Minister of propaganda, John Rendon

Rolling Stone profiles Bush's minister of propaganda, John Rendon: "Mark Frauenfelder:
James Bamford, author of the book 'A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies,' wrote an amazing, frightening article for Rolling Stone about John Rendon, a guy who has taken untold millions of US taxpayer dollars to produce propaganda designed to sell the idea of wars in the Middle East. He's the one who fed a gusher of lies to the New York Times' Judith Miller, who uncritically used the propaganda for her stories.

[T]he Pentagon had secretly awarded [Rendon] 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.

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