John Rendon John Rendon began his career in
Democratic Party politics with
George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign. He later served as the Executive Director and Political Director of the
Democratic National Committee; managed
President Carter's
1980 Democratic convention in New York; and subsequently worked as Director of Scheduling and Advance for President Carter's reelection campaign. In 1985, Rendon began working for clients internationally. According to the Rendon Group website, the company has worked in over 98 countries to date. Journalist
James Bamford reported in the
Rolling Stone that Rendon came up with the name for the INC and helped install
Ahmed Chalabi as its head. Francis Brooke, adviser to Ahmed Chalabi and former employee of The Rendon Group said, “Those arguments are false. Mr. Rendon was a consultant. The Iraqi National Congress was founded independently by Dr. Chalabi, and Mr. Rendon provided consulting services during that period.” The Rendon Group replied on its website to Mr. Bamford's article, saying, “For the record, the Rendon Group (TRG) had no role whatsoever in making the case for the Iraq war, here at home or internationally. Mr. Bamford's contention to the contrary is flatly untrue. TRG reviews open source media reports for the Department of Defense and analyzes and charts positive and negative trends very much the same way public opinion researchers analyze polling data. Unable to find facts that support his thesis, Mr. Bamford relies on false information and mischaracterization to create his story.” The post goes on to address numerous factual errors in Bamford's article.
OSI The
Office of Strategic Influence, or OSI, was a department created by the United States Department of Defense on October 30, 2001. According to a DOD IG Report, The Rendon Group never had any connection to OSI aside from a 60-day deployment. In February 2002, OSI provided a government contracting technical representative to assist in managing a work order given to The Rendon Group that was funded by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence for the Joint Information Operation Task Force. This Task Order funded a 60-day deployment of two media advisors to Indonesia to support the embassy's public diplomacy and opinion research. Later, DOD publicly disbanded the OSI following a backlash when
Pentagon officials said the new office would engage in "black" disinformation campaigns, of which The Rendon Group was not a part.
Afghanistan In December, 2005, the
Chicago Tribune reported that the Rendon Group received $1.4 million in 2004 to help the
Afghan government with media relations. According to the paper,
President Karzai and
Zalmay Khalilzad, then the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, were unhappy with the work. ==Further reading==