WOULD YOU TRUST Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld? That is the question some in Washington are asking after a bruising week for the Pentagon.
It fell to Mr Rumsfeld to explain revelations in the New York Times that the Defence Department was planning to plant lies in the foreign media through its new Office of Strategic Influence.
The Orwellian-titled body is being created far from the prying eyes of much of his own administration, as well as the US Congress, and is drawing on the US$10 billion (HK$78 billion) emergency kitty created following September 11.
Part of its yet-to-be-approved charter seeks to further US interests through straight-forward press releases. Other plans involve 'black propaganda' across the Middle East, Asia and Western Europe, attacking unfriendly governments or movements with false information. Some of it may be created and routed through means that could make its origins opaque at best.
At the office's core is a private Washington-based firm, the Rendon Group, a consultancy with a long but shadowy record of work with the CIA and the Kuwaiti royal family. Mr Rumsfeld was quick to point out that the office's charter is still being created. Even before he finalises it, he insists no lies will be told.
Laws exist to prevent the US Government lying to its own press. What it does internationally is another matter - but not if it rebounds domestically through an increasingly globalised media market.
'Government officials, the Department of Defence, this secretary and the people who work with me tell the American people and the people of the world the truth,' Mr Rumsfeld said. 'Consistent with Defence Department policy, under no circumstances will the office or its contractors knowingly or deliberately disseminate false information to the American or foreign media or public.'
