From the WSJ Opinion Archives
A
False News Story About False News Stories?
A story in yesterday's New York Times about the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic
Influence begins as follows:
The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said.
The claim that the Pentagon was going to put out false news stories caused quite a stir, not least at the Times. An editorial today calls the plan a "misguided experiment in news manipulation." Over on the op-ed page, Maureen Dowd is in full froth:
We're the white hats, but we're planning a "black" propaganda campaign against the axis--and even the allies.
People at the Defense Department and elsewhere are cringing at the news that the Pentagon's shadowy new Office of Strategic Influence is plotting to plant deliberately false stories in the foreign press, with both feral and friendly nations.
But wait. Is the Pentagon really planning to spread false news stories? There's nothing in the original Times report, other than the aside in the lead paragraph, about false news stories, and indeed it sounds as though the "black" part of the office's efforts is distinct from the "public affairs" element, which is "white":
Headed by Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden of the Air Force, the new office has begun circulating classified proposals calling for aggressive campaigns that use not only the foreign media and the Internet, but also covert operations.
The new office "rolls up all the instruments within D.O.D. to influence foreign audiences," its assistant for operations, Thomas A. Times, a former Army colonel and psychological operations officer, said at a recent conference, referring to the Department of Defense. "D.O.D. has not traditionally done these things."
One of the office's proposals calls for planting news items with foreign media organizations through outside concerns that might not have obvious ties to the Pentagon, officials familiar with the proposal said.
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.
Today's Washington Post carries a follow-up article entitled "Defense Dept. Divided Over Propaganda Plan," which leads us to think that the Times' editors and Dowd have been fooled into taking sides in a bureaucratic turf war.
In any case, the Times carries on its Web site today an Associated Press dispatch quoting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as saying that while the Pentagon may employ "tactical deception" to confuse the enemy--"if U.S. troops were about to launch an attack from the west, they might 'very well do things' that would make the enemy believe an attack was instead coming from the north, Rumsfeld says"--the Pentagon will not lie to the public or the press.
Arafat's
PR Effort
The Jerusalem Post reports that an "international effort" is under
way to help Yasser Arafat "improve his image." As part of this effort,
"European Union special Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos and US Consul
General in Jerusalem Ronald Schlicher aided Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser
Arafat in drafting a letter last week to US Secretary of State Colin Powell
regarding the Karine A arms ship." The State Department denies Schlicher
was involved.
"Arafat has received additional public relations help in the US from a lobbying firm headed by former US consul general in Jerusalem Edward Abingdon, who reportedly authored his New York Times column on February 3," the Post adds. That column, of course, presented the Palestinian strongman as a champion of peace--so neither the byline nor the article was true. Hmm, which paper was it that was complaining about "false news stories" again?
Clinton
in Reuterville--II
Remember the Clinton-era Army video we noted
in December that repeated the Reuterian trope that one man's terrorist is
another's freedom fighter? National Review Online's John Miller has watched
the tape. Here's what he describes as "the most bizarre and jaw-dropping
segment of the whole program":
"Sometimes governments are forced to place their own national interests ahead of international efforts to reduce terrorism," says the narrator, as an image of Ronald Reagan appears on the screen. "In 1986, the United States conducted an air raid on terrorist training camps in retaliation for terrorist acts committed in Europe by agents of the Libyan regime. While some Arab nations condemned the raid as a terrorist act itself, most countries supported the U.S. action, including a call for international economic sanctions against the government in Tripoli. As we noted earlier, rarely is anything black and white when it comes to terrorism. We are usually dealing with varying shades of gray."
Got that? The United States attacks a regime directly responsible for death and destruction, and the actions it takes in response are morally suspect. This is an extremist form of cultural relativism--and its existence at the Pentagon four years ago is one of the keys to understanding why the federal government was not prepared for September 11.
A
High Official
"The CIA has conducted a detailed analysis of the videotape of its Feb.
4 killing of three suspected al Qaeda members and determined one of the targets
was over 6 feet tall and was wearing Arab garb," the Washington Times reports.
American labs are now analyzing human remains collected at the site.
Poison
Plot
"Italian police say they have arrested four Moroccans who were planning
a chemical attack in Rome, targeting buildings which included the United States
embassy," the BBC reports. The men, picked up yesterday, had "a powdered
cyanide-based substance, maps marking the capital's water supply network, as
well as a hoard of false documentation and Islamic extremist propaganda."
The BBC adds that "Italian magistrates are said to be furious that the
news of the arrests of the Moroccans has been leaked to the press. They say
it will jeopardise efforts to reveal who the men were working with, and who
had supplied them with the poisonous substance."
Second
Thoughts
Some of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are having doubts about their involvement
with the anti-American jihad, the Washington Times reports. "They
thought fighting is the ultimate jihad--a short way to heaven," Lt. Abuhena
Mohammad Saiful-Islam, a Muslim chaplain in the U.S. Navy, told the Associated
Press. "They do feel somewhat that they made the wrong choice, at the wrong
time."
At the same time, "some Guantanamo detainees remain steadfast in their belief that the attacks were justly executed in the name of Islam and trust their imprisonment will win them religious honors, the 39-year-old cleric said."
ISI
You Around
"Pakistan has begun to disband two major units of its powerful intelligence
service that had close links to Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir,"
the New York Times (link requires registration) reports, citing "senior
Pakistani military and intelligence officials." The Times adds that "the
move would result in the transfer of perhaps 40 percent of forces assigned to
the secretive organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which draws
its manpower from the military."
It
Was an Assassination! No, It Was a Mob!
"Afghanistan's foreign minister said Wednesday the country's aviation minister
was killed by an angry mob, not senior government conspirators as interim Prime
Minister Hamid Karzai has claimed," the Associated Press reports. Foreign
Minister Abdullah, "who uses only one name," though he sometimes uses
it twice, "said the whole government now shares this view, although there
was no comment on this from Karzai."
Will
Aretha Franklin Man the State Department's EU Desk?
Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign-policy chief, is calling on his
fellow EUnuchs to treat America with more respect, London's Daily Telegraph
reports. The Guardian
adds that Chris Patten, the EU's external affairs commissioner, is now "admitting
that he had 'lost his cool' in his recent Guardian interview in which he was
strongly critical of the US president."
Missile
Training
"Iranian mullahs are sponsoring a course in Lebanon for Palestinian terrorists
on how to operate SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles," Richard Chesnoff reports
in the New York Daily News. "Activists from the Hamas terrorist organization
and from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah are being taught by Iranian
trainers to hit low-flying planes or helicopters with shoulder-fired missiles
that can be easily operated from almost any location."
Stupidity Watch
On Sept. 11, "Prozac Nation" author Elizabeth
Wurtzel was awakened by a call from her mother, who bore the news that a
plane had just hit the World Trade Center. "My main thought was: What a pain
in the ass," she tells the Toronto Globe and Mail:
Her apartment was at ground zero, on Greenwich Street, south of Chambers. She could see the twin towers from her window. Or she could have, if she had bothered to get out of bed.
Then the second plane hit, and more people called. Wurtzel finally hauled herself up in time to watch one tower collapse. "I had not the slightest emotional reaction," she recalls. "I thought: 'This is a really strange art project.' "
Wurtzel takes a tiny bite of monkfish and ponders the worst terrorist attack in New York's history. "It was a most amazing sight in terms of sheer elegance. It fell like water. It just slid, like a turtleneck going over someone's head."
She takes another bite of monkfish. "It was just beautiful. You can't tell people this. I'm talking to you because you're Canadian."
Then her windows blew in. Airplane chunks landed on her roof. Wurtzel crawled into the basement and was later removed from the building. To this day, she can't understand why everyone else was so upset. "I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me."
"You know what was really funny?" asks Wurtzel, whose idiotic comments reached an American audience through the good offices of the New York Post's Page Six. "After the fact, like, all these different writers were writing these things about what it was like, and nobody bothered to call me."
Ralph Nader tells the Chicago Tribune: "This war would never have happened had I been president, because for 30 years we have had an aviation safety group, and we have been urging the airlines to toughen cockpit doors and improve the strength of the locks, and they have been resisting for 30 years."
Asked to name "the most important thing a president could do to challenge corporate dominance in America," Nader says it would be . . . to help Naderite groups win recruits: "Pass one bill that requires all corporations and government agencies to send inserts to insurance policyholders, bank customers, motorists, you name it, to join private consumer environmental worker action groups."
We usually don't mention Ted Rall, because he's so aggressively stupid, but this week's contribution is unusual even by his standards. He thinks corporate CEOs are worse than terrorists:
As it turns out, some of our deadliest foes have been working deep within the system. Even with 2,800 9-11 victims to his credit, Osama bin Laden has nothing on these home-grown corporate terrorists. Thoughtless, greedy captains of industry like Lay have laid off more than 15 million Americans since 1990, simply to pump up the value of stock given to them for nothing.
They fired people when their companies made money and they fired people when they lost money. Either way, the more they fired the more they earned. How many of those 15 million died because they could no longer afford health insurance? How many more have slipped off the ladder of downward mobility and plunged into abject poverty? Osama bin laden and Ken Lay shared a common target--innocent American workers.
Uh, earth to Ted: Who hired those people in the first place?
Yesterday's Stupidity Watch cited an Internet posting attributed to Edward Said. Several readers have pointed out that the Columbia University e-mail address on the posting is a bogus one, leading us to doubt that the posting was actually Said's. Also, we identified Said as Egyptian; although he grew up in Cairo, where his family lived, he was born during a visit to Jerusalem and calls himself Palestinian.
Did
Helen Know Something?
Yesterday's
report on Britain's "invasion" of Spain led reader Troy Taylor
to remind us of a November interrogation of White House press secretary Ari
Fleischer by aged reporter Helen Thomas, which National Review's Jay Nordlinger
noted last month:
Thomas: Does the president feel the United States has the right to bomb or invade any country harboring terrorists? Is he going to invade Spain?
Fleischer: Helen, the president, as I mentioned, is focused on Phase One . . .
Thomas: Eight suspected terrorists . . .
Fleischer: The president is focused on Phase One of the war against terrorism. But the president has made it plain to the American people that this a long-term war.
Thomas: Answer the question. What right do we have to invade any country?
Fleischer: I'm not aware that we are invading Spain.
American
Cheese
James Kraft, a Republican state legislator from Phoenix, is coming under scrutiny
for "stories of his business exploits as a member of the Kraft Foods family,"
the Arizona Republic reports:
His claim to be a millionaire trustee of the family fortune, not to mention the 12,000 boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese he handed out to potential voters, helped get him elected.
But his latest tales of hobnobbing at the Super Bowl with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who the lawmaker says is his cousin, have turned out to be false. The Patriots owner said he has never heard of James Kraft, is not related to him and has no connection to the famous family, according to a team spokesman.
The minority leader of Arizona's state House is also questioning Kraft's whereabouts during a recent special session, Kraft "told colleagues he was out of the state and out of the country doing business on behalf of the Kraft family trust."
Headline
of the Day
From the Boston Herald: "DA's Hands Seem Tied in Dominatrix Death Case."
Regrets?
I've Had a Few.
"A Filipino man was killed and his friend seriously wounded after they
sarcastically applauded a student for singing Frank Sinatra's classic My
Way off-key," Reuters reports. "The 21-year-old student felt insulted
when the victims clapped after he sang the song at a karaoke parlour in downtown
Manila." Filipino newspapers report Karaoke parlors have been removing
"My Way" from their play lists "because fights frequently broke
out--for unfathomable reasons--when the song was sung."
Pants
on Fire
Tallahassee, Fla., police officer Seth Stoughton caught Carl Franklin, 30, with
his pants down, about to commit an alleged act of public urination, the Tallahassee
Democrat reports. When an officer shouted, Franklin pulled up his pants and
ran for it. "Apparently, Franklin had been smoking a Newport when he stopped
to heed nature's call. Lacking anywhere to put his smoke, he'd just slipped
it into his pocket," the Democrat reports.
Franklin was charged with resisting arrest. Officer Stoughton tells the paper that "about halfway to the jail, he was still shouting that his pants were on fire."
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Jose Guardia, Steve Brizel, Brian O'Rourke, Steven Platzer, Kathleen Hoffart, Michael Segal, Yehuda Hilewitz, Damian Bennett, S.E. Brenner, Michiel Visser, C.E. Dobkin, Raghu Desikan, Peg Innis, Mario Fante, Michael Morley, Fred Komarow, Gregory Taylor, John Lott, Dayn Perry, Sheldon Townsend, Richard Olson and John Reilly. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Precision weapons produce a just war (link requires registration)
- Pete du Pont: Bush's innovative approach to health care.
- John Fund: Can Dick Riordan beat California's Democratic governor?
