Empowering Secrecy

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The conservative legal group Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against the Defense Department, for not responding to their March 2004 Freedom of Information Act request on what "strategic influence, perception management, strategic information warfare and/or psychological operations" contracts the Pentagon has signed since September 11, 2001. Judicial Watch is especially concerned with "Empower Peace," an Internet-based program run by the secretive Rendon Group, to link "American school age children with their counterparts in the Arab world." Judicial Watch says the site might be "propagandizing the American public," and maintains that the Pentagon has spent $40 million on the project, "while guys are running around getting killed in Iraq." Rick Rendon calls Judicial Watch's charges "absolutely not true," saying Empower Peace receives no Pentagon funding.