Filtering the War

As the US military bolsters its efforts in Afghanistan, a private firm with a colorful history was hired to flag applicant journalists critical of the war for the US government, Jody Ray Bennett writes for ISN Security Watch.

During the last week of August, Stars and Stripes ran a story covering the activities of a private company that had been contracted by the US Department of Defense (DoD) to external pagegather information on journalists requesting to be embedded in US military operations in Afghanistan.

The coverage detailed the work conducted by external pageThe Rendon Group, a public relations firm that was awarded a $1.5-million contract for “news analysis and media assessment,” which apparently included the previous work of embedded journalists with the US military.

According to the external pagesubsequent coverage by Stars and Stripes, The Rendon Group was contracted to provide “statistical analysis of reporting trends inside and outside of the country and coverage of specific topics such as counternarcotics operations [as well as] analyz[ing] how effectively the [US] military is communicating its message.”

As a result, external pagethe company recently stated that it regularly “examines individual reporters’ recent work and determines whether the coverage was ‘positive,’ ‘negative’ or ‘neutral’ compared to mission objectives.”

The situation has created a external pageheightened concern among journalists who suspect that their applications for embedding with the US military were denied as a external pageresult of analyses by The Rendon Group, which profiled specific journalistic work as being detrimental to US military operations.

A new target

One journalist who external pageaccidentally intercepted a Rendon Group report on his own work stated the Rendon Group told the US military that, “most notably, he tends to quote experts which [have] been critical of the coalition mission and the Afghan government."

The journalist later stated, “A day after the e-mail - which included the Rendon analysis - was sent to the officer, my application was rejected without explanation.”

However, Nir Rosen, a journalist who was one of the first to be profiled by the company, recently had his application accepted to embed with the US military. However, when Rosen intercepted his Rendon Group report, which referred to a external pageRolling Stone article he wrote, external pageit stated:

“Rosen’s report was highly unfavorable to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. The article portrayed the Taliban as a relatively coherent and effective fighting force that, in reality, controls the majority of the country. Rosen relayed Taliban propaganda and exaggerations as factual information, without significantly noting the questionability of such information. Rosen also stated that the Taliban perform many of the functions of the government, such as providing judicial and security services. […] Rosen referred to Taliban commanders and leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan as 'officials,' apparently putting them on equal footing with the Afghan government. The report contained quotations from unnamed Western and UN officials and academics that supported his conclusion that Afghanistan is largely a lost cause.” 

In a later external pageinterview with DemocracyNow!, Rosen stated that he thought that this sort of practice was “normal,” especially given an organization so large that “invites scrutiny” is also involved in dangerous and serious matters concerning sensitive state objectives abroad. While Rosen referred to a natural tension between the interests of journalists and the US government, he later stated that what “struck [him] as odd was that [the US military] would hire this expensive public relations” to profile and analyze the work of journalists applying to be embedded.

Tim King, a journalist with Oregon-based Salem News, explained to ISN Security Watch that after a brigade of soldiers from his state were deployed to Iraq, his plans to join them fell through.

“I was personally invited to go over to Iraq with the Brigade's commanding officer, but all planning from the military suddenly stopped cold,” King told ISN Security Watch.

“Plenty of people think the embed program is nothing but a sellout program in the first place.  The greater reality is that journalists have a much better chance of surviving these types of work conditions if they are embedded [with US forces].  There should be an integral embed program that supports the rights of working journalists to maintain a large degree of privacy,” King said.

Re-education, the Rendon way

The relationship between the US government and the Rendon Group external pagegoes back as far as 1989 when it was “hired by the CIA to assist the campaign of Guillermo Endara against Manuel Noriega in Panama.”

external pageIts website boasts that from an “office in Washington, DC, [which] operates a 24/7 media monitoring watch-center in support of both clients and TRG personnel working on location worldwide” it has “worked in 91 countries planning and managing strategic and tactical communications programs across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.”

A self-described “external pageinformation warrior and perception manager,” The Rendon Group’s founder and CEO, John Rendon, in a external page1996 speech commenting on the scenes of victorious US soldiers rolling into Kuwait City at the end of the first Persian Gulf war, asked the audience of US military and government personnel: “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, and for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries? Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then.”

Since then, it has been reported that The Rendon Group earned millions to create “external pagecard decks” of wanted criminals or political leaders, external pageinfluence elections, external pageestablish a pro-US Iraqi opposition group (coined later by Rendon as the external pageIraqi National Congress) six months prior to the US invasion of Iraq, stage and present the external pagetoppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad post- invasion, external pagemanage the public relations of “US strikes” parallel with the US invasion in Afghanistan, to name a few.

On the last day of August, the US military external pageterminated the contract with the Rendon Group for profiling journalists in Afghanistan, stating “the issue of Rendon’s support to US forces in Afghanistan had become a distraction from the main mission.

“I believe it was another big money move like KBR [Kellogg Brown and Root] feeding all Americans at military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military has the funding, people and infrastructure to adequately handle its own informational quests. The bottom line is that reporters who are critical of the war and denied the opportunity to embed in the first place, now understand a few more things about that,” Tim King told ISN Security Watch.

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