Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black

The Pentagon Paid A PR Firm $500 Million For Top Secret Iraq Propaganda

An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed that the Pentagon gave a controversial UK PR firm over half a billion dollars to run a top secret propaganda program in Iraq.

Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black
By Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black
Bell Pottinger was hired as a news editor by a British PR firm and quickly sent to Camp Victory in Iraq. It soon became apparent he would be doing much more than just editing news footage.

B ell Pottinger’s output included short TV segments made in the style of Arabic news networks and fake insurgent videos which could be used to track the people who watched them, according to a former employee. The agency’s staff worked alongside high-ranking US military officers in their Baghdad Camp Victory headquarters as the insurgency

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The Private Sector Is Cashing In On The Pentagon’s ‘Insatiable Demand’ For Drone War Intelligence

With the ratio of contractors to governmental personnel swelling, many worry that targeting decisions could become meaningless.

Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black
By Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black
Military personnel in Air Force Distributed Common Ground System.

Some months ago, an imagery analyst was sitting in his curtained cubicle at Hurlburt Field airbase in Florida watching footage transmitted from a drone above one of the battlefields in the War on Terror. If he thought the images showed someone doing anything suspicious, or holding a weapon, he had to type it in to a chat channel seen by the pilots

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