Editing Office of Strategic Influence (section)

==Timeline==
*February 19, 2002: Major US news organizations report that the Department of Defense had set up the Office of Strategic Influence. These reports quote an unnamed official, who is discussing the advantages of and dangers in setting up such an office.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/02/19/gen.strategic.influence/ |title=CNN.com - New Pentagon office to spearhead information war - February 20, 2002 |accessdate=2010-02-13 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091207052906/http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/02/19/gen.strategic.influence/ |archivedate=2009-12-07 }}</ref>
*February 20, 2002: After discussions on the purpose of the Office in the US media, [[Douglas Feith]], Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, assures the public in an interview that Defense Department officials will not undermine the credibility of US institutions by lying to the public, and states that the exact mandate of the office is under review.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://fas.org/sgp/news/2002/02/dod022002c.html|title = Under Secretary Feith on Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence}}</ref>
*February 26, 2002: Rumsfeld announces the decision by Douglas Feith to close the Office of Strategic Influence.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/id/43904/|title = News Archive}}</ref>
*November 18, 2002: Rumsfeld states in a press briefing that the Office of Strategic Influence was closed down only in name, that the activities of the office still continue. Rumsfeld:

{{blockquote|And then there was the office of strategic influence. You may recall that. And 'oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.' I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3296|archive-url=https://archive.today/20120803222645/http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3296|url-status=dead|archive-date=August 3, 2012|title = Transcript}}</ref>}}

*November–December 2005. It is disclosed that the US Army secretly paid some Iraqi journalists to publish upbeat stories about the US military operations.<ref name="KellerMitchell2006"/><ref name="ArquillaBorer2007"/> This is interpreted by some authors as Rumsfeld having kept his word.<ref name="KellerMitchell2006">{{cite book|author1=William Walton Keller|author2=Gordon R. Mitchell|title=Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy|year=2006|publisher=University of Pittsburgh Pre|isbn=978-0-8229-5936-6|page=246}}</ref> The Pentagon again announces that it would stop such practices.<ref name="ArquillaBorer2007">{{cite book|author=Hy S. Rothstein|title=Strategy and psychological operations|editor=John Arquilla and Douglas A. Borer|chapter=Information Strategy and Warfare: A Guide to Theory and Practice|year=2007|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-98415-1|pages=168}}</ref>