Topic: Pentagon's Public Affairs Chief Resigns

Yahoo.com
October 15, 2007
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon public affairs chief has resigned, telling his staff on Monday that he would be leaving around the end of the month, a Pentagon spokesman said.
Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defence for public affairs, was appointed to the post in January 2006 amid controversy over a newspaper column he wrote accusing US television news networks of aiding Al-Qaeda by airing videotape from Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television.
"Dorrance Smith has indicated to his staff today that he plans to go back into the private sector, that he has largely accomplished what the secretary has asked him to do," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
Smith, a former ABC television producer and media adviser to Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, may continue to work for the Pentagon in an advisory capacity of some kind, he said.
Smith will be leaving his post, which oversees a sprawling military public affairs bureaucracy that employs thousands of people, "around the end of the month," Whitman said.