Stead's interview caused a media sensation and led to a popular clamour for Gordon to be sent to the Sudan. Urban wrote: "The "Pall Mall Gazette" articles, in short, began a new chapter in international relations; powerful men using media manipulation of public opinion to trigger war. It is often suggested that that campaign by William Randolph Hearst's paper that led to the US invasion of Cuba in 1898 was the world's first episode of this kind, but the British press deserves these dubious laurels for its actions a full fourteen years earlier". The man behind the campaign was the Adjutant General, Sir Garnet Wolseley – a skilled media manipulator who often leaked information to the press to effect changes in policy – and who was strongly opposed to Gladstone's policy of pulling out of the Sudan.