Here is a great article from the New York Times about the manipulation role of private intelligence agencies. Gives examples of past findings. Starts of a little slow but keep reading it gets into it.
A snippet of the article --- The hack also revealed evidence that Team Themis was developing a “persona management” system — a program, developed at the specific request of the United States Air Force, that allowed one user to control multiple online identities (“sock puppets”) for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grass roots support. The contract was eventually awarded to another private intelligence firm.
Link --
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...-reality/?_r=1