"The Pit Bull Of Public Relations" PDF Print E-mail
PR Industry
Business Week
APRIL 17, 2006



PEOPLE

Eric Dezenhall serves clients such as ExxonMobil by going after their foes

When Greenpeace USA found itself the subject of an Internal Revenue
Service audit last year, the environmental group thought it knew whom
to blame: Public Interest Watch, a Washington nonprofit heavily funded
by Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM ) PIW had filed an IRS complaint against
Greenpeace in 2003, accusing it of abusing its tax-exempt status.
Greenpeace assumed ExxonMobil had used PIW to harass a persistent
critic.

 But the story, first reported last month by The Wall Street Journal,
was even more complicated. PIW, it turns out, has close ties to
Dezenhall Resources, a communications firm known for stealthy assaults
on its clients' foes. Founder and CEO Eric Dezenhall, who is also a TV
pundit and writer of mystery novels, explained his perspective in a
1999 nonfiction book, Nail 'Em! Confronting High-Profile Attacks on
Celebrities & Businesses. "Damage control used to be about soft,
fuzzy concepts like image," he wrote. "Now it's about survival, and
this has made the battle bloodier."

Dezenhall Resources occupies a small niche within the public relations
business that includes Sitrick & Co. in Los Angeles and Qorvis
Communications in Washington. Kevin McCauley, editor of O'Dwyer's PR
Report, a trade publication, regards Dezenhall as one of the most
effective in his specialty, calling him "the pit bull of public
relations."

NO FINGERPRINTS

Dezenhall frequently appears on TV and radio to critique the
damage-control skills of the likes of Wal-Mart (WMT ), Martha Stewart,
and even Vice-President Dick Cheney. But it's difficult to identify
what he does for his own clients. Dezenhall won't name them, and he
doesn't like to leave fingerprints. Interviews with people familiar
with his firm reveal a shop that follows the combative credo outlined
in Nail 'Em! It has been hired by lawyers representing former Enron CEO
Jeffrey Skilling and by Mark J. Geragos, the Los Angeles attorney for
Michael Jackson and other celebrities. Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly
& Co. (LLY ) has retained Dezenhall in the past but won't say why.
Journalist Bill Moyers, who tangled with Dezenhall's firm over a 2001
documentary about the chemicals industry, says: "I consider them the
Mafia of industry."

Dezenhall, 43, grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Dartmouth in
1984. He worked briefly in the communications office of the Reagan
White House and then joined a Washington PR firm before starting his
own outfit in 1987. (The semi-autobiographical hero of his novels,
Jonah Eastman, is an image massager and amateur sleuth who mixes with
South Jersey mobsters, journalists, and politicians.) Although active
in Republican politics, Dezenhall has professional admirers across the
ideological spectrum, says Chris Lehane, a former spokesman for Al
Gore. "They have a very good reputation," Lehane, now a communications
consultant in San Francisco, says of Dezenhall Resources.

Targets of Dezenhall's tactics see things differently. "We now know
who's doing the invisible work to undermine efforts to protect the
environment," says Kert Davies, Greenpeace USA's research director. The
IRS said last month that the group could remain tax-exempt.

Greenpeace thought its audit problem emanated from Public Interest
Watch, which according to federal tax filings received $120,000 of its
$124,000 in revenue from ExxonMobil in 2003, the year PIW filed its IRS
complaint against Greenpeace. But a person familiar with the situation
says Dezenhall Resources helped create PIW in 2002 specifically to prod
the IRS to go after Greenpeace. Two of PIW's three founding board
members are former Dezenhall employees: James McCarthy and Christopher
Meyers. McCarthy, who now has his own PR business and until last year
used space in Dezenhall Resources' Connecticut Avenue offices, declines
to comment on whether the firm helped launch PIW. Meyers didn't respond
to phone messages.

The third PIW founder, Michael J. Hardiman, says in an e-mail exchange
that he started the group after sparring with nonprofits over land-use
issues. He didn't respond to e-mail and phone messages asking about
Dezenhall Resources' role. Eric Dezenhall similarly didn't respond to
requests that he explain any ties to PIW. ExxonMobil declines to
comment, saying through a spokesman: "It's our policy not to discuss
our business relationships."

In a June, 2002, engagement involving ExxonMobil, Dezenhall Resources
arranged a pro-Exxon demonstration on Capitol Hill, according to people
familiar with the situation. At Dezenhall Resources' behest, the
several dozen demonstrators were brought together by the conservative
Washington nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform, these people say.
Participants waved signs reading "Capitalism Rocks" and "Stop Global
Whining." Their aim was to counter an environmental protest at an Exxon
station near the Capitol.

FINANCIAL TIES?

Dezenhall resources has provided financial backing to Americans for Tax
Reform, say people familiar with the communications firm. But ATR says
it has no indication that the Dezenhall firm paid for the 2002
demonstration. "The staff here I spoke with said they don't have any
recollection of payment for this specific event," says ATR spokesman
John Kartch.

In an e-mail answer to questions about the incident, Eric Dezenhall
doesn't comment on any ties to ATR but says: "We routinely support
think tanks and other experts whose positions are consistent with our
clients' views, and will continue to do so unapologetically." He
declines to say whether Exxon has been a client.

In the mid-1990s, Motel 6, a unit of the French company Accor, was
threatened with potentially embarrassing publicity stemming from claims
by a couple that a peephole allowed them to be observed during intimate
moments. Dezenhall wrote in his 1999 book that his investigators
discovered that the peephole story was bogus and that the accusers had
a history as con artists. As a result, a TV newsmagazine segment in the
works never aired, Dezenhall wrote. A Motel 6 spokeswoman confirms this
account.

Jeffrey Skilling's Los Angeles-based law firm, O'Melveny & Myers,
hired Dezenhall in the wake of Enron's collapse in 2001. Internal
Dezenhall communications from 2003 show that employees there discussed
a plan to pay newspaper opinion writers to publish articles questioning
the credibility and motivation of Enron whistleblower Sherron Watkins.
It couldn't be determined whether the idea was put into action.
O'Melveny partner Daniel Petrocelli, Skilling's lead lawyer in the
Enron fraud trial, says that the relationship with Dezenhall has ended.
Petrocelli says that if any anti-Watkins campaign took place, Skilling
and O'Melveny didn't approve: "That's not something we would ever do."

Without confirming O'Melveny as a client, Dezenhall says: "We
aggressively pitch journalists on story ideas, but we do not pay for
coverage."


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