Within many of the recent news reports about the U.S. military paying for propaganda to run in Iraqi newspapers was a paragraph like this, which appeared in the L.A. Times...
The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.
In essence, the military was laundering the information through a firm to "mask any connection with the U.S. military." Sounds logical, but was that the only reason? The Project on Government Oversight has this, which makes you wonder if masking connections was the only reason...
Today, Senator John Warner (R-VA) visited the Pentagon to find out why contractor Lincoln Group has been hired to pay off media outlets to place positive news articles in Iraq. What the White House probably won't be looking into is how a tiny little-known start up named the Lincoln Group landed more than $100 million in Defense Department contracts which led, in part, to the news buys.
In August, 2004, the New York Times captured the Lincoln Group's young founder, Christian Bailey, on camera at a Republican National Convention event where he talked about the importance of cultivating the next generation of donors to the Republican Party: "These are going to be the big supporters, the big donors to the Republican Party in five years' time." Bailey was co-chair of an event for the organization known as Lead21, which claims to be an organization which promotes "political involvement for business leaders." But, from the looks of their web site, Lead21 is only interested in Republican political involvement. Government Executive notes that some of Bailey's political activities have been taken down from the web in recent months.
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