Otto Reich

[Magda Hassan]

The Return of Otto Reich
Will Government Propagandist Join Bush Administration?

By Jeff Cohen

In totalitarian countries, government propaganda officers wield great power. They're authorized to use the media to stir up state-sanctioned passions and fears through the selective dissemination of information -- sometimes factual, sometimes phony.

If you think the United States has never employed propaganda officers, meet Otto Reich. He may soon be our country's chief diplomat in Latin America if the Bush administration has its way.

In March, Bush announced his intention to nominate Reich as assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere. If he's officially nominated, it will be interesting to see how journalists handle Reich -- because from 1983 through 1986, it was Reich's job to handle journalists. That's when he commanded the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy, whose main mission was to inflame fears about Nicaragua and its left-wing Sandinista government that had come to power by overthrowing a corrupt, U.S.-supported dictator.

By covertly disseminating intelligence leaks to journalists, Reich and the OPD sought to trump up a Nicaraguan "threat," and to sanctify the U.S.-backed Contra guerrillas fighting Nicaragua's government as "freedom fighters." The propaganda was aimed at influencing Congress to continue to fund the Contras.

Take the scary news that Soviet MiG fighter jets were arriving in Nicaragua. With journalists citing unnamed "intelligence sources," the well-timed story surged through U.S. media on the night of Ronald Reagan's reelection. At NBC, Andrea Mitchell broke into election coverage with the story. The furor spurred a Democratic senator to discuss a possible airstrike against Nicaragua. But the story turned out to be a hoax. Several journalists later acknowledged they'd been handed the story by Reich's office.

It isn't the only erroneous story journalists link to the OPD. According to the Miami Herald, for example, Reich's office promoted the fable that Nicaragua had acquired chemical weapons from the Soviets. According to Newsweek, the OPD told reporters that high-level Sandinistas were involved in drug trafficking, but U.S. drug officials said there was no evidence for such a charge.

Reich's office worked alongside the White House National Security Council, collaborating with CIA propaganda experts, Army psychological warfare specialists and a then-obscure Marine lieutenant colonel named Oliver North. Declassified documents detailing OPD activities are on file and online at the National Security Archive, a DC-based nonprofit (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/).

In a March 13, 1985 "Eyes Only" memo to Pat Buchanan, then-White House Communications Director, the OPD bragged about the recent results of its "White Propaganda" operation in support of the Contras. The OPD said it helped write an anti-Sandinista column for the Wall Street Journal that ran two days earlier; assisted in a "positive piece" on the Contras by Fred Francis that aired the night before on NBC; wrote op-eds for the Washington Post and New York Times that would run with the bylines of Contra leaders; arranged an extensive media tour for a Contra leader "through a cut-out" (to hide the OPD's role); and prepared to leak a State Department cable that would embarrass the Sandinistas: "Do not be surprised if this cable somehow hits the evening news."

The memo said that the Wall Street Journal column, "Nicaragua is Armed for Trouble," was written by an OPD "consultant," but cautioned that "officially, this office had no role in its preparation." Weeks later, after the Journal published a news report on Nicaragua that Reich disliked, the OPD chief wrote an angry letter-to-the editor touting the "Armed for Trouble" column and complaining that the news report was "an echo of Sandinista propaganda." It was an audacious charge since Reich himself was "echoing" propaganda his office had covertly boasted to have assisted in.

Besides media manipulation through planted stories and leaks, there was also cajoling and bullying of journalists. Reich visited CBS in April 1984 to complain at length about its Central America coverage. In a memo to President Reagan, Secretary of State George Shultz described the meeting as an example of "what the Office of Public Diplomacy has been doing to help improve the quality of information the American people are receiving. It has been repeated dozens of times over the past few months."

Six months later, Reich met with a dozen National Public Radio reporters and editors about their allegedly biased Nicaragua coverage. According to NPR Foreign Affairs correspondent Bill Buzenberg, "Reich bragged that he had made similar visits to other unnamed newspapers and major television networks...Reich said he had gotten others to change some of their reporters in the field." Buzenberg told me in a 1987 interview that he viewed the OPD chief's comments as a "calculated attempt to intimidate."

Reich had little tolerance for independent-minded reporters. In the summer of 1985, his office helped circulate a specious story suggesting that U.S. reporters received sexual favors from Sandinista-provided prostitutes in return for favorable coverage. "It isn't only women," Reich told New York magazine; for gay journalists, they'd procure men.

The OPD viewed many in the media as allies to be rewarded, particularly on the weekend pundit shows. According to a Feb. 1985 OPD memo, certain correspondents on the McLaughlin, Brinkley and Agronsky programs had "open invitations for personal briefings."

After Reich had left to become ambassador to Venezuela, the OPD was shut down in 1987, in the wake of a U.S. comptroller general's report which concluded that Reich's office had "engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities." According to the Miami Herald, a "senior U.S. official" described the OPD as "a vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory." But the population targeted was not an enemy -- it was the U.S. public

A confrontation is brewing on Capitol Hill over Otto Reich. He is supported by the Cuban-American lobby, which is so powerful with the Bush White House that Reich reportedly got the nod for the assistant secretary state job over a career foreign service officer favored by Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Cuban-born Reich, now a corporate lobbyist, helped draft the Helms-Burton Act tightening the embargo of Cuba.

Reich is opposed by Democratic senators who remember his exploits at the OPD. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) commented in March that Reich's "office may have been the genesis of acts of propaganda not just prohibited in this country, but which reflect a kind of carelessness about the truth."

A key player to watch in any confirmation battle will be the press corps itself. What will be the reaction of journalists who were manipulated by leaks from his office? Or of the newspapers that may have run op-ed columns unaware that his office was behind them?

If senators don't adequately raise questions about Otto Reich's history as a media manipulator, one would hope that journalists will.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2446