AMERICA'S PERSUADER IN THE SKY

By DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON

The Air Force's latest secret weapon, a dull gray propeller-driven craft converted from cargo service, looks as slow and chunky as a pelican. But Commando Solo could prove as important as any jet fighter or bomber in the infowars of the future. A TIME reporter, the first journalist allowed to tour the $70 million plane, found the fuselage stuffed with more electronics than a mallful of Radio Shacks: secure fax machines and computers, cassette decks, compact disc and VHS tape players, and powerful transmitters. This gear allows the plane's 11-man crew to jam a country's TV and radio broadcasts and substitute messages--true or false--on any frequency.

Commando Solo has already been battle-tested by the 193rd Special Operations Group, a Pennsylvania Air National Guard unit. During the Persian Gulf War, the plane's crew broadcast radio reports to Iraqi soldiers eager to hear uncensored news of the war, including some of the next areas to be targeted by U.S. bombers. As a result, many Iraqi soldiers deserted those positions. To prepare Haiti for the U.S. intervention there, Commando Solo beamed in radio and TV messages from deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Each broadcast began with the crow of a rooster, the symbol of Aristide's political party.

Future broadcasts may be more unconventional. Specialists for the Army's 4th Psychological Operations Group, which prepares the taped messages that Commando Solo airs, have considered morphing the image of a foreign leader and putting words in his mouth to get him in trouble--for instance, Saddam Hussein appearing on Iraqi TV before the Gulf War, sipping whiskey and carving a ham, both forbidden in Islam. (In Haiti the CIA had even thought of synthesizing the voice of the late and much feared dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier to urge superstitious soldiers to surrender.) For now, ethics and strategy argue against such tactics. Says Colonel Jeffrey Jones, former commander of the psy-ops group: "The truth is our best weapon."

--By Douglas Waller/Washington