U.S., Saudis Prepare to Play Mind Games With Iraqis

The United States and Saudi Arabia are preparing to initiate a program of covert psychological warfare as part of any Persian Gulf military action, including clandestine propaganda broadcasts to persuade Iraqi soldiers and civilians to abandon the fight, according to U.S. military sources.

Among operations already in progress, sources said, are efforts to smuggle hundreds of thousands of small transistor radios into Iraq over the Turkish and Saudi borders to provide a ready audience for Arabic-language messages aimed at sowing disruption and confusion across Iraq if war is waged.

With the United States planning to jam Iraq’s internal radio and television frequencies, the broadcasts are envisioned as potentially powerful tools of war because they could provide the only information available to ordinary Iraqi citizens and soldiers on the front lines.

“What we want to do is to control what Iraqis know about the war,” one knowledgeable source said.

One plan under consideration would deliberately spread disinformation by announcing that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is dead and urging Iraqi citizens and soldiers to throw down their weapons, the source said.

Other, more overt programs, modeled on the Voice of America news network, could simply relay accurate information about the progress of the war and provide assurances to Iraqi soldiers that they would not be mistreated if they surrendered or were captured.

The planned operation would mark a more widespread psychological warfare campaign than was implemented a year ago in Panama, where invading U.S. forces primarily used loudspeaker trucks to urge Panamanian military and paramilitary forces to abandon resistance efforts.

In this theater, the United States could seek to disrupt Iraq even while remaining outside its borders. Sources said they believe the campaign could undermine resistance to the point that U.S. casualties would be reduced if hostilities occur.

Other plans under consideration would seek to distribute clandestine loudspeakers within Iraq itself, each containing a taped anti-Hussein message that could be programmed to boom across town squares and other public areas at preset times.

The transistor radio-smuggling operation is well under way, however, and is supported by U.S. and Saudi intelligence officials. The radios are being transported primarily by tribesmen who move easily across Iraq’s wide-open northern and southwestern borders.

In time of war, the source said, such radios could effectively provide the United States and its allies with a direct link to enemy troops who are denied access to other forms of communication by American jamming and other efforts.

If the United States decides to undertake a “black” propaganda campaign, these broadcasts could transmit inaccurate casualty figures, spread rumors about the fall of the Baghdad government or disseminate other disinformation.

A U.S. source in Saudi Arabia acknowledged the covert smuggling of radios, so far limited to numbers “in the thousands,” is “not a cure-all” in the planned effort to undermine resistance among the Iraqi population.

But he said it is symbolic of the broader effort to seize control, at the outset of any war, of every possible influence on Iraqi civilians in order to raise doubts about the wisdom of maintaining the fight.

“They’ve had their Baghdad Rose,” the source said, referring to the woman featured on Iraqi propaganda broadcasts picked up by American troops on the front lines in eastern Saudi Arabia.

“Now, we’ll have our Riyadh Rose or our Desert Rose,” he said. Near the Turkish border, where Kurdish populations have long been harshly treated by the Iraqi government, “we’ll have our Kurdish Rose,” he said.

Times staff writer John M. Broder, in Washington, contributed to this report.