Lord of the lies; how Hill and Knowlton's Robert Gray pulls Washington's strings - Washington, D.C. public relations consultant

Of course, keeping influence was sometimes trickier than getting it. Joan Braden's contacts, for instance, gave Gray and Company one of its most prestigious accounts--the government of Canada. But Canada also illustrated a problem with Gray's star system, as the big names often had no experience in PR.

Braden won the account through her friendship with Canada's then-Ambassador Allan Gotlieb. Once the account was secured, it was turned over to young, low-paid account executives, who saw it as a fat cow ready to be milked dry. "Everybody who could fancy the slightest reason for piling on, piled on," Joan Braden said in her memoir, Just Enough Rope. "Why were six people from the press department attending a conference in Ottawa?"

The Canada account ended with great public embarrassment. Gray and Company sent The New York Times a press release that misspelled the ambassador's name, the name of the reporter, and the name of the ambassador's guest at the luncheon the press release was promoting. The Times ran a story saying that Canada's publicists could not even spell the names correctly. Canada canceled the contract, and Joan Braden quit.

Presstidigitation

Still, Gray's business could survive, in part because, as the eighties progressed, the illusion-machine was on full power.

When Gray courted the media, he left nothing to chance, hiring personal aides or special assistants whose primary responsibilities were to get him favorable publicity. A mention in The New York Times and The Washington Post style sections could work wonders. High social visibility was encouraged, especially among top-tier people like Frank Mankiewicz, Alejandro Orfila, and Braden. The regular appearance of well-known Gray and Company stars at social and political functions and the drum beat in the press contributed to the firm's image as the most talented and well-connected in town.

When The New York Times wrote about Gray in 1982, he carefully orchestrated the interview as he had done so many times before. Clip files on Gray are filled with stories like this:

His hair is silver-gray, his suits are impeccably tailored, and he is always in a hurry .... "Get me Jim Baker," Mr. Gray calls to his secretary .. . Mr. Gray can get just about anyone in town on the telephone, maybe even the President now and then .... Just now, he is talking to Mr. Baker. "James!" he booms. "How are you doing? . .. We want to help you anytime we can .... You know that." Then Mr. Gray brings up the real reason for the call: Mr. Reagan's minimum profits tax ... He hangs up the phone and telephones Robert B. Peabody, president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, one of his clients. "Bob," he says, "how're you doing? I just had a telephone call with Jim Baker on minimum profits .... "

Illusion? By now, it was harder to tell. The get-itwhile-you-can attitude of the Reagan years brought a steady stream of clients to the door of the Power House. But while business was thriving, it was also changing. As his Ursula Meese-style access-mongering began to work, Gray gravitated toward big contracts with clients a lot more questionable than the government of Canada. Gray and Company "was a company without a moral rudder," said Sheila Tate, a former Hill and Knowlton employee and later Nancy Reagan's press secretary, discussing the firm's controversial clientele; the only criterion Gray seemed to have in selecting his clients was the size of their wallets.