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Turn Up the Propaganda, Please

Apparently not satisfied that U.S.-funded broadcast services including Radio Farda and the Voice of America are targeting Iran with a sufficient level of propaganda, a Pentagon report, prepared at the behest of an interagency committee known as the Iran Steering Group, has charged “that U.S. international broadcasts into Iran aren't tough enough on the Islamic regime,” according to McClatchy Newspapers.

The report appears to be a gambit by some officials in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office and elsewhere to gain sway over television and radio broadcasts into Iran, one of the few direct tools the United States has to reach the Iranian people.

U.S. broadcasting officials, according to McClatchy, view the report as a power play intended to usurp the independence of U.S.-sponsored news outlets. They also say the report is filled with errors. As Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, put it, “The author of this report is as qualified to write a report on programming to Iran as I would be to write a report covering the operations of the 101st Airborne Division.”

That brings us to the author of the report, who sources told McClatchy is a Pentagon official and Iran specialist named Ladan Archin. Back in May Laura Rozen identified Archin as one of three officials who previously worked in the notorious Office of Special Plans, a clearinghouse for manipulated intelligence on Iraq, and are now working in the Pentagon's recently established Iran directorate. (Read Kevin Drum’s take on all of this here.)

In recent months, the U.S. has stepped up so-called democracy promotion campaigns targeting Iran as a means to bolster the opposition and undermine the regime, including an $85 million State Department program to prop up dissident groups and ramp up anti-Iran propaganda efforts. As the U.S. and Iran continue on a collision course, expect the propaganda war to heat up.

Posted by Daniel Schulman on 09/27/06 at 7:35 AM | E-mail | Print

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