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The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

- Edward Bernays
Propaganda (1928)

The term "banana republic" actually originated in reference to United Fruit's domination of corrupt governments in Guatemala and other Central American countries. The company brutally exploited virtual slave labor in order to produce cheap bananas for the lucrative U.S. market. When a mildly reformist Guatemala government attempted to reign in the company's power, Bernays whipped up media and political sentiment against it in the commie-crazed 1950s.

"Articles began appearing in the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Atlantic Monthly, Time, Newsweek, the New Leader, and other publications all discussing the growing influence of Guatemala's Communists," Tye writes. "The fact that liberal journals like the Nation were also coming around was especially satisfying to Bernays, who believed that winning the liberals over was essential. . . . At the same time, plans were under way to mail to American Legion posts and auxiliaries 300,000 copies of a brochure entitled 'Communism in Guatemala--22 Facts.'"

His efforts led directly to a brutal military coup. Tye writes that Bernays "remained a key source of information for the press, especially the liberal press, right through the takeover. In fact, as the invasion was commencing on June 18, his personal papers indicate he was giving the 'first news anyone received on the situation' to the Associate Press, United Press, the International News Service, and the New York Times, with contacts intensifying over the next several days."

http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q2/bernays.html

One of his early public relations strokes was on behalf of Venida hairnets. When women began to bob their hair after World War I, they discarded hairnets, much to the distress of hairnet manufacturers.

Venida, an industry leader, called in Mr. Bernays, who conducted a public relations campaign for the product. Among other things, he got artists to praise the "Greek coiffure" look that hairnets gave their wearers. And he got a labor expert to urge labor commissioners around the country to insist that women working with or near machines wear hairnets for their own protection. Much favorable publicity ensued.

In this, as in similar campaigns, Mr. Bernays's approach was oblique. The emphasis was on hairnets, not on Venida. Indeed, Venida was rarely mentioned at all.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/16/specials/bernays-obit.html

In the 1920’s it was considered inappropriate for women to smoke. Realizing that they could double their market the American Tobacco company hired a man named Edward Bernays to change that perception. Bernays, who is considered the father of the public relations industry, decided it would be effective to associate smoking with freedom and womens suffrage. He payed models to march in women’s rights parades smoking cigarettes and referring to them as “Torches of Freedom”. Then he made sure all of the major papers and magazines noted this fact and prominently featured pictures of them.

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/05/31/
chesterfield-ad-i-really-dont-know-if-i-should-smoke/

"The average citizen is the world's most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own logic proof compartments, his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction.

-- Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion

http://www.nndb.com/people/802/000113463/

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know.

Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld

Whatever happened to TRUTH?

...In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- ...
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do..."

...power, and its influence on truth. Power, the argument runs, can shape truth: power, in the end, can determine reality, or at least the reality that most people accept—a critical point, for the administration has been singularly effective in its recognition that what is most politically important is not what readers of The New York Times believe but what most Americans are willing to believe. The last century's most innovative authority on power and truth, Joseph Goebbels, made the same point but rather more directly:

There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.

Why is the truth so difficult to find nowadays?

Perception trumps reality, every time.

Spin Cycles: Spinning war
Sheldon Rampton Interview

They have been fairly closed mouth about their work but have on occasion given speeches, and in one speech for example that John Rendon gave to US Naval Cadets, he told the story - he said, "Do you remember how at the end of the first war in Iraq how you saw Kuwaitis lined up waving American flags on television as they were, you know, as they were greeting American soldiers in Kuwait". He said, "Did you ever wonder how those flags ended up in their hands? That was my job back then". That tells you that those iconic moments that you see on television, that people watch and they think this tells us something about the meaning of what is happening in this war - those don't happen by accident. There is someone carefully scripting and staging things and making sure that little flags end up in the hands of Kuwatis so that they are there to wave them.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/spincycles/transcript-rampton.html

I think so and you can see very specific examples of that in the case of buildup to war with Iraq. For example, we now know that a lot of the information that the White House relied upon in making its claims about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction came from comments provided by a group called The Iraqi National Congress. As we've explained in our books and as is well documented, The Iraqi National Congress is actually a group that was set up at the instigation of the first President Bush, following Operation Desert Storm and who did he hire to create this group? Who came up with the name Iraqi National Congress? It was a public relations group, the Randen Group and the task for The Iraqi National Congress for which it was created was to create conditions that would lead to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.

- Ibid

We have a privileged class of communicators and an audience whose role is either to be passive or to accept the will of the privileged communicator that's different from the dialogue that you expect in a democracy. That hasn't changed; that's been part of war propaganda since war propaganda and wars began. One of the things that I think is somewhat different about the propaganda that sold the war in Iraq is the extent to which the communicators themselves used the jargon of advertising and commercial marketing, so for example you had Andrew Carr, the White House Chief of Staff who was asked why they had chosen September of 2002 to kick off their big publicity push, and his response was "Well, from a marketing point of view you don't launch new products in August". That's a rather striking turn of phrase in a way of thinking about things, it's a very straightforward statement that they're selling just as they would a bar of soap.

-ibid

John Rendon "insists that information is terrain and someone will occupy it, either the adversary, a third party, or US."

Organizing for Combat

"In the Pentagon, in addition to the normal public affairs structure, the Special Plans Office was deeply involved in this effort, supported (with information) by the Iraqi National Congress. There was the Rendon Group, headed by John Rendon who gave media advice to OSD, the Joint Staff and the White House. Finally, there were connections to large PSYOPS activities.

"The Rendon Group worked for both OSD and the Joint Staff during this war. John Rendon says he was part of the daily 9:30 phone calls with the key information players to set themes."

Joint Chiefs of Staff

O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported in June 2003 that Rendon had gone to work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, providing "strategic communications counsel, media analysis and consultation support services" to the Joint Chiefs, combatant commanders and top military advisors

Afghanistan

Newspapers reported in October 2001 that the Pentagon had awarded Rendon a four-month, $397,000 contract to handle PR aspects of U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan. Rendon and Pentagon officials declined to discuss details of the firm's work, which reportedly included monitoring international news media, conducting focus groups, creating a web site about the US campaign against terrorism, and recommending "ways the US military can counter disinformation and improve its own public communications."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rendon_Group

. Miller was also close to Vice President****Cheney's top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, whose sister, Sandra Libby, happens to be John Rendon's wife.

http://www.prwatch.org/node/5509

I am not a national-security strategist or a military tactician,I am a politician, a person who uses communication to meet public-policy or corporate-policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager.

John Rendon
U.S. Air Force Academy speech
1996