IRAQ: A voice in Arabic crackles over the airwaves: "This is Radio Tikrit". It sounds like an Iraqi station broadcasting from Saddam Hussein's home town, but it isn't.
Though the shooting war with Iraq has not yet begun, Radio Tikrit is just one sign that US psychological operations against the Baghdad regime are well under way. Inside Iraq, senior figures have also been bombarded with subversive e-mails and phone calls and phone lines have been hacked to give bogus instructions to the military.
When Radio Tikrit was launched early this month, it appeared to be just another regime-run station. It mocked the US and its efforts to win Arab support for a war. There was even a programme called Open Dialogue which praised "Saddam Hussein's Iraq".
The only clue that Radio Tikrit's mix of news, music and features might not have been what it seemed came when the station omitted to play the Iraqi national anthem either at the beginning or end of its broadcasts, as all government-run stations do.
By February 15th, however, Radio Tikrit began to change its tune. This time Open Dialogue talked about Iraqi citizens who were so poor they had to sell doors and windows from their homes in order to get money for food. Then the station urged members of the Republican Guard to desert their posts "before it is too late".
On February 19th, according to the BBC Monitoring Service, it told officers in public security to refuse the "orders of the tyrant" and "be brave before it is too late".
"This seems to be what is technically known as a black clandestine operation," said Andy Sennitt of Radio Netherlands. Traditionally, black clandestine broadcasts are launched at the beginning of military action. Tikrit may have surfaced prematurely because of unexpected delays in the UN Security Council.
But there may be another explanation. Listeners have been intrigued by the station's horoscopes, which some believe may be passing coded instructions to undercover operatives inside Iraq.
The station broadcasts for two hours a night on 1584 kHz and, according to a radio enthusiasts' website, dxing.info, its signal is so strong that it dominates the frequency, even in parts of Europe.
Its transmissions were first logged outside Iraq by Bjorn Fransson, an enthusiast in Sweden, on February 3rd. There is little doubt among experts that Tikrit is a US station, with programmes produced by the 4th Psychological Operations Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and broadcast from a CIA-controlled transmitter in Kuwait.
An Egyptian listener says Tikrit's main male announcer also appears on Information Radio, an overt anti-Saddam propaganda station whose launch was announced by the Pentagon last December.
At least some of Information Radio's broadcasts come from airborne transmitters on US EC- 130E Commando Solo aircraft which were previously used for the same purpose in Afghanistan. They can also broadcast television programmes. Radio Tikrit comes from Kuwait, where two Iraqi opposition stations, al-Mustaqbal and Twin Rivers Radio, broadcast from the CIA's transmitter. Its broadcasts run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. GMT.