The Man Who Sold the War: Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war

Rolling Stone ^ | Nov 17, 2005 | James Bamford

[baseball_fan]

[Rendon is one of the most influential of the private contractors in Washington who are increasingly taking over jobs long reserved for highly trained CIA employees. In recent years, spies-for-hire have begun to replace regional desk officers, who control clandestine operations around the world; watch officers at the agency's twenty-four-hour crisis center; analysts, who sift through reams of intelligence data; and even counterintelligence officers in the field, who oversee meetings between agents and their recruited spies. According to one senior administration official involved in intelligence-budget decisions, half of the CIA's work is now performed by private contractors -- people completely unaccountable to Congress. Another senior budget official acknowledges privately that lawmakers have no idea how many rent-a-spies the CIA currently employs -- or how much unchecked power they enjoy.]

...

[It is an unusual career twist for someone who entered politics as an opponent of the Vietnam War. The son of a stockbroker, Rendon grew up in New Jersey and stumped for McGovern before graduating from Northeastern University. "I was the youngest state coordinator," he recalls. "I had Maine. They told me that I understood politics -- which was a stretch, being so young." Rendon, who went on to serve as executive director of the Democratic National Committee, quickly mastered the combination of political skulduggery and media manipulation that would become his hallmark. In 1980, as the manager of Jimmy Carter's troops at the national convention in New York, he was sitting alone in the bleachers at Madison Square Garden when a reporter for ABC News approached him. "They actually did a little piece about the man behind the curtain," Rendon says. "A Wizard of Oz thing." It was a role he would end up playing for the rest of his life.

After Carter lost the election and the hard-right Reagan revolutionaries came to power in 1981, Rendon went into business with his younger brother Rick. "Everybody started consulting," he recalls. "We started consulting." They helped elect John Kerry to the Senate in 1984 and worked for the AFL-CIO to mobilize the union vote for Walter Mondale's presidential campaign. Among the items Rendon produced was a training manual for union organizers to operate as political activists on behalf of Mondale. To keep the operation quiet, Rendon stamped CONFIDENTIAL on the cover of each of the blue plastic notebooks. It was a penchant for secrecy that would soon pervade all of his consulting deals.]

...

[In 1989, shortly after his election, President George H.W. Bush signed a highly secret "finding" authorizing the CIA to funnel $10 million to opposition forces in Panama to overthrow Gen. Manuel Noriega. Reluctant to involve agency personnel directly, the CIA turned to the Rendon Group. Rendon's job was to work behind the scenes, using a variety of campaign and psychological techniques to put the CIA's choice, Guillermo Endara, into the presidential palace. Cash from the agency, laundered through various bank accounts and front organizations, would end up in Endara's hands, who would then pay Rendon.

A heavyset, fifty-three-year-old corporate attorney with little political experience, Endara was running against Noriega's handpicked choice, Carlos Duque. With Rendon's help, Endara beat Duque decisively at the polls -- but Noriega simply named himself "Maximum Leader" and declared the election null and void. The Bush administration then decided to remove Noriega by force -- and Rendon's job shifted from generating local support for a national election to building international support for regime change.]

There have been a number of examples now of the U.S. government paying surreptitiously to plant stories (however meritorious) in the press. Is the possible gain worth running the risk of losing trust or having the process abused as so often has happened in other parts of government? Need some FReeper due diligence help.

[BenLurkin]

0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. -.

[Uncle Miltie]

So an anti-war McGovern, Carter, Kerry hack duped us into war? And wants to talk about it now?

Gee, color me skeptical.

[frankjr]

Rolling Stone...now there is a quality news source. F'ing stoners!

[cvq3842]

A basic question I ask myself when evaluating the latest war tactic to be criticized is to ask, what did we do in WWII (back in the days when the country by and large recognized we were fighting a grave threat, and actually wanted to win)?

[yldstrk]

Total bravo sierra

[BlueSky194]

baseball fan, do you know who James Bamford is.
He's a radical anti U.S professor at Berkeley.
Bamford also believes the Jews control the Bush administration.
The guy is a wacked out liar.
Bamford is also upset that the Kurds will soon be free from Iraqi Arabs.

[inquest]

There have been a number of examples now of the U.S. government paying surreptitiously to plant stories (however meritorious) in the press. Is the possible gain worth running the risk of losing trust or having the process abused as so often has happened in other parts of government?

I don't see how it can be. You're talking about sacrificing credibility for all time for the sake of a very temporary gain. How could that ever be a good tradeoff? In order for it to be worth it, this one temporary gain would have to deal with a singularly grave threat to national security from which we wouldn't be able to recover for a long time.

Interesting stuff about the McGovern/Carter/Kerry connection, by the way.

[smoothsailing]

"What's the frequency, Kenneth?"

[Fintan]

Try this...

...and this...

...and this: James Bamford is the former Washington D.C. investigative producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings...

Cheers.

[baseball_fan]

"do you know who James Bamford is."

first i've ever heard of him. worried about the prospects of this power being available under a Democratic administration without some kind of checks and balances.

i see the possible necessity for sometimes planting stories - for example where it was necessary to deceive Hitler and Rommel as to where the D-Day landing was going to take place by conducting a disinformation campaign that Patton would lead it.

[bill1952]

What are you? A troll in training?

Quoting the Rolling Stone and a notorious, left wing loon at Berkley as credible news scorces is going to damage your credibilty here, or mark you as a loon pretty quickly.

[killjoy]

Considering this was written by Bamford I wouldn't give it much weight. He is not exactly the most reliable source. His chapter in _Body_of_Secrets_ on the USS Liberty is laughable. I have met the man and I don't have much respect for him as a journalist.

By the way, his description of Pattaya had me laughing out loud. "in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide" I don't think there is any hotel in Pattaya where you can hear the tide.

[tuff_schlitz]

Follow the Rolling Stone link to the story...there's a nice rebuttal by Rendon wehre he asserts basically the same thing (that the story is a bunch of BS). Rolling Stone....oh, that shining bastion of journalistic greatness....LOL

[inquest]

Bamford has been part of the MSM, so I don't see anything that gives him any worse credibility than them, which of course isn't saying all that much. In other words, it's in under the general category of, grounds for further investigation, but not proof of anything by itself.

[bill1952]

He is a well known leftist whack job, endlessly spouting wierd and sinister conspiracy theories, all of which have an anti American government bent, and it doesn't matter one whit if some low level fishwrap published his inchoate ramblings.

The man is a well know nut.

[inquest]

it doesn't matter one whit if some low level fishwrap published his inchoate ramblings.

According to BookReporter.com:"He was until recently Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and has written investigative cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine."

All of this of course is LSM, which means it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But however biased these sources are, they're not "low-level". Just trying to keep things in a little perspective.

The man is a well know nut.

Well, it's the first I've heard of him. You're entitled to your views of him, but until I come across some serious evidence that he's unreliable (by LSM standards), I'll consider it worthy of further investigation.

[DJ Taylor]

[Valin]

Bamford also believes the Jews control the Bush administration.


You mean they don't? Could it be that PJB is wrong? I'm so disillusioned.

[baseball_fan]

"What are you? A troll in training? Quoting the Rolling Stone and a notorious, left wing loon at Berkley as credible news scorces is going to damage your credibilty here, or mark you as a loon pretty quickly."

I am not saying the information is credible. It may be a complete hack job, but given the paying of columnists and the recent placing of stories in Iraq, it seems something that needs to be looked at in a sober, non-sensational way. George Schultz, Secretary of State under Reagan said that "Trust is the coin of the realm." That is why I'm asking for other's perspective. If Judith Miller is leading with a story on WMD from a source that she doesn't know has just been discredited by a CIA intelligence officer while another part of the CIA is funding a clandestine program that if the article has any credibility happens to result in promoting this source while it makes its way into the President's intelligence briefing, that would seem to be an important issue. For example, I have no idea if the following is true or false but would like to know whether President Bush was adequately protected on this:

[Although Moran was gone, the falsified story about weapons of mass destruction that he and Sethna had broadcast around the world lived on. Seven months earlier, as President Bush was about to argue his case for war before the U.N., the White House had given prominent billing to al-Haideri's fabricated charges. In a report ironically titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception," the administration referred to al-Haideri by name and detailed his allegations -- even though the CIA had already determined them to be lies. The report was placed on the White House Web site on September 12th, 2002, and remains there today. One version of the report even credits Miller's article for the information.]

Also, there was a lot of evidence that there may have been WMD independent of this (Stephen Hayes's reporting in The Weekly Standard for example) or that we could not wait until we were absolutely sure. I don't think the administration was trying to deceive anyone. The issue that concerned me here was the seeming covert placing of information in the press (albeit an unverified assertion) through outsourced parties (a PR firm) funded by the CIA and what checks and balances are needed around that. As Conservatives we have feared both big government and interference with freedom of the press. Sometimes in both areas exceptions may be needed but are adequate checks and balances in place?