Rendon Rocks Iraq

The Rendon Group, a PR firm that has assisted U.S. military interventions in at least seven countries, continues to be a Pentagon favorite. The secretive firm recently won a year-long $6.4 million contract with the Army for "Strategic Communications Operations Support" in Baghdad. In April 2005, O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported that Rendon "is winding down its current $8.2M contract" with the Pentagon's Strategic Command. Rendon had been "handling foreign media analysis for about 15 months," with a whopping "56 staffers handling the account." The Rendon Group is no stranger to Iraq. Seymour Hersh reported in a March 2002 New Yorker article that the firm received close to $100 million from the CIA for work it did in Iraq in the five years following the Gulf War, which included launching the Iraqi National Congress.