Darth Vader of the Lobbyists
By Stephen Labaton
Published: August 23, 1992
THE POWER HOUSE Robert Keith Gray and the Selling of Access and Influence in Washington. By Susan B. Trento. Illustrated. 430 pp. New York: St. Martin's Press. $24.95.
...
To Susan B. Trento, who was formerly the chief staff aide to Representative Harold Hollenbeck of New Jersey,
the lobbying industry's Darth Vader is Robert Keith Gray of the public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton. In "The Power House," she tells how Mr. Gray, after unabashedly peddling access for decades, reached the apex of his influence when his friend Ronald Reagan moved into the White House. Throughout the 1980's and into the 90's, as either the head of his own firm or as an executive with Hill & Knowlton, Mr. Gray indiscriminately took on almost any cause, as long as his hefty retainers were paid.
His rogues' gallery of clients has included the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the teamster president Jackie Presser, the disgraced publisher Robert Maxwell, the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), Haiti under the regime of Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier and China immediately following the massacre at Tiananmen Square.
An avowed conservative who was an inaugural co-chairman in 1980-81, organizing the glitzy Republican parties that ushered in the Reagan decade, Mr. Gray represented the Marxist Government of Angola. He also worked for Playboy and Penthouse when they were facing a Reagan Administration antipornography crusade led by his friend Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d. Mr. Meese ultimately turned his back on the crusade, Ms. Trento says, because of Mr. Gray's persuasive powers. (She notes elsewhere that Mr. Gray once helped secure a job for Mr. Meese's wife, Ursula.)
For a fee of more than $10 million, Mr. Gray's office at Hill & Knowlton waged a lobbying campaign for Kuwait in an effort to manipulate public opinion in favor of an American invasion. The campaign was effective, although eventually Hill & Knowlton was severely embarrassed: the firm had arranged for a young woman to present emotional testimony before a Congressional panel about Iraqis killing Kuwaiti babies by removing them from incubators. Later, it was revealed that she was really the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/23/books/darth-vader-of-the-lobbyists.html
According to wiki, "This book (Trento's) led to a defamation lawsuit by Gray against Trento and St. Martin's Press, in which Gray's claims were dismissed."
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