, officials said. It will include information campaigns about Mr. Bush's domestic policy — like education bills — as well as traditional information about the military, diplomatic and economic sides of national security policy, officials said.

Rather than create agencies, the new office would take advantage of the huge communications network of American embassies, their media offices and the broadcast network already in place under the State Department.

Charlotte Beers, a former advertising executive now in charge of public diplomacy at the State Department, has used her marketing skills in an attempt to make American policies as familiar as American culture.

Officials involved in the global communications effort said it required clear direction from the White House to break down the bureaucratic walls built up around the government after the cold war ended and the focus on defeating a clear-cut enemy disappeared.

Foreign journalists say they have given up getting meaningful interviews from American officials here. Only the most senior ambassadors from allied countries meet regularly with government policy makers.

"There was often the feeling that we were either taken for granted or considered irrelevant," said Patrice de Beer, the former Washington correspondent for Le Monde, the French daily. "We don't expect anyone to deliver state secrets to us but to be accessible to explain what the policy was. That's all."

In the earlier White House effort, Ms. Hughes joined forces with her British counterpart to put together the Coalition Information Center, known as the war room.

When Washington decided to highlight the Taliban's policy against women's rights, officials enlisted not only First Lady Laura Bush but Cherie Blair, the wife of the British prime minister.

"The Afghanistan women's campaign was the best thing we've done — giving insight into their vision of the future," said Jim Wilkinson, the head of the Coalition Information Center.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/20/international/20INFO.html

 

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20020226_379.html

They've killed the Office of Strategic Influence. Rumsfeld says that reporters gave it such a bad reputation that it couldn't do its work. Of course, the office treeman just posted an article about will just take its place (and probably its personnel, office and budget too).

 

That's cool. As long as someone's going to try to spread the word...