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America Targets Terrorism: Military Says It Won't Lie to Public
Thursday, February 21, 2002
(12:00 AM)
By Eric Rosenberg
Hearst Washington Bureau
The San Antonio Express-News

"There are all kinds of ways of affecting enemy's perceptions of what our armed forces are doing that don't involve Department of Defense officials lying to the public."

WASHINGTON
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials said Wednesday that a controversial new Pentagon office responsible for coordinating propaganda activity wouldn't disseminate lies to the public in order to deceive enemies such as al-Qaida.

"Government officials, the Department of Defense, this secretary and the people that work with me tell the American people and the people of the world the truth," Rumsfeld said while visiting U.S. troops providing security at the Olympics in Salt Lake City. "The Pentagon does not issue misinformation to the foreign press or any press."

In Washington, Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's top policy official who has responsibility for the office, said: "We are not going to lie to the press or the public."

The officials were responding to reports that the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence, in seeking to shape international public opinion in the fight against terrorism, might spread false information through news media outlets and the Internet.
(More: The San Antonio Express-News Source)
2002 © KENS 5 and the San Antonio Express-News.

Dan