THIS WEEK'S NATIONAL NEWS:

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The Pentagon’s information warrior: Rendon to the rescue

US police unprepared to defend Muslims post-9/11

ACLU denounces Pentagon’s
new cyber-spying system

Nation Briefs

The Pentagon’s information warrior: Rendon to the rescue

By Laura Miller and Sheldon Rampton

“I am not a National Security strategist or a military tactician,” says John W. Rendon, Jr., whose DC-based PR firm was recently hired by the Pentagon to win over the hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims worldwide.

“I am a politician,” Rendon said in a 1998 speech to the National Security Conference (NSC), “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. This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote ‘When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.’”

The Rendon Group’s contract with the Pentagon was awarded on a no-bid basis, reflecting the government’s determination to hire a firm already versed in running overseas propaganda operations. Rendon specializes in “assisting corporations, organizations, and governments achieve their policy objectives.” Past clients include the CIA, USAID, the government of Kuwait, Monsanto Chemical Company, and the official trade agencies of countries including Bulgaria, Russia, and Uzbekistan.

“Through its network of international offices and strategic alliances,” the Rendon Group website boasts, “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.”

The Pentagon stipulates that the Rendon Group will receive $400,000 for four months of work. Details are confidential, but according to the San Jose Mercury News, Rendon will be monitoring international news media, conducting focus groups, creating a web site about the US campaign against terrorism, and recommending “ways the US military can counter disinformation and improve its own public communications.”

Rendon and Desert Storm

In dollar terms, Rendon’s Pentagon contract resembles the $100,000 monthly retainer that it received in the early 1990s from the Kuwaiti government as part of a multi-million-dollar PR campaign denouncing Iraq’s 1990 invasion and mobilizing public support for Operation Desert Storm.

The Rendon Group’s website states that during the Gulf War, 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.” Several of Rendon’s non-governmental clients also have headquarters in Kuwait: Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, Kuwait University, American Housing Consortium, American Business Council of Kuwait, and KPMY/Peat Marwick.

The Rendon Group’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 in the first year of its contract with the CIA. It worked closely with the Iraqi National Congress, 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.

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, which began broadcasting Iraqi opposition propaganda in January 1992 from a US government transmitter in Kuwait. According to a September 1996 article in Time magazine, six CIA case officers supervised the IBC’s 11 hours of daily programming and Iraqi National Congress activities in the Iraqi Kurdistan city of Arbil. These activities came to an abrupt end on Aug. 31, 1996, when the Iraqi army invaded Arbil and executed all but 12 out of 100 IBC staff workers along with about 100 members of the Iraqi National Congress.

Today’s PR war

The work of the Rendon Group is only one element of the Bush Administration’s PR campaign. The United States has established “instant response” communications offices in Washington, London and Islamabad, and senior administration officials are regularly talking to Arabic news media.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 8 that the Army’s “4th Psychological Operations (Psy-ops) group” designed leaflets and radio broadcasts inside Afghanistan “to persuade enemy fighters to quit, and to convince civilians that US bombs raining down on their country will result in a better future for their families.”

A separate advertising campaign is headed by Charlotte Beers, a former Madison Avenue advertising executive who was recently named the State Department’s Undersecretary of State for “public diplomacy” (the official government euphemism for “public relations”). The New York Times reported that Beers is “planning a television and advertising campaign to try to influence Islamic opinion; one segment could feature American celebrities, including sports stars, and a more emotional message.”

In an October interview with Advertising Age, Beers said public diplomacy “is a vital new arm in what will combat terrorism over time. All of a sudden, we are in this position of redefining who America is, not only for ourselves under this kind of attack, but also for the outside world.” The corporate-funded Advertising Council is reportedly working with Beers on developing the campaign. According to Advertising Age, the Ad Council “has boiled its message down to one strategic idea: freedom.”

Hollywood executives have also joined the White House brain trust, conferring with administration officials on ways to help spread the US message at home and abroad. “It’s possible the entertainment industry could help the government formulate its message to the rest of the world about who Americans are, and what they believe,” said Bryce Zabel, chairman of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Voice of America has dramatically increased its radio broadcasts in Arabic, Dari, Pashto, Farsi, and Urdu, but has had difficult reaching crucial elements of the Arab population in the Middle East. “We have almost no youthful audience under the age of 25 in the Arab world and we are concerned that ... this important segment of the population has enormous distrust of the United States,” said Marc Nathanson, a spokesman for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the entity that oversees international public broadcasting operations for the United States.

To know us is to love us

Many of the people charged with masterminding the propaganda war seem handicapped by a naïve belief that the US is simply misunderstood abroad. “They hate us out of ignorance,” is a common trope. Communications strategies are being developed on the assumption that if “they” just knew how good “we” are and how much we love “freedom,” then they will support the war.

“How is it that the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has such trouble promoting a positive image of itself overseas?” asked Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee. President Bush has expressed similar bafflement. “I’m amazed that there’s such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us,” he said. “We’ve got to do a better job of making our case.”

Lee McKnight, director of the Edward R. Murrow Center at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, says this inability to understand the thinking of the Arab world is the single biggest reason that the United States is winning the military battle but losing the propaganda war. “We can’t convince anyone we’re right if we don’t understand their point of view,” he said.

The spin doctors and politicians have failed to realize that propaganda cannot hope to change opinions when fundamental US policies remain the same. “No amount of media management will matter if the US is not also seen — and actually working on — ways to resolve some of the intractable conflicts which have served to feed fanaticism and anti-US sentiment throughout many Arabic and Islamic nations,” McKnight said.

“The United States lost the public relations war in the Muslim world a long time ago,” says Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News. “They could have the prophet Muhammad doing public relations and it wouldn’t help.”

“The calculus of human suffering is far less clear from the perspective of the Middle East,” observes Princeton University history professor Nicholas Guyatt, “and the awful images of Sept. 11 fade quickly when supplanted by Israeli attacks on Bethlehem or even the ‘collateral damage’ of the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan.” The US cannot hope to win the battle for hearts and minds until its leaders realize the importance of deeds in addition to words and begin to promote real democracy, peace and human rights in the Muslim world.

Source: Center for Media & Democracy

US police unprepared to defend Muslims post-9/11

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Nov. 14 (IPS)— US police acted quickly to protect Muslims and other groups targeted after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but they should have been better prepared for such incidents, says a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

That lack of foresight is one reason why anti-Muslim hate crimes in the US rose 1,700 percent during 2001, despite calls by public officials, including US President George W. Bush, for citizens to respect the rights of Muslims.

Crimes included at least three and as many as seven murders, at least 49 other violent assaults, and dozens of incidents of vandalism and property damage, especially against mosques, most of them within the first week after the attacks.

The 41-page report, “We Are Not the Enemy,” concludes that many US police departments made serious efforts to contain violence against suspected Muslims and mosques, but it calls for law-enforcement agencies to adopt pre-emptive policies, including building closer ties with local Muslim communities, to prevent violence against Muslim targets in the event of future terrorist incidents.

“Government officials didn’t sit on their hands while Muslims and Arabs were attacked after Sept. 11,” said Amardeep Singh, author of the report and HRW’s US program researcher. “But law-enforcement and other government agencies should have been better prepared for this kind of onslaught.”

The backlash was entirely predictable, according to the report, which locates the beginning of serious anti-Muslim harassment in the United States at the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and oil embargo.

Six years later, the Iran hostage crisis and the 1980 “ABSCAM” (short for “Arab Scam”) scandal — a federal sting operation in which FBI agents posed as wealthy sheiks and offered bribes to politicians — added fuel to a growing fire of anti-Islamic sentiment in the United States, it says.

The 1990-91 Gulf War set off the first major wave of hate crimes nationwide against US Arabs and Muslims.

While the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) reported only four anti-Arab hate crimes from January to August 1990 — when Iraq invaded Kuwait — it recorded 40 hate crimes between August and the start of the US military offensive in mid-January 1991, and 44 more during the first week of the campaign.

Similarly, the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, which the mainstream media speculated was the work of Muslim terrorists for three days before the FBI identified right-wing individuals as the culprits, gave rise to scores of incidents of harassment, assault and property damage.

As a result, says the report, when last year’s attacks took place, Muslims, Arabs and Sikhs (who have been often mistaken for Muslims) were expecting a major backlash against them.

“Unlike previous hate crime waves, however, the Sept. 11 backlash distinguished itself by its ferocity and extent,” it says. “The full dimensions of the backlash may never be known,” in part due to the voluntary and incomplete nature of the various reporting systems used by police.

The potential for backlash violence persists, the report adds, particularly given continued incitement by Christian Right leaders and politicians associated with them. The just-elected senator from Georgia, C. Saxby Chambliss, for example, called publicly for local sheriffs to “arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line.” He later apologized.

But fundamentalist leaders like Pat Robertson and Franlin Graham — both strong supporters of Bush — have refused to apologize for their remarks. Graham last year called Islam “wicked, violent and not of the same God.”

By all accounts, backlash against suspected Arabs and Muslims skyrocketed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed more than 3,000 people in New York and the Pentagon.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported a 17-fold increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes, from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001, almost all of them after Sept. 11.

In addition, Muslim and Arab groups around the country received more than 2,000 reports of harassment, violence, and other acts related to Sept. 11.

Government efforts to protect target groups varied from state to state, says the report, which focused on the performance of law-enforcement agencies in six cities across the country — Seattle, Dearborn, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix and New York City, as well as that of the federal government.

In many cases, government officials responded quickly and vigorously to the backlash violence.

The report gives high marks to both Bush and Attorney-General John Ashcroft for making strong statements as early as Sept. 12, both against retaliation against Muslims and in support of their rights in the United States. By Sept. 15, both houses of Congress, as well as numerous city councils, had also passed resolutions condemning crimes against Arabs, Muslims and South Asians.

At the same time, the report notes that federal authorities also took measures that “cast a cloud of suspicion over all Arabs and Muslims,” including detaining some 1,200 people of almost exclusively Arab, Muslim, or South Asian heritage because of “possible” links to terrorism.

Such “mixed messages” were also conveyed by FBI requests to interview over 8,000 men of Arab or Muslim heritage and the later decision to fingerprint citizens from certain Middle Eastern nations.

“Most people are probably asking, ‘if government doesn’t trust these people, why should I?’” noted one Arab-American activist quoted in the report.

At the local level, the best police successes were found in Dearborn where, as a result of close ties between the police and the large Arab community of some 30,000 people, police immediately deployed to areas that were most likely to be targets of backlash attacks. Only two violent Sept. 11-related assaults were reported there.

Despite the lack of such close ties, police in New York, Phoenix, and Los Angeles dispatched police very quickly to Muslim and Sikh places of worship and residential areas, says the report.

But none of those cities had backlash mitigation plans, despite recent history which showed clearly that violence usually follows acts of terrorism attributed to Arabs or Muslims, the report said. Such plans, the report notes, are badly needed, along with better reporting on hate crimes and specialized police and prosecutor units to deal with them.

ACLU denounces Pentagon’s
new cyber-spying system

Washington, DC, Nov. 14— The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today called on President Bush to disavow a new system being developed at the Pentagon that would be able to track every American’s activities. 

IAO logo courtesy www.darpa.mil

“Smile, you’re on virtual candid camera,” said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU’s Washington National Office. “If the Pentagon has its way, every American — from the Nebraskan farmer to the Wall Street banker — will find themselves under the accusatory cyber-stare of an all-powerful national security apparatus.”

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing the system, which it has dubbed “Total Information Awareness,” in its Information Awareness Office. That office is directed by former Reagan Administration official John Poindexter, who once said that it was his duty as the national security advisor to withhold information from Congress.

The Total Information Awareness program will be — by Poindexter’s own public admission — the infrastructure for what the government hopes will be the most extensive electronic surveillance system in history. That vision is encapsulated in the logo for Poindexter’s office: the all-seeing eye and pyramid (prominent also on the one dollar bill) spying from above on the entire world. The office’s motto is Scientia Est Potentia, Latin for “Knowledge is Power.”

The ACLU concerns are somewhat similar to those expressed today by “card-carrying conservative” New York Times columnist William Safire that the program is a “supersnoop’s dream.” 

The Total Information Awareness program would use the technology called data-mining — which is totally untested in the national security context — to ostensibly detect terrorist threats before they occur. Data-mining, currently used by private industry to track buying habits and target telemarketers, among other things, involves the computerized scrutiny of vast amounts of unrelated information in the hope of finding patterns that can predict future behavior. 

But the Total Information Awareness program goes further than any corporate cyber-snooping: it would link a huge number of commercial and governmental databases, both in America and overseas. These databases could presumably range from student grades to mental health histories to travel records. 

“Just as he scaled back the program that would have had neighbors spying on neighbors, President Bush must stop the Total Information Awareness program now,” said Katie Corrigan, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. “And if he refuses to act, Congress should step in quickly and pull the plug on this dangerous idea.”

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Nation Briefs

Three US citizens detained in Israel

Three US citizens were arrested while trying to block Israeli bulldozers that were clearing land for the construction of a security fence near the West Bank town of Tulkarem. They were among over 100 protestors, most of whom were Palestinians. (There was one Palestinian among the detainees.) Soldiers threw concussion grenades and tear gas, and at least one activist was severely beaten, according to Robert Smith of St. Paul, MN.

Israel began building the fence six months ago in an attempt to keep Palestinian militants from crossing into Israel. So far, less than one mile of the planned 75-mile-long barrier has been completed. It will run the length of the West Bank. Jewish settler leaders and their political patrons complain the barrier will become a de facto international border with a Palestinian state they do not believe should exist. Palestinians maintain the fence will cut into West Bank land they want for a state. (Associated Press)

Churches
united for peace

The National Council of Churches convened for its annual meeting in Tampa Nov. 14 with the goal of urging the Bush administration to work with international partners and to help Congress understand the “unintended consequences” of war with Iraq. Hundreds of council members have traveled to Washington, DC since September to make their case against the impending war by meeting with their representatives, holding prayer vigils, and news conferences.

Roman Catholic bishops in the US issued a statement Nov. 13 saying that they cannot now find a moral justification for a pre-emptive war against Iraq because there is no adequate evidence that Iraq is about to attack. They stated that such a war could create more “evils and disorders” than it would eliminate, cause more suffering to Iraqi civilians, provoke wider conflict and instability in the region, and detract from the effort to stabilize Afghanistan. (Tampa Tribune, New York Times)

Secret court
OKs broad
wiretap powers

On Nov. 19, in a victory for the Bush administration, a secretive appeals court ruled the US government has the right to use expanded powers to wiretap terrorism suspects under a law adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Attorney General John Ashcroft hailed the ruling and said he was immediately implementing new regulations and working to expedite the surveillance process. Civil liberties groups argued that broader government surveillance powers would violate the Fourth Amendment which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The appeal hearing was not public and only the Justice Department’s top appellate lawyer, Theodore Olson, presented arguments. Although the court allowed “friend of the court” briefs to be filed by civil liberties groups and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, since the Justice Department was the only party the ruling can likely not be appealed.

“This is a major Constitutional decision that will affect every American’s privacy rights, yet there is no way anyone but the government can automatically appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court,” said Ann Beeson of the American Civil Liberties Union. (Reuters)

20 Miami cops among most
aggressive in US

A group of 20 Miami police officers fired nearly half of all the bullets expended by the 1,100-officer department since 1990, making them some of the most aggressive shooters in the nation. The group includes seven officers now under indictment on charges of planting guns at police shooting scenes and four who have been disciplined for lying to supervisors in unrelated cases. Miami Chief of Police Raul Martinez acknowledges that his department should have done a better job of addressing officers prone to shoot. In many other departments, officers who are involved in several shootings are assigned other duties. He said civil-service protections, a strong police union and a weakly enforced early warning system have made it difficult to transfer or penalize officers involved in multiple shootings. (Miami Herald)

Six sent to prison in 1969 race-riot killing

Six white men Nov. 13 received sentences of up to three years’ imprisonment in the fatal shooting of a black woman during 1969 race riots in York, PA. All six, initially charged with murder, pleaded guilty to reduce charges in August, and some testified for the prosecution this year in the related trial of a former York mayor and two other white men. All six defendants were then teenaged gang members. The same jury acquitted former Mayor Charlie Robertson, who was a police officer at the time of the riots. Robertson was accused of handing out ammunition and encouraging white gang members to shoot blacks. (Associated Press)

Arab family in dark about search

US Secret Service agents on Nov. 15 took over the house of a Palestinian-American family in Chicago for 12 hours beginning at 9pm, confiscating computers, discs, and files. It was the home of Salah Al-Rifai, his wife and two sons. The family lawyer, denied entrance to the house when he arrived at 11pm, told the Secret Service agent in charge that they needed a warrant. The agent informed him that US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was in his office working on a warrant, which did not arrive until 4am. The warrant authorized agents to look for documents relating to “possible targets.” Finding none, they confiscated two computers, 51 computer discs and “junk mail” from two Islamic charities that federal agents have charged with aiding terrorists. One officer suggested that it was one of the Al-Rifai son’s trip to Springfield in a car with pro-Islam bumper stickers that may have attracted federal attention, as President Bush had been considering a visit there on Nov. 19. (Chicago Sun-Times)

Senator wants
review of Posse
Comitatus

Sen. John Warner (R-VA), who is likely to head the Armed Services Committee, said he would hold hearings to review the 19th century Posse Comitatus law that restricts the military’s involvement in domestic law enforcement. The legal separations between the military and law enforcement were in the spotlight recently when military planes were used to help police hunt for the DC-area snipers. In an overview of his priorities, Warner said he wants to help advance the use of unmanned airplanes, naval vessels, and other vehicles. “If local law enforcement is totally overwhelmed, would not the military be perhaps the best to help for that interim period until the local law enforcement can reconstitute itself?” Warner asked. (Associated Press)

Agencies monitor Iraqis in the US
for terror threat

The Bush administration has begun to monitor Iraqis in the US in an effort to identify potential domestic terrorist threats posed by sympathizers of Iraq. The intelligence program involves tracking thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans with dual citizenship who are attending US universities or working at private corporations. Federal authorities plan to begin interviewing Arab-Americans, asking them to report suspicious activity related to Iraq. The interviews will be voluntary, but in the past such efforts have been criticized by Arab-American groups. Another part of the new intelligence operation involves a focused effort to assess whether the Iraqi government has engaged in any actions, through alliances with Middle Eastern terrorist organizations or efforts to obtain weapons, that could threaten US interests in this country or abroad. A large number of government agencies are part of the new operation, including the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA, the INS, the State Department, and the NSA, which eavesdrops on communications around the world. (New York Times)