Foreign-language broadcasts are just one of the old ideas being dusted off and given a new life in an effort to recreate the kind of propaganda campaigns that were waged against the Axis powers in World War II and against communism in the cold war.
Like the old Office of War Information in World War II, the administration has sought to harmonize the daily message about the progress of the war through the creation of the White House war room. Representatives of various agencies work together there, including officials from the Pentagon, Health and Human Services and the new Office of Homeland Security.
In addition to enlisting the help of Hollywood, another old idea being recast is enlarging the message overseas through American diplomacy. This was once the domain of the United States Information Agency, but that agency was reduced and folded into the State Department in the Clinton administration.
Charlotte Beers became under secretary of state last month to help sell the American war to the Islamic world. She quickly put Christopher Ross, a former ambassador fluent in Arabic, on the Arab satellite network Al Jazeera to counter a videotaped message from Mr. bin Laden, and has put Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Egyptian television to defend the American bombing campaign and Egypt's role in the war on terrorism. Vice President Cheney gave an interview on Friday to the British tabloid newspaper The Sun in that same effort to get the message past the elite.
This week Ms. Beers sent a "catalog of lies" through the State Department to Pakistani newspapers to dispute Taliban allegations, including the claim that the United States was purposefully targeting civilians.
And Ms. Beers has begun addressing groups of foreign journalists in Washington, many from Muslim nations. Those sessions are closed to American journalists.
"We can't give out our propaganda to our own people," said Price Floyd, deputy director of media outreach at the State Department.
This new concerted information campaign, with messages put together jointly by American and British government communications directors in the war offices, called coalition information centers, in Washington, London and Islamabad, is trying to counter enemy propaganda about civilian casualties and the progress of the war.
Among some people who have played a spokesman's role before, there are doubts about whether journalists here and abroad will accept these new messages.
"I'd tone this down," said Frank Mankiewicz, a former Democratic spokesman now with the public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton. "This is not the Second World War, it's something different. It's trying to fit one kind of struggle into another form and it's not working. It's too obvious."
There are also doubts about how well the United States message is being received in the Islamic world. One challenge has been reaching across the cultural divide.
As part of its psychological operations, the military has been dropping leaflets over Afghanistan and broadcasting radio programs from aircraft meant to encourage the defections of Taliban soldiers by showing the cruelty and tyranny of the regime.
Originally, some leaflets were designed with a more direct message ó telling Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters to surrender or risk certain death. But culture experts working on the military's psychological operations team balked, saying an Afghan soldier would read a demand to surrender as an invitation to become a coward and lose his honor. The wording was changed.
Keeping Tight Control
On Information and Expectations
Even before the bombing began on Oct. 7, news organizations had begun pushing for access to information and troops. But in the days and weeks since, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, while officially endorsing the Persian Gulf war guidelines for news media coverage of combat, has enforced policies ensuring that journalists have little or no access to independent information about military strategies, successes and failures.
Pentagon correspondents say their usual sources have taken Secretary Rumsfeld's warnings about leaks to heart and are reticent where they had once been forthcoming in giving guidance to reporters.
In addition, after-action access to the troops engaged in bombing or other combat missions has been almost nonexistent. While there are hundreds of reporters in countries like Pakistan, the Persian Gulf states, Uzbekistan and the northern areas of Afghanistan ó all places where United States troops have been deployed ó the Central Command has yet to allow reporters to have any contact with the troops most involved.
It is not just information that the Pentagon leadership is keeping under tight control. It is also expectations. At a briefing on Thursday, Gen. Tommy R. Franks of the Army, the commander in chief of the Central Command, was asked, "At the end of a month, now, what can we show that says, `Hey, we're winning?' "
General Franks rejected the premise, choosing instead to outline his objectives in the broadest terms: "Our job has to do with terrorist organizations, networks and global reach, and it has to do with the command and control of the Taliban."
The desire to keep information and expectations at a minimum stems directly from the experience of the Vietnam War, longtime military reporters and military historians say. The Johnson administration "oversold greatly the degree of success" of the war before the Tet offensive in 1968, said Don Oberdorfer, a former diplomatic and military correspondent for The Washington Post. The unrealistic expectations turned the Tet battles ó arguably a United States military victory ó into a massive public relations defeat.
"A whole generation of military officers grew up believing that the press was the problem, if not the enemy," Mr. Oberdorfer said.
And with public support of the Afghan action and trust of the Bush administration high, news organizations have little leverage. As the Army's senior historian, William Hammond, said, "History tells us that in a very popular war the government doesn't have to justify a whole lot."
Nonetheless, on Oct. 18, Mr. Rumsfeld said he "had no problem" with the nine- year-old "Principles of Coverage" Vice President Cheney agreed to when he was defense secretary. Among other things, the principles state that the military, as quickly as practicable, provide reporters with independent access to combat operations ó under the stricture that reporting would never compromise missions or endanger troops or intelligence-gathering operations.
