February 17, 2006: Rumsfeld Defends Defense Department Program that Plants Stories in Iraqi Newspapers

In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defends a Pentagon program that has been planting pro-US stories (see September 2004-September 2006) in the Iraqi press. “The US military command, working closely with the Iraqi government and the US embassy, has sought nontraditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of aggressive campaign of disinformation. Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate; for example, the allegations of someone in the military hiring a contractor, and the contractor allegedly paying someone to print a story—a true story—but paying to print a story. For example, the resulting explosion of critical press stories then causes everything, all activity, all initiative, to stop, just frozen. Even worse, it leads to a chilling effect for those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field.” [Council of Foreign Relations, 2/17/2006]