Poindexter Defends Deception on Security Issues

White House national security adviser John M. Poindexter, the author of a controversial memo outlining a disinformation campaign against Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, said Tuesday that the government has an inherent right to use deception to protect national security.

“The whole question comes down to: Is deception going to be a tool that the government can use in combatting a very significant national security problem, and I think that the answer . . . has to be yes,” Poindexter told a group of reporters.

He insisted that the campaign launched as a result of his memo last August was not intended to deceive the public or the press, either in the United States or in the rest of the world. But he conceded that some people who were not targets of the campaign might have been deceived inadvertently.

“We had no intent and did not plan or conspire to mislead the American press in any way,” Poindexter said. “The objective of the program with Kadafi was to deceive Kadafi.

“Now, the foreign press is obviously more likely (than the American press) to pick up various reports of things that were happening (as a result of the U.S. deception campaign), but the goal was not to deceive the foreign press either,” he said.

Journal Story Cited

Poindexter’s proposal was approved at a White House meeting in mid-August, according to a report first carried by the Washington Post and later confirmed by Administration officials. The plan suggested a campaign to convince Kadafi that the United States was preparing to take military action against him when, in fact, no attack was imminent.

After the White House meeting, the Wall Street Journal reported increased U.S.-Libya tensions and said that U.S. intelligence agencies had uncovered increased terrorist activity by the Libyan leader. At the time of the newspaper report, Poindexter said Tuesday, Kadafi was in a “quiescent” period as far as terrorist activity was concerned, although he might have been planning to step up his activities.

Although the Journal story now appears to be a result of the effort to deceive Kadafi, White House spokesman Larry Speakes described it at the time as “authoritative,” in effect recommending the information to other newspapers and broadcast outlets.

Poindexter said intelligence reports indicated as early as July that Kadafi was planning to use offices of the Libyan airline as bases for terrorist activity.