POLITICS: Afghanistan Spy Contract Goes Sour for Pentagon - Part 1 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50681

Mike Furlong, a top Pentagon official, is alleged to have run a covert network of contractors to supply information for drone strikes and assassinations in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the U.S. government.The contract built upon his decade-long experience in running propaganda programmes for the military in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq. Officially, Furlong worked in strategic communications for Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command. In reality, Furlong was in charge of a project titled "CAPSTONE" under which he hired former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives who helped him gather intelligence on the whereabouts of "suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps" that was then transmitted to high-ranking Pentagon and CIA officials for "possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

To do this, Furlong tapped the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organisation, a Pentagon research organisation to reduce the threat from roadside bombs, to provide him with a 24.6-million-dollar pot of money via two obscure contracting offices - the Cultural Engagement Group at the Special Operations Command Central in Tampa, Florida, and the Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Programme Office in Dahlgren, Virginia. With this money, he hired a newly minted company called International Media Ventures (IMV) of St. Petersburg, Florida, and attempted to subcontract other individuals and companies to run surveillance operations in South Asia.

One of the companies Furlong attempted to subcontract was AfPax Insider, a subscription service run by Robert Young Pelton, author of "The World's Most Dangerous Places", and Eason Jordan, a former chief news executive for CNN. After learning more about what Furlong wanted to do, Pelton told IPS that he opted out of the programme in late 2009. "When we suspected what he was doing, we protested. That moral stand cost us millions," he said.