Originally published December 8 2005
Rolling Stone looks at a lesser-known member of the Bush administration
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
James Bamford, reporting for Rolling Stone, profiles John Rendon, whom he calls the head of propaganda for the Bush administration's move to make war on Iraq.
Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein.
For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale.
Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war.
And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.
Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam.
Rendon's brother Rick serves as senior partner and runs the company's Boston office, producing public-service announcements for the Whale Conservation Institute and coordinating Empower Peace, a campaign that brings young people in the Middle East in contact with American kids through video-conferencing technology.
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.
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.
"I wrote a memo about what the Kuwaitis were going to face, and I based it on our experience in Panama and the experience of the Free French operation in World War II," Rendon says.
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