The U.S. Navy spent over $1.6 million on PR work to influence a vote on whether part of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques would continue to serve as a bombing range, the Associated Press reports. Documents obtained by
Judical Watch show
The Rendon Group was contract by the Navy in 2001 to "develop methods and tracking procedures to increase support among citizens in Vieques to support and vote in the 6 November 2001 referendum for the option of continued Navy training at Vieques."
The Rendon Group has assisted a number of U.S. military interventions in nations including Argentina, Colombia, Haiti, Kosovo, Panama and Zimbabwe. Rendon's activities also include organizing the Iraqi National Congress in 1992 as part of a covert CIA plan to foment the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The secretive firm has been paid over $40 million by the Defense Department since September 11, 2001.
Spin of the Day
Interesting personnel listing for
Rendon:
John Rendon - began his career as an election campaign consultant to Democratic Party politicians. According to Franklin Foer, "He masterminded Michael Dukakis's gubernatorial campaign in 1974; worked as executive director of the Democratic National Committee
Rick Rendon - in the Boston office
Linda Flohr, a CIA covert operations veteran, worked for the Rendon Group at one point before returning to the government, where she is now a top anti-terrorism official at the White House's National Security Council.
Francis Brooke worked in the mid-1990s on the Rendon Group's anti-Iraq campaign in London at a salary of $19,000 a month. He subsequently became the chief assistant in Washington to Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. Brooke also was principal founder and director of the Iraq Liberation Action Committee, which favored Hussein's ouster
Paul Moran, a freelance TV cameraman who was killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber during the war in Iraq in 2003, also worked as a freelance contractor for the Rendon Group.