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Watch: Interview reveals how a British PR firm helped shape the war on terror in Iraq

BY Desiree Huitt

In the video below, Martin Wells a former employee of Bells Pottinger is interviewed. Bells Pottinger is the London PR company hired and paid millions to make “Arabic style” news and fake al Qaeda propaganda videos during the Iraq war. The primary reason behind the fake videos was the ability to track the audience. If they tracked the audience, […]

In the video below, Martin Wells a former employee of Bells Pottinger is interviewed. Bells Pottinger is the London PR company hired and paid millions to make “Arabic style” news and fake al Qaeda propaganda videos during the Iraq war. The primary reason behind the fake videos was the ability to track the audience. If they tracked the audience, it could lead to possible terrorists inside Iraq and around the world. Martin Wells, stated that when he was hired he had no idea the type of work he would be doing and he was surprised to be living outside of the green zone at Camp Victory. Camp Victory was the Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) headquarters during the war in Iraq and was eventually turned over to Iraqi forces during the withdrawal.

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In an article by the Daily Beast, the types media produced by the PR firm were described as the following.

There were three types of media operations commonly used in Iraq at the time, said a military contractor familiar with Bell Pottinger’s work there.

“White is attributed, it says who produced it on the label,” the contractor said. “Grey is unattributed, and black is falsely attributed. These types of black ops, used for tracking who is watching a certain thing, were a pretty standard part of the industry toolkit.”

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Martin Wells said that they primarily sent out the media to be utilized on “Real Player” which had a white blank screen before the video started. They were able to manipulate the coding of that white screen and track the audience around the world.

SOFREP also covered this topic recently as well, you can read that article HERE.

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Image courtesy of the Daily Beast

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