Pentagon Steps Up Propaganda Efforts

The Pentagon is planning a PR campaign to get the world behind the next stage of its "war on terror", which could include the release of false news stories, according to reports in the US.

The newly created office of strategic influence is planning to extend the US's tradition of information warfare by involving news organisations not just in the Middle East and Asia but in also in western Europe, says the New York Times.

"The small but well-financed Pentagon office, which was established shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, was a response to concerns in the administration that the United States was losing public support overseas for its war on terrorism, particularly in Islamic countries," the paper reports.

"As part of the effort to counter the pronouncements of the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and their supporters, the state department has already hired a former advertising executive to run its public diplomacy office and the White House has created a public information 'war room' to co-ordinate the administration's daily message domestically and abroad," the New York Times reveals.

According to the paper, the office of strategic influence is being kept strictly under wraps by the Pentagon.

However, it has begun circulating proposals for "aggressive campaigns that use not only the foreign media and the internet but also covert operations".

Brigadier General Simon P Worden, the head of the new office and a former air force chief, is reported to have said the department should consider running so-called "black" information campaigns that use misinformation and covert activities

A senior Pentagon official is quoted as saying: "It goes from the blackest of black programmes to the whitest of the white" - an allusion to the possibility of mixing black propaganda with truthful press releases.

The office of strategic influence has hired a firm of consultants run by John W Rendon Jr, a former campaign aide to President Jimmy Carter.

The New York Times claims the consultancy has been involved in covert propaganda campaigns in Arab countries.

The US government's and military's heavy-handed use of propaganda came under fire during the recent Afghanistan campaign.

President George W Bush's administration tried to discourage news organisations, such as CNN, from running material provided by Arab stations, including al-Jazeera, claiming they could carry coded messages from al-Qaida and Bin Laden.