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Nov. 26, 2005 He is not a candidate for President, or even a household name, but John Rendon probably has as much an influence on American foreign policy as anyone linked to the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. He is the head of the self-named The Rendon Group (TRG), a so-called "secretive" public relations firm. Rendon and his associates manufacture the propaganda that has sold both Americans and Middle Easterners on the U.S. military presence in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. TRG has been involved in military escapades all over the globe, including Haiti, Panama, Kosovo and several other countries. The group also laid the foundation for the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which was assembled to propagate the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The INC, led by Ahmed Chalabi, was created by the Rendon Group. According to ABC News, the group spent more than $23 million dollars paid through a contract with the CIA. The motto of TRG is "information as an element of power." Rendon calls himself, "...not a National Security strategist or a military tactician. I am a politician. and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior, and a perception manager." Rendon began his career as a consultant to the Democratic Party, working with Michael Dukakis' 1974 campaign for Governor of Massachusetts and was Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee during Jimmy Carter's term as President. He also headed Carter's unsuccessful 1980 re-election campaign. A year later John brought his brother Rick into the fold as they formed a consulting firm. Their work was primarily outside of the United States, where they ran the propaganda campaign against Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. After the U.S. military invasion of that country, the RTG headed the formation of that country's new government. Along the way the group established strong ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. RTG then went to work in Kuwait to manage the war of words that would drum up support for a U.S. invasion of that country, to drive out the Iraqis. Under the Reagan administration the RTG's influence grew. Rendon began handling military assignments. The George H.W. Bush administration wanted to give the okay to the creation of an Office of Strategic Influence, which would articulate the American perspective overseas. Rendon served as an advisor to the President. However, the plan was scrapped when it was reported that the office would do little more than spread disinformation. However, the issue has been skirted by the employ of TRG, which operates under the less ominous moniker of being a public relations firm. In 1989, TRG was at work in Panama, paving the way for opposition leader Guillermo Endara to become the new Panamanian president. Rendon's primary role was to coach Endara on how to become more media savvy. In 1994 Rendon set up shop in Haiti to assist the reinstated President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. According to the Haitian government's general counsel, Ira Kurzhan, Rendon was paid from a Washington bank account. Operating out of London, TRG began its work with the INC with the character assassination of Hussein. They collaborated with exiled Iraqi opposition parties to spawn an anti-Saddam atmosphere. In 1992 RTG was the driving force behind the Iraqi Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) and Radio Hurriah, both which spew anti-Saddam propaganda and operated inside the Kuwaiti border. They also circulated photographs of the regime's sadistic atrocities, pictures of burning oil wells and oil-soaked bird carcasses which served as evidence that Saddam was destroying the Kuwaiti economy and ecosystem as well as its people. On August 31, 1996, the IBC broadcasts ended tragically when the Iraqi Army invaded and slaughtered 88 of IBCs 100 employees and nearly 100 reputed members of the INC. Journalist Paul Moran was a key figure in the propaganda effort and was the first journalist killed in Iraq. Rolling Stone magazine investigative journalist James Bamford elaborated. "Paul Moran, who had formerly worked for both the I.N.C. and the Rendon Group...which helped push the U.S. into war with Iraq ...actually became the very first journalist killed in the war. He was in northern Iraq, and a car bomb exploded very close to him, and he was killed instantly. I think it was within two or three days of the beginning of the war. So, it was a very tragic irony that Paul Moran, who helped generate some of the early publicity for the war ended up being one of the first people killed in the war." Their misinformation was not limited to Iraqis. Pretap Chatterjee writes, "On October 10, 1990, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on Capitol Hill. California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter introduced a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah. Weeping and shaking, the girl described a horrifying scene in Kuwait City. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," she testified. "While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns and go into the room where babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die. "Seven pro-war senators brought up the baby-incubator allegations to argue for an invasion of Iraq, leading to a narrow five-vote win. Later it was discovered that the Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, daughter of the ambassador to the United States and that the incubator incident was fabricated." After the U.S. had run Saddam out of Kuwait, Rendon again went to work. This time he supplied Kuwaiti citizens with hand-held American flags and those of other countries involved in the coalition. At a 1998 National Security Conference Rendon boasted, "Did you ever stop to wonder how the people of Kuwait City...were able to get (the) hand-held flags? That was one of my jobs." Prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom TRG broadcast televised pro-Pentagon announcements. According to Copywatch, Rendon saw his role in the most recent invasion of Iraq in these terms: "I believe that Operation Iraqi Freedom provided for all of us a ringside seat for a clash of cultures of communication. If you watched US or Western media you saw the war portrayed one way. If you watched or listened to war news in the Arab media, you accepted delivery of a different set of news and information." An Iraqi civil engineer named Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri informed the CIA that he had assisted in the burial of Saddam's secret arsenal. The pentagon sought to confirm the stories and sent a CIA polygrapher to interview al-Haideri. The result of the polygraph examination showed that al-Haideri was lying. The information was used anyway as justification for attacking Iraq. Al-Haideri remained on the payroll of the INC/TRG. Chalabi and the INC supplied further "evidence" that Hussein was building WMDs. This same storyline was fed to U.S. media sources including Judith Miller of the New York Times, who had Chalabi as an exclusive source. The information was pushed by the Bush administration as being reliable. Subsequent weapons inspectors (under a treaty signed after Operation Desert Storm) indicated otherwise. In May 2004, the Times issued the following retraction: "In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged...we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged, or failed to emerge." According to several reports, Rendon organized the INC by bringing the central figures of the organization to a conference in Vienna. (It is rumored that it was Rendon who conjured up the name 'Iraqi National Congress'). TRG had been given the assignment because of their track record. Meanwhile, Chalabi's own past wasn't without scandal. In 1992 he had been convicted of making false statements and embezzling $230 million from his own bank. He fled to avoid a twenty-two year sentence of hard labor. During this time the CIA paid RTG $326,000 per month. It has been rumored that since the onset of the Gulf War, RTG has been paid from various sources to the tune of $100 million. But Rendon wasn't beyond making mistakes. According to Franklin Foer, while meeting with a "radical Shia group--suicide-bomber types--in robes and beards, [Rendon] sent a thirty-one-year-old woman with a dress up to her ass who said 'I'm here to plan.' A comedy of cross-cultural misunderstandings ensued. They felt insulted by her sheer ignorance." Eventually the CIA lost faith in TRG and the group was replaced. But Rendon used his connections at the Pentagon to secure work. He is also chummy with Karl Rove. TRG still works hand-in-hand with the government, but their contract is classified. However, in an article that appeared in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh wrote that TRG received "close to a hundred million dollars by the CIA." This was for their work with the INC. Interviews with former employees assert that after the September 11 attacks the Pentagon awarded Rendon a $100,000-a-month contract and is now as high as $20 to $40 million annually, with the contractor footing the costs for overhead as well. Sources: Pratap Chatterjee, "Rendon Group Wins Hearts and Minds in Business, Politics and War," CorpWatch, August 4th, 2004 The Rendon Group, wikipedia James Bamford, "The Man Who Sold the War: Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war," Rolling Stone, November 18, 2005 Laura Miller and Sheldon Rampton, "The Pentagon's Information Warrior: Rendon to the Rescue," The Media Center For Democracy. Date unavailable. Stephen J. Hedges, "U.S. pays PR guru to make its points," Chicago Tribune, May 12, 2002 Franklin Foer, "John Rendon's Shallow P.R. War On Terrorism," May 14, 2002, The New Republic Jeff Stein, "Propaganda, the Pentagon, and the Rendon Group," Independent Media Institute, February 28, 2002 Recommended reading: "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies," James Bamford ------------ About the author: Timothy Stelly is a 46-year old California native with a wide variety of interests-from fishing to politics, which have a lot in common: Both require you to deal with worms and most of your time is spent idling. He is a former Democrat, believing that Party represents outdated ideas. He is officially registered as an Independent, choosing to keep his options open. Timothy is also the author of more than 80 screenplays and novels, two of which have been "published": "Tempest In The Stone" and "The Malice Of Cain", both available through PublishAmerica. He defines his writing style as "Hip-hop fiction; a cross between Richard Pryor and Richard Wright." His UK columns is written in a hard-edged style, but he is not yet a curmudgeon or a conservative. (Is that redundant?) After all, one of his favorite movies is "The Adventures of Milo and Otis." stellbread0.tripod.com Email: stellbread@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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