Lincoln Group: Unethical weapon of mass deception

By Bill Berkowitz
Created Dec 7 2006 - 8:57am

Controversial public relations outfit awarded yet another Pentagon contract:
up to $20 million for monitoring the media

Since the inception of the Iraq war, and even during the run-up to the
invasion, the Bush Administration aimed to control the news about, and from,
Iraq. Early on, embedded reporters told moving, albeit questionable stories
about the toppling of the statue of Saddam and the heroism of individual
soldiers as the military quickly seized Baghdad. Over the course of the
subsequent three-plus-year occupation, several hundred million dollars have
been spent on an assortment of media projects that were specifically
designed to sell "good" news about the occupation.

Perhaps the most notorious U.S. effort involved a U.S. public relations
company that was contracted to pay for positive news stories -- written by
U.S. military personnel -- to be placed in Iraqi publications.

In late-September, the Pentagon once again turned to the Lincoln Group,
inking a two-year contract which "put together a unit of 12-18 communicators
to support military PR efforts in Iraq and throughout the Middle East from
media training to pitching stories and providing content for
government-backed news sites," ODwyerspr.com reported.

According to ODwyerpr.com -- an information service produced by the highly
respected industry publication O'Dwyers PR Daily -- the "contract with the
Multi-National Force-Iraq is valued at more than $6 million per year,
although contracting documents indicated that additional efforts could be
"ordered" from the Pennsylvania Avenue firm for up to $20 million."

"Lincoln Group is proud to be trusted to assist the multi-national forces in
Iraq with communicating news about their vital work," said Bill Dixon, a
company representative.

According to its website, the Washington, D.C.-based Lincoln Group maintains
that it is a "strategic communications and public relations firm providing
insight and influence in challenging and hostile environments."

The company points out that its "employees and consultants have worked, and
continue to work, around the world in such places as Iraq, Lebanon,
Afghanistan, Colombia, Indonesia and elsewhere. While others may view these
locations as 'inhospitable', we prefer to call them 'challenging.'"

A Fortune magazine story dated January 20, 2006, pointed out that Lincoln
Group "says it has entered into more than 20 Defense Department contracts
(the biggest of which could be worth as much as $100 million) and a similar
number of commercial and nonmilitary government deals. It has more than 40
employees in the U.S. and 200 overseas, mostly in Iraq, doing research,
communications, and even some investing."

According to SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy,
in March 2006, O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported that the Lincoln Group was
"working to boost economic development in Pakistan. Lincoln is working with
former U.S. diplomat Carol Fleming to increase 'investments in the country's
textile, energy, technology and telecom' industries. The firm produced 'a
documentary' of areas devastated by the October 2005 earthquake, 'to remind
countries to honor their pledges to support the victims.'

"Lincoln has also 'expressed interest' in a contract to help the U.S. Army
Reserve communicate its 'vision of the future.' The contract includes
'speech writing, research, development of a comprehensive ... communications
plan,' support for 'national outreach programs,' and media outreach for Army
Reserve Chief Lt. Gen. James Helmly."

In an interview posted at Pakistan Link, Fleming, Lincoln Group's Country
Director, touted the investment opportunities in Pakistan and pointed out
that her company "provides its clients access to cultures which have
historically been difficult to reach through traditional Western
communities."

"We provide analytical solutions and consultancy to deliver rapid,
actionable insight to our clients in the areas of economics, defense, media
and trade. We also develops comprehensive communications plans and uses a
mix of advertising, public relations, marketing and specialty communications
to influence the perceptions and behaviors of key audience," Fleming added.

While no stranger to garnering government contracts, the Lincoln Group is
also no stranger to controversy. In November 2005, the Los Angeles Times
revealed that the U.S. military was "secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to
publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image
of the U.S. mission in Iraq." The Times' Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi
reported that the stories were authored by U.S. military "information
operations' troops" and "translated into Arabic and covertly placed in
Baghdad newspapers."

The Lincoln Group acted as an intermediary between the U.S. military and the
media outlets; company staff and subcontractors wrote and translated
stories, then paid local editors varying amounts to run them, pretending to
be freelance reporters, for example, or advertising executives.

In their recently published book, "The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and
the Mess in Iraq" (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006), co-authors Sheldon Rampton and
John Stauber document how Pentagon money was "thrown" at the Lincoln Group
and other public relations outfits to promote the war in Iraq:

In September 2004, the U.S. military awarded a $5.4 million contract to
Iraqex -- which soon after changed its name to The Lincoln Group -- a "newly
formed" Washington, DC-based company "set up specifically to provide
services in Iraq." A year later, the New York Times' Jeff Gerth would report
that Iraqex's winning of the contract was "something of a mystery" given the
fact that the "two men who ran the small business [Christian Bailey, a young
businessman from England and Paige Craig, a young former marine intelligence
officer] had no background in public relations or the media."

According to Rampton and Stauber, "In its various [pre-war] incarnations,
Iraqex/Lincoln dabbled in real estate, published a short-lived online
business publication called the Iraq Business Journal, and tried its hand at
exporting scrap metal, manufacturing construction materials, and providing
logistics for U.S. forces before finally striking gold with the Pentagon PR
contract."

At first the Lincoln Group worked with the Rendon Group, "a public relations
firm that had already played a major role in leading the U.S. into war
through its work for Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress." After
Rendon left the project Lincoln "hired another Washington-based public
relations firm as a subcontractor -- BKSH & Associates, headed by Republican
political strategist Charles R. Black, Jr. BKSH is a subsidiary of
Burson-Marszteller, a PR firm whose previous experience in Iraq also
included work for Chalabi and the INC. Other Pentagon contracts for public
relations work were awarded to SYColeman Inc. of Arlington, Virginia, and
Science applications International Corporation. All totaled, the PR
contracts added up to $300 million over a five-year period."

All in all, as the New York Times reported, the Lincoln Group managed to
place more than 1,000 stories in the Iraqi and Arab press.

Reckoning with Lincoln

In late-May of this year, bulldogreporter.com pointed out that "a Defense
Department investigation of Pentagon-financed propaganda efforts in Iraq
warn[ed] that paying Iraqi journalists to produce positive stories could
damage American credibility and call[ed] for an end to military payments to
a group of Iraqi journalists in Baghdad, according to a summary of the
investigation."

The review, ordered after news reports last November disclosed "that the
military had paid the Lincoln Group to plant articles written by American
soldiers in Iraqi publications, without disclosing the source of the
articles. The firm's work also included paying Iraqi journalists for
favorable treatment."

Though the document prepared by Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk doesn't mention
the Lincoln Group by name, it nevertheless found that the military should
scrutinize contractors involved in the propaganda effort more closely "to
ensure proper oversight is in place," the New York Times' David S. Cloud
reported. Van Buskirk also blamed the military for not investigating whether
paying for placement for articles would "undermine the concept of a free
press," in Iraq, according to the summary.

According to bulldogreporter.com, "Over all, the report conclude[d] that
American commanders in Iraq did not violate military regulations when they
undertook a multipronged propaganda campaign beginning in 2004 aimed at
increasing support for the fledgling Iraqi government, the three-page
summary says. That conclusion has been previously reported, but the portions
of the report that raise questions about the effort or that are critical
have not been previously disclosed."

"The most critical portion of the report concerns the military's creation in
2004 of an entity called the Baghdad Press Club, in which Iraqi journalists
were paid if they covered and produced stories about American reconstruction
efforts, such as openings of schools and sewage plants."

"The military's 'direct oversight of an apparently independent news
organization and remuneration for articles that are published will
undoubtedly raise questions focused on 'truth and credibility,' that will be
difficult to deflect, regardless of the intensions and purpose of the
remuneration,' the report says."

Psyops Journalism

"The war in Iraq has spawned a new industry in Washington that could be
called Psy-ops Journalism," Alvin Snyder, a former Executive of the United
States Information Agency (USIA) and a Senior Fellow at the USC Center for
Public Diplomacy, recently wrote on the Center's website. "The new breed of
journalists are following the money trail to the Pentagon."

Psyops is of course not a new phenomenon. An Air Force document published in
1994 titled "Air Force Intelligence and Security Doctrine: Psychological
Operations (PSYOP)," pointed out that by necessity psychological operations
aims to "convey and (or) deny selected information and indicators to foreign
audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning ...
In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations
security, cover, and deception, and psyops."

In the information age, psyops, or the effective manipulating of information
or spinning stories for political gain knows no borders. A Defense
Department document titled "Information Operations Roundup," approved in
2003, acknowledged that "information intended for foreign audiences,
including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our
domestic audience and vice-versa. PSYOP messages disseminated to any
audience ... will often be replayed by the news media for much larger
audiences, including the American public."

"Some $400 million in media consulting contracts has been awarded during the
past few years by the Pentagon, for the purpose of helping 'to effectively
communicate Iraqi government and Coalition goals with strategic audiences,'"
Alvin Snyder pointed out. "Thus far both the Pentagon and its contract
psy-op journalists have experienced a painful learning curve, but the most
recent contract award will show how much each has learned. The outlook is
not promising."

"A practical question is whether psy-ops journalism can work at all. It is a
cross between what is accepted as the mainstream journalism of print and TV
(and many journalists now blog) and what is known as psy-ops, or
psychological operations, those engaged in mind control warfare, to gain
military advantage by fooling the enemy."

Over the past three-plus years, the Pentagon has initiated an endless stream
of public relations efforts aimed at stemming the tide of negative news from
Iraq. As "The Best War Ever" points out, "much of the U.S. propaganda
effort" -- from manipulating events, such as the toppling of the statue of
Saddam Hussein after the U.S. marched into Baghdad, creating heroic stories
for domestic consumption, sitting on negative information as evidenced by
the slow initial response to torture at Abu Ghraib prison -- "is aimed not
at tactical deception of enemy combatants but at influencing morale and
support for the war in the United States."

Many observers appear to agree with Alvin Snyder's assertion that the
millions spent by the Pentagon have basically come to naught. It hasn't won
the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, it has failed to win support
abroad for the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, and it has ultimately
failed to convince the American public that the war in Iraq is winnable.

Despite the chaos enveloping Iraq, business for The Lincoln Group is
thriving. Its D.C. offices, once located on K Street, moved to larger
quarters in the Pennsylvania Avenue building that housed Jack Abramoff's
famous restaurant, Signatures.
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson