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Pentagon Paid for Fake ‘Al Qaeda’ Videos

65 points by snowy 10y ago

mlvljr 10y ago
>> The third and most sensitive programme described by Wells was the production of fake al Qaeda propaganda films. He told the Bureau how the videos were made. He was given precise instructions: “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.” US marines would take the CDs on patrol and drop them in the chaos when they raided targets. Wells said: “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.” The CDs were set up to use Real Player, a popular media streaming application which connects to the internet to run. Wells explained how the team embedded a code into the CDs which linked to a Google Analytics account, giving a list of IP addresses where the CDs had been played.
pabloski 10y ago
Nothing new here. Watch this, for examples, https://twitter.com/MrTonyMan/status/766660512566435840/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/MrTonyMan/status/766660512566435840/phot...
ianhawes 10y ago
"US marines would take the CDs on patrol and drop them in the chaos when they raided targets. Wells said: “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.” The CDs were set up to use Real Player, a popular media streaming application which connects to the internet to run. Wells explained how the team embedded a code into the CDs which linked to a Google Analytics account, giving a list of IP addresses where the CDs had been played."
dleslie 10y ago
The link to the original source is dead; strange. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2016/10/02/fake-news-and-false-flags-how-the-pentagon-paid-a-british-pr-firm-500m-for-top-secret-iraq-propaganda/ https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2016/10/02/fake-news-a...
- r721 10y ago
  New link: http://labs.thebureauinvestigates.com/fake-news-and-false-flags/ http://labs.thebureauinvestigates.com/fake-news-and-false-fl... It's strange that they didn't set up redirection though.
totalZero 10y ago
Two takeaways from this. First, the half-a-bil price tag is absurd and I don't see how it's remotely justifiable. Second, this is yet another reason why Real Player sucks.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  > First, the half-a-bil price tag is absurd and I don't see how it's remotely justifiable. If you deploy civilian personnel into an active war zone, you gotta pay them huge amounts of extra money as a risk reward. Even soldiers get up to 110€ a day extra (http://www.focus.de/politik/videos/gefahrenzulagen-fuer-auslandseinsaetze-110-euro-pro-tag-so-viel-zahlt-die-bundeswehr-soldaten-fuer-die-gefaehrlichsten-einsaetze_id_5180477.html http://www.focus.de/politik/videos/gefahrenzulagen-fuer-ausl...), so you're looking at least 40k/year/FTE in extras, plus normal salary. I'd say it's safe to assume 100-300k/year/FTE in salary, plus accomodation costs, travel allowances, ... Therefore, I guess payroll was the biggest block on expenses.
Fifer82 10y ago
Why is no one held to account? If this is not illegal, fine, but can we have a disclaimer with the news saying that it probably isn't accurate??
- Noseshine 10y ago
  The headline is slightly misleading, I too thought they paid for news fed to Western media at home. According to the article the fake news was used to gather intelligence and for local propaganda, not to mislead the people at home. To me it seems like a legitimate project.
BariumBlue 10y ago
Why is this information now public? As far as I can see, there's no benefit to releasing this info, and there's certainly possible detriment.
- erikj 10y ago
  Detriment? To who exactly?
  - Noseshine 10y ago
    They know one more way the US gathers intelligence. That method won't work any more, or not nearly as well/reliably as it did.
    - jsprogrammer 10y ago
      There won't be many cd players left before long.
      - Noseshine 10y ago
        Yeah, they will never figure out that the same might happen with USB sticks. Because whenever you learn something you limit it to the concrete object, people cannot generalize.
        jsprogrammer 10y ago
        The Trojan horse story has existed for millennia, yet someone still used CDs.
orasis 10y ago
How reliable is thedailybeast?
- kobayashi 10y ago
  Quite.

65 points by snowy 10y ago

>> The third and most sensitive programme described by Wells was the production of fake al Qaeda propaganda films. He told the Bureau how the videos were made. He was given precise instructions: “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.” US marines would take the CDs on patrol and drop them in the chaos when they raided targets. Wells said: “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.” The CDs were set up to use Real Player, a popular media streaming application which connects to the internet to run. Wells explained how the team embedded a code into the CDs which linked to a Google Analytics account, giving a list of IP addresses where the CDs had been played.

pabloski 10y ago

Nothing new here. Watch this, for examples, https://twitter.com/MrTonyMan/status/766660512566435840/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/MrTonyMan/status/766660512566435840/phot...

ianhawes 10y ago

"US marines would take the CDs on patrol and drop them in the chaos when they raided targets. Wells said: “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.” The CDs were set up to use Real Player, a popular media streaming application which connects to the internet to run. Wells explained how the team embedded a code into the CDs which linked to a Google Analytics account, giving a list of IP addresses where the CDs had been played."

dleslie 10y ago

The link to the original source is dead; strange. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2016/10/02/fake-news-and-false-flags-how-the-pentagon-paid-a-british-pr-firm-500m-for-top-secret-iraq-propaganda/ https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2016/10/02/fake-news-a...

r721 10y ago
New link: http://labs.thebureauinvestigates.com/fake-news-and-false-flags/ http://labs.thebureauinvestigates.com/fake-news-and-false-fl... It's strange that they didn't set up redirection though.

totalZero 10y ago

Two takeaways from this. First, the half-a-bil price tag is absurd and I don't see how it's remotely justifiable. Second, this is yet another reason why Real Player sucks.

mschuster91 10y ago
> First, the half-a-bil price tag is absurd and I don't see how it's remotely justifiable. If you deploy civilian personnel into an active war zone, you gotta pay them huge amounts of extra money as a risk reward. Even soldiers get up to 110€ a day extra (http://www.focus.de/politik/videos/gefahrenzulagen-fuer-auslandseinsaetze-110-euro-pro-tag-so-viel-zahlt-die-bundeswehr-soldaten-fuer-die-gefaehrlichsten-einsaetze_id_5180477.html http://www.focus.de/politik/videos/gefahrenzulagen-fuer-ausl...), so you're looking at least 40k/year/FTE in extras, plus normal salary. I'd say it's safe to assume 100-300k/year/FTE in salary, plus accomodation costs, travel allowances, ... Therefore, I guess payroll was the biggest block on expenses.

Fifer82 10y ago

Why is no one held to account? If this is not illegal, fine, but can we have a disclaimer with the news saying that it probably isn't accurate??

Noseshine 10y ago
The headline is slightly misleading, I too thought they paid for news fed to Western media at home. According to the article the fake news was used to gather intelligence and for local propaganda, not to mislead the people at home. To me it seems like a legitimate project.

BariumBlue 10y ago

Why is this information now public? As far as I can see, there's no benefit to releasing this info, and there's certainly possible detriment.

erikj 10y ago
Detriment? To who exactly?
- Noseshine 10y ago
  They know one more way the US gathers intelligence. That method won't work any more, or not nearly as well/reliably as it did.
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    There won't be many cd players left before long.
    - Noseshine 10y ago
      Yeah, they will never figure out that the same might happen with USB sticks. Because whenever you learn something you limit it to the concrete object, people cannot generalize.
      - jsprogrammer 10y ago
        The Trojan horse story has existed for millennia, yet someone still used CDs.

orasis 10y ago

How reliable is thedailybeast?

kobayashi 10y ago
Quite.