US 'funded and distributed' fake al-Qaeda videos in Iraq
US 'funded and distributed' fake al-Qaeda videos in Iraq
A former PR firm employee reveals that the US government paid for al-Qaeda style videos to be made and distributed in Iraq.
3 min read
US soldiers allegedly dropped CDs containing the fake footage at houses raided in Iraq [Getty]
The Pentagon paid over half a billion dollars between 2003 and 2011 to a British PR firm to create fake al-Qaeda propaganda films in Iraq, a report by the Sunday Times and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed.
According to an ex-employee of the UK company, Bell Pottinger, the firm was tasked with producing short videos in the style of al-Qaeda propaganda in order to track viewers.
By using a foreign company, the US was also able to circumvent its own laws prohibiting the government from using propaganda on American citizens.
The work is said to have been approved by former Major General and CIA chief David Petraeus – and at times as high up as the White House.
Whisked away to a war zone
Former Bell Pottinger video producer Martin Wells told the Bureau that upon taking the job assigned by the Pentagon in May 2006, he was totally unaware that he would be working in the middle of conflict-stricken Iraq.
According to an ex-employee of the UK company, Bell Pottinger, the firm was tasked with producing short videos in the style of al-Qaeda propaganda in order to track viewers.
By using a foreign company, the US was also able to circumvent its own laws prohibiting the government from using propaganda on American citizens.
The work is said to have been approved by former Major General and CIA chief David Petraeus – and at times as high up as the White House.
 |
The work is said to have been approved by former Major General and CIA chief David Petraeus – and at times as high up as the White House |  |
Former Bell Pottinger video producer Martin Wells told the Bureau that upon taking the job assigned by the Pentagon in May 2006, he was totally unaware that he would be working in the middle of conflict-stricken Iraq.
"You'll be doing new stuff that'll be coming out of the Middle East," Wells was told by his recruitment agency.
"I thought 'That sounds interesting,'" he recalled. "So I go along and go into this building, get escorted up to the sixth floor in a lift, come out and there's guards up there. I thought what on earth is going on here? And it turns out it was a Navy post, basically. So from what I could work out it was a media intelligence gathering unit."
Following this brief meeting, the video editor was told that he would be flying out to Baghdad within days to begin work on the covert propaganda operation.
During the course of the contract, Wells produced television commercials aimed at tarnishing al-Qaeda's reputation and news items that were filmed with low-definition cameras and distributed to TV stations across the Middle East.
Planting propaganda
The most controversial aspect of his work involved the production of fake al-Qaeda propaganda videos, which he was told to make in the style of the militant group.
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During the course of the contract, Wells produced television commercials aimed at tarnishing al-Qaeda's reputation and news items that were filmed with low-definition cameras and distributed to TV stations across the Middle East | |
The most controversial aspect of his work involved the production of fake al-Qaeda propaganda videos, which he was told to make in the style of the militant group.
"We need to make this style of video and we've got to use al-Qaeda's footage," he was told. "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."
The videos were then burned onto CDs that were taken by US troops and dropped in buildings raided by their forces.
"If they're raiding a house and they're going to make a mess of it looking for stuff anyway, they'd just drop an odd CD there."
Using an embedded tracking code linked to a Google Analytics account, US intelligence agents were then able to identify the IP addresses of where the videos had been viewed.
"If one is looked at in the middle of Baghdad… you know there's a hit there," Wells explained. "If one, 48 hours or a week later shows up in another part of the world, then that's the more interesting one, and that's what they're looking for more, because that gives you a trail."
Wells said that the CDs began emerging in various places across the world, including Syria, Iran and the US.
Former chairman of Bell Pottinger, British peer Lord Timothy Bell, said to the Sunday Times that the tracking techniques described by Wells were "perfectly possible".
The Pentagon has confirmed that Bell Pottinger was contracted to work under the Information Operations Task Force [ITOF] to make produce "truthful" material, some of which was made available to coalition troops in Iraq.
Bell Pottinger ceased working for the US government when troops were withdrawn from Iraq in 2011.
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