Reply #37: This sounds just like something going on in the '80's

[Judi Lynn]

when Reagan was President.

I learned in the last few years that Otto Reich, whom Reagan placed in his State Department in the Office of Public Diplomacy did things just like this. I've found an example:

(snip) Otto Reich came to prominence during the Reagan administration when he was appointed head of the office of public diplomacy within the state department. According to the national security archives, Reich used this role to pursue his own agenda to such an extent that in 1987 the Comptroller-General of the US, a Republican appointee, found that some of the efforts of his office were "prohibited, covert propaganda activities ... beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities". A letter of September 30 1987 concluded that Reich's office had violated "a restriction on the state department's annual appropriations prohibiting the use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorised by Congress".

He staffed his unit with CIA and Pentagon "psychological warfare" specialists and discredited journalists whose work the Reagan administration did not like. His office wrote bogus editorial pieces under the names of Nicaraguan contras and got them published in the mainstream media. He reported directly to Oliver North. (snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,646835,00.html

Information on Public Diplomacy and Covert Propaganda
Otto Reich's instruments used against the naive American public are discussed. Congress took a very long, hard look at this kind of thing: deliberate lying. I think some have called it "White Propaganda." Yeah, right.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/