Rumsfeld holds court at Nellis

Michael Campbell

Thursday, Feb. 21, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reaffirmed in Las Vegas on Wednesday that the Defense Department would not use a new office to plant false information in the foreign news media.

"I don't lie. People who work for me don't lie. And that's just a fact," Rumsfeld said.

The New York Times reported earlier this week that the department was weighing the possibility of having the Office of Strategic Influence disseminate information, and possibly disinformation, in foreign media outlets as part of a military campaign to promote U.S. policies overseas. Critics of the proposal say planting lies with the media abroad could undermine the credibility of the United States.

Rumsfeld, who made his remarks when he met with members of the Sun and Review-Journal editorial boards, said government officials wouldn't lie, but he did defend what has been characterized as tactical deception. In World War II Gen. Dwight Eisenhower had a great deal of activity that led the Germans to believe that U.S. forces would land at Calais, when in fact they landed at Normandy, Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld was in Las Vegas to watch Red Flag, a combat training exercise that includes allies from the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. Rumsfeld's daylong trip to Las Vegas also was a road show version of the Pentagon briefings he conducts, performances that have made him a celebrity of sorts.

Rumsfeld brought to a town hall meeting with Nellis airmen an upbeat message about the war in Afghanistan, but it also was one that was tempered with caution.

Rumsfeld told about 1,000 airmen that the people in Afghanistan no longer live under a repressive regime. "The women are free to go out in the street and go to schools, to go to a hospital and to be treated," he said.

But the defense secretary added that the war may not be over anytime soon in what still is a dangerous country. "There's no way to know how long," said Rumsfeld. "It is not days, weeks, months. It's years for sure."

He even joked that Osama bin Laden's whereabouts are a question that dogs him at home. Sometimes when he gets up in the morning, his wife Joyce asks: "Don, where is he?"

The war on terrorism may not be short-lived, but Rumsfeld, responding to an airman's question about the U.S. role in post-Taliban Afghanistan, said the United States doesn't plan on a long-term peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. Instead the United States will assist Afghanistan in building a military.

Turning to the future of potential threats, Rumsfeld said that if there is any certainty, it is uncertainty.

The wars of the future, Rumsfeld said, will likely be as different from Afghanistan as Afghanistan has been different from Desert Storm.

"If there's one lesson we've learned, and learned well, it's that we will continue to be surprised in the future."