Coalition Information Center

The Coalition Information Center (CIC), "the propaganda wing of Operation Enduring Freedom, [was] known among journalists who tried to cover the war in Afghanistan as a veritable disinformation center."&mdash;Roger Ricardo Luis, Granma Internacional, August 22, 2002.

The CIC was the Bush administration's "'rapid response' team", "created to wage the propaganda war" against Osama bin Laden.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said November 2, 2001, that the CIC would "operate around the clock in Washington, London and Pakistan to stop the Taliban from scoring propaganda points during the wee hours in Washington."


 * After the September 11, 2001 attack, Karen P. Hughes, counselor to President George W. Bush, "launched a quick-response war room at the White House to counter the Taliban's anti-American propaganda."
 * "In October 2001, Hughes worked with PR specialist John Rendon to create the Coalition Information Center (CIC), which Laura Flanders describes as a 'fast-response network [with offices in Washington, London, and Islamabad] set up to respond to anti-US news that appears anywhere in the world.' ... 'It will take probably 10 or 15 or even 20 years for the kind of campaign we are talking about to have an effect,' Hughes said at the time. 'We have not done a very good job in America over the past 20 or 30 years of explaining our values to the rest of the world and talking about the values we have in common. And we're obviously behind.'"
 * Hughes worked closely with "three other women: Victoria Clarke, chief Pentagon spokeswoman; Charlotte Beers, under secretary of state for public diplomacy; and Mary Matalin, chief political adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. ... The four [were] among the Bush administration's most important shapers of the words and images that the allies [sought] to convey to a global audience. (Others include[d] Ari Fleischer, the president's press secretary, and James Wilkinson, a Hughes deputy who ... set up a comprehensive center to counter Taliban propaganda.) They talk[ed] several times a day -- including a daily 9:30 a.m. agenda-setting conference call, presided over by Ms. Hughes -- and bounce[d] ideas off one another frequently."
 * Hughes also consulted Margaret D. Tutwiler, then Ambassador to Morocco, "regularly for a candid read on Muslim opinion, and it was Tutwiler who reported that official government statements were not credible or effective in reaching ordinary people."
 * The CIC became the Office of Global Communications in October 2002.

Controlling the Message
"When it became apparent that the United States and Britain were not winning the public relations battle in the Middle East, the White House established the Coalition Information Center, with offices in Washington, London and Pakistan, to react in real time to breaking news and present the American side of the conflict to Mideast viewers." 

"A little-noticed but critical component of the war on terrorism operates beneath lamp-bearing cherubs in a building next door to the White House. There, amid message boards that list upcoming events and clocks that display the time in Washington, London, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Coalition Information Center has a mission nearly as important as winning the war: controlling the story," Judy Keen reported December 18, 2001, in USA Today.

"The public-relations operation stretches from downtown Washington to London, Islamabad and Kabul, where people are stationed to help choreograph foreign reporters' perspectives on the war. 'We've learned that you either start the news wave or you're swamped by it,' says Jim Wilkinson, a White House communications aide who runs the center," Keen wrote.

Criticism
"It took more than six weeks since the bombs started falling in Afghanistan for the United States and Britain to establish a public information center here in the region to explain their actions and rebut allegations by the Taliban," Peter Baker wrote in the November 21, 2001, Washington Post. "For all the advances on the battlefield, officials in Washington and London have come to realize they may be losing the propaganda war in the Muslim world. ... The new Coalition Information Center [in Pakistan] was the third opened in an effort to get ahead of the public relations curve but, unlike those in Washington and London, it has been assigned the critical mission of convincing Muslim countries that the United States and its allies are waging war on terrorists, not on Islam."

"The U.S. government shares direct responsibility for its poor public campaign so far. It is not doing enough, including failing to enlist the support of the private sector. The Pentagon and the White House have been too focused on programs like the Coalition Information Center and have missed that this is not simply a war of information flow and press releases, but a long-term battle of ideas." --Brookings Institution Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World, Task Force Meeting Report #9, December 18, 2002.

"The Global War on Terrorism: The First 100 Days"
"The White House's Coalition Information Center, the office charged with drumming up support for the War on Terror both at home and abroad," released the "official report card on the administration's efforts to date" -- "The Global War on Terrorism: The First 100 Days" -- on December 20, 2001.

180-Day Anniversary
Concurrent with the six-month anniversary of September 11, 2001, and Vice President Dick Cheney's visit, "the London branch of the Coalition Information Center published a report ... outlining the achievements in the war on terror so far.

"The 35-page document included a thorough country-by-country list of military support, law enforcement activity, diplomatic and financial action, and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan," Cybercast News Service's London bureau chief Mike Wendling reported March 11, 2002.

About CIC

 * Three Coalition Information Centers: Washington, DC; London; and Islamabad, Pakistan, working together to "help serve the President and coalition partners in their efforts to communicate to the world about the war on terrorism."
 * Washington: Jim Wilkinson
 * London: Tucker Eskew, White House Director of Media Affairs
 * Pakistan: Greg Jenkins, White House representative


 * "The State Department works closely with Al Jazeera and other middle east media outlets. We are working to get as many US officials on these outlets to help tell our story about the war against terrorism."

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Department of State "rapid response office"
 * Downing Street documents
 * embedded
 * Iraq Communications Desk
 * Jessica Lynch
 * Office of Strategic Influence
 * Rendon Group
 * Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
 * war propaganda
 * White House Iraq Group

Web Series

 * Gar Smith, "America's Ministry of Propaganda Exposed", WorldNewsstand.net, December 2003; (also as full document):
 * Part 1: "A Strategy of Lies: How the White House Fed the Public a Steady Diet of Falsehoods"
 * Part 2: "Transforming Language to Market the 'Big Lie'"
 * Part 3: "Targeting Critics, Spreading Lies, and PSYOPS"
 * Part 4: "Black Programs and the Future of Propaganda"

2001

 * "Winds of War Sweep Into White House," Associated Press, September 19, 2001.
 * Deborah Orin, "Bush's Big Guns Step Up Propaganda War," New York Post, November 2, 2001.
 * "US appoints terror war spin doctor," BBC (AGR News.org), November 8, 2001. Scroll down to article. "On Nov. 1, the US and Britain announced that a 'Coalition Information Center' is to be set up in Islamabad. ... Similar centers will open in London and Washington to counter what the prime minister’s official spokesman refers to as 'untruths and lies'."
 * Martha Brant, "Bush's New War Room," Newsweek, November 12, 2001.
 * Peter Baker, "In Pakistan, U.S. Joins Battle On Publicity Front. Belatedly, Sights Set on Muslim Opinion," Washington Post, November 21, 2001.
 * Paul Bedard, "Going way beyond 'It's the Taliban, stupid!' approach," US News & World Report, December 3, 2001.
 * Jim Wilkinson, "America At War: The White House," Washington Post, December 10, 2001.
 * Judy Keen, "Information ' war room' deploys its own troops," USA Today, December 18, 2001.
 * James Carney and John F. Dickerson, "Inside The War Room. Relying on instinct, and trusting his team, George W. Bush unleashed a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy--and faster than you might have guessed," CNN Inside Politics, December 24, 2001.

2002

 * Elizabeth Becker and James Dao, "Bush Will Keep Wartime Office Promoting U.S.," New York Times (InfoShop News), February 20, 2002: "President Bush has decided to transform the administration's temporary wartime communications effort into a permanent office of global diplomacy to spread a positive image of the United States around the world and combat anti-Americanism."
 * Mike Allen, "White House Angered at Plan For Pentagon Disinformation," Washington Post, February 25, 2002.
 * Robert K. Ackerman, "Technology Empowers Information Operations in Afghanistan," Signal Magazine, March 2002.
 * Audrey Woods, "Anti-terrorism coalition progress report notes threats could prompt military action," Associated Press (SF Gate), March 11, 2002.
 * "Bush: World stirred to action on September 11," CNN, March 11, 2002.
 * Mike Wendling, "Cheney, Blair Discuss Iraq Options," Cybercast News Service, March 11, 2002.
 * Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts, "The White House Message Machine," USA Weekend, April 14, 2002.
 * Franklin Foer, "Flacks Americana: John Rendon's Shallow PR War on Terrorism," The New Republic, May 20, 2002; also posted on PRFirms.org website.
 * Karen DeYoung, "Bush to Create Formal Office To Shape U.S. Image Abroad," Washington Post (Elfis Forum), July 30, 2002.

2003

 * Will Femia, "Point man on the war on terror. Jim Wilkinson, White House communications strategist, answers your questions," MSNBC, February 21, [2003].
 * John Hughes, "Why America's story needs to be sent overseas," Christian Science Monitor, April 3, 2003.
 * Col. Brad M. Ward, "Strategic Influence Operations – The Information Connection," U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Carlisle, PA, April 7, 2003.
 * Sam Gardiner, "The Truth from These Podia. Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II," US News & World Report, October 8, 2003.
 * "Retired Air Force Col. (Sam Gardiner) On How Bush Admin. Used Psy-Ops, Propaganda and Information Warfare In Build-Up to Iraq Invasion," Democracy Now!, October 17, 2003.

2004

 * Carl Conetta, "Disappearing the Dead. Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a 'New Warfare'," Project on Defense Alternatives Research Monograph #9, February 18, 2004.

2005

 * "White House web of lies unravels," The Impolitic, July 3, 2005.

External resources

 * Ari Fleischer, White House News Briefing, November 5, 2001.
 * "Al Qaeda and Taliban Atrocities," As released November 11, 2001, by CIC/Islamabad.
 * Fact Sheet: Al Qaeda & Taliban: The Making of a Humanitarian Disaster, Released November 28, 2001, by the White House Coalition Information Center.
 * "Raw Data: War on Terror, First 100 Days," Fox News, December 20, 2001.