London based PR firm Bell Pottinger were paid £417 million by the US government to produce propaganda material to fuel the Iraq War, a new investigation has revealed.
The company was founded by one of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s advisers, Lord Timothy Bell, and was known to work with a number of controversial clients.
None will top the Pentagon however, as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism report revealed they created fake terror and news videos and then tracked the viewers watching them.
Bell told The Sunday Times, ““It was a covert military operation. It was covered by various secrecy documents. We were very proud of it. We did a lot to help resolve the situation. Not enough. We did not stop the mess which emerged, but it was part of the American propaganda machinery.”
Martin Wells, a former video editor at Bell Pottinger, said, “”When I first started working, I didn’t know how big a project this was. I just assumed it was news gathering. We would do the news items which would go out on the various channels locally.
“We would have people out there filming it. It would come back, we would then edit it… and we were to make it, as best we could… look as if it was Arabic… as if it was created by Arabic TV almost.”
This new report shows the scary reality of the world we live in and how shady corporations are often pulling strings behind the scenes of major world events.