NEWS TRANSCRIPT from the United States Department of Defense
DoD News Briefing
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
Wednesday, February 20, 2002
(Media availability in Salt Lake City, Utah.)


Q : Mr. Secretary, there have been reports about the Office of Strategic Influence. Can you give us your comments about whether the Pentagon should be issuing disinformation to foreign press, and any comments?

RUMSFELD : Well, the Pentagon is not issuing disinformation to the foreign press or any other press.

Q : Will they be?

RUMSFELD : No. The United States of America has long had policies with respect to public information, and we have policies where certainly we make a practice of assuring that what we tell the public is accurate and correct. And if in any event somebody happens to be misinformed and say something that's not correct, they correct that at the earliest opportunity.

The Department of State of the United States of America has an Office of Public Diplomacy, I believe it's called. The Joint Staff has an Office of Information Operations. And the office called SOLIC [Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict] has the office you're referring to, of Strategic Influence.

If you think about it, in the Afghan conflict, for example, or the war on terrorism, we dropped millions of food rations for starving people in Afghanistan. They were in yellow packets, and they were dropped from aircraft. And the Taliban and the al Qaeda were lying to people and telling the Afghan people that in fact that it was poisoned food. It was not poisoned food, it was wonderful food. It was culturally appropriate food. So we have an information operation where we explained -- dropped leaflets explaining to the Afghan people that it was very good food.

There was also a problem where there was same -- similar-colored packets that had some bomblets in them, culturally appropriate bomblets, and we dropped leaflets explaining the difference.