Robert Keith Gray

Robert Keith Gray was a Republican activist and public relations executive who founded Gray and Company in 1981 after working with Hill & Knowlton.

Career

Grey served in the Eisenhower Eisenhower administration in various roles. In the 1960s and 1970s, Gray provided services to accounts that included the American Petroleum Institute, Procter and Gamble, and the National Association of Broadcasters and El Paso Natural Gas. El Paso hired Hill and Knowlton to drum up support for legislation that would allow El Paso to buy out its competitor, Pacific Northwest Pipeline Company. [ Susan B. Trento, [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n9_v24/ai_12529888 Lord of the lies; how Hill and Knowlton's Robert Gray pulls Washington's strings - Washington, D.C. public relations consultant] "Washington Monthly" Sept, 1992 ] Between 1961 and 1981 as the head of the Washington office of, and eventually as vice chairman of, Hill and Knowlton, a major public relations and lobbying firm. He started his own firm, Gray and Company in 1981, only to sell it back to Hill and Knowlton in 1986.

Throughout his thirty years in Washington, Robert Gray's style has been consistent -- he parties and charms his way into the power elite, and then sells access to his Rolodex for fees sometimes running into the millions. Gray was for many years active in Republican politics and a leading figure in public relations in Washington, D.C. In 1967 he joined the 50-person committee responsible for charting Richard Nixon's path to the White House. During the Watergate era, Robert Keith Gray served on the board of Consultants International, founded by CIA agent Edwin Wilson. When Wilson and fellow agent Frank Terpil got caught running guns abroad, Gray tried to deny his connection with Wilson.

He worked in the 1980 Reagan-Bush presidential campaign, serving directly under William Casey.

Gray's firm came to prominence after the Kuwaiti government in the run-up to the first Gulf War in 1990.Besides Kuwait, Gray represented China after 1989, Haiti under Duvalier, supporters of Rev. Moon, the Church of Scientology, BCCI, the late British publisher Robert Maxwell, the Teamsters under Jackie Presser, and the Catholic Bishops Conference in their campaign against abortion.

In July 1992, St. Martin's Press, Inc., published a book by Susan Trento entitled "'The Power House: Robert Keith Gray and the Selling of Access and Influence in Washington". Focusing on Gray's career, the book sought to show the influence of powerful and well-connected lobbyists on the federal government. In June 1995, Gray brought suit both against St. Martin's Press and Trento in the federal district court in New Hampshire, claiming that eight separate statements made in the book were defamatory. A jury found for Susan Trento on all issues. Mr. Gray's appeals were all dismissed.

Books

* Susan B. Trento, "The Power House: Robert Keith Gray and the Selling of Access and Influence in Washington", New York, St.Martin's Press, 1992. ISBN 0-312-08319-X

External links

* [http://www.namebase.org/main4/Robert-Keith-Gray.html Robert Keith Gray] at NameBase

References