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Read James Bamford: Who Needs Karen Hughes to Run U.S. Propoganda When John Rendon and Ahmed Chalabi are So Effective?
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Monday, Nov 21, 05, 10:19AM
It's a coldish, overcast day in Washington, D.C. -- and for local blog friends -- I'm over at the Starbucks at Connecticut & R Streets if you want to grab a latte and talk about the big issues of the day.
This place was the birthplace of not only The Washington Note but also Talking Points Memo. In fact, I'm sitting in a chair where Josh Marshall's used to be. I think that they have taken his over to the Smithsonian for preservation.
I am catching up with a lot of stuff today -- but I keep reading items that I feel deserve some serious attention, like the article by James Bamford that just appeared in Rolling Stone titled "The Man Who Sold the War." It's a profile of John Rendon, but also has quite a bit on Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi, whom I think not only successfully seduced America in a major disinformation intelligence effort but also marketed American secrets to Saddam Hussein (in an earlier coup effort) and to Iran.
For those of you who don't know James Bamford, you must go back and read his seminal book on the National Security Agency titled Puzzle Palace: Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization.
This book was first published in 1982, and I met James Bamford that year at UCLA when he was there for a ritzy conference on publishing, with Maxine Hong Kingston, and other writers. I gravitated towards Bamford at that conference and was intrigued by the fact that his book had opened up the super-secret NSA and that Bamford had been threatened with legal action and probable imprisonment by the U.S. government for proceeding with publication. He did proceed and he broke down one of the important doors of opaqueness in our democracy -- and probably inspired me to get into this business.
I had not met or seen James Bamford for 23 years -- though I have read everything he has produced -- and he showed up at the political hurricane-triggering event that I organized at the New America Foundation with Lawrence Wilkerson.
This preamble on Bamford is important because I think that it's useful for us to remember that the debates we are having today about the importance of transparency in national security decisions, the battles over Executive Privilege and checks and balances in our government, and the importance of robust civil society engagement in these debates -- in which the public holds the government accountable for its actions -- rests on the shoulders of giants like James Bamford who engaged in a serious wrestling match with the high priests of national security two and half decades ago.
Now, Bamford provides extraordinary detail about how the Bush administration hired John Rendon to do "what needed to be done" to get America positioned to invade Iraq. I am going to post a rather long excerpt of a much longer article that has appeared in Rolling Stone this week.
Read the entire thing -- but this will give you a sense of it:
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.
"They're very closemouthed about what they do," says Kevin McCauley, an editor of the industry trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "It's all cloak-and-dagger stuff."
Although Rendon denies any direct involvement with al-Haideri, the defector was the latest salvo in a secret media war set in motion by Rendon. In an operation directed by Ahmad Chalabi -- the man Rendon helped install as leader of the INC -- the defector had been brought to Thailand, where he huddled in a hotel room for days with the group's spokesman, Zaab Sethna. The INC routinely coached defectors on their stories, prepping them for polygraph exams, and Sethna was certainly up to the task -- he got his training in the art of propaganda on the payroll of the Rendon Group. According to Francis Brooke, the INC's man in Washington and himself a former Rendon employee, the goal of the al-Haideri operation was simple: pressure the United States to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein.
As the CIA official flew back to Washington with failed lie-detector charts in his briefcase, Chalabi and Sethna didn't hesitate. They picked up the phone, called two journalists who had a long history of helping the INC promote its cause and offered them an exclusive on Saddam's terrifying cache of WMDs.
For the worldwide broadcast rights, Sethna contacted Paul Moran, an Australian freelancer who frequently worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "I think I've got something that you would be interested in," he told Moran, who was living in Bahrain. Sethna knew he could count on the trim, thirty-eight-year-old journalist: A former INC employee in the Middle East, Moran had also been on Rendon's payroll for years in "information operations," working with Sethna at the company's London office on Catherine Place, near Buckingham Palace.
"We were trying to help the Kurds and the Iraqis opposed to Saddam set up a television station," Sethna recalled in a rare interview broadcast on Australian television. "The Rendon Group came to us and said, 'We have a contract to kind of do anti-Saddam propaganda on behalf of the Iraqi opposition.' What we didn't know -- what the Rendon Group didn't tell us -- was in fact it was the CIA that had hired them to do this work."
The INC's choice for the worldwide print exclusive was equally easy: Chalabi contacted Judith Miller of The New York Times. Miller, who was close to I. Lewis Libby and other neoconservatives in the Bush administration, had been a trusted outlet for the INC's anti-Saddam propaganda for years. Not long after the CIA polygraph expert slipped the straps and electrodes off al-Haideri and declared him a liar, Miller flew to Bangkok to interview him under the watchful supervision of his INC handlers. Miller later made perfunctory calls to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, but despite her vaunted intelligence sources, she claimed not to know about the results of al-Haideri's lie-detector test. Instead, she reported that unnamed "government experts" called his information "reliable and significant" -- thus adding a veneer of truth to the lies.
We should salute John Murtha for his leadership and honesty last week, but I also want to salute James Bamford for this important journalism and his bravery in creating a much more confident style of press reporting on national security issues. A "Dana Priest"-type would be hard to imagine if Bamford had not done what he did on the NSA.
-- Steve Clemons
Modesty is a virtue:
"I had not met or seen James Bamford for 23 years -- though I have read everything he has produced -- and he showed up at the political hurricane-triggering event that I organized at the New America Foundation with Lawrence Wilkerson."
Creating without claiming,
Doing without taking credit,
Guiding without interfering,
This is primal virtue.
The Tao te Ching
Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego.'
Friedrich Nietzsche
He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects
Humility makes great men twice honorable.
Franklin, Benjamin
When someone sings his own praises, he always gets the tune too high.
Waldrip, Mary H.
Well Steve,
I agree, the conference with Lawrence Wilkerson was a politcal hurricane triggering event, however immodest it may appear to someone that you would simply state that fact.
Thanks for the excerpts from James Bamford. It's a bit scary to have someone confirm your worst fears. One might want to read a book called "Propoganda" by Jacques Elleul, which exlains techniques of manipulating public opinion. Very insightful on how Madison Avenue uses brainwashing and Pavlovian conditioning techniques to get you to do what they want. The same techniques that sell soap sell war.
Steve,
When will you invite John Rendon to one of the brown bag lunches at the New America Foundation to talk about the Rendon Group?
As a family run business, the Rendon Group also has a Boston office that takes on and supports environmental issues, the arts and music and other "liberal" causes. see Amy Goodman's interview of Bamford at democracynow.org
Hello "Desmayed admirer",
I am surprise it took you this long the find out that Steve is not a humble guy! His big Ego is in every blog he posts....
Interview with Bamford on Democracy Now!, with partial (so far) transcript)
People, let's not be diverted by the state or magnitude of Clemons' ego. He DID organize the conference, and Wilkerson's comments CAN be compared to a hurricane. If you find Clemons' claim of responsibility offensive, don't read his blog. But please, let's not descend to the gutter level of lots of discussion boards, where people resort to personal rants and attacks.
The issue here is the conscious deception (not yet proven, granted) of the Bush Administration in taking us to war. There could be no greater grounds for impeachment. This is as serious a public issue as any in my memory which, at 72 years of age, is long (if not always accurate!) We need to discuss this issue with intelligence, clarity, and imagination, and to share information and insights; beating up on Steve Clemons wastes EVERYONE'S time and energy. Enough.
The Rendon disclosure here is certainly the first I've heard, and seems to offer grounds for an airtight case of willful deception. It has not appeared in the mainstream media, but it must be fairly common knowledge among the political cognoscenti in D.C.
If I'm not over the hill yet I'm high enough to get nosebleeds, and I live far from the action, but with such evidence as Bamford's, why is the inquiry into Bush's deception so muted, so fractured, so timid?
Whatever his ego might be (it seems utterly inoffensive to me), bless Steve Clemons' bones, his contacts, and his keyboard for daylighting this.
Dear Dismayed Admirer and Rita (or is it Dave or Lori -- other names you use to post):
Thanks for the admonition on posts and ego. I have been somewhat chastened by Dismayed Admirer's comments -- but Rita is a regular critic, so we can all chase predictable grooves.
To be clear, I have the view that the things that New America is organizing, that I am writing, and helping to get others to articulate -- can have a public policy impact. I don't do any of this out of a sense that I and what I am helping to launch will be irrelevant to the debates or public policy course the country is on. There are times, I feel quite comfortable taking credit -- and many, many times when I remain quiet or give credit to others.
On the Wilkerson front, most credit is due Lawrence Wilkerson -- but the point of the matter is that I want to note -- for branding reasons -- that Wilkerson's talk did occur at the New America Foundation, and that his talk has had impact. So yes, if you perceive that to be taking credit -- then so be it.
And yes, Rita/Dave/Lori, my "big ego" permeates much of what I do, like many others who hope to have some impact on the foreign policy process in this town. I try not to be a "jerk" about this -- but at the same time, I'm not the passive type. Thanks for stating the obvious though.
Best,
Steve Clemons
Finally! Someone gets a major media outlet to spill the beans on Miller's affiliation with Rendon Group. Paul Rendon was getting paid by Rendon for his work covering al-Haideri. Was Miller? Was she only doing this water-carrying for Rendon because she was sweet on Chalabi, or has she been a paid freelancer for RG for years? No wonder she could get security clearances and embeds and order military around .... she was working for the Pentagon as a contractor in "Information Services".
Like Rumsfeld said when forced to end the OSI office, "I've given you the name. That's all that you'll get." He then outsourced the entire propaganda effort to Rendon.
The list of "journalists" and "pundits" that are on the government teat is going to be long and appalling.
Eh, sorry, that was "Paul Moran was being paid by the Rendon Group" in the second sentence above.
Dear RW Behan:
Thanks for the supportive comment. The issue that some have raised is one about whether writing a blog -- organizing events -- etc. are self-aggrandizing, ego-gratifying events or not. The fact is that they are, in part. I think that that is what "Dismayed Admirer" is getting at, and from my view point there is nothing wrong at all with this person warning me to be careful about ideas and forces launched and the issue of taking personal credit.
The reason I specifically mentioned New America and my role with Wilkerson is to highlight that the collective activities of New America (and this blog -- which is separate from New America) are to try and shake up the foreign policy world in Washington and to try and suggest more enlightened and better policy paths for the country to pursue.
This blog is my R&D shop. I think things through here -- it's HIGHLY personal. New America and the Wilkerson event are greater gambits -- where the forces we try and unleash are designed to try and have consequence.
I want New America and its American Strategy Program to be known as constructive, dissident institutions. Shyness or modesty won't help this institution or me personally achieve the results we want.
Thus, for those who want modesty and passivity, there are probably better options than this blog to read.
If you want engagement -- serious debate -- and want to wrestle with ideas and alternative policy notions -- then this is a good place to hang out.
But be warned -- occasionally (not in every post Rita -- but lots of them), you are going to hear me convey what I did, what I thought, what I helped organize or launch. You will hear me mention names -- drop names -- and personalize a lot of the debate I'm engaged in. That's what happens on this blog. It's personal, it's real. . .it's not distant.
Sometimes, you will see me slip into a veil of modesty, distance, or uncertainty about something -- but that is more the exception than the rule.
But still, I do thank "Dismayed Admirer" for the thoughtful rebuke -- but I don't think that my original post was inappropriate as all. But there will be times when I get in gratuitous self-aggrandizing modes that his/her commentary will be useful to remember.
Rita, on the other hand, your note is less friendly and certainly not constructive -- but you are welcome to post as well.
-- Steve Clemons
As a blogger myself - a shameless, vanity plug, I assume you will assert - I find the comment about blog humility hilarious. First, if you know anything about the web, it's that people are coming to you new and ignorant of your positions and backgraound at every click. Having written on the web for almost 10 years... well, I'll stop here, because my ego just belched. Anyway... When someone like Steve posts something as important as the Bamford - Wilkerson reference, it's critical for purposes of context. Not everyone reads a person's bio before reading our blog bloviations; again, calling it that in context to the vanity comment. Because if we are just speaking out to feed our own ego, then it is indeed bloviating, in the company of Bill O'Reilly.
For Steve and others (even me), thoughtful discourse and consideration of topics given must be set in context. Steve did that for all his readers, including the ones who stop by and don't know from what base Steve's opinions are reached. His blog is better for it and readers in the the blogosphere more informed.
To me the most interesting implication of this very interesting story is "preplanned blowback" as in:
1) neocons push through Iraq Liberation Act supporting INC 2)Rendon gets US money for regime change effort 3) INC and Rendon cook up WMD story 4) Story is handed to CIA--now it's stovepipeable intel product that can be stripped of its caveats 4) story is released to media--of course, caveats are omitted--as quality CIA intel, to shape opinion.
What if this was the plan from the very beginning: to get a "foot in the door" with legislation that provided funding and legitimized subversion against Iraq, then use this infrastructure as an enabling condition to create the intel and political pretexts for a "good" war, a war that was expected to be a triumphant cakewalk against an opponent we were determined to overthrow--and we knew didn't have any WMDs--made possible by some "really neat" psyops legerdedmain using cooperative people like Rendon as cut-outs.
That's why I think the Italian yellowcake situation has such explosive potential. What if the whole forged documents imbroglio was an active effort to solicit and plant spurious allegations about Iraq's nuclear program, with the Italian secret service playing the INC role and some neocon stringpuller with close links to Cheney in the Rendon role?
If the Iraq war had turned out great, these little off-the-books operations would have been quietly celebrated with backslapping and braggadocio in spookworld. But now they just look sordid, incompetent, and impeachment-worthy.
Steve:
Thanks for your clarification. The admiration of the undersigned for your good work is genuine. However, sweetness of the dithyramb is always greater when sung by others. Confucius got it right. True, organization of the conference with Wilkerson had impact. Your impact on public policy debates and public policy formulation is to be desired and will be enhanced and extended in its reach as long as scrupulous vigilance against the natural human tendency towards self-satisfaction is maintained.
Was it not Michael Moore who declared to a global audience at the Academy Awards with sage prescience in 2003:
"We like non-fiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.
Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr Bush."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2879857.stm
before being dragged off the stage? Was he not roundly ridiculed and scorned by the radical right but, worse, by the progressive and DNC policy establishment and by the mainstream media establishment? When you're right, you're right. Michael Moore gets original credit for being the Zephyr that spawned any hurricane of truth exposure concerning the massive historic fraud of WMD in Iraq. Everything else ensuing are gathering winds. Has Michael Moore been invited to the New America Foundation to share his thoughts on this belated mainstreaming of familiarity with truth and courage? A panel with Wilkerson, Moore, Newt Gingrich, Hilary Clinton, Senator Lugar, Evan Bayh and Scowcroft would really get the winds howling. Throw Mark Warner in for some added sobriety.
$1,000 per second appearing in the link provided - entirely foreseen by the wise.
Pragmatism and realism call for understanding that Iraq calls for (1) a 10-15 year plan and (2) allies.
I have no idea who "Dave" is.
Best,
No Longer Dismayed Admirer
The Rendon Group's letter to the editor of Rolling Stone refuting some of Bamford's claims is at
Norwood Girl,
The Rendon Group letter is something of a "non-denial denial." It doesn't deny their involvement directly -- it quotes a former government official as denying their involvement.
See what Laura Rozen wrote on this...
I read the RS piece last night, it tells a story that's been out in bit and drabs in an understandable compelling narrative. There were articles about Rendonin the alternative press -- and UK Guardian, I think -- back in the summer of 2003 when Paul Moran was killed in Iraq. I remember at the time there was quite an effort by the Australian paper he was working with to that he played any central role in TRG'S "perception management" campaigns. The story went that Moran's gigs with Rendon were the typical sorts of assignments any free lancer takes on to pay the bills. Uh-huh.
I think it's imperative that we confront this manipulation of news and information and how it's perceived, so it's important to note that Rendon doesn't work exclusively for the Pentagon/intel communities. Rendon has worked for Dems and Republcans to fashion such mind-control campaigns, one of its divisions played a large role in fashioning and coordinating the Dem message during the 2004 convention, iirc.
I am so bloody sick and tired of our political dialogue being all about party or particular politicos' ambitions, with the public's voice seen as something to be controlled and manipulated rather than fostered and heard. Beyond their role in manufacturing consent for pre-determined war policies, the Rendons have played an enormous road in the deplorable condition the marketplace of ideas is in now.
Halcyon Days is correct about the "yellow cake" affair being explosive.
But experience and history tell me that when the evidence of things like that gets close to the source of the lie, and the source is someone in the White House, a "bipartrisian committee" will get together behind closed doors and work out a "deal".
Alas.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20051121/1a_lede21.art.htm
I'ts not lunatics who have taken over the asylum so much as demons.
Here is the ultimate exposure of the 'Dante's Inferno' that the American dream has become. It would be funny if it was not so grim for the victims (among whom, in a way, are the entire US population).
I don't want to beat this to death, but I think you're completely off base Dismayed.
First of all, it's your ego that causes you to think your eligible to stand in judgement of Steve.
Further, wasn't the primary objective of Confucious to keep the masses in line? That idea would be diametrically opposed to the objective of this blog, where we're contradicting the imposed will of certain leaders. A quote by Confucious would seem completely inappropriate. I don't particularly want to be one of the cowed masses.
As a web person I'll add that the more context that people put into their posts (not an excuse to post books), the easier it is for search engines to classify and report the results. Personally, I want people to find this blog and read the ideas (plural) found here.
In addition, I like knowing that we're hearing and participating in the formation of ideas of someone that has influence in leadership circles. Only by hearing of meetings, discussions, and impacts do I know what the results are that are shared here.
And lastly, I've never seen Arianna respond to a particular post nor have I had her reply to one of my emails, both of which I've seen Steve do.
So a little humility (or removing the beam in your own eye before commenting on specks) might be a good first step for you Dismayed.
It is this same hubris that has convinced certain politicians and lobbyists that they can use any form of deceit to carry out their own objectives because they know better than their critics.
It seems to me, in my experience with politicians, that the temptation when writing the laws is to think you are above them.
We now return you to your originally scheduled program.
This is the kind of Consent Manufacturing Chomsky has been chiding the government and MSM about for years; and he's accused of being a fringe paranoid.
Rendon's wife, Sandra Libby, handles the books as chief financial officer and "senior communications strategist."
um...are we not supposed to notice this?
greetings Steve, in a nutshell:
DONT CHANGE ANYTHING due to ignorant readers at your website! Funny you should mention Josh at talkingpointsmemo.com in one of your posts tonight,my friends and I consider your site and Josh's two of the best for serious,thoughtful information. Here's to fine writing with a tasteful dash of ego! P.S. looking forward to the day Bolton gets carted off to jail for oh,I dont know,possibly assaulting a real diplomat?
Don,
A few points:
1) You've made a lot of assumptions in your commentary which are baseless. I'll leave it to you to reflect on precisely what they are and on their illogic.
2) You may wish to read The Analects. Your understanding of Confucius' views are based on caricature.
3) It is precisely your (and Nancy/CA's) illiberal refusal to countenance criticism of approaches - thankfully not shared by Steve - which contributes to the inability of the progressive elite to reason things out and approach things in a way that's palatable to the red state masses. It is precisely the semblance of an attitude that "I am the savior of the world" and "I know best" which alienates a huge plurality of voting Americans. Sure, effective leaders should believe they know best (even when they don't), but they must persuade skillfully. (That latter comment has no direct bearing on Steve's leadership traits in case that's not obvious.)
Note to Steve:
On the subject of passivity - what are you and your regular readers doing *actively* to advertise/promote your blog? It deserves to be read from coast to coast by influential thinkers, conservative and progressive.
Dear Folks -- I just want to make clear that I was not put off in any sense by the comments that my ego and my posts may be overly co-mingled. That happens on occasion, though I think in this case on this post that was less true than may seem immediately apparent. But it's like speeding -- when the cop finally stops me, I may have been 8 miles over limit, but on other occasions, I may certainly have been in quite illegal territory.
Anyway, thanks to those of you who have debated this one way or the other. The only thing I mind is ad hominem attacks, or stalker type posts (I won't mention names in this regard -- but I, like other bloggers, have occasional problems with this). I don't mind debate -- and I don't mind folks telling me where I have slipped up. As long as I get my chance to respond -- and as long as discourse stays civil.
So, to my dismayed and no longer dismayed admirer, thanks for your good humor -- and thanks to others of you for stepping in and sharing views on personalities, agendas, and blogs. It's been interesting.
On the subject of promoting the blog, I think it's getting out there. It's read regularly by some interesting folks -- and my hunch is that blogs like this grow because of word of mouth and links. So, when I write or suggest things worth thinking about, the blog will grow in readership and impact. When I don't, it will rest a bit....but thanks very much to those of you on all sides of these debates for your support.
-- Steve Clemons
Who's to say that Rep. Murtha isn't a coward? It's only a matter of time before the White House and their embedded buddies (Woodward School)do a 'Swift Boat' job on him and recollections are in circulation of how he ran away in some village skirmish in the jungle circa 1971. Check this link for the real war heroes.
http://www.nhgazette.com/news/chickenhawks/politicans_platoon/
Here's an example of work by some more heroes of peace and democracy:
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