If you don't think they would fake a terror plot.........

[Joanne98]

You probably missed this great article. From the "oldie but goodie" greatest hit list........

The Man Who Sold the War
Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war
JAMES BAMFORD
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/8798997/the_man_who_sold_the_war/

James Bamford's November 17th, 2005 profile of John Rendon, "The Man Who Sold the War," (RS988) won the 2006 National Magazine Award in the reporting category.

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.

On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/8798997/the_man_who_sold_the_war/

[Joanne98]

1. Would the UK lie about a terror plot? Meet Operation Rockingham.

Revealed: the secret cabal which spun for Blair
http://www.sundayherald.com/34491

Investigation: By Neil Mackay


BRITAIN ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq.
Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.

The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels,' he added.

'Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasising reports that showed non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed compliance. It was cherry-picking intelligence.'

Ritter and other intelligence sources say Operation Rockingham and MI6 were supplying skewed information to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which, Tony Blair has told the Commons, was behind the intelligence dossiers that the government published to convince the parliament and the people of the necessity of war against Iraq. Sources in both the British and US intelligence community are now equating the JIC with the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the US Pentagon. The OSP was set up by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to gather intelligence which would prove the case for war. In a staggering attack on the OSP, former CIA officer Larry Johnson told the Sunday Herald the OSP was 'dangerous for US national security and a threat to world peace', adding that it 'lied and manipulated intelligence to further its agenda of removing Saddam'.

He added: 'It's a group of ideologues with pre-determined notions of truth and reality. They take bits of intelligence to support their agenda and ignore anything contrary. They should be eliminated.'

http://www.sundayherald.com/34491

[EVDebs]

14. What gets me is that MI6 and the CIA all know about "Peak Oil"

and even Plan B 2.0 by Lester Brown shows us that China/India, with a US-style economy, cannot get us past 2031 on the oil we've already got.

If defeating 'Islamo-fascism' is the goal, simply reverting to a non-petroleum economy and conservation would do the trick at much less cost ideologically and in treasure/lives.

It appears that 'Oil-fascism' in the West is more to blame in their controlling the Blair's and Bush's of this world. Iran and Saudi Arabia are simply on a different time schedule for upheaval.

[eccles12]

2. It surely boggles the mind, sir.

Why many people refuse to believe that their government would lie to them, deceive them, and send them to war for no other reason than profiteering when the historical record clearly makes this a truism since the orign of mankind has puzzled me for most of my adult life. It has been the why, the how of all wars, including America's civil war, all through history.

[Joanne98]

3. Welcome to DU. Are you a history buff?

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NYCGirl]

5. I believe that Wayne Madsen is no longer considered a source here at DU.

He makes too much stuff up.

[flyarm]

6. read this in yahoo..Bush staff wanted bomb-detect cash moved

and do remember that Lie ber man is on the homeland security committee!




snip:
Rep. Peter DeFazio (news, bio, voting record) of Oregon, a senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said he urged the administration three years ago to buy electron scanners, like the ones used at London's airport to detect plastics that might be hidden beneath passenger clothes.

"It's been an ongoing frustration about their resistance to purchase off-the-shelf, state-of-the-art equipment that can meet these threats," he said.




http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060811/ap_on_go_ot/terror_explosives_detection

Busheviks Wanted to Cut Money to Protect Us from Liquid Explosives!

Bush staff wanted bomb-detect cash moved - Yahoo! News
Bush staff wanted bomb-detect cash moved
By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press WriterFri Aug 11, 7:38 PM ET

While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.

Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.

Homeland Security's research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a "rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course," Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently.

"The committee is extremely disappointed with the manner in which S&T is being managed within the Department of Homeland Security," the panel wrote June 29 in a bipartisan report accompanying the agency's 2007 budget.

[NYCGirl]

7. What's that have to do with Madsen? NT

[Spazito]

8. Operation Northwoods....

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf

The REAL interesting stuff begins on pdf page 10.

[Joanne98]

9. Oh yeah. How could I have forgot. Thanx.

[EVDebs]

12. We only found out about Northwoods via a FOIA re JFK's murder...

And now Bushco is busy putting classified status on everything it can find including old historical documents. Go figure.

[Spazito]

13. Yep, if I were to don a tin-foil hat I might ask....

how many "operation northwoods" are yet to be discovered given the bush admin is frantic to classify everything and anything? I don't usually wear tinfoil as it clashes with my wardrobe but, lately, I am learning to like the contrasting colours, lol.

[EVDebs]

15. Please read Post #14 and give me your thoughts. I'd love to hear

what you think. It looks like we're 'on our own' so to speak. We simply have to green our way out of the mess they've made (companies, as in The Corporation, show us their pathological tendencies, see Synopsis at

http://www.thecorporation.com/index.php?page_id=2 ).

How to spread the word ? DU perhaps.

""To more precisely assess the "personality" of the corporate "person," a checklist is employed, using actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social "personality": It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. Four case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a "psychopath." ""

Such is the nature of the corporation. Truly a 'great satan'. It appears Iran is targetting the corporation via the government and is misdirected in that way. An invisible entity acting through a separate almost spiritual dimension...

As with Enron and WorldCom, Iran would probably agree with Americans that this is something of a world view they can each agree upon.

[Spazito]

16. Corporations are, indeed, part, a large part of what is happening...

it is not only the control of the remaining oil reserves but also control of the remaining fresh water reserves that, imo, are driving much of the "unrest" occurring. The overriding belief, imo, is that which controls these two necessities will dominate.

Corporations are, in themselves, only in existence with the support of governments, ie the removal of the Fairness Doctrine, the privatization of health care, etc. The power of the corporations wax and wane depending on the policies of the government in power, ie the waning of very rich at the introduction of income tax, corporation taxes. Those same corporations or their descendent's, per se, have been working very hard to eliminate those very curbs that were established then which is why they support governments like bush's who's members and individual supporters are part of that very elite 1%.

The reality, imo, going green is environmentally wise but, instead of controlling the oil/water, corporations will merely control the mechanics needed to go green unless governments curb them and I don't see that happening in the near future regardless of which party is elected.

[Joanne98]

10. The main reason I don't believe anything UK intell saz....

Is because of poor old David Kelly. Even if he did kill himself, the British goverment drove him to it. This is what happens to "the good guys". They can fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned.

MP casts doubt on David Kelly suicide Sun Jul 23, 8:40 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060723/wl_afp/iraqweaponsbritain;_ylt=Ajvl8Ie7

LONDON (AFP) - An opposition member of parliament has alleged that a government scientist who cast doubt on intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction may not have taken his own life.

A judicial inquiry into the death of David Kelly in July 2003 concluded that the one-time UN weapons inspector and expert on Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes committed suicide.

He did so after he was named as the source of a BBC news report suggesting that Tony Blair's government had "sexed up" intelligence in the run-up to the US and British invasion of Iraq four months earlier.

"Today, I challenge that conclusion," wrote Norman Baker, from the Liberal Democrats, in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

"I do so on the basis that the medical evidence available simply cannot sustain it, that Dr Kelly's own behaviour and character argues against it and that there were serious shortcomings in the way the legal and investigative processes set up to consider his death were followed."

Points raised by Baker -- whose centre-left party opposed the Iraq war -- included the fact that Kelly supposedly cut his ulnary artery in his wrist, a more difficult and painful option that the radial artery.

In 2003, Baker said, Kelly was the only person recorded to have taken his or her own life in this fashion.

[Joanne98]

11. The Rendon Group (Source watch)

Wouldn't you just luv to know what he's been doing lately....

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rendon_Group

Rendon Group
From SourceWatch
The Rendon Group is a secretive public relations firm that has assisted a number of U.S. military interventions in nations including Argentina, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Panama and Zimbabwe. Rendon's activities include organizing the Iraqi National Congress, a PR front group designed to foment the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

In a 1998 speech to the National Security Conference (NSC), company founder John Rendon described himself as "an information warrior, and a perception manager. This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"

"Through its network of international offices and strategic alliances," the Rendon Group website boasted in 2002, "the company has provided communications services to clients in more than 78 countries, and maintains contact with government officials, decision-makers, and news media around the globe."

The Chicago Tribune reports (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0511130330nov13,1,4083882.story?ctrack=1&cset=true) that the Rendon Group has garnered more than $56 million in Pentagon work since September 2001. <1> (http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/1860)

John Rendon and the Democratic Party
John Rendon began his career as an election campaign consultant to Democratic Party politicians. According to Franklin Foer, "He masterminded Michael Dukakis's gubernatorial campaign in 1974; worked as executive director of the Democratic National Committee in the Jimmy Carter era; managed the 1980 Democratic convention in New York; and subsequently worked as chief scheduler for Carter's reelection campaign." James Bamford reports Rendon and his younger brother Rick went into consulting in 1981.<2> (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8798997?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1132271793151&has-player=true) In the mid-1980s, he began working for clients in the Caribbean and other places outside the United States. His "career took an unlikely turn in Panama, where his work with political opponents of Manuel Noriega kept him in the country straight through the 1989 American invasion. As U.S. forces quickly invaded and quickly pulled out, he helped broker the transition of power." This in turn led to contacts with the CIA, and in 1990 the government-in-exile of Kuwait hired him to help drum up support for war in the Persian Gulf to oust Iraq's occupying army.<3> (http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20020520&s=foer052002)

John Rendon and the Department of Defense
John Rendon "insists that information is terrain and someone will occupy it, either the adversary, a third party, or US." <4> (http://www.iwar.org.uk/iwar/resources/usaf/maxwell/students/2002/urrutia.pdf)
Organizing for Combat
"In the Pentagon, in addition to the normal public affairs structure, the Special Plans Office was deeply involved in this effort, supported (with information) by the Iraqi National Congress. There was the Rendon Group, headed by John Rendon who gave media advice to OSD, the Joint Staff and the White House. Finally, there were connections to large PSYOPS activities.

"The Rendon Group worked for the Government of Kuwait during the Gulf I. John Rendon proudly tells that it was he who shipped small American flags to Kuwait for the citizens to wave as troops entered Kuwait City. He suggested the same technique for , but the Joint Staff information operations office turned down the idea.

"The Rendon Group worked for both OSD and the Joint Staff during this war. John Rendon says he was part of the daily 9:30 phone calls with the key information players to set themes." <5> (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/documents/truth_6.pdf)

Office of Strategic Influence
The New York Times reported in February 2002 that the U.S. Pentagon was using the Rendon Group to assist its new propaganda agency, the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI). However, the OSI was publicly disbanded following a backlash when Pentagon officials said the new office would engage in "black" propaganda (disinformation).<6> (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/19/international/19PENT.html?pagewanted=print)<7> (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/21/international/21INFO.html?pagewanted=print)

Joint Chiefs of Staff
O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported in June 2003 that Rendon had gone to work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, providing "strategic communications counsel, media analysis and consultation support services" to the Joint Chiefs, combatant commanders and top military advisors.<8> (http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0603rendon.htm)

Strategic Command
In April 2005, O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported that Rendon "is winding down its current $8.2M contract" with the U.S. Department of Defense's Strategic Command (STRATCOM). Rendon had been "handling foreign media analysis for about 15 months," with a whopping "56 staffers handling the account." <9> (http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0422stratcom.htm)

Rendon's work for STRATCOM included "analyz foreign media coverage and handl strategic communications for its operations and the so-called ," according to O'Dwyer's. Specific tasks include tracking "media in broadcast, print and online in Arabic, Urdu, Pashtu" and other languages, as well as "building databases of key communicators and media outlets, analyzing the perception of U.S. actions and communication, and identifying vulnerabilities." <10> (http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0422stratcom.htm)

Defenselink.mil reported in its September 27, 2005, press release on new contracts that the Rendon Group won a year-long $6.4 million dollar contract with the Army for "Strategic Communications Operations Support" in Baghdad. <11> (http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts/2005/ct20050927.html)

Kuwait
According to Rendon's web site, it "established a full-scale communications operation for the Government of Kuwait, including the establishment of a production studio in London producing programming material for the exiled Kuwaiti Television." Rendon also provided media support for exiled government leaders and helped Kuwaiti officials after the war by "providing press and site advance to incoming congressional delegations and other visiting US government officials."

Rendon's work in Kuwait continued after the war itself had ended. "If any of you either participated in the liberation of Kuwait City ... or if you watched it on television, you would have seen hundreds of Kuwaitis waving small American flags," John Rendon said in his speech to the NSC. "Did you ever stop to wonder how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American flags? And for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries? Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs."

Iraq
Rendon was also a major player in the CIA's effort to encourage the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In May 1991, then-President George Bush, Sr. signed a presidential finding directing the CIA to create the conditions for Hussein's removal. The hope was that members of the Iraqi military would turn on Hussein and stage a military coup. The CIA did not have the mechanisms in place to make that happen, so they hired the Rendon Group to run a covert anti-Saddam propaganda campaign. Rendon's postwar work involved producing videos and radio skits ridiculing Saddam Hussein, a traveling photo exhibit of Iraqi atrocities, and radio scripts calling on Iraqi army officers to defect.

A February 1998 report by Peter Jennings cited records obtained by ABC News which showed that the Rendon Group spent more than $23 million dollars in the first year of its contract with the CIA. It worked closely with the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an opposition coalition of 19 Iraqi and Kurdish organizations whose main tasks were to "gather information, distribute propaganda and recruit dissidents." According to ABC, Rendon came up with the name for the Iraqi National Congress and channeled $12 million of covert CIA funding to it between 1992 and 1996. Writing in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh says the Rendon Group was "paid close to a hundred million dollars by the CIA" for its work with the INC.<12> (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020311fa_FACT)

ClandestineRadio.com, a website which monitors underground and anti-government radio stations in countries throughout the world, credits the Rendon Group with "designing and supervising" the Iraqi Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) and Radio Hurriah, which began broadcasting Iraqi opposition propaganda in January 1992 from a US government transmitter in Kuwait. According to a September 1996 article in Time magazine, six CIA case officers supervised the IBC's 11 hours of daily programming and Iraqi National Congress activities in the Iraqi Kurdistan city of Arbil. According to a Harvard graduate student from Iraq who helped translate some of the radio broadcasts into Arabic, the program was poorly run. "No one in-house spoke a word of Arabic," he says. "They thought I was mocking Saddam, but for all they knew I could have been lambasting the US government." The scripts, he adds, were often ill conceived. "Who in Iraq is going to think it's funny to poke fun at Saddam's mustache," the student notes, "when the vast majority of Iraqi men themselves have mustaches?"<13> (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK13Ak01.html) In any case, the propaganda campaign came to an abrupt end on August 31, 1996, when the Iraqi army invaded Arbil and executed all but 12 out of 100 IBC staff workers along with about 100 members of the Iraqi National Congress.

Afghanistan
Newspapers reported in October 2001 that the Pentagon had awarded Rendon a four-month, $397,000 contract to handle PR aspects of U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan. Rendon and Pentagon officials declined to discuss details of the firm's work, which reportedly included monitoring international news media, conducting focus groups, creating a web site about the US campaign against terrorism, and recommending "ways the US military can counter disinformation and improve its own public communications." <14> (http://www.prfirms.org/resources/news/pentagon101901.asp)

In October 2001, Karen P. Hughes, then counselor to President George W. Bush, "worked with PR specialist John Rendon to create the Coalition Information Center (CIC), which Laura Flanders describes as a 'fast-response network set up to respond to anti-US news that appears anywhere in the world.'" <15> (http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18907)

The New York Times reported in April 2004, "The United States has hired a Washington-based communications company, the Rendon Group, to bolster Mr. Karzai's communications office. And in a brief huddle at the palace, Mr. Khalilzad and the head of intelligence, Amrullah Saleh, discussed how the Afghan people regarded the government -- and, as Mr. Khalilzad put it, 'things we could do to help the standing of the government without working through the government.'"<16> (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/international/asia/17AFGH.html?pagewanted=print&position=)

A December 2005 Chicago Tribune story profiled Rendon's work in Afghanistan, including a $1.4 million contract awarded in early 2004, "to help Afghan President Hamid Karzai with media relations"; a $3.9 million contract in late 2004, to "hire and train five Afghan media specialists and support all counternarcotics publicity"; and a third contract, under consideration in late 2005, "a three-year deal to work on counternarcotics public relations." Yet, seven months after the first contract began, Karzai and then-U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, complained that Rendon was getting "too much money for not enough work." <17> (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0512130124dec13,1,3302014.story?page=2&cset=true&ctrack=1)

Colombia
The Rendon Group's work for the Colombian Ministry of Defense (http://www.rendon.com/rendon/layout7/stratce2.htm) received attention in the spring of 2004. As coordination with the U.S.'s Plan Colombia, Rendon had created a deck of playing cards depicting Colombian "narco-terrorists" otherwise known as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and two other antigovernment groups. The State Department blocked the distribution of the cards, saying that they were a poor fit in Colombia. <18> (http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040328-115803-2222r.htm)

Empower Peace
In 2003, Rendon launched a web site called "Empower Peace (http://www.empowerpeace.com)," through which they called on young people throughout the world to "help us develop an International Youth Pledge of Peace." Does this mean they've joined the anti-war protests? Not exactly. Empower Peace wants people "not to refer the current political situation going on in the world today but rather focus and emphasize on the importance of breaking down cultural barriers in order to achieve peace." <19> (http://www.empowerpeace.com/pages/aboutus/pledge.html)

"The EmpowerPeace website didn't last long. The reason, Gardiner suspects, is that its creation probably violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which bans the domestic dissemination of government propaganda." <20> (http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=892)

Overspending?
Franklin Foer reports that Rendon has been dogged throughout his career "by complaints of profligate spending--even charged with being the PR equivalent of the Pentagon's $400 toilet seat. In 1995 CIA accountants demanded an audit of his work. As ABC reported in 1998, Rendon's own records show he spent more than $23 million in the first year of his contract to work with the INC. Several of his operatives in London earned more than the director of Central Intelligence--about $19,000 per month. Rendon shot across the Atlantic on the Concorde, while his subordinates flew on open business-class tickets. According to one of those subordinates, 'There was no incentive for Rendon to hold down costs.'" Others have complained that his work is often inept and ineffective. However, he continues to win contracts because he is "superbly networked" with friends in high places in Washington."<21> (http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20020520&s=foer052002)

(An anonymous contributor to SourceWatch has commented on some of Foer's claims in the above paragraph, stating, "The audit found that all Rendon accountings were in order. The person you reference here was paid a salary plus the government rate per diem..the total of which was $19,000. His salary was less than $7,000 per month. At the time, British Air offered a special...buy a business ticket and fly one way on the Concorde at no additional cost.")

In September 2004, Rendon and state officials came under scrutiny in Massachusetts, when it was revealed that the PR firm was awarded "more than $14,000 in anti-terrorism funds to videotape the August 2002 graduation ceremonies for 122 new State Police troopers." Thomas Kiley, the lawyer for Massachusetts' former secretary of public safety, defended the contract. "It's the first post-9/11 class and the training of that class focused on anti-terrorism," said Kiley, who called the graduation ceremony a "highly visible law enforcement event."<22> (http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=42548&format=)

Influencing Vieques Vote
In July 2005, Judicial Watch released documents it had obtained throught the Freedom of Information Act that indicate that the Rendon Group billed the U.S. Navy $1.6 million for work in 2001 to influence a vote on whether part of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques would continue to serve as a bombing range. Rendon was to "develop methods and tracking procedures to increase support among citizens in Vieques to support and vote in the 6 November 2001 referendum for the option of continued Navy training at Vieques."<23> (http://www.judicialwatch.org/5390.shtml)

Personnel
John Rendon
Rick Rendon - in the Boston office
Linda Flohr, a CIA covert operations veteran, worked for the Rendon Group at one point before returning to the government, where she is now a top anti-terrorism official at the White House's National Security Council.
Francis Brooke worked in the mid-1990s on the Rendon Group's anti-Iraq campaign in London at a salary of $19,000 a month. He subsequently became the chief assistant in Washington to Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress.
Paul Moran, a freelance TV cameraman who was killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber during the war in Iraq in 2003, also worked as a freelance contractor for the Rendon Group.
Clients
Clients of the Rendon Group have included a number of foreign nations, as well as major corporations. Known specific clients have included:

American Housing Consortium (based in Kuwait)
American Business Council of Kuwait
Bulgaria
Colombian army
Indonesia
KPMY/Peat Marwick
Kuwait
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation
Kuwait University
Monsanto Chemical Company
Russia
U.S. Strategic Command
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
U.S. Pentagon
Uzbekistan
Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (which it helped promote a ban on landmines)
In Massachussetts, Rendon has worked for the Massachusetts Port Authority, the Governor's Highway Safety Bureau, the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.<24> (http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=42547)

All-New Terrorist Evil-Doers Trading Card #12 of 55 - H&K/ TRG/ OSI/ OSP/ INC/ INA (http://webpages.charter.net/syzygy/tradingpost/12.html): "The Rendon Group - The guerilla marketing and PR firm that brought us Ahmad Chalabi, created the Iraqi National Congress, pushed 'bad intelligence' about Iraqi WMDs to the Media, US State Department, and DoD, and staged PR events, like the fall of Hussein's statue, for the US media enclave that was confined at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad."
Empower Peace (http://www.empowerpeace.com) web site.
Articles & Commentary
2001
Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay, "Pentagon Hires Public Relations Firm to Reverse Opposition in Islamic World (http://www.prfirms.org/resources/news/pentagon101901.asp)," Knight Ridder, October 17, 2001.
Norman Solomon, "War Needs Good Public Relations," (http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views01/1026-11.htm) Common Dreams, October 26, 2001: "... pleasant news arrived the other day with a $397,000 contract to help the Pentagon look good while bombing Afghanistan. The four-month deal includes an option to renew through most of 2002."
Ken Silverstein, "Selling the Afghan War (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011119&s=silverstein20011107)," Nation, November 7, 2001.
Richard Delevan, "Bush is fighting the PR battle on two fronts," (http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2001/11/18/story781821828.asp) The Post.IE, November 18, 2001.
Laura Miller and Sheldon Rampton, "The Pentagon's Information Warrior: Rendon to the Rescue (http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2001Q4/rendon.html)," PR Watch, vol. 8, no. 1, 4th quarter 2001.
2002
Andrew Miga, "Hub-linked PR firm off to war - Feds award Rendon propaganda contract," (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4154/is_20020220/ai_n12315969) Boston Globe, February 20, 2002.
Jeff Stein, "When Things Turn Weird, the Weird Turn Pro (http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5188)," TomPaine.com, February 27, 2002.
Seymour Hersh, "The objective is clear--topple Saddam. But how? (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020311fa_FACT)", New Yorker, March 3, 2002.
Lt.Col. Linda R. Urrutia-Varhall, "Capturing the Information Terrain," (http://www.iwar.org.uk/iwar/resources/usaf/maxwell/students/2002/urrutia.pdf) Air University, April 2002. A Research Report Submitted to the Faculty In Partial Fulfillment of the Graduation Requirements Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. 57-page pdf.
Erin P. Billings, "Hearts and Minds. The Rendon Group's Top-Secret Spin Machine for the Pentagon Is Big Business," (http://www.bizforward.com/wdc/issues/2002-05/government/) Washington Business Forward, May 2002.
Stephen J. Hedges, "U.S. Pays PR Guru to Make Its Points (http://cndyorks.gn.apc.org/news/articles/usprguru.htm)," Chicago Tribune, May 12, 2002.
Franklin Foer, "Flacks Americana: John Rendon's Shallow PR War on Terrorism (http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20020520&s=foer052002)," The New Republic, May 20, 2002.
Ian Urbina, "This war brought to you by Rendon Group (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK13Ak01.html)," Asia Times, November 13, 2002.
Christopher Deliso, "The Interview That Never Happened. When the Masters of Spin Go Silent," (http://www.antiwar.com/orig/deliso62.html) antiwar.com, December 16, 2002.
2003
"Rendon Advises 'Combatant Commanders (http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0603rendon.htm),'" O'Dwyer's PR Daily, June 3, 2003.
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, "How To Sell a War: (http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/how_to_sell_a_war/) The Rendon Group deploys 'perception management' in the war on Iraq", In These Times, August 4, 2003.
Michel Chossudovsky, "War Propaganda and the Capture of Saddam Hussein," (http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO312B.html) Global Research (Canada), December 22, 2003.
Gar Smith, "America's Ministry of Propaganda -- Part Four: Black Programs and the Future of Propaganda," (http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=892) The Edge (envirosagainstwar.org), December 23, 2003.
2004
Rowan Scarborough, "Columbia Rebels Not In Cards (http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040328-115803-2222r.htm)," Washington Times, March 29, 2004.
"Rendon Group Stacks Deck (http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0329rendon.htm)," O'Dwyer's PR Daily, March 29, 2004.
Amy Waldman, "In Afghanistan, U.S. Envoy Sits in Seat of Power, (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/international/asia/17AFGH.html?pagewanted=print&position=)," New York Times, April 17, 2004.
Pratap Chatterjee, "Information Warriors: Rendon Group Wins Hearts and Minds in Business, Politics and War (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11486)," CorpWatch.org, August 4, 2004.
Jack Meyers, "PR firm cashes in on connections (http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=42547)", Boston Herald, September 2, 2004.
Jack Meyers, "Terror cash wasted on home movies: Funds used to video statie graduation ceremony (http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=42548&format=)," Boston Herald, September 2, 2004.
2005
Justin Raimondo, "Payola Pundits for War?" (http://www.levymultimedia.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/4/2517) antiwar.com (posted on Dissent News website), January 28, 2005.
Chris Raphael, "Spinning Media for Government," (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11836) CorpWatch, February 10, 2005.
"STRATCOM Opens Foreign Media Pact to Competition (http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0422stratcom.htm)," O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub. req'd.), April 22, 2005.
John J. Lumpkin, "Firm Hired By Navy To Sway Vieques Vote (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/22/AR2005072201571.html)," Associated Press in Washington Post July 22, 2005.
Judicial Watch, "U.S. Navy Paid $1.69 Million to The Rendon Group: 2001 Navy Contract Details PR Consultant’s Role in Failed Attempt to Sway Outcome of Puerto Rican Referendum (http://www.judicialwatch.org/5390.shtml)", Media Release, July 25, 2005.
Department of the Navy, "Amendment of Solicitation/Modification of Contract (http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2005/deptofnavy072505.pdf)", July 19, 2001. (1.2MB Pdf file)
James Bamford, "The Man Who Sold the War (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8798997?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1132271793151&has-player=true)," Rolling Stone, posted online November 17, 2005.
Rendon Group, "Letter to the Editor of Rolling Stone Magazine (http://www.rendon.com/letter.php)", November 18, 2005.
Kim Barker and Stephen J. Hedges, "U.S. paid for media firm Afghans didn't want: Millions spent despite complaints deals were 'rip-off' to taxpayers (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0512130124dec13,1,3302014.story?page=2&cset=true&ctrack=1)," Chicago Tribune, December 13, 2005.
2006
Fariba Nawa, "Pink 'iPods' for Democracy!" (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13402) CorpWatch, March 15, 2006. See sidebar "The Information War."
John Stauber, John Rendon's Long, Strange Trip in the Terror Wars (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4954), www.PRWatch.org, July 11, 2006.
James Bamford, Iran: The Next War (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/10962352/iran_the_next_war/), Rolling Stone, July 26, 2006.
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