Pentagon Paid UK PR Firm Over $500M To Make Fake Terrorist Videos

Shocking reports are currently circulating online about how the Pentagon paid a UK-based PR firm more than half a billion dollars to create fabricated terrorist videos in Iraq.

The news tells us that Bell Pottinger, the PR company, has a reputation of having a controversial list of clients including the Saudi government and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s foundation. Apparently, this same company worked with the US military in order to create terrorist propagandas in a “secretive operation,” an RT article tells us.

According to recent reports, the Pentagon hired a UK-based PR firm to create fake Al-Qaeda terrorist videos.

The blog further declared:

“The firm reported to the CIA, the National Security Council and the Pentagon on the project with a mandate to portray Al-Qaeda in a negative light and track suspected sympathizers.

“Both the White House and General David Petraeus, the former general who shared classified information with his mistress, signed off on the content produced by the agency.”

Bell Pottinger, the PR firm, “reported to the CIA, the National Security Council and the Pentagon.”

It is said that Bell Pottinger began with the project right after the US invasion of Iraq. Their initial task was to promote the “democratic elections” and then to do some other “more lucrative psychological and information operations,” RT reports.

Martin Wells, a former employee from the firm, said that he was sent to Iraq after he was hired as a video editor. He landed in Baghdad to edit footage for secret “psychological operations” at Camp Victory.

Videos were fabricated to make it appear like they came from Arabic TV.

The company made TV ads portraying Al-Qaeda in a negative light and, to make it more believable, the video was done in a way that it looked like it was produced by Arabic TV. Camera crews were sent to film bombing footage using low quality video and then the PR firm would then paste the content together, making it appear like news footage.

The company was hired “to portray Al-Qaeda in a negative light and track suspected sympathizers.”

Some of those fake Al-Qaeda videos were planted by the military in the houses they raided.

According to Wells, the employees were given detailed instructions about their work. His executives told him:

“We need to make this style of video and we’ve got to use Al-Qaeda’s footage. We need it to be 10 minutes long, and it needs to be in this file format, and we need to encode it in this manner.”

And what does Pentagon have to say about the matter?

Well, representatives confirmed that they worked with the PR firm for the Information Operations Task Force (IOTF) but insisted that they created “truthful” content. The firm also said they worked under the Joint Psychological Operations Task Force (JPOTF) but Pentagon refused to comment on that.

Bell Pottinger reportedly received over $500 million for the transactions between 2007 to 2011.

Existing documents prove that the Pentagon paid $540 million to Bell Pottinger in contracts that spanned from 2007 to 2011. Another contract in 2006 was worth $120 million.