Pentagon punts propaganda contractor

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has severed its relationship with its longtime propaganda contractor in Afghanistan after spending more than $425 million on its pamphlets, broadcasts, websites and billboards.

In February, the military denied the last of Leonie Industries’ protests that it should be awarded the lucrative contract, Lt. Col. David Hylton, a spokesman for the Army’s contracting command, said in an email Tuesday. Instead, the military awarded the $32 million contract to SOS International.

But from 2008 to 2015, Leonie was the military’s top propaganda contractor despite doubts about the effectiveness of what the Pentagon calls Information Operation programs and the company’s own troubled history.

A spokesman for Leonie, Alfred Soyyar, declined in an email to comment on the protest denial.

In 2012, USA TODAY reported on the hundreds of millions of dollars the Pentagon had spent on poorly tracked information operations programs designed to sell the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to often hostile populations. A year later, a Government Accountability Office report, meant for internal use only by the Pentagon but obtained by the paper, showed that the impact of the programs was unclear and that the military didn’t know whether it was targeting the right people.

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USA TODAY also revealed that the owners of Leonie Industries, the brother-and-sister team of Camille Chidiac and Rema Dupont, had failed to pay $4 million in federal taxes a year after their company had taken in $92 million in Pentagon contracts.

Shortly Leonie was questioned about the tax delinquency, Chidiac launched an anonymous, online smear campaign against USA TODAY. Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts were opened in reporters’ names, phony fan clubs raised questions about their prior work and anonymous posts suggested they were Taliban sympathizers.

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The accounts, websites and smears ceased when Chidiac’s role was revealed. Chidiac admitted the character attacks but maintained he launched them as a private citizen, not as the company’s owner. He was suspended for a time from doing business with the government but was subsequently reinstated.

Congress, led by Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., pushed for legislation banning contractors with federal tax debts from doing business with the government.

In 2013, then-Defense secretary Leon Panetta criticized the Pentagon’s propaganda efforts, saying their benefits were difficult to quantify. He also acknowledged that they had been misused against USA TODAY.

“I think there are dangers associated with it, that you just have to continue to be very vigilant about, because it can be misused as we saw take place in your area,” Panetta said in an interview about propaganda and how it could be misued. That's the kind of thing that we just have to be very careful about."

Panetta’s concerns, however, did not stop contracts flowing to Leonie. The Pentagon paid Leonie more than $123 million in fiscal years 2014 and 2015.

Propaganda programs are more closely tracked now, the Pentagon says. But after a pamphlet drop in Syria late last year, military officials would not provide measures of its effectiveness, saying that information was classified.

Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, a government watchdog group, questioned the value of propaganda programs, saying there’s little evidence that they won hearts and minds. He called for a review of the reliance on private contractors for the program.

“The government should be auditing the previous contract to ensure that taxpayer dollars were spent wisely,” Amey said. “Additionally, moving forward, I hope that (Pentagon) brass has determined that this work is truly essential, that it benefits the U.S., and that we are in good hands with contractors taking the lead.”