April 30, 2008: White House Defends Pentagon Propaganda Operation

Reporter Eric Brewer asks White House spokesman Dana Perino about recent reports of the Pentagon’s systematic propaganda operation to manipulate public opinion about the war in Iraq (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond). After briefly summarizing the story, Brewer asks, “[D]id the White House know about and approve of this operation?” Perino stumbles through her initial response before recovering: “Look, I didn’t know—look, I think that you guys should take a step back and look at this—look, [the Defense Department] has made a decision, they’ve decided to stop this program (see April 26, 2008). But I would say that one of the things that we try to do in the administration is get information out to a variety of people so that everybody else can call them and ask their opinion about something. And I don’t think that that should be against the law. And I think that it’s absolutely appropriate to provide information to people who are seeking it and are going to be providing their opinions on it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those military analysts ever agreed with the administration. I think you can go back and look and think that a lot of their analysis was pretty tough on the administration. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t talk to people.” [White House, 4/30/2008; Raw Story, 4/30/2008]