The U.S. Department of Homeland Security "is paying a Pennsylvania ad firm to pitch 'pre-written' winter-weather-preparedness articles" to national and local media. The Neiman Group firm wrote to the Vermont newspaper Seven Days: "In light of the forecasted weekend snowstorm in Burlington, now is a great time to remind your readers about the importance of preparing for winter weather." In response to questions from the paper, a Neiman spokesperson explained: "We've just noticed that staffing has been a little down at newspapers. ... A lot of newspapers have been asking us for what we're calling 'pre-written' articles." The information offered from Homeland Security's Ready.gov campaign intersperses mentions of "winter storms and extreme cold," "man-made disasters as well as natural ones" and "attacks." Ready.gov "is administered by the Ad Council, a private marketing firm" that "first gained notoriety for its 'Loose Lips Sink Ships' campaign" during World War II.

The pharmaceutical companies Merck and Schering-Plough, which co-market the cholesterol drug Vytorin, "have gone into damage-control mode, taking out newspaper ads." The PR campaign follows the companies' reluctant publication of a study showing that neither of the drugs present in Vytorin "reduced the buildup of fatty plaque in arteries." The study "was completed in 2006, but Merck and Schering said they didn't release it for nearly 21 months due to the complexity of the data and their own scientific concerns." The drug companies' ads, which ran in the New York Times and USA Today, refer to the damning study as "a single study that has generated a lot of confusion." The ads stress that the drugs "have been proven to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol," but what the study showed was that Vytorin is not "any better than generic Zocor in reducing the buildup of fatty plaque." Members of Congress have called for an investigation into why the "massive advertisement campaign for Vytorin was allowed to continue," after the study was belatedly made public. (The drug makers pulled their Vytorin TV -- but not print -- ads on January 22, reports Associated Press.) Class-action lawsuits are also being filed, alleging that the drug companies "misrepresented and withheld significant information" from the Food and Drug Administration and the public.

Following a damaging Associated Press report that Blackwater Worldwide "repaired and repainted its trucks immediately after a deadly September shooting in Baghdad, making it difficult to determine whether enemy gunfire provoked the attack," the private military company has hired more lobbyists. The firm Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice will serve as Blackwater's "D.C. representative for contracting and acquisition issues," reports O'Dwyer's. Lobbyists working for Blackwater include Jimmy Broughton, who was former Senator Jesse Helms's chief of staff; Mark Harkins, who worked for Representative Brad Miller; and Kevin Jones, who worked for former Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen. Lobbyists.info also lists C&M Capitolink and Gregory F. Hahn among Blackwater's lobbying firms. Regarding the truck repairs, a Blackwater spokesperson said they "would have been done at the government's direction," perhaps referring to an obligation under the firm's contract with the State Department that it maintain its own vehicles. Blackwater has received more than $1 billion in federal contracts since 2001.

The Center for Public Integrity "has released the first analysis of its kind, Iraq – The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War ... identifying 935 false statements by eight top administration officials that mentioned Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, or links to Al Qaeda, on at least 532 separate occasions. The false statements included in the analysis were made by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan." In July, 2003, the Center for Media and Democracy wrote the first book detailing the Bush propaganda campaign that lied the US into war, Weapons of Mass Deception.