U.S. Government

"The Pentagon has made a decision that threatens to keep the American public and Congress in the dark about how things are going with the Bush administration's high-priority missile defense program," says Philip E. Coyle III, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense. "Equally disturbing," he adds, is the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency "new policy of withholding information from the Pentagon's own independent review offices, such as the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation.

Tompaine.com has run an opinion page advertisement in the New York Times decrying the FBI's recent PR campaign to improve its image in the wake of now public disclosures that it dropped the ball in regard to the 9/11 terrorist attacks: "Americans are entitled to a full accounting of the problems at FBI headquarters -- Who is responsible? Who will be held accountable? Using public relations tactics to change the subject and to defuse the political consequences short-circuits needed reforms and does the nation a disservice."

"To fabricate an alibi for his nonfeasance, and to cover up his department's embarrassing cut of the counterterrorism budget last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft - working with his hand-picked aide, F.B.I. Director 'J. Edgar' Mueller III - has gutted guidelines put in place a generation ago to prevent the abuse of police power by the federal government," writes conservative pundit William Safire.

"Lauri Fitz-Pegado, the former Hill and Knowlton staffer who promoted the story about armed Iraqi troops tossing Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators - one of the biggest PR stories of the `90s - is now handling PR for the Cayman Island Cultural Center in New York," noted O'Dwyer's PR Daily on May 28. "H&K, on behalf of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait front group of exiled royals, produced a 15-year-old girl 'Nayirah' who testified that she saw Iraqi troops committing the atrocity in a Kuwaiti hospital. She testified before the Congressional Human Rights caucus in Oct.