Gadhafi paid millions to U.S. firms to polish his global image

[Turborama]

Source: CNN

By Dugald McConnell and Brian Todd |April 7, 2011 9:42 a.m. EDT

- Just a few years before becoming embroiled in fighting a rebellion, Moammar Gadhafi was spending millions of dollars a year to wage a secret PR campaign to burnish his global image as a statesman and a reformer, confidential documents show.

The mercurial leader hired The Monitor Group, a Boston-based consulting firm, to execute a public relations strategy that included paying think-tank analysts and former government officials to take a free trip to Libya for lectures, discussions and even personal meetings with Gadhafi starting in 2006.

According to a 2007 memo from Monitor to Gadhafi's intelligence chief, the campaign was to "enhance international understanding and appreciation of Libya... emphasize the emergence of the new Libya... (and) introduce (Moammar Gadhafi) as a thinker and intellectual."

The price: $3 million a year, plus expenses, for work that included consulting, briefings, analyses and a steady stream of high-profile visitors to Libya -- at least one a month.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/04/06/libya.gadhafi.image/index.html?hpt=C1

---

More details at the link.

Video report on this: http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/04/06/todd.gadhafi.rich.cnn

[randr]

1. Remind me never to hire the Monitor Group

[russspeakeasy]

5. Consider yourself reminded.

Monitor/ monitor lizard, any relation?

[bemildred]

2. Apparently that was a waste of money. nt

[WatsonT]

4. As the saying goes: you can't polish a turd.

[Bragi]

10. But sometimes you can invoice for turd polishing services /nt

[tridim]

12. Actually the Mythbusters proved that you can.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_aL228cuWfwo/TMyCzRmu3UI/AAAAAAAAAMY/BQAqe10TEzk/s1600/real+games+acro+turd.jpg

That polished turd looks quite a bit better than post-image-enhanced Momar.

[KurtNYC]

3. this was only one part of it

The US and Britain were rehabbing Gadaffi as fast as possible. Obama was the first US President to shake Gaddafi's hand (ever) so they were very convinced they could do it.

Something went wrong in their deal with Gaddafi.

[Uncle Joe]

6. I hate using crude language, but it's like they say.

You can polish a turd all day long but at the end of the day, it will still be a turd,

Thanks for the thread, Turborama.

[global1]

7. What's The Expression - "Throwing Good Money After Bad".....

So does this account for the recognition that Ghaddafi got from BushCo? This was all a PR ploy.

[jakeXT]

8. He got screwed by everyone including Trump

Billionaire potential Republican presidential aspirant Donald Trump claimed on Monday that he once took part in a subversive plan to undermine Muammar Gaddafi's power in Libya, an effort that has since become an international mission.

"I think I probably have more experience of anybody -- whether I sell them real estate for tremendous amounts of money. I mean, I've dealt with everybody," the billionaire real-estate mogul told Fox News Monday morning, touting his supposed foreign policy credentials. "And by the way, I can tell you something else. I dealt with Gaddafi. I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn't let him use the land."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/21/donald-trump-gaddafi-screwed_n_838328.html

[bhikkhu]

9. That's one expensive turd! n/t

[Bragi]

11. He should have hired Bill Clinton for PR, just like Bush /nt

[pinboy3niner]

13. What was lost when some of America's finest scholars got paid to buff the Libyan dictator's image?

Opening Remarks April 6, 2011, 11:01PM EST


The Professors and Qaddafi's Extreme Makeover


What was lost when some of America's finest scholars got paid to buff the Libyan dictator's image?


By Paul M. Barrett


In 2006 and 2007, a dozen Western intellectuals traveled to the North African desert for intimate conversations with the man who likes to call himself the Brother Leader. Muammar Qaddafi received his visitors in a carpeted Bedouin-style tent, where they sat on plastic chairs and sipped tea while discussing the dictator's thoughts on economics and politics.

The meetings were arranged by the Monitor Group, a Cambridge (Mass.) consulting firm co-founded in 1983 by Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School management expert. As Politico first reported on Feb. 21, the Qaddafi regime paid Monitor a fee of $3 million a year, plus expenses, to run what the firm called "a sustained, long-term program to enhance international understanding and appreciation of Libya." Monitor, which has 1,500 employees worldwide, organized roundtables and produced thick studies on stimulating business in the isolated oil state. It provided research for a PhD thesis Qaddafi's son Saif al-Islam submitted to the London School of Economics.


...


None of that excuses the use of august academic reputations and affiliations to promote the Qaddafis. Monitor partner Eamonn Kelly said in an e-mail to Bloomberg Businessweek that the firm regrets "our research in support" of Saif Qaddafi's doctoral thesis. "We also regret the proposal submitted to write a book under Colonel Qaddafi's name. Although this work was not completed, the very idea was a mistake." Kelly said he is leading an internal investigation that includes whether Monitor engaged in lobbying without having registered to represent Libya.

What Monitor did is no different from what K Street "public affairs" shops do every day of the week for dubious foreign governments. Still, the Libya episode leaves a distinctive odor, one that emanates from the corruption of academic reputation. Harry Lewis, a computer science professor at Harvard, doesn't like the smell. During a faculty meeting on Apr. 5, he asked the university's president, Drew Faust, "Shouldn't Harvard acknowledge embarrassment, and might you remind us that when we parlay our status as Harvard professors for personal profit, we can hurt both the university and all of its members?" Faust responded that she supports such expressions of concern but also endorses "the wide discretion of all of you in this room … to pursue the directions of academic inquiry you choose, and the outside activities and engagements you choose."


...


Barrett is an assistant managing editor at Bloomberg Businessweek.


http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_16/b4224004951872.htm

[nyy1998]

14. Intreresting, i have a friend who works there(a liberal in fact), I'm guessing she has no idea

considering she's been working there for all of 7-8 months and I think is in HR. I'm not going to associate her with Gaddafi in any shape or form, but still very interesting to see what a small world it is.