Pentagon paid PR firm
$540mn to make fake terrorist videos
Oct 2 2016
The Pentagon paid a UK PR firm half a billion dollars to
create fake terrorist videos in Iraq in a secret
propaganda campaign exposed by the Bureau of Investigative
Journalism.
PR firm Bell Pottinger, known for its array of
controversial clients including the Saudi government and
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s foundation, worked
with the US military to create the propaganda in a
secretive operation.
The firm reported to the CIA, the National Security
Council and the Pentagon on the project with a mandate to
portray Al-Qaeda in a negative light and track suspected
sympathizers.
Both the White House and General David Petraeus, the
former general who shared classified information with his
mistress, signed off on the content produced by the
agency.
The Bell Pottinger operation started soon after the US
invasion of Iraq and was tasked with promoting the
“democratic elections” for the administration before
moving on to more lucrative psychological and information
operations.
Former employee Martin Wells told the Bureau how he found
himself working in Iraq after being hired as a video
editor by Bell Pottinger. Within 48 hours, he was landing
in Baghdad to edit content for secret “psychological
operations” at Camp Victory.
The firm created television ads showing Al-Qaeda in a
negative light as well as creating content to look as
though it had come from “Arabic TV”. Crews were sent out
to film bombings with low quality video. The firm would
then edit it to make it look like news footage.
They would craft scripts for Arabic soap operas where
characters would reject terrorism with happy consequences.
The firm also created fake Al-Qaeda propaganda videos,
which were then planted by the military in homes they
raided.
Employees were given specific instructions to create the
videos. “We need to make this style of video and we’ve got
to use Al-Qaeda's footage,” Wells was told. “We need it to
be 10 minutes long, and it needs to be in this file
format, and we need to encode it in this manner.”
The videos were created to play on Real Player which needs
an internet connection to run. The CDs were embedded with
a code linking to Google Analytics which allowed the
military to track IP addresses that the videos were played
on.
According to Wells, the videos were picked up in Iran,
Syria and the US.
"If one, 48 hours or a week later shows up in another part
of the world, then that’s the more interesting one,” Wells
explained. “And that’s what they’re looking for more,
because that gives you a trail.”
The Pentagon confirmed the PR firm did work for them under
the Information Operations Task Force (IOTF) creating
content they say was “truthful”. The firm also worked
under the Joint Psychological Operations Task Force (JPOTF).
The Pentagon said it could not comment on JPOTF
operations.
US law prohibits the government from using propaganda on
its population, hence the use of an outside firm to create
the content.
Documents show the Pentagon paid $540 million to Bell
Pottinger in contracts between 2007 and 2011, with another
contract for $120 million in 2006. The firm ended its work
with the Pentagon in 2011.
In 2009, it was reported that the Pentagon had hired
controversial PR firm, The Rendon Group, to monitor the
reporting of journalists embedded with the U.S. military,
to assess whether they were giving "positive" coverage to
its missions.
It was also revealed in 2005 that Washington based PR
company the Lincoln Group had been placing articles in
newspapers in Iraq which were secretly written by the US
military. A Pentagon investigation cleared the group of
any wrongdoing.
source
RT
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