"Perhaps no list of reporters has commanded such attention in Washington since Richard Nixon compiled his enemies list more than thirty years ago," writes Douglas McCollam, discussing the reporters whose names and phone numbers appear in a confidential July 2002 memorandum from the Iraqi National Congress (INC). The memo lists 108 news stories that were influenced by INC-supplied defectors. "The balance of the stories," McCollam writes, "advanced almost every claim that would eventually become the backbone of the Bush administration's case for war, including Saddam Hussein's contacts with al Qaeda, his attempts to develop nuclear weapons, and his extensive chemical and bioweapons facilities - all of which are now in grave doubt." According to Helen Kennedy, one of the reporters whose name appears on the list, "The INC's agenda was to get us into a war. The really damaging stories all came from those guys, not the CIA. They did a really sophisticated job of getting it out there." After interviewed reporters whose names appear on the list, McCollam concludes that "influencing public opinion through the American and European media was always central to the INC's mission (of the 108 stories on Qanbar's list, fifty appeared in U.S. news outlets). One of the first uses for the Iraq Liberation Act funds was to hire the giant public relations firm Burson-Marsteller."

"When he appeared on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News Channel show last week, Georgetown law professor David Cole was impressed that the hard-charging host played, as part of his opening commentary, 'a balanced sound bite' from the chairman of the 9/11 commission," reports Howard Kurtz. "Cole was less impressed when an aggravated O'Reilly stopped the taping of 'The O'Reilly Factor' and killed the sound bite. And when Cole brought up the incident during his interview, he says, O'Reilly 'exploded,' called him an SOB and declared he would never be invited back."

"Cold War hawks are resurrecting a decades-old group to lobby for a harder line against terrorist organizations and rogue states," reports The Hill. The Committee on the Present Danger will see its third incarnation (it was established in 1950 and re-formed in 1976) as a Washington DC-based lobby group, headed by PR pro and former Reagan adviser Peter Hannaford. Other known members include Senator Joe Lieberman, former CIA director James Woolsey, and Reagan administration official and 1976 Committee founder Max Kampelman. Past Committee incarnations advocated for tripling the defense budget and helped launch neoconservatives into government positions.

In writing the Center's newest book, Banana Republicans, authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber experimented with collaborative research, inviting visitors to the Center's website to contribute their own research and analysis while the book was being written. That process of collaboration is still continuing. If you'd like to contribute, you can do so through the Center's online feature Disinfopedia.