Deception and sleight of hand are important in gaining advantages in war, both to gain domestic support of the operations and for the military against the enemy. Although perception management is specifically defined as being limited to foreign audiences, critics of the DOD charge that it also engages in domestic perception management. An example cited is the prohibition of viewing or photographing the flag draped caskets of dead military as they are unloaded in bulk upon arrival in the U.S. for further distribution, a policy only recently implemented. The DOD also describes perception management as an intent to provoke the behavior you want out of a given individual. During the Cold War, the Pentagon sent undercover US journalists to Russia and Eastern Europe to write pro-American articles for local media outlets. A similar situation occurred in Iraq in 2005 when the US military covertly paid Iraqi newspapers to print stories written by US soldiers; these stories were geared towards enhancing the appearance of the US mission in Iraq. The US Air Force has used perception management with UFO/ET events by dropping flares and claiming it was a "misperception of their training activity". Years ago in Gulf Breeze, Florida similar techniques were used where a fake UFO model was planted in a house. Domestically, during the Vietnam War, critics allege the Pentagon exaggerated communist threats to the United States in order to gain more public support for an increasingly bloody war. This was similarly seen in 2003 with accusations that the government embellished the threat and existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Perception management includes all actions used to influence the attitudes and objective reasoning of foreign audiences and consists of Public Diplomacy, Psychological Operations (PSYOPS), Public Information, Deception and Covert Action. The Department of Defense describes "perception management" as a type of psychological operation. It is supposed to be directed at foreign audiences, and involves providing or discarding information to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning in a way that is favorable to the originator of the information. The main goal is to influence friends and enemies, provoking them to engage in the behavior that you want. DOD sums it up: "Perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations." The US military has demonstrated using perception management multiple times in modern warfare, even though it has proven to take a hit to its credibility among the American people. In late 2001 after 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld created the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence (OSI). When it came to light, the Pentagon was initially criticized for simply using a perception management office to influence foreign states. The OSI was dismantled less than five months after its creation when sources alleged to the press that one of its goals was domestic influence, similar to the Iran-Contra era Office of Public Diplomacy. Shortly after, the Office of Special Plans was created with a more focused goal of selective intelligence vetting outside the normal chartered intelligence apparatus, with foreign propaganda activities moved to the Office of Information Activities under the direction of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. In fact, strategic influence, special plans, psychological operations, and perception management are all direct synonyms within the DoD. More recently, the DOD has continued to pursue actively a course of perception management about the Iraq War. "The Department of Defense is conscious that there is an increasingly widespread public perception that the U.S. military is becoming brutalized by the campaign in Iraq. Recognizing its vulnerability to information and media flows, the DoD has identified the information domain as its new 'asymmetric flank.' " The level of use of perception management is continuing to grow throughout the Army. Until recently specialists, known as psychological operations officers and civil affairs officers, whose only purpose is to decide how to present information to the media and to the people of the current country that they are in only held positions in high division levels of command. The Army has decided that it is now necessary that these specialists be included in the transformed brigades and deal with "everything from analyzing the enemy's propaganda leaflets to talking with natives to see what the Army can do to make them their friends," said 3rd Brigade's Civil Affairs Officer Maj. Glenn Tolle. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_management

• published: 02 Oct 2013
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