It is not legal for the U.S. government to direct psychological operations or propaganda against the American people. But the lines between ordinary public affairs and propaganda are sometimes blurry, and there are varying views as to whether this particular campaign crossed those lines. A Pentagon spokesman said its intent was to keep the American people informed about the war by providing prominent military analysts with factual information and frequent, direct access to key military officials. As Lawrence Di Rita, a former senior Pentagon official told me, they viewed it as the “mirror image” of the Pentagon program for embedding reporters with units in the field. In this case, the military analysts were in effect “embedded’’ with the senior leadership through a steady mix of private briefings, trips and talking points. But internal documents show that Pentagon officials also viewed the military analysts as “surrogates” or “message force multipliers’’ who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages’’ as if they were their own views, and several analysts asserted in interviews that they were sometimes given false or misleading information on a variety of topics related to the war.