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Pentagon Psychological Warfare Operations Against U.S. Citizens


http://www.planetnetopia.com/forum/posts/id_95/title_psychological-warfare-operations-u-s-citizens/


Evidence of Pentagon Psychological Warfare Operations Against U.S.
Citizens Surfaces in Want Ads


The U.S. military's domestic operations command says it is not
planning or conducting a secret psychological warfare campaign to
manipulate the opinions of American citizens, despite a U.S. Air
Force document suggesting such activities might be taking place.

"We do not do information operations against the American public,"
said Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kelly, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Northern
Command, known as NORTHCOM, based in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Kelly confirmed that there is a "psyops," or psychological warfare
operations, unit at NORTHCOM but said its work is "designed to
influence and deter foreign enemies from attacking the United
States."

NORTHCOM was created after the 9/11 attacks to direct military
operations, including intelligence analysis, air defense and support
for civilian first responders, inside the United States. It shares
the military's counterterrorism mission with the Pentagon's Pacific
Command, Central Command and Strategic Command.

The possibility of a propaganda program run out of the military's
domestic headquarters surfaced with a phrase in an online employment
ad.

Flashback:
Propaganda: Remember the Kuwaiti babies?

If you liked the lie about the murder of Kuwaiti babies after Iraq's
invasion of the oil-rich emirate in 1990, you'll love the Office of
Strategic Information.

That is, if the Pentagon's new office of shadow plays survives in the
form it had been envisioned.

Last week The New York Times reported that the Defense Department is
paying the Rendon Group, a Washington-based international consulting
firm, $100,000 per month to help the OSI with a broad campaign that
would include "black" propaganda, or disinformation -- commonly known
as lies.

This brought to mind one of the most notorious pieces of
disinformation promulgated the last time the government wanted to
build public support for a war against Iraq. It was fabricated by
Hill and Knowlton, one of the world's largest public relations firms.
This is the story that in 1990 invading Iraqi soldiers pulled Kuwaiti
premature babies from their incubators and left them to die on the
cold floor. The Bush administration has scrambled away from the storm
of criticism sparked by the Times' report, and the president promised
Monday that his government would not lie about defense policy. On
Sunday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on NBC's "Meet the
Press": "The person in charge is debating whether it should even
exist in its current form, given all the misinformation and adverse
publicity it has received."

The OSI was created shortly after Sept. 11 to build public support
abroad for the U.S. war on terrorism.

On Wednesday, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith
told reporters that the Pentagon would never lie to the public. But
United Press International's Pentagon correspondent Pamela Hess wrote
that Feith "refused to rule out the possibility that hired guns --
private lobbying or public relations firms with more legal latitude --
would spread misinformation on the Pentagon's behalf."

On Monday a spokeswoman in the Office of the Secretary of Defense
said Feith's words had been misconstrued.

"I don't think he said that we might hire 'hired guns,'" said Army
Lt. Col. Catherine Abbot. "I think that's a misinterpretation of what
he said."

But the transcript of the Feb. 20 Defense Writers' Group breakfast
meeting supports Hess' interpretation. Feith was asked twice if he
had ruled out the possibility of contractors spreading
disinformation, and he evaded the question both times.

The Rendon Group said it would not lie.

Spokeswoman Jeanne Sklarz declined to discuss the nature of Rendon's
contract with the Pentagon. "Let me just say that we have a
confidentiality/nondisclosure agreement in place" with the Department
of Defense. "We don't speak about the work we do for clients," she
told UPI.

"The only thing I can say is that we have not, do not, and will not
engage in disinformation."

According to The New York Times, "the Rendon Group has done extensive
work for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Kuwaiti royal family
and the Iraqi National Congress, the opposition group seeking to oust
President Saddam Hussein. ... The firm is well known for running
propaganda campaigns in Arab countries, including one denouncing
atrocities by Iraq during its 1990 invasion of Kuwait."

Reminded of Hill and Knowlton's incubator story -- which echoed World
War I Allied propaganda that invading German soldiers had bayoneted
and mutilated Belgian babies in 1914 -- Sklarz said: "We would not do
that. ... (President) John Rendon really believes that you don't need
anything other than the truth to deliver messages."

UPI asked Hill and Knowlton if it now acknowledges the incubator
story as a deception. "The company has nothing to say on this
matter," media liaison Suzanne Laurita replied. When asked if such a
deception would be considered part of the public relations business,
she answered: "Please know again that this falls into the realm that
the agency has no wish to confirm, deny or comment on."

The Iraqi invaders were guilty of enough acts of gratuitous cruelty,
as numerous eyewitnesses reported, that one wonders why inventing an
atrocity was considered necessary.

Hill and Knowlton did not produce the deception under a federal
contract, but rather on behalf of the oil-rich Kuwaiti government. An
appearance of U.S. government validation, however, came from a
hearing of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on Oct. 10, 1990.

In his 1992 book "Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf
War," Harpers magazine publisher John R. MacArthur wrote that the
caucus is not a committee of Congress, before which it would be a
crime to lie under oath. "Lying from under the cover of anonymity to
a caucus is merely public relations."

The 15-year-old star witness was indeed anonymous, identified only by
her first name of Nayirah. "According to the caucus, Nayirah's full
name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against
her family in occupied Kuwait," MacArthur wrote.

In fact, she was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, and her
father -- ambassador to the United States Saud Nasir al-Sabah -- sat
listening in the hearing room. Sobbing, Nayirah described how she, as
a volunteer at al-Addan Hospital in Kuwait City, had seen Iraqi
soldiers remove 312 babies from their incubators and leave them to
die on the floor.

On Jan. 12, 1991, the U.S. Senate approved support of the war against
Iraq by a narrow, five-vote margin. Did the story about the murdered
babies make the critical difference?

Let's hope we don't get any "stories" like this from contractors
working for the Office of Strategic Information.

(Deleted by US ‘sic’ intelligence.)

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