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• Saturday, May 10, 2008 10:20 AM

  DoD Foreign Propaganda Program Monies Paid to Major Media?

  Great work as always, Glen.

  One angle I wonder about is whether some of the $300 million allocated to three military contractors in 2005 for foreign propaganda generation (one of which, SAIC, was headed by Gen. Dowling until 7/05) found its way into major media accounts for the generation of domestic propaganda.

  The USA Today's Matt Kelley published two stories on 12/13 and 12/14/05 (a week before Risen published his telco stories, btw) about the awarding of these contracts. The first was "3 groups have contracts for pro-U.S. propaganda" [ http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-13-propaganda-inside-usat_x.htm ], and the follow-up was "Pentagon rolls out stealth PR" [ http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-14-pentagon-pr_x.htm ].

  The sidebar of the second story provides a primer on the contracts --

  •Cost: Up to $100 million per contractor, $300 million total

  •Contractors: SYColeman of Washington; Lincoln Group of Washington; Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego

  •Awarded: June 7

  •Length: Five years

  •Purpose: "For media approach planning, prototype product development, commercial quality product development, product distribution and dissemination, and media effects analysis."

  Source: Department of Defense

  (I posted a longer conjecture in Greg Mitchell's diary this morning on your piece at DailyKos. IANAL, but if any of this money landed in major media bank accounts, they could be in legal jeopardy, no? Keep up the good work...).

  —mogolori Read mogolori's other letters
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