"We want to maintain the perception (if not the reality)"

This New York Times update on the Pentagon-propaganda story includes the following new (to me) info:

• There is a 1,200-employee psy-ops unit at Fort Bragg churning out unsourced, one-sided news stories for Iraqi and Afghani audiences. Sometimes the articles are attributed to the "International Information Center."
• The Lincoln Group, the Pentagon contractor paid to place many of these stories, has "planted more than 1,000 articles in the Iraqi and Arab press and placed editorials on an Iraqi Web site."
• "The two men who ran [The Lincoln Group] had no background in public relations or the media."
• The Pentagon "took over the Taliban's radio station [and] renamed it Peace Radio," and the U.S. Army publishes a sister newspaper called Peace. "An examination of issues from last spring," the Times reported, "found no bad news."
• The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) "finances about 30 radio stations in Afghanistan but keeps that from listeners." USAID spokeswoman Peggy O'Ban explained: "We want to maintain the perception (if not the reality) that these radio stations are in fact fully independent."