‘Misleading Americans’

“Misleading Americans” (by Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, Opinion, Sept. 11) should appeal to conspiracy theorists, who choose to accept innuendo, half-truths, and outright falsehoods to buttress accusations of illegal U.S. governmental activities. The facts, however, do not support the unfounded charges leveled by the authors against the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy.

To support charges that the Office of Public Diplomacy was a covert CIA-National Security Council-managed operation, the column claims that the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean (S/LPD) “was housed at the State Department but actually reported to the NSC.” The article reports that “Reich and (Walter) Raymond have denied that the office ‘reported’ to the NSC.” What we have denied--repeatedly and under oath--was earlier versions of this story: that the office was controlled by the NSC staff. As an interagency office, S/LPD was tasked to, among other things, report periodically to the NSC, which it did. But S/LPD was part of the Department of State, and I, as head of it, received daily policy guidance from the Department of State only.

The article also accuses S/LPD of taking its marching orders from Lt. Col. Oliver North. At no time did North give S/LPD any orders or policy direction. We did talk very frequently, sharing information (much of it classified) about events in the region which should be made public if possible. The “North role” with my office was examined in some detail by the Office of the Independent Counsel and the congressional Iran-Contra committee. Had there been a conspiracy, as alleged in your article, I believe these inquiries would have uncovered it.

The article’s assertions about S/LPD’s relationship with the press are simply ridiculous. It states that we monitored American reporting on Central America and discussed articles with editors and reporters to press for more “sympathetic coverage.” It also accuses us of threatening and intimidating journalists. Anyone familiar with the U.S. media knows how futile it would be for a U.S. official to attempt to intimidate a journalist.

It is worth noting here that the article offers no evidence that S/LPD ever disseminated a single piece of untruthful information. S/LPD published literally thousands of pages of information in scores of documents over a three-year period. Each of these was gone over with a fine-toothed comb. We knew that if we ever put out one false fact, the media would stop contacting us.

Had either author bothered to contact me about this column, I would have been happy to tell them exactly what I have stated here. One might ask why they did not see fit to contact me.

OTTO J. REICH

Caracas, Venezuela