[iwar] [fc:Truth.Be.Told,.They.Do.Lie]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-03-01 07:57:58
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 07:57:58 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Truth.Be.Told,.They.Do.Lie]
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National Journal
March 2, 2002
Truth Be Told, They Do Lie
That leak about a ministry of truth was a huge favor for all Americans.
By George C. Wilson
The flap over the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence-which was put out
of its misery this week-takes us back to that old question: Does the
American government have the right to lie? Arthur Sylvester, a one-time
Pentagon spokesman, became briefly famous in 1962 for saying the government
could indeed lie to save the country. By establishing this new influence
office, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reignited the controversy.
Despite Rumsfeld's efforts to caulk every leak in the Pentagon, he missed
the one that did him and all the rest of us a favor by revealing the
existence of this mysterious ministry of truth to The New York Times. The
Times story of February 19 said the new office, overseen by a one-star Air
Force general, planned to send news items, "possibly even false ones," to
foreign-media organizations as part of the Bush Administration's campaign to
win offshore hearts and minds.
President Bush and Rumsfeld, who rushed to their damage-control stations
after the story broke, subsequently insisted that neither the Office of
Strategic Influence nor any other arm of their Administration would
deliberately lie. For the short term, their reassurance was too late to
close the credibility gap opened by establishing the office with no
announcement or explanation. In the long term, we still don't know how this
Administration might bend the truth. 
An officer who had just come from the school for military information
officers gave some insight into how much short-term damage the revelation of
the Office of Strategic Initiative's existence has caused: "They told us [at
the school], 'You're not spinners. You're supposed to get out the maximum
information in minimum time.' I didn't hear anything about this Office of
Strategic Influence." Now he's wondering if he's working in Spin City after
all.
A senior information executive said he fears that the Bush Administration's
squads of mouthpieces from the public relations world are so obsessed with
marketing the President's "message," they will break "the trust" between the
military and the media that he and others have tried so hard to re-establish
since the bad old days of the Vietnam War. Victoria Clarke is the Pentagon's
top information officer. She has a PR background, unlike most of her
predecessors, who came from the news media. But in a January 9 exchange with
Michael Getler-the Washington Post ombudsman and a former Pentagon
reporter-she seemed to suggest that reporters fare better with her than they
would with Sylvester, the former Newark, N.J., Evening News Washington
bureau chief who ran the Pentagon's information empire from 1961 to 1967:
Clarke: [Getler] said it was unfortunate that the journalists don't have the
kind of advocate in the Pentagon like Arthur Sylvester. So-
Getler: No, no, I didn't-
Clarke: So I would ask you: Do you want someone in the Pentagon who will
lie?
Getler: No, of course not.
Sylvester never said the Pentagon should routinely lie. What he said,
according to a transcript of his speech in New York City on December 6,
1962, was this: "It's inherent in that government's right, if necessary, to
lie to save itself when it's going up into a nuclear war. This seems to me
basic. Basic." In elaborating later, during a House hearing, Sylvester said:
"In our country, the governmental representatives of this people whom they
elect and dispose of have a duty to take whatever means in their judgment,
or in the judgment of the top people, is necessary when that people faces
nuclear disaster. This was what I was trying to say." His speech was a
response to media complaints that the government had deceived them during
the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
"The Pentagon does not lie to the American people; it does not lie to
foreign audiences," Rumsfeld said. However, he and Gen. Richard B. Myers,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been openly frustrated about not
being able to influence foreign opinion, especially about the war in
Afghanistan. Because the Pentagon is very much a top-down establishment,
it's possible that planning by Air Force Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden, head of
the Office of Strategic Influence, and his deputies went further than
Rumsfeld intended. It's also possible that the Secretary knew more about
those plans, and especially about the possibility of the occasional use of
disinformation, than he has acknowledged publicly.
Despite Rumsfeld's assurances, recent history documents that our government
has lied to us. The Republican Eisenhower Administration initially lied
about the CIA spy plane that was shot down over Soviet airspace in 1960. At
first, the Administration told the American public that the plane was a
space agency weather aircraft that went down because the pilot had
"difficulties with his oxygen equipment." The Democratic Kennedy
Administration lied during the Cuban missile crisis. The George W. Bush
Administration's supposed dedication to the truth has not been as severely
tested, so far. When it is, Bush and Rumsfeld should remember the warning
that Gene Robb, vice president of the American Newspaper Publishers
Association, gave to a House committee in 1963: "A government can
successfully lie no more than once to its people. Thereafter, everything it
says and does becomes suspect."

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