James Bamford joins us to discuss the case of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, the government’s overreach in bringing espionage charges against him, and the Obama Administration’s unprecedented level of retaliation against government whistleblowers. He discusses the Obama Administration’s shift from military wars to covert-secret wars, the increased use of the CIA as a war branch, and Obama’s violation of the Presidential War Powers Act. Mr. Bamford talks about the CIA operations in Yemen and the use of cluster bombs there as early as December 2009, the implications of WikiLeaks, the absurdity of Obama’s Nobel Peace Award and his recently given Transparency Award, the ineffectiveness and uselessness of NSA in monitoring Osama Bin-Laden’s activities, the absence of real coverage and analyses in the US Mainstream Media, and more!

James Bamford is one of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues. His books include “The Puzzle Palace,” “Body of Secrets,” “A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies,” and most recently “ The Shadow Factory”. Mr. Bamford coproduced NOVA’s “The Spy Factory”, which was based on his latest book. He has written for many magazines, including investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine and The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and is a contributing writer for Rolling Stone. His 2005 Rolling Stone article “The Man Who Sold the War” won a National Magazine Award for reporting. He also spent a decade as the Washington investigative producer for the ABC News program, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, as a distinguished visiting professor.

Here is our guest James Bamford unplugged!

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There are ‘experts’ views,’ and then there are experts’ views. There are ‘government sources,’ and then there are government sources. Not all experts are equal. And, not all sources are reliable. Am I talking in riddles? Of course not; give me a chance and I’ll explain.

We have members of the popular media (mainstream and quasi alternatives alike) ever anxious to market and disseminate government conspiracy and propaganda. They, members of the popular media, have their own rolodex of ‘experts’ and analysts, some on their payroll, to help them propagate the delivery and execution of government-given propaganda-conspiracy. The same principle applies to ‘sources.’ The popular media relies on their government sources who act as middle-men-government messengers who’ve been given a government written and approved script to be delivered; almost always anonymously. Well, this is exactly what we have been getting from our media, around the clock, since the announcement of the Bin Laden Death Operation: ever-changing government scripts, delivered mainly by anonymous government sources to the US media, and further embellished and expanded upon by government-connected experts and analysts on the payroll.

On the other hand, there are many independent real experts whose analyses and views you won’t, or rarely, get to hear or read about; at least not in the mainstream media or at quasi-alternative sites. And there are current and former government sources not tasked with messenger duties; many of whom don’t see the ‘calculated’ necessity to remain ‘anonymous.’ I can assure you, you do not, and will not, read or hear these experts’ and sources’ statements, analyses or views when it comes to government-written stories and their media buddies.

Last weekend Boiling Frogs Post contacted several independent sources and experts, and asked them for their straight-forward take on the absurdity-filled and ever-changing Bin Laden Death story. I say independent, because they are. As you’ll see these veterans and sources come from all different walks of Intelligence-Law Enforcement-Military, and as far as political orientation goes, they fall into every single category-liberal, conservative, libertarian and none. I want to thank them all for honoring the request given to them on extremely short notice, and for being honest, direct, commonsensical, and in some cases realistically humorous. Here is what they had to say, and say it briefly per my request, starting with my favorite investigative reporter and bestselling author, whom I respect tremendously and consider ‘truly independent,’ James Bamford:

I don’t know what happened, but here’s what I suspect.  The White House press office was horrified.  The image of an unarmed Bin Laden killed in his PJs, and his unarmed wife shot as she was trying to protect him, was too bland for prime time TV.  So after consulting with the “perception managers” at The Rendon Group, they quickly called together a team of experts for a conference in the Roosevelt Room to come up with a better narrative.

Among those present was Nurse Nayirah, daughter of the former Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., accompanied by several PR representatives from Hill & Knowlton.  It was her false claim that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in Kuwait and leave them on the floor to die, a lie propagandized around the world by H&K, that helped push the U.S. into the first Gulf War.  Sitting next to her was Ahmed Chalabi, the man whose deceptions about Saddam and his WMD, heavily promoted by the New York Times, helped lead the country to war with Iraq.  Then there was Jim Wilkinson, the Bush master propagandist who needed to find a way to get the country behind the war.  He thus fed the story to the media of how Pvt. Jessica Lynch fearlessly mowed down Fedayeen terrorists with her M16 until she ran out of ammo, whereupon she was shot, stabbed, captured, tortured and raped.  Unfortunately, through no fault of Lynch, it was later discovered to be totally made up. Finally, there was General Stanley McCrystal, largely responsible for promoting the fact that football star and Army private Pat Tillman was killed in a heroic battle in Afghanistan when in reality he was accidentally shot by his own men.  The false story was then ballyhooed by the press and used by the Army as a major recruiting tool for the Afghan War.

After a few hours going around the table for ideas, the White House press people finally had their story.  With one hand wrapped around his wife as a shield, Bin Laden used the other in a desperate effort to fight off capture by firing wildly at the commandos with an AK-47, but was finally taken down with a bullet right between his eyes. 

James Bamford- One of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues.

If you factor in growth in government and the actual costs of the military and intelligence effort that finally succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden after fifteen years of trying, the renowned terrorist becomes the $3 trillion dollar man.  Considering that he has not personally directed a successful terrorist operation since 9/11 that is quite impressive, somewhat like winning a lifetime achievement Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony.  And even 9/11 is by no means a slam-dunk for Osama as the Justice Department never charged him with that particular crime because they knew they did not have enough evidence to convince a jury.  So his story ends, shot down in Pakistan while resisting or possibly surrendering, with his wife and son or alone, in a lavish mansion or a shack, as a result of a great spy operation or maybe not, and with the President of the United States personally directing the operation or possibly just sitting in for a photo op.  Requiescat in Pace Osama. 

Philip Giraldi- Former Counterterrorism Specialist & military Intelligence Officer  of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

The executive-ordered assassination of Osama bin Laden, in what is now described as a rubbish-strewn, dirt-infested and barely habitable compound, does free up a spot on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list.   As a result of this grand and newsworthy success, after an interminable decade of really, really, really hard work, the flag-draped and platinum-plated military-industrial-intelligence complex is poised for even greater rewards, in both glory and gold.   Constitution-minded and economically strapped Americans, and those who oppose unnecessary undeclared wars of any kind, need to get back under the Bush-Obama bus, and quick.  Here’s why: President Obama will not remind Americans that bin Laden was never “wanted” by the FBI for the 9/11 attacks, and as such, bin Laden’s death is irrelevant to Washington’s long war in Afghanistan.  Likewise, former President Bush will not tell the country that the bin Laden connection to Saddam Hussein was manufactured in 2002 by neoconservatives bent on invasion, and as a result, bin Laden’s death has no bearing on Washington’s 9-year occupation and nation-building project in Iraq.    Come to think of it, not having Osama around anymore is stagnation we can believe in. 

Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski- Retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and a specialist on the Middle East 

Two UN guys are sitting in a bar in Kabul – and one turns to the other and says “Did you hear the one about the president, the terrorism advisor and the pope?” The second guy turns to the other and says “Well – no – I have not” – and the first guys says “Me neither  – but it cannot be any more funny than the way the White House has handled the narrative of the Bin Laden raid.”

Four days after the Bin Laden raid, and in the middle of what must have been the 10^th White House modification to the story, I was asked in an on-air interview “don’t you (in the Special Operations Community) have plans for dealing with the media?” – well yes, yes, we do…but this plan was not used due to the White House insinuation of their “academic smart guys and gals” – so the plan was not followed – because the raid became a White House center piece that was quickly (and badly) absorbed for purposes of supporting the President’s reelection.

National security – and what is best and necessary for the nation – should NOT be an issue that is used by either side for political gain…the harsh reality is that it often is.  As I have said many time: “I am not anti-war, I am anti-stupidity…” we have sycophants in the White House who will do or say anything to get the President re-elected and sacrifice the truth, and the nation’s best interests, in the process as they drive the clown car of freedom around the nation for a victory lap…

Lt Col Tony Shaffer- Intelligence Officer & recipient of the Bronze Star, with 25 years of field experience commanding and directing several key operational intelligence organizations
 

The “fog of war” excuse for the Obama Administration’s horrendous series of factual errors in reporting bin Laden’s killing was mostly due to rushing to make the U.S. press deadline and take credit before being upstaged by leaks from international press.  One small detail that reveals the over-arching importance placed on Obama’s need for a bold, decisive press image lies in his unqualified announcement about getting his man that was made even before the DNA testing was completed.  The White House later clarified that they were 90 to 95% certain it was bin Laden based on photo comparisons and later they upped that to 95% certainty but there’s nothing scientific about “facial analysis” photo comparisons.  Quite likely another reason the Administration doesn’t want the dead bin Laden photo out now is that it would invite scrutiny of the hasty announcement.  I think the series of errors was mostly based on the rush to frame this quickly for the press so Obama would appear bold and strong on terrorism and get what Charley Cook projected as a 13% “bounce” in the polls.

Coleen Rowley- Retired FBI Agent and Former Cchief Counsel of the FBI Minneapolis field office
So we come through the mountain passes that are being watched by tribal warlords who have our left over stinger missiles from the Soviet’s little adventure there, because if we fly too high the Pakistani defense radar network will pick us up.  We don’t know who is in this compound, so we shoot-to-kill every unarmed male resident on the spot, before we even know if Bin Laden is there.  And we insist Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service knew nothing of Bin Laden being in the middle of their retirement neighborhood for military generals and intelligence officials.  Oh, we wanted to do it one week earlier, but our government knew that on that day the Easter Bunny would be hiding multi colored eggs for all the little Pakistani children!

Russell D. Tice- Former Intelligence Analyst for the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency & National Security Agency

From my own 25-years experience on the inside much of it doing international covert operations, I’m pretty certain that the competing federal bureaucracies’ decades long, often bizarre war for headlines is at the root of this whole weird episode. Of course this is fueled by the ease with which mainstream media is manipulated into printing absolutely anything that comes from their “inside” usually “anonymous” sources.

With the Bin Laden hit, the media skirmish started with the scramble for “credit” by the public affairs offices of each of the parties involved a.  First the Pentagon (Defense Intelligence) and White House take the lead.  Then the CIA, the Criminal Inept Agency, sorely hurting from five decades of being total and abject losers and perpetually at war with DIA, grabs the whole ball and runs with it, like they invented it.   This pisses off the DIA and leaks and counter-leaks begin to spring in every direction from inside sources on both sides, sniping at each other’s “story.”

But you can’t count out the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Incompetence, who has been totally and insultingly left out of the whole mix.  Rumor is they even had an FBI Files episode on “How the FBI killed Bin Laden, “ready to go into production, no matter how Bin Laden died.  All they needed was a body.  Leaving them totally out of the kill of the dude for whom they’ve spent half their PR budget hunting, is…well…insulting to say the least. And you do NOT want to piss off the FBI.  Remember Cointelpro?!

Finally. What really happened? My bet is that some Navy Seal captain in charge of the guys out there circling around Pakistan’s night skies in helicopters like sitting ducks waiting for the Washington suits to make up their minds, said, “Screw it!  I’ll take responsibility.  Let’s do it guys!”

Mike Levine- Retired supervisory agent, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); also served the U.S. Customs Service, IRS (Criminal Investigations Division) & the FBI/DEA Task Force

  Obama’s Idea — Whatabad!

Killing Osama in Abbottabad

Serves only to get a whole lottabad

guys planning in sync

To pay back Murder, Inc.

From Kandahar to Jalalabad.

Ray McGovern- Retired CIA Analyst, former Army Intelligence Officer & Founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

A part of me is going to miss Bin Laden, at least I understood him.  I certainly do not condone his methods or his twisted logic; but his actions were extremely predictable (I was one of the few people that actively tried to prevent 9-11). But I do not understand our own government.  First we attack a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, we lower our moral standing in the eyes of the world, we violate our Constitution, we turn our military into the Peace Corps resulting in thousands of our own military casualties and tens of thousands of innocent civilian casualties overseas, we treat our own citizens as guilty of something until proven otherwise at airports, the list is endless.  The final straw, however, is the PR campaign of the killing of BL.  If ever there was a “black operation” in the traditional use of the term, this was it.  Our government should have said nothing about this assassination.  Oh, word would have leaked out over time and years from now we could have our day in the sun, but this isn’t the time.  We celebrate this killing like it’s the winning touch-down at the Super Bowl.  All this dog and pony show is a rallying cry for the same fanatics that rioted and killed over cartoons.  How many more innocent lives will be lost just so our politicians can make a little splash in the news?

Bogdan Dzakovic- Special Agent, Team Leader of the Red Team (terrorist team) and Federal Air Marshals for the Federal Aviation Administration(FAA), and  Former Coast Guard Officer & Federal Criminal Investigator

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My congratulations to Sibel Edmonds on the launch of “Boiling Frogs”!  At a time when most mainstream news organizations are constantly following the beat of the same few drummers, there is a critical need for independent, alternative, and new media to expand the boundaries of thought.  For nearly a decade, Sibel has fought against excessive government secrecy, built up an organization of more than one hundred national security whistleblowers, and exposed government attempts to cover-up abuses.

Now with BOILINGFROGSPOST.COM, Sibel is taking the next step and establishing a beautifully designed website to give voice to these ideas, opinions, and viewpoints that are largely missing from the narrow stream of daily journalism. It is an appropriate metaphor.  Like frogs slowly boiling as the water temperature gradually increases, many Americans have slowly grown to accept as normal increasing governmental abuse, from torture to warrantless wiretapping to wars based on lies. 

Supporting Boiling Frogs is an important way to wake up the American public before the water gets too hot to climb out of the pot.

James Bamford

James Bamford is one of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues. His books include “The Puzzle Palace,” “Body of Secrets,” “A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies,” and most recently “ The Shadow Factory”. Mr. Bamford coproduced NOVA’s “The Spy Factory”, which was based on his latest book. He has written for many magazines, including investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine and The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and is a contributing writer for Rolling Stone. His 2005 Rolling Stone article “The Man Who Sold the War” won a National Magazine Award for reporting. He also spent a decade as the Washington investigative producer for the ABC News program, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, as a distinguished visiting professor.

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Mizgin’s Desk Reports:

Does anyone remember the Rendon Group? If not, let me refresh your memory.

The Rendon Group is a public relations firm that has specialized in creating propaganda for various US military interventions over the last few decades in places as varied as Panama, Haiti, Colombia, Zimbabwe, and Puerto Rico. Most recently, the Rendon group helped the US government to win hearts and minds for the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Because it has worked with the US government for a long period of time, it has been willing to justify US military actions for both Democratic and Republican administrations, although the Rendon Group’s founder, John Rendon, got his start in the propaganda business back in the 1970s as a campaign consultant for the Democratic Party.

There is a lot more information on the Rendon Group at Sourcewatch. James Bamford, whom many will remember as the first guest on The Boiling Frogs podcast interviews, wrote what may be the most definitive article explaining the raison d’etre for the Rendon Group. Bamford named John Rendon as “The Man Who Sold the War” to the American public for the Bush Administration. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, indeed, long before September 11, the Rendon Group created the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and appointed Ahmed Chalabi as the head of the organization. It created the Iraqi Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) and Radio Hurriah, both of which ineffectively broadcast propaganda against the Saddam regime in the early 1990s, first from Kuwait and later from Arbil in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region. In 1996, Saddam’s army invaded Arbil and killed the vast majority of Rendon’s IBC employees and some 100 INC members. What prompted the response by Saddam’s army had less to do with the content of Radio Hurriah’s propaganda, which was described as “poorly run” by one Iraqi Harvard graduate student, and more to do with the fact that the CIA had poured millions of dollars into the Rendon Group, which then funneled the money into the INC.

According to Bamford, while the CIA dumped money into the INC through the Rendon Group, Ahmed Chalabi dumped questionable “intelligence” information into the New York Times’ now discredited war drummer, Judith Miller. Bamford later wrote about Chalabi’s secret dealings with Iran, including the possible passing of NSA code-breaking information.

As a result of the Rendon Group’s deep and widespread involvement with those who want to maufacture consent for any goal of any American administration, it should come as no surprise that last week the Reuters and the Washington Post revealed news from the US military’s Stars and Stripes indicating that the Rendon Group has been hired by the Pentagon to vet journalists for embedded reporting from Afghanistan. From the Reuters article:

The U.S. military in Afghanistan defended itself Thursday against accusations that a company it employs was rating the work of reporters and suggesting ways to make their war coverage more positive.

Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for U.S. troops, said it had obtained documents prepared for the U.S. military by the Rendon Group, a Washington-based communications firm that graded journalists’ work as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”

The newspaper, partly funded by the Pentagon but editorially independent, said the journalists’ profiles included suggestions on how to “neutralise” negative stories and generate favourable coverage.

It published a pie chart which it said came from a Rendon report on the coverage of a reporter for an unidentified major U.S. newspaper until mid-May, judging it to be 83.33 percent neutral and 16.67 percent negative with respect to the military’s goals.

The U.S. military command in Afghanistan said the Rendon Group provided a range of services under a $1.5 million (921,330 pound) one-year contract, including analysis of news coverage — but it did not grade journalists.

Neither the Reuters report nor the Washington Post noted the Rendon Group’s previous propaganda work, particularly it’s long fiasco with planning regime change in Iraq. Unsurprisingly, National Public Radio, also failed to mention the Rendon Group’s history in a story it aired on its “All Things Considered” program on 27 August. It did include a quote from a press officer from the 101st Airborne Division, in which he admitted he relied on Rendon’s ratings:

Maj. Patrick Seiber, the press officer for the 101st Airborne Division, says that during his time in Afghanistan, he dealt with 62 different news agencies and 143 different reporters. He says he relied on the Rendon reports.

“Well, you got to have something, because we don’t have enough public affairs guys that can go through and do it our own self,” he says. “You got to know what you’re dealing with. Our soldiers are at risk. Information is also a risk.”

Seiber says he did pay some attention to negative ratings. If someone had many negative ratings, he says, he would want to know why.

“This didn’t happen that often,” he says. “Out of all those news agencies, I can only remember a couple of times there was somebody we didn’t take … because of their bent.”

Both times, he says, the news agencies sent a different reporter.

Seiber doesn’t know when the ratings started, but says Rendon has been doing the work for eight years.

So, they did use the Rendon Group’s “secret” profiles and they did deny reporters on the basis of their views. It must be problematic to have reporters who might not be willing to sell the Pentagon’s angle on a war to an American public that increasingly sees as “not worth fighting”.

One reporter working in Afghanistan managed to obtain a copy of his Rendon-generated dossier from a friend in the military. Here’s what he has to say:

Most reporters in Afghanistan know about these reports. I obtained a copy of my Rendon report about three months ago from a friend in the military and I’ve posted excerpts below. I don’t really think the reports are some kind of violation, in fact, I think the military is smart to look into the background’s of people who will be writing about them. Rating the coverage that reporters give the military–”positive,” “neutral,” “negative”–seems a bit silly and slightly Orwellian, but if thousands of reporters were covering my organization, I would want a simple shorthand to indentify them as well.

I do think the reports are creepy though. These guys have read almost everything I’ve written in the last few years, even interviews I’ve given to local news blogs. Reading this report is like perusing the diary of your stalker. Rendon also classifies certain publication as “left leaning” which I find odd.

Most troubling by far is that when S&S [Stars and Stripes] asked the military about Rendon, they denied the existence of these reports. I’m holding one of these reports in my hand right now, trust me, it exists. I’ve also met people who work for The Rendon Group in Kabul. In conversations, they deny that there is any nefarious objective to what they do. “We just help the military figure out what embed is right for a particular reporter,” one Rendon employee told me over drinks. “If a reporter is classified as “negative” they are less likely to go where the action is and more likely to be covering a platoon that guards sandbags in Herat.”

Other reporters, like freelancer Nir Rosen, were less than enthusiastic about their dossiers:

Last week Stars and Stripes reported that the Pentagon is employing Rendon to profile reporters. I was shown a copy of the memorandum the Rendon group prepared about me. It is two and a half pages. A public affairs officer told me it was the most alarming report about a journalist that he had ever seen, and as a result I was grateful that Colonel Bill Hix was open minded enough to approve my embed despite the red flags raised about me.

“The purpose of this updated memo is to provide an assessment of freelance journalist Nir Rosen, and give a profile of his work, both through a summary of content and analysis of style, in order to gauge the expected sentiment of his work while on embed mission in Afghanistan.”

In the background section the memorandum describes some of my past work, experience and skills. It also warned that “in late 2008 Rosen ‘embedded’ with the Taliban in several areas of Afghanistan. A lengthy report on his embedded experience appeared in Rolling Stone and was highly unfavorable to international efforts in Afghanistan.”

Despite denials from the military in both the Reuters and the Washington Post reports, it’s obvious that reporters and news corporations know that they are “rated” so that those providing reports that are most favorably viewed by the Rendon Group are assigned with units in the hottest areas. The “trustworthy” ones are given the plumb embeds, in other words. In fact, that’s exactly what Stars and Stripes reported on 29 August:

The secret profiles commissioned by the Pentagon to rate the work of journalists reporting from Afghanistan were used by military officials to deny disfavored reporters access to American fighting units or otherwise influence their coverage as recently as 2008, an Army official acknowledged Friday.

What’s more, the official said, Army public affairs officers used the analyses of reporters’ work to decide how to steer them away from potentially negative stories.

“If a reporter has been focused on nothing but negative topics, you’re not going to send him into a unit that’s not your best,” Maj. Patrick Seiber, spokesman for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, told Stars and Stripes. “There’s no win-win there for us. We’re not trying to control what they report, but we are trying to put our best foot forward.”

[ . . . ]

The revelations are the latest twist in the controversy over how the military is gathering and using reporter profiles compiled by The Rendon Group, a Washington, D.C. public relations firm contracted by the Pentagon to rate journalists’ work.

[ . . . ]

Pentagon officials repeatedly denied this week that the Rendon profiles are being used to rate reporters or determine whether they will be granted permission to embed with U.S. units in Afghanistan.

“There is no policy that stipulates in any way that embedding should be based in any way on a person’s work,” Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters on Monday.

The only one who makes sense in this entire fiasco is Admiral Mullen:

Meanwhile, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Friday published an essay in a military journal that was sharply critical of the U.S. government’s attempts to use “strategic communications” to shape messages directed at the Muslim world.

“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Mullen wrote in the essay in Joint Force Quarterly.

“I would argue that most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all,” he wrote. “They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.”

It may be that Admiral Mullen’s words were heard loudly and clearly by the US military command in Afghanistan because on 31 August, Stars and Stripes reported that the contract with the Rendon Group in Afghanistan had been cancelled:

The U.S. military is canceling its contract with a controversial private firm that was producing background profiles of journalists seeking to cover the war that graded their past work as “positive,” “negative” or “neutral,” Stars and Stripes has learned.

[ . . . ]

“The decision to terminate the Rendon contract was mine and mine alone. As the senior U.S. communicator in Afghanistan, it was clear that the issue of Rendon’s support to US forces in Afghanistan had become a distraction from our main mission,” said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, in an e-mail sent Sunday to Stars and Stripes.

TIME reported that the effective date of the cancellation of the contract would be 1 September.

Given Rendon’s history with the Pentagon, particularly its assistance to Donald Rumsfeld’s Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), one has to wonder what it really means to cancel Rendon’s contract for the vetting of reporters in Afghanistan. The OSI was established in February of 2002, with Douglas Feith–whom a less diplomatic American general called “the f***ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth”–assuring the Defense Writers Group of this:

“First of all I want to clarify that when Defense Department officials speak to the public they tell the truth, and despite some of the reports about the Office of Strategic Influence that I’ve read over the last day or two, Defense Department officials don’t lie to the public. And we are confident that the truth serves our interests in the broadest sense of national security and specifically in this war.”

Oh, I know I believe him.

The fact is that Donald Rumsfeld merely killed the OSI in name only:

And then there was the office of strategic influence. You may recall that. And “oh my goodness gracious isn’t that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.” I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I’ll give you the corpse. There’s the name. You can have the name, but I’m gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.

According to James Bamford, the job that the OSI was intended to do was eventually transferred to the Information Operations Task Force. Where will the Rendon Group’s work on “secret” profiling be transferred now?

In spite of the claim that the Rendon Group’s contract is now terminated, the mainstream media should be held accountable for what it failed to say in any of its reporting of Rendon’s recent activity in Afghanistan for the Pentagon, particularly when the general consumer of American media has a notoriously short memory. Why didn’t the mainstream media remind the American public of the Rendon Group’s shady dealings in the past, how it helped manufacture consent for unpopular wars, how it funneled money for CIA operations, and how it promoted an Iranian double-agent to a position to hand over NSA code-breaking information to Teheran, or how it was involved with the Office of Strategic Information? Were these facts overlooked because of amnesia on the part of the mainstream media? Or was this oversight a case of the mainstream media’s bootlicking of the propaganda firm that can veto any reporter?

It’s ironic that the one publication to publish the truth about the Rendon Group’s operations in Afghanistan is the one publication whose reporters are not vetted by Rendon–the Stars and Stripes.