Fearing Fear Itself.

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Joseph Cirincione, of the liberal Center for American Progress in Washington, said the Bush administration could stand accused of having "needlessly hyped a threat for political purposes" if it's determined the radio voice was not from Iranian forces.
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U.S. sailors say they have heard the prankster — who is possibly more than one person — transmitting "insults and jabbering vile epithets" on unencrypted frequencies during Navy exercises in the Gulf for years, said the Navy Times, a privately owned newspaper.

"Navy women — a helicopter pilot hailing a tanker, for example — who are overheard on the radio are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment," the newspaper said Sunday.

Rick Hoffman, a retired Navy captain, said a renegade talker repeatedly harassed ships in the Gulf in the late 1980s when U.S. warships protected Kuwaiti oil tankers during the Iran-Iraq war.

"For 25 years there's been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats," Hoffman told Navy Times. "He could be tied up pier-side somewhere, or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship."

The Iranians frequently send frigates and patrol craft or reconnaissance planes, including U.S.-made P-3 Orions, to watch U.S. ships in the Gulf. The Navy often responds by scrambling jet fighters to intercept and shadow Iranian planes.

Said Cirincione: "We have to take a step back and make sure we don't hyperinflate these threats, to prevent a shooting war that nobody really wants."

Mickey Gurdus, an Israeli who has been monitoring radio and TV broadcasts for Israel Radio for four decades, believes the Gulf broadcast was not a hoax and "could have been psychological warfare."

"I can't imagine that there is anyone in the proximity of the Strait of Hormuz that would carry out a hoax like that," said Gurdus, who did not monitor the original radio broadcast Jan. 6. "I think this was something real."

Gurdus said he believes the broadcast heard by the U.S. vessels were UHF or VHF transmissions that would originate within a 60-mile radius of the strait if made from land and 180 miles from an airborne transmitter.

Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said he was surprised that the source of the transmission remains unclear, because of the many decades of U.S. naval presence in the Gulf.

"You would have thought we would have been able to nail this down," he said.