Fake News and False Flags
"The Pentagon gave a controversial UK PR firm over half a billion
dollars to run a top secret propaganda programme in Iraq, the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism can reveal."
"Bell 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."
"Bell, one of Britain’s most successful public relations executives, is
credited with honing Margaret Thatcher’s steely image and helping the
Conservative party win three elections. The agency he co-founded has had
a roster of clients including repressive regimes and Asma al-Assad, the
wife of the Syrian president. "
"Bell Pottinger’s work in Iraq
was a huge media operation which cost over a hundred million dollars a
year on average. A document unearthed by the Bureau shows the company
was employing almost 300 British and Iraqi staff at one point.
The London-based PR agency was brought into Iraq soon after the US
invasion. In March 2004 it was tasked by the country’s temporary
administration with the "promotion of democratic elections" – a
"high-profile activity" which it trumpeted in its annual report."
"The firm soon switched to less high-profile activities, however. The
Bureau has identified transactions worth $540 million between the
Pentagon and Bell Pottinger for information operations and psychological
operations on a series of contracts issued from May 2007 to December
2011. A similar contract at around the same annual rate – $120 million –
was in force in 2006, we have been told. "
"The work consisted
of three types of products. The first was television commercials
portraying al Qaeda in a negative light. The second was news items which
were made to look as if they had been “created by Arabic TV”, Wells
said. Bell Pottinger would send teams out to film low-definition video
of al Qaeda bombings and then edit it like a piece of news footage. It
would be voiced in Arabic and distributed to TV stations across the
region, according to Wells."
"The third and most sensitive programme
described by Wells was the production of fake al Qaeda propaganda
films. He told the Bureau how the videos were made. He was given precise
instructions: “We need to make this style of video and we’ve got to use
al Qaeda’s footage,” he was told. “We need it to be 10 minutes long,
and it needs to be in this file format, and we need to encode it in this
manner.”
US marines would take the CDs on patrol and drop them
in the chaos when they raided targets. Wells said: “If they’re raiding a
house and they’re going to make a mess of it looking for stuff anyway,
they’d just drop an odd CD there.”
Martin Wells worked for Bell Pottinger in Iraq during 2006-8
