Who’s Disinforming’ Who?

(Washington, D.C.): Last week, the New York Times did a front-page hit piece on the Pentagon’s recently established Office of Strategic Influence (OSI). It claimed — purportedly on the basis of on-the-record comments by the organization’s Assistant for Operations, Col. Thomas A. Timmes USA (Ret.) at a recent industry conference and explicitly on the basis of disgruntled, but unnamed, Pentagon sources — that the OSI was preparing to disseminate “disinformation” to foreign press and governments (including friendly ones) as part of the war on terrorism.

Predictably, the Times‘ report set off a firestorm of criticism in the media, including demands not only for a blanket Pentagon prohibition on the use of disinformation but for the complete disestablishment of the Office of Strategic Influence. Regrettably, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — who was obliged to spend much of last week disavowing any interest in, let alone authorization for, DoD disinformation campaigns — signaled yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “the person who’s in charge is debating whether [the OSI] should even exist in its current form, given all the misinformation and adverse publicity that it’s received.”

This would, as the following column by the Center for Security Policy’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. which appeared Friday in National Review Online makes clear, be a serious mistake. After all, the war on terrorism is going to require the United States to do the sorts of things the OSI was created to perform: Bringing not disinformation but the truth to bear on behalf of America’s strategic interests. These include, as the Washington Times reports this morning, counteracting Iranian disinformation now raining down on Afghanistan in the hopes of destabilizing the Karzai government and offering alternatives to the Islamist madrassas in Pakistan that serve as petri dishes for the next generation of terrorists.

If such an effort is not enabled by the resources of the Defense Department and coordinated by competent people in the Office of the Secretary of Defense like Brigadier General Simon “Pete” Worden, the OSI’s director, chances are that it will be done somewhere else in an inferior and far less synergistic fashion. It would be particularly ill-advised to fall prey to the temptation to conduct these sorts of operations as a “black program” entirely out of the public eye; such a step would simply invite intensified speculation that the Pentagon is, in fact, engaged in influence and information operations that involve disseminating lies.

Secretary Rumsfeld and the “person in charge” of the Office of Strategic Influence, Under Secretary Douglas Feith, should reaffirm their support for this initiative — not attempt to appease its critics by dismantling this needed organization. It would be particularly egregious for them to do the latter insofar as the charges that OSI would like to engage in disinformation are, themselves, untrue, as Mr. Rumsfeld himself observed yesterday on Meet the Press:

It’s not clear to me that what [Tim Russert read to him from the original New York Times article and a subsequent Times editorial about OSI and disinformation] is true. You read it as though it were fact. To my knowledge, no people are quoted by name as to whether or not those things are true. I don’t believe they’re true. I know that if they are true, they won’t happen, so — because I’m not going to allow it to happen.

On that basis, the Office of Strategic Influence can clearly render the valuable service it was meant to perform. It should be allowed to do so. At the same time, those who had hoped to keep OSI from doing so — by planting disinformation about its activities in the U.S. press — are the ones who should be put out of business. They certainly have, as a senior White House official put it in today’s Washington Post, done “a tremendous disservice to the President” by raising questions about the Administration’s credibility when he was overseas. That disservice would be greatly and unjustifiably compounded by inflicting real harm on the war on terrorism and the national security more generally if allowed to succeed in taking down the Office of Strategic Influence.

The good news is that Leftists at home and abroad are no longer getting front-page attention for their preposterous claims that the Pentagon is badly treating terrorists by denying them prisoner-of-war status during their incarceration in Guantanamo Bay. The bad news is that the Bush administration’s critics over the war on terrorism have not given up, they have simply chosen a new stick with which to beat up the U.S. government.

The current campaign has been prompted by charges breathlessly publicized by the New York Times to the effect that the defense department is preparing to use disinformation against foreign governments and press. Suddenly pass are concerns about the “sensory deprived” Taliban and al Qaeda detainees captured on film being forced to kneel in their Cuban stockade. The cause de jour has become an insistence that the Pentagon tell nothing but the truth, the whole truth, all the time.

While the focus is different, the political subtext of the new campaign like the one that preceded it is the same: Knock down the public’s confidence in the administration when it comes to waging war on terrorism.

It is as extraordinary as it is regrettable that this second round of overheated rhetoric appears to have been precipitated by the same source as the first: The Pentagon’s own public-affairs shop. This organization recently, if belatedly, took collective responsibility for the decision to release the provocative photograph of the Guantanamo detainees. That self-inflicted wound was compounded by the failure simultaneously to explain that it chronicled not their day-to-day treatment, but a single moment in time: The exceedingly dangerous transition of hardened and ruthless terrorists from the plane that brought them to Cuba to their cells.

The defense department’s PA shop has yet to take credit for setting off this week’s cause celebre. Still, the front-page, above-the-fold article in the February 19 editions of the New York Times that precipitated the current firestorm of criticism was sourced by unnamed individuals transparently defending their bureaucratic “turf” against proposals that would cede to a newly created Office of Strategic Influence any authority to disseminate information to overseas audiences.

The tragedy is not only that the secretary of defense has been obliged by actions of his own subordinates once again to spend precious time, energy, and political capital defending his department against the Left’s rants. Rather it is that, in the process, he has been compelled sharply to circumscribe, and perhaps to disable, an effort whose importance he appreciates better than practically anyone: The ability of America’s unrivaled dominance in information technologies and techniques to contribute to winning the war on terrorism.

This is to take nothing away from Secretary Rumsfeld. To his credit, he has responded to the latest charges with characteristic forthrightness and courage, affirming the importance of public and press confidence in the defense department’s official declarations while underscoring the military’s need to use deception in appropriate circumstances to assure tactical and strategic success.

Unfortunately, in the process he felt compelled to rule out the use of “disinformation.” A press release issued by his office Wednesday declared flatly, “Under no circumstances will the office [of Strategic Influence] or its contractors knowingly or deliberately disseminate false information to the American or foreign media or publics.”

To be sure, this is and should be the general rule. Yet, producing misleading indications of our intentions and otherwise acting to deceive an enemy is not merely a time-tested and -honored practice in warfare. It is in some cases D-Day comes to mind essential to the success of military operations and, most especially, to keeping U.S. combat casualties to an absolute minimum.

This is, arguably, even more true today than ever before. As the American armed forces mount worldwide operations under the unblinking gaze of seemingly omnipresent, 24/7 media coverage, the need to induce the enemy to misapprehend our plans and intentions becomes all the more challenging, even as it becomes ever more important. Secretary Rumsfeld needs to have available to him creative ideas about how to accomplish that goal, and the latitude necessary to act on such ideas where saving the lives of our servicemen and women and/or our civilian populace may hang in the balance.

Winston Churchill once trenchantly observed, “In a time of war, the truth is so precious that it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” It would be regrettable, and potentially costly, if the Bush administration were to allow itself to be bludgeoned into foreclosing the deception option to protect truth and the lives of all those who treasure it.