11.30 am - By RUPERT CORNWALL
In a move worrying some US defence officials, the Pentagon is developing a major covert news and disinformation campaign to help Washington win the propaganda war against the terrorists, especially in the all-important Islamic world.
The plan is being elaborated by the Office of Strategic Influence, a recently created unit funded from an extra $US10bn of emergency funds voted by Congress to the Pentagon after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The main target audience is the Islamic countries of the Middle east and Asia, but it may also be directed at Western Europe, where criticism has grown sharply in recent weeks of the Bush Administration's strategy to combat terrorism.
Little is known of the OSI other than that it is headed by an Air Force general, Brigadier General Simon Worden, and is being advised by a high-powered Washington-based communications consultancy, the Rendon Group. Its budget and staffing are unknown.
Rendon has previously worked for the CIA, the Kuwaiti government and the Iraqi National Congress opposition group, and is being paid fees of around $US100,000 a month, according to the New York Times which disclosed the existence of the OSI yesterday.
The blueprint for the new propaganda offensive is being studied by the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and by Pentagon lawyers, and has not yet been formally approved by President Bush.
But Mr Rumsfeld is said broadly to back the idea --- and Rendon's background is further evidence of how Mr Bush intends to ratchet up the pressure to oust Saddam Hussein and achieve "regime change" in Iraq.
Nonetheless there are misgivings within the Pentagon at its seemingly imminent venture into an area traditionally the preserve of the CIA and the State Department.
The main fear is that by feeding slanted and possibly false information to foreign government officials and the international media, the OSI might undermine the credibility of the official press department of the Pentagon.
"We shouldn't be in that business. Leave the propaganda leaks to the CIA, the spooks," one Defence Department official said.
"If we get the reputation for spreading false information, then what is anyone to believe and not believe that comes out of this building?"
Other officials fear that the initiative, once revealed, might actually weaken support for the US among its allies.
Victoria Clarke, the official Pentagon press spokeswoman, said her department was not involved with the OSI, calling it "a work in progress".
Though the Pentagon has been far from generous with information about the war, Mr Rumsfeld has more or less kept his promise not to lie to reporters, often acknowledging to reporters probing sensitive issues that "I know, but I won't tell you."
The Times said that the plan, if approved, would embrace "black" disinformation and other covert activities in addition to accurate news releases. It would feature e-mail messages pushing US policies, and attacking unfriendly governments. Much of the output could be distributed by an outside source, so that its government origin would be concealed.
Examples of 'black' propaganda
In November 1990, a 15-year old Kuwaiti girl testified before the US Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers tossing premature babies onto the floor of a Kuwaiti hospital so their incubators could be sent back to Iraq.
Her testimony was cited by Senators as a crucial factor in their decision to go to war with Iraq.
It later turned out that the girl, who had been brought forward by a US public relations company hired by Kuwait, was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US.
* * *
MI6 deployed agent Robert Craig posing as an "adviser" attached to the British military unit's Balkan secretariat during the Bosnian war.
In 1994, two articles appeared in the Spectator by Craig under the byline "Kenneth Roberts" in which he attacked western nations' policy in the conflict.
Former MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson later accused Spectator editor Dominic Lawson of being a secret agent with the code-name "Smallbrow" who acted as a cover for MI16 to plant stories in the media.
Mr Lawson denies the accusations.
* * *
Australian television on February 13 broadcast a secretly-filmed video purportedly showing the Zimbabwe opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, plotting to kill President Robert Mugabe.
Mr Tsvangirai was accused of contacting a Canadian company to arrange the assassination.
The company's chief executive, Ari Ben-Menashe, is a former Israeli intelligence officer with contacts in the Zimbabwean government.
Mr Tsvangirai denies that there was any discussion of killing Mr Mugabe and the tape shows Ben-Menashe asking leading questions. Mr Tsvangirai says the video was a set-up by the Harare government.
* * *
MI5 ran a black propaganda campaign, code-named Clockwork Orange, from the British Army's Lisburn barracks in Northern Ireland, to discredit members of Harold Wilson's Labour government in the 1970s.
Forged documents demonstrating communist ties or homosexual activity amongst MPs were given to journalists.
Colin Wallace, the Army press officer at Lisburn, exposed the campaign after refusing to participate in a security services cover-up of sexual abuse at Kincora boys home in Belfast, where one of the main abusers was an MI5 agent.
- INDEPENDENT
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