[CTRL] The Rendon Group is a secretive public relations firm that has assisted a number of U.S. military interventions
-Caveat Lector- http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Rendon_Group Center for Media Democracy | Spin of the Day | Forum Disinfopedia | Recent changes | Edit this page | Page history Printable version | Disclaimers Not logged in Log in | Help Go Search Rendon Group The Rendon Group is a secretive public relations firm that has assisted a number of U.S. military interventions in nations including Argentina, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Panama and Zimbabwe. Rendon's activities include organizing the Iraqi National Congress, a PR front group designed to foment the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In a 1998 speech to the National Security Conference (NSC), John Rendon described himself as an information warrior, and a perception manager. This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.' Through its network of international offices and strategic alliances, the Rendon Group website boasted in 2002, the company has provided communications services to clients in more than 78 countries, and maintains contact with government officials, decision-makers, and news media around the globe. Table of contents [showhide] 1 History 2 Personnel 3 Clients 4 Case studies 5 Contact Information 6 External Links History Company founder John Rendon began his career as an election campaign consultant to Democratic Party politicians. According to Franklin Foer, He masterminded Michael Dukakis's gubernatorial campaign in 1974; worked as executive director of the Democratic National Committee in the Jimmy Carter era; managed the 1980 Democratic convention in New York; and subsequently worked as chief scheduler for Carter's reelection campaign. In the mid-1980s, however, he began working for clients in the Caribbean and other places outside the United States. His career took an unlikely turn in Panama, where his work with political opponents of Manuel Noriega kept him in the country straight through the 1989 American invasion. As U.S. forces quickly invaded and quickly pulled out, he helped broker the transition of power. This in turn led to contacts with the CIA, and in 1990 the government-in-exile of Kuwait hired him to help drum up support for war in the Persian Gulf to oust Iraq's occupying army.[1] According to Rendon's web site, it established a full-scale communications operation for the Government of Kuwait, including the establishment of a production studio in London producing programming material for the exiled Kuwaiti Television. Rendon also provided media support for exiled government leaders and helped Kuwaiti officials after the war by providing press and site advance to incoming congressional delegations and other visiting US government officials. Rendon's work in Kuwait continued after the war itself had ended. If any of you either participated in the liberation of Kuwait City ... or if you watched it on television, you would have seen hundreds of Kuwaitis waving small American flags, John Rendon said in his speech to the NSC. 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 flags? And for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries? Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs. Rendon was also a major player in the CIA's effort to encourage the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In May 1991, then-President George Bush, Sr. signed a presidential finding directing the CIA to create the conditions for Hussein's removal. The hope was that members of the Iraqi military would turn on Hussein and stage a military coup. The CIA did not have the mechanisms in place to make that happen, so they hired the Rendon Group to run a covert anti-Saddam propaganda campaign. Rendon's postwar work involved producing videos and radio skits ridiculing Saddam Hussein, a traveling photo exhibit of Iraqi atrocities, and radio scripts calling on Iraqi army officers to defect. A February 1998 report by Peter Jennings cited records obtained by ABC News which showed that the Rendon Group spent more than $23 million dollars in the first year of its contract with the CIA. It worked closely with the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an opposition coalition of 19 Iraqi and Kurdish organizations whose main tasks were to gather information, distribute propaganda and recruit dissidents. According to ABC, Rendon came up with the name for the Iraqi National Congress and channeled $12 million of covert CIA funding to it between 1992 and 1996. Writing in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh says the Rendon Group was paid close to a hundred million dollars by the CIA for its work with the INC.[2] ClandestineRadio.com, a website which monitors underground and anti-government radio stations in countries throughout the world, credits the Rendon Group with designing and supervising the Iraqi Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) and Radio Hurriah,
[CTRL] The Rendon Group
-Caveat Lector- http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=299_0_1_0_C How To Sell a War The Rendon Group deploys perception management in the war on Iraq By Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber | 8.4.03 As U.S. tanks stormed into Baghdad on April 9, television viewers in the United States got their first feel-good moment of the wara chance to witness the toppling of a giant statue of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Americans channel-flipping over breakfast between Fox, CNN and CBS all saw the same images, broadcast live from Baghdads Firdos Square. For those who missed it in the morning, the images were continually replayed on cable news throughout the day, and newspapers carried front-page color photos. A crowd of jubilant Iraqis had climbed onto the statue, thrown a noose around its neck and tried to pull it down. A man with a sledgehammer began pounding at its concrete base. Others took turns, but the statue was too big and the base too massive, so the U.S. marines moved in with an armored vehicle and a chain. Saddams statue first bent from its pedestal and then snapped completely, to roars of approval from the crowd, which surged forward to stomp on its remains, kicking and spitting on the rubble. Whooping, they dragged its head through the street. Media commentators were quick to assign iconic significance to the statues tumble, ranking it alongside the fall of the Berlin Wall, the protesters facing down tanks at Tiananmen Square, and other great events caught on TV. NBCs Tom Brokaw compared the event to all the statues of Lenin [that] came down all across the Soviet Union. Iraqis Celebrate in Baghdad, reported the Washington Post. Jubilant Iraqis Swarm the Streets of Capital, said the headline in the New York Times. It was liberation day in Baghdad, proclaimed the Boston Globe. If you dont have goose bumps now, gushed Fox News anchor David Asman, you will never have them in your life. The problem is that the images of toppling statues and exulting Iraqis, to which American audiences were repeatedly exposed, obscured a larger reality. A Reuters long-shot photo of Firdos Square showed that it was nearly empty, ringed by U.S. tanks and marines who had moved in to seal off the square before admitting the Iraqis. A BBC photo sequence of the statues toppling also showed a sparse crowd of approximately 200 peoplemuch smaller than the demonstrations only nine days later, when thousands of Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad calling for U.S.-led forces to leave the city. Los Angeles Times reporter John Daniszewski, who was on the scene to witness the statues fall, caught an aspect of the days events that the other reporters missed. Most Iraqis were indeed glad to see Saddam go, he wrote, but he spoke near the scene with Iraqi businessman Jarrir Abdel-Kerim, who warned that Americans should not be deceived by the images they were seeing. A lot of people are angry at America, Abdel-Kerim said. Look how many people they killed. Today I saw some people breaking this monument, but there were peoplemen and womenwho stood there and said in Arabic: Screw America, screw Bush. So all this is not a simple situation. Perception Management The visual images, of course, are what most people will remember. But it is worth asking whether the toppling of Saddam was as spontaneous as it was made to appear. If this scene seemed a bit too picture-perfect, perhaps there is a reason. Consider, for example, the remarks that public relations consultant John Rendonwho, during the past decade, has worked extensively on Iraq for the Pentagon and the CIAmade on February 29, 1996, before an audience of cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy. I am not a national security strategist or a military tactician, Rendon said. 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. He reminded the Air Force cadets that when victorious troops rolled into Kuwait City at the end of the first war in the Persian Gulf, they were greeted by hundreds of Kuwaitis waving small American flags. The scene, flashed around the world on television screens, sent the message that U.S. Marines were being welcomed in Kuwait as liberating heroes. Did you ever stop to wonder, Rendon asked, 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? He paused for effect. Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether Rendon or any other PR specialist helped influence the toppling of Saddams statue or other specific images that the public saw during the war in Iraq. Public relations firms often do their work behind the scenes, and Rendonwith whom the Pentagon signed a new agreement in February 2002is usually reticent about his work. But his description
