No Need To Hide the Truth

Earlier this week, military officials reported that the Pentagon is drawing up plans to plant news stories abroad in an effort to increase pro-American sentiment in both friendly and unfriendly countries. Distributing information about America and its foreign policy has usually fallen to the State Department, while the Department of Defense has usually concerned itself solely with tactical and military matters. While this shift in responsibilities would be undesirable on its own, it is even more startling that the Pentagon plans to disseminate false stories along with those that are true.

Although the Office of Strategic Influence—the Defense Department’s group in charge of these types of activities—was set up immediately after Sept. 11 and has dropped leaflets and broadcast messages during the ongoing war in Afghanistan, the plans to deceive foreigners have not yet received final approval from the Bush administration. If these operations go forward, irreparable harm will be done to America’s credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Allowing a military organization to disseminate American propaganda will undermine the already tenuous trustworthiness of the Pentagon, both at home and around the world. There is a fine line between narrow military necessity—where deception may be justified—and more general propaganda, where falsehood reinforces negative American stereotypes. This line is already blurry, and the Pentagon’s involvement will make it even more difficult to differentiate between the two.

But regardless of which departments are involved, it is wrong to intentionally disseminate misinformation of any kind. The very notion of intentional deception as an official policy to encourage trust, understanding and faith in the United States is faintly ludicrous. This would put in doubt the vast amount of truthful information circulated by the all branches of the U.S. government and destroy American credibility on all levels.

Spreading misinformation is not only misguided on a moral level; it does not stand up to legal scrutiny. Current legislation bans the C.I.A. and the Pentagon from propaganda activities in the United States. In the 1970s it was discovered that the C.I.A. had given false information to a French news agency, and newspaper articles about the untrue story had subsequently been published in the U.S. If this could occur before the Internet, e-mail and wireless communication became widespread, it would be even more likely today that false information disseminated abroad could be republished in America—violating the spirit of the federal law, if not the law itself.

In any other situation it may be seen as comical that military officials announced that the Pentagon was going to start deceiving people but, unfortunately, this is no joke. It is imperative that the Bush administration abandon these dangerous plans and safeguard the reputation of the United States with friend and foe alike.