Memo Sheds Light on Pre-War Media Duping

by John Stauber — February 12, 2004 - 12:00am

The New York Times has obtained a June, 2002, memo written by the Iraqi National Congress, the CIA front group that has been tutored and advised by John Rendon's PR firm and instrumental in the propaganda campaign advocating war with Iraq. ( The INC's leader Ahmed Chalabi was most recently seen sitting in the balcony during the State of the Union address.) The Times reports that "many officials in the American
intelligence community have said that much of the
information provided to Washington by the Iraqi National
Congress before the war was suspect, and some have
questioned whether the group provided disinformation to the
United States. ... The fact that the Iraqi National Congress was disseminating information about Iraq to the United States government and
the Western news media before the war has been previously
reported. Less widely known is that the effort was
carefully coordinated through a special analytical unit the
group established in Washington that was paid for by the
United States." The article fails to mention that the New York Times itself and its reporter Judith Miller were guilty of using INC propaganda and other misinformation
in their own inaccurate and misleading reporting about Iraq's supposed WMDs.