Media accounts were very different, however. The latest installment of the contract was awarded to Rendon in January, but the company has done work in Afghanistan before.

Stars and Stripes, a newspaper funded partly by the Defense Department, said the profiles had been used as recently as last year to keep reporters whose prior coverage had been negative from traveling with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

With public doubts about the war in Afghanistan growing, the implication was that the military was trying to reverse the trend by giving plum embed spots to reporters who have written favorably about the war.