Why Google made the NSA

Even more telling, Pentagon documents obtained by Bamford for his Rolling Stone story revealed that Rendon had been given access to the NSA's top-secret surveillance data to carry out its work on behalf of the Pentagon. TRG, the DoD documents said, is authorized "to research and analyze information classified up to Top Secret/SCI/SI/TK/G/HCS."

'SCI' means Sensitive Compartmented Information, data classified higher than Top Secret, while 'SI' designates Special Intelligence, that is, highly secret communications intercepted by the NSA. 'TK' refers to Talent/Keyhole, code names for imagery from reconnaissance aircraft and spy satellites, while 'G' stands for Gamma, encompassing communications intercepts from extremely sensitive sources, and 'HCS' means Humint Control System"--"information from a very sensitive human source. In Bamford's words:

"Taken together, the acronyms indicate that Rendon enjoys access to the most secret information from all three forms of intelligence collection: eavesdropping, imaging satellites and human spies."

So the Pentagon had:

1. contracted Rendon, a propaganda firm;

2. given Rendon access to the intelligence community's most classified information including data from NSA surveillance;

3. tasked Rendon to facilitating the DoD's development of information operations strategy by running the Highlands Forum process;

4. and further, tasked Rendon with overseeing the concrete execution of this strategy developed through the Highlands Forum process, in actual information operations around the world in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.

TRG chief executive John Rendon remains closely involved in the Pentagon Highlands Forum, and ongoing DoD information operations in the Muslim world. His November 2014 biography for the Harvard Kennedy School 'Emerging Leaders' course describes him as "a participant in forward-thinking organizations such as the Highlands Forum," "one of the first thought-leaders to harness the power of emerging technologies in support of real time information management," and an expert on "the impact of emerging information technologies on the way populations think and behave." Rendon's Harvard bio also credits him with designing and executing "strategic communications initiatives and information programs related to operations, Odyssey Dawn (Libya), Unified Protector (Libya), Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Allied Force and Joint Guardian (Kosovo), Desert Shield, Desert Storm (Kuwait), Desert Fox (Iraq) and Just Cause (Panama), among others."

Rendon's work on perception management and information operations has also "assisted a number of US military interventions" elsewhere, as well as running US information operations in Argentina, Colombia, Haiti, and Zimbabwe"--"in fact, a total of 99 countries. As a former executive director and national political director of the Democratic Party, John Rendon remains a powerful figure in Washington under the Obama administration.

Pentagon records show that TRG has received over $100 million from the DoD since 2000. In 2009, the US government cancelled a 'strategic communications' contract with TRG after revelations it was being used to weed out reporters who might write negative stories about the US military in Afghanistan, and to solely promote journalists supportive of US policy. Yet in 2010, the Obama administration re-contracted Rendon to supply services for "military deception" in Iraq.

Since then, TRG has provided advice to the US Army's Training and Doctrine Command, the Special Operations Command, and is still contracted to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the US Army's Communications Electronic Command, as well as providing "communications support" to the Pentagon and US embassies on counter-narcotics operations.

TRG also boasts on its website that it provides "Irregular Warfare Support," including "operational and planning support" that "assists our government and military clients in developing new approaches to countering and eroding an adversary's power, influence and will." Much of this support has itself been fine-tuned over the last decade or more inside the Pentagon Highlands Forum.

The Pentagon Highlands Forum's intimate link, via Rendon, to the propaganda operations pursued under Bush and Obama in support of the 'Long War,' demonstrate the integral role of mass surveillance in both irregular warfare and 'strategic communications.'

One of the major proponents of both is Prof John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School, the renowned US defense analyst credited with developing the concept of 'netwar,' who today openly advocates the need for mass surveillance and big data mining to support pre-emptive operations to thwart terrorist plots. It so happens that Arquilla is another "founding member" of the Pentagon's Highlands Forum.

Much of his work on the idea of 'networked warfare,' 'networked deterrence,' 'information warfare,' and 'swarming,' largely produced for RAND under Pentagon contract, was incubated by the Forum during its early years and thus became integral to Pentagon strategy. For instance, in Arquilla's 1999 RAND study, The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward an American Information Strategy, he and his co-author David Ronfeldt express their gratitude to Richard O'Neill "for his interest, support and guidance," and to "members of the Highlands Forum" for their advance comments on the study. Most of his RAND work credits the Highlands Forum and O'Neill for their support.

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Arquilla's work was cited in a 2006 National Academy of Sciences study on the future of network science commissioned by the US Army, which found based on his research that: "Advances in computer-based technologies and telecommunications are enabling social networks that facilitate group affiliations, including terrorist networks." The study conflated risks from terror and activist groups: "The implications of this fact for criminal, terror, protest and insurgency networks has been explored by Arquilla and Ronfeldt (2001) and are a common topic of discussion by groups like the Highlands Forum, which perceive that the United States is highly vulnerable to the interruption of critical networks." Arquilla went on to help develop information warfare strategies "for the military campaigns in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq," according to military historian Benjamin Shearer in his biographical dictionary, Home Front Heroes (2007)"--"once again illustrating the direct role played by certain key Forum members in executing Pentagon information operations in war theatres.

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