[Infowarrior] - Was Congress Misled by "Terrorist" Game Video?

[Richard Forno]

(c/o J)

http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/285129.html

2006-05-11 10:00:00

Was Congress Misled by "Terrorist" Game Video? We Talk to Gamer Who
Created the Footage

Was an elite congressional intelligence committee shown video footage from
an off-the-shelf retail game and told by the Pentagon and a highly-paid
defense contractor that it was a jihadist creation designed to recruit and
indoctrinate terrorists?

It's looking more and more like that is the case.

The bizarre story began to unfold last week when Reuters reported that the
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was shown video footage
of combat action which was represented as a user-modified version (or
"mod") of Electronic Art's best-selling Battlefield 2, a modern-day
military simulation which features combat between U.S. forces and those of
the fictitious Middle East Coalition (MEC) as well as the People's
Republic of China.

Reuters quoted a Pentagon official, Dan Devlin, as saying, "What we have
seen is that any video game that comes out... (al Qaeda will) modify it
and change the game for their needs."

The influential committee, chaired by Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), watched
footage of animated combat in which characters depicted as Islamic
insurgents killed U.S. troops in battle. The video began with the voice of
a male narrator saying, "I was just a boy when the infidels came to my
village in Blackhawk helicopters..."

Several GP readers immediately noticed that the voice-over was actually
lifted from Team America: World Police, an outrageous 2004 satirical film
produced by the creators of the popular South Park comedy series. At about
the same time, gamers involved in the online Battlefield 2 community were
pointing out the video footage shown to Congress was not a mod of BF2 at
all, but standard game footage from EA's Special Forces BF2 add-on module,
a retail product widely available in the United States and elsewhere.

GamePolitics has been seeking comment on the video from the Pentagon and
Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), a defense contractor based
in San Diego. Committee chair Hoekstra's office referred GP back to the
committee for comment. A call there had not been returned by press time.

According to Reuters, the U.S. government is paying SAIC $7 million to
monitor Islamist web sites, which is where they apparently discovered a
copy of the footage. However, the video can also readily be accessed via
links found in the user forums of the popular Planet Battlefield site,
operated by IGN Entertainment of Brisbane, California.

It is unclear whether SAIC vetted the origin of the video before showing
it to key members of Congress and representing it as a terrorist
recruiting tool.

[..]