OFFICE OF STRATEGIC INFLUENCE

The government’s reputation for truth telling is now further discredited with the Pentagon’s announcement of the creation of a new special propaganda unit called the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI)--whose title sounds strangely close to the old Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA. The new OSI is to be headed by Air Force Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden, and will engage in aggressive media campaigns, using US and foreign media plants as well as the Internet rumor mill to plant news items at home and abroad. The CIA also utilizes such tactics, secretly paying journalists to plant stories for them. Every journalist who has access to government “anonymous” sources is part of the system--though only journalists on the Left get paid. The OSI will also do covert operations to infiltrate the alternative media. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld assured the press that the OSI was harmless and that “US government would never tell a lie” to the American media. Somehow I find his statement less than reassuring given the Pentagon’s egregious record of denials and half-truths about civilian casualties in the bombing attacks in Afghanistan--to cite just one example. By omission, Rumsfeld left standing the charge that the Pentagon will be planting disinformation in foreign media sources--something which will hardly be surprising to our allies in Europe who have a healthy distrust of anything the US says.