“The entire story [involving WMD in Iraq] may have been little more than a U.S.-sponsored psychological warfare effort–The Rendon Group’s specialty–to gin up the American public’s fear over Saddam Hussein. If so, it would have been illegal under U.S. law, which forbids the use of taxpayer money to propagandize the American public. ‘I think what you’re seeing,’ said [former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott] Ritter [on July 23, 2003], ‘is the need for the United States government to turn to commercial enterprises like The Rendon Group to do the kind of lying and distortion of truth in terms of peddling disinformation to the media that the government normally can’t do for itself.’ ”
– James Bamford, A Pretext for War, Page 298