Fw: NYTimes.com Article: Bush Will Keep Wartime Office Promoting U.S.

[Lutfi M. Hussein]

Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002 8:08 PM
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Bush Will Keep Wartime Office Promoting U.S.


> This article from NYTimes.com
> has been sent to you by lutfi.hussein at asu.edu.
>
>
>
> Bush Will Keep Wartime Office Promoting U.S.
>
> February 20, 2002
>
> By ELIZABETH BECKER and JAMES DAO
>
>
>
>
> WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 - President Bush has decided to
> transform the administration's temporary wartime
> communications effort into a permanent office of global
> diplomacy to spread a positive image of the United States
> around the world and combat anti-Americanism, senior
> administration officials said today.
>
> "The president believes it is a critical part of national
> security to communicate U.S. foreign policy to a global
> audience in times of peace as well as war," said Dan
> Bartlett, the White House communications director.
>
> While discussions are at a preliminary stage, officials
> said there was general agreement in the administration that
> the intense shaping of information and coordination of
> messages that occurred during the fighting in Afghanistan
> should become a permanent feature of national security
> policy.
>
> The White House office to be created to carry out the
> policy will coordinate the public statements of State,
> Defense and the other departments like the Voice of America
> to ensure that foreign correspondents in Washington as well
> as foreign leaders and opinion-makers overseas understand
> Mr. Bush's policies.
>
> "What is important is we want to do a better job of using
> the government seamlessly to give direction to the
> president's global diplomacy," a senior administration
> official said.
>
> Officials said the new office would be entirely separate
> from a proposed Office of Strategic Influence at the
> Pentagon, which would use the media, the Internet and a
> range of covert operations to try to influence public
> opinion and government policy abroad, including in friendly
> nations.
>
> That office is contemplating plans, which are being
> reviewed by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, to
> disseminate information, and possibly even disinformation,
> in foreign media as part of an aggressive campaign by the
> military to promote American policies overseas.
>
> Today, the president of the Radio- Television News
> Directors Association, Barbara Cochran, wrote a letter to
> Mr. Rumsfeld objecting to any plans involving the spread of
> false or misleading information by the Pentagon.
>
> Like the office of Homeland Security, the efforts to
> centralize public diplomacy following the Sept. 11 attacks
> have grown in importance and urgency in the last six
> months.
>
> So far, the new White House office has no name, no director
> and no budget, though officials say Mr. Bush has said money
> will be no obstacle in pursuing the effort. The earlier
> White House push to create a more positive image of the
> United States after Sept. 11 was led by Karen P. Hughes,
> senior adviser to the president and is known as the
> Coalition Information Center.
>
> The major goal, officials said, is to stem what the White
> House sees as a rising tide of anti-Americanism.
>
> "A lot of the world does not like America, and it's going
> to take years to change their hearts and minds," said a
> senior official involved in the discussions.
>
> The president broached the possibility of a permanent
> mission in a meeting with the top people who speak for the
> administration in September. "He told us that we were going
> to be at this for a long, long time," one participant said,
> "that we were setting a template for future presidents,
> that we had to think big, strategic, historic thoughts."
>
> Global diplomacy as envisioned in the new office will
> inject patriotism into the punishing 24-hour, seven-day
> news cycle, officials said. It will include information
> campaigns about Mr. Bush's domestic policy - like education
> bills - as well as traditional information about the
> military, diplomatic and economic sides of national
> security policy, officials said.
>
> Rather than create agencies, the new office would take
> advantage of the huge communications network of American
> embassies, their media offices and the broadcast network
> already in place under the State Department.
>
> Charlotte Beers, a former advertising executive now in
> charge of public diplomacy at the State Department, has
> used her marketing skills in an attempt to make American
> policies as familiar as American culture.
>
> Officials involved in the global communications effort said
> it required clear direction from the White House to break
> down the bureaucratic walls built up around the government
> after the cold war ended and the focus on defeating a
> clear-cut enemy disappeared.
>
> Foreign journalists say they have given up getting
> meaningful interviews from American officials here. Only
> the most senior ambassadors from allied countries meet
> regularly with government policy makers.
>
> "There was often the feeling that we were either taken for
> granted or considered irrelevant," said Patrice de Beer,
> the former Washington correspondent for Le Monde, the
> French daily. "We don't expect anyone to deliver state
> secrets to us but to be accessible to explain what the
> policy was. That's all."
>
> In the earlier White House effort, Ms. Hughes joined forces
> with her British counterpart to put together the Coalition
> Information Center, known as the war room.
>
> When Washington decided to highlight the Taliban's policy
> against women's rights, officials enlisted not only First
> Lady Laura Bush but Cherie Blair, the wife of the British
> prime minister.
>
> "The Afghanistan women's campaign was the best thing we've
> done - giving insight into their vision of the future,"
> said Jim Wilkinson, the head of the Coalition Information
> Center.
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/20/international/20INFO.html?ex=1015260935&ei
=1&en=cbcd897efad3fe31
>
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