During the early years of the war in Afghanistan, the Bush administration was frustrated that the Arab World would not carry many of the stories about our efforts to deal with those that attacked us on 9/11. According to Mr. Rich, the Arab countries were unhappy with Bush because of our policies in the Middle-east and reacted by ignoring stories about our efforts to fight al Qaeda.
The solution was to create an agency within the Pentagon called the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) to manipulate public opinion with fake stories and e-mails. Although not all the stories provided by the OSI were untrue, many of them had no basis in fact and were designed only to alter public opinion in this country and in the Arab world.
The OSI had a staff of 15 people and a multi-million dollar budget. In February 2002, the NYT learned of this agency and its activities. A week after the NYT alerted the public of the OSI, the Pentagon pulled the plug.
It is doubtful the very short life of this agency had any real impact but it does show the character of the Bush Administration.
