Reagan Approves Office to Monitor Disinformation

WASHINGTON —  President Reagan has approved creation of a government office that will monitor efforts by the Soviet Union and other countries to discredit the United States through disinformation and related practices, a State Department spokesman said today.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz disclosed his intention in a report transmitted to Congress on Aug. 29, spokesman Charles Redman said. The office will be set up in the State Department and will be headed by Kathleen Baily, a deputy assistant secretary of state.

The Reagan Administration itself was somewhat embarrassed last week when its bungled effort to use a disinformation campaign to destabilize Col. Moammar Kadafi’s Libyan regime surfaced. (Story on Page 5.)

The office that Shultz announced today will keep a data base on Soviet and other foreign efforts to undercut American policies through disinformation, forgeries, blackmail and attempts to control the media in foreign countries.