In November 2001, Douglas Feith quietly set up the Office of Strategic Influence inside the Pentagon. The office was run by Brigadier General Simon P. Worden. In February 2002, the existence of the office was leaked and reported by the New York Times.
General Worden envisions a broad mission ranging from “black” campaigns that use disinformation and other covert activities to “white” public affairs that rely on truthful news releases, Pentagon officials said.
“It goes from the blackest of black programs to the whitest of white,” a senior Pentagon official said.
NYT: Common Dreams
The resulting global outrage was so searing that Rumsfeld was forced to announce that the OSI would be closed. Yet, as Rumsfeld later admitted, the mission of the office was merely divided up among other Pentagon agencies:
That was intended to be done by that office is being done by that office, NOT by that office in other ways.”
Secretary Rumsfeld- Media Availability En Route to Chile, Monday, Nov. 18, 2002. Defense Link
That’s fairly clear, right?
:::flip:::
When the head of MI6 reported that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”, what might he have meant?
Might he have meant the Atta/Prague/Iraq connection?
Or might he have meant the Iraq/Niger connection?
Or might he have meant the Chalabi/Curveball connection?
Or might they have meant the Allawi phony memo incident:
Details of Atta’s visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day “work programme” Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal’s base in Baghdad.
In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta “displayed extraordinary effort” and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be “responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy”.
The second part of the memo, which is headed “Niger Shipment”, contains a report about an unspecified shipment – believed to be uranium – that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.
Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq’s ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.
“We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam’s involvement with al-Qaeda,” he said. “But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks.”
Although Atta is believed to have been resident in Florida in the summer of 2001, he is known to have used more than a dozen aliases, and intelligence experts believe he could easily have slipped out of the US to visit Iraq.
Yes, you read that correctly. And Bill Safire was the only major American journalist with so little personal integrity to repeat this obviously false story.
So, why should we believe anything the Pentagon says, or doubt that the OSI’s mission has been carried out with great gusto?
The book ‘Bodyguard of Lies’ by Anthony Cave Brown is essential reading for all students of disinformation.
The book details the complex and risky disinformation schemes carried out by the Allies before D-Day in WWII.
It is a textbook on the origins of present day counter-intelligence.
A must-read.
Atta: To him, Saddam Hussein was an American stooge set up to give Washington an excuse to intervene in the Middle East. [9/11 Report, p. 161]. Right. So he goes to the leader he most despises?
The allies successfully used the media in WWII to confuse the Germans before D-Day, and had offices churning out “war news” every day. We didn’t know what the hell was “really going on” in Korea or Vietnam until after hostilities ceased.
Observed and reported actions by in-country international media are probably the closest thing to accurate available. Even then some of the information is suspect because of DoD’s imbed policies.
I’m really curious as to why you’re so surprised about the DoD publicity machine. What’s surprising? The fact that this office exists, and has for more than 50 years? Or that people believe the press releases they put out?
My dad used to say “believe nothing of what you hear, and half of what you see, and you’ll be alright.” It’s a rule.
in a sense, I’m not surprised. I don’t expect the Pentagon to refrain from all psy-ops. It’s part of their job.
However, what I am attempting to do is to draw some bright lines so we can attempt to reconstruct what false stories were planted in foreign news sources (such as the UK Telegraph) and how those stories wound their way back into MSM sources here in America.
Safire was the conduit, on this end, for each of these stories. Therefore, I accuse him of working directly for military intelligence, and I can only hope his recent semi-retirement was the NY Times editorial board’s gracious way of saying ‘thank-you for using the Gray Lady as an outlet for your lies, you puke’.
…reconstruct what false stories
Got it. I’m afraid some of those won’t come to light until after hostilities are over, and farther out, people retire. Since the U.S., et. al. control access, it’s a wonder ITV, Al Jazeera, or any other independent news source can get information out.
I’ve always gauged the feelings of the military by what information is leaked, by whom, and most importantly when. I think it’s safe to say the intelligence community is highly pissed, and leaks from the military are beginning to come from ever higher “unnamed sources”.
Confidence is high.
put a pattern does emerge, although it cannot be verified.
It was a much more sophisticated loop than the Guckert/Gannon or Armstrong Williams loops.
But it involves two main streams. One is the CIA-Allawi loop. The other was the NSC/Pentagon-Chalabi loop.
We also see evidence of Bolton working as a mole with the State Dept.
Bogus intel went out to Iraqi exiles, and was leaked to German/Italian/even French agencies, who leaked them back to Conrad Black. Safire and Krauthammer picked them up, then FOX, and all the others.
It looks like the OSI concept to me.
Hey Boo, I think it would be easier to operate on the premise that all the stories are probably false and backtrack from there instead of believing any to be true.
When this whole story was reported about OSI and disinformation in newspapers, etc I wondered at the time and still do what exactly was the purpose of letting this story be told? What was the point of letting the world know specifically what they were doing? That seemed to make no sense whatsoever.
I think it was some psy ops itself but just can’t figure out what it was or to what point?
I suppose even sillier was the fact the media or anyone else who might have believed the program was actually shut down. Why, well cause we’re the good guys with the white hats, of course.