Planted Articles May Be Violation

[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times 1/27, AUTHOR: Mark Mazzetti]
A secret U.S. military program that pays Iraqi newspapers to publish articles favorable to the American mission appears to violate a 2003 Pentagon directive, according to a newly declassified document released Thursday. The information campaign run by U.S. troops in Baghdad and a Washington-based private contractor is the subject of a high-level military investigation. Last month, the top U.S. general in Iraq said a preliminary investigation into the program had found it did not violate U.S. law or Pentagon regulations. A secret directive on the Pentagon's information operations policy released Thursday, however, appears to prohibit U.S. troops from conducting psychological operations, or psy-ops, targeting the media. "Psy-op is restricted by both DoD [Department of Defense] policy and executive order from targeting American audiences, our military personnel and news agencies or outlets," says the directive, dated Oct. 30, 2003, and signed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The document, titled "Information Operations Roadmap," was released by the National Security Archive, a research institution based at George Washington University that obtained it under the Freedom of Information Act.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-infowar27jan27,0,170...
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