How To Win The Media War Against Grassroots Activists: Stratfor’s Strategies

The playbook: isolate the radicals, “cultivate” the idealists and “educate” them into becoming realists. Then co-opt the realists.

Mintpress July 29, 2013

By Steve Horn

The home page of the Stratfor website is seen on a computer monitor in London Wendesday Jan 11, 2012. Security analysis firm Stratfor has relaunched its website after hackers brought down its servers and stole thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to its clients. Stratfor acknowledged Wednesday that the company had not encrypted customer information  a major embarrassment for a security company. (AP Photo/Cassandra Vinograd)

(AP/Cassandra Vinograd)

Part 1 of this exclusive Mint Press News investigation examined the strategies employed by Stratfor precursor Pagan International. So named for its founder Rafael Pagan, corporate clients hired the company with the aim of defusing grassroots movements mobilized against them around the world.

Part 2 takes a closer look at how Pagan International’s successor, Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin (MBD), revised and refined these strategies — and how what began as a corporate public-relations firm evolved into the private intelligence agency Stratfor, which wages information warfare against today’s activists and organizers.

 

Rafael Pagan — who died in 1993 — was not invited to be a part of his former associate’s new firm, Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin. His tactic of conquering and dividing activist movements and isolating the “fanatic activist leaders” lived on, though, through his former business partner, Jack Mongoven.