Crisis Management

Gary Winnick, the Global Crossing founder/chairman who is trying to raise $1 billion to rescue his once-mighty company from bankruptcy, has hired Rubenstein and Associates, the PR firm that specializes in "reputation management" for clients such as Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, Adnan Khashoggi, Kathie Lee Gifford and the state of Israel.

"A series of revelations of corporate malpractice and number fiddling" have destroyed investor faith in Wall Street, reports the Economist. "Investors have not only lost patience with corporate America's greed and its inability to do what it says it is doing; they have also lost confidence in Wall Street's ability to act as an honest broker between them, the providers of capital, and the corporate users of it.

A "PR makeover," explains communications consultant Fraser P. Seitel, is when "a caged and cornered public figure attempts a complete identity reversal." Seitel examines recent makeover attempts by FBI Director Robert Mueller, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, and New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli. "Changing one's image depends on a shocking release, startling revelation or completely unanticipated declaration - to confess to past lapses and promise future change," Seitel says. But are any of these conversions genuine?

Hill & Knowlton, the PR firm that "managed communications" at Three Mile Island and worked for the government of Kuwait to spin the war in the Persian Gulf, has now been hired "to salvage Enron Corp.," according to O'Dwyer's. Howard Paster, the White House lobbyist for former President Clinton, is working on the account with a variety of other H&K staffers with ties to both Republican and Democratic politicians.