PR Perspective: A Long-Term Struggle...
How a Media Campaign Helped Turn the Guantanamo Tide

by Richard S. Levick,

President

Levick Strategic Communications

rlevick@levick.com

In the aftermath of 9-11, bounty hunters captured hundreds of young Arab men in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone. They were delivered over to the U.S. military as suspected terrorists and brought to the U.S. Naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They've been held in secret detention without charges and without due process.

Among them were twelve Kuwaitis. Their fates would come to depend on the U.S. military personnel guarding them, the well-known law firm working on their behalf, the judges making decisions about their status - and our team of public relations professionals.

What has since occurred offers a model tale of how "PR" - sometimes unjustly a byword for sycophancy and hollow promotion - can be used in an unpopular cause to reverse a tidal wave of adverse public perception.

In 2002, relatives of the Kuwaiti detainees, led by an impressive gentleman named Khalid Al-Odah, whose son remains among the detainees, banded together to form the Kuwaiti Family Committee. The group hired the large New York-based law firm Shearman & Sterling to spearhead the battle to grant these prisoners the legal protections provided to U.S. citizens, such as the right to have charges brought against them and the right to a trial.

To create an environment where reporters knew that this issue deserved open-minded coverage, we devised a two-tiered PR strategy. One tack was to put a human face on the then "invisible" detainees in Guantánamo. With such exposure, Americans would be more apt to ask themselves: "Does our country really want to be treating people this way?" The subtext: The United States is supposed to be a beacon of freedom and justice in the world, and instead is resorting to nefarious and un-democratic tactics worthy of the terrorists themselves.

The second prong of the communication outreach would help the public understand that the issues faced by the detainees affect all Americans. The underlying message emphasized that suspending the rule of law, forsaking habeas corpus, and ignoring the Geneva Conventions diminishes this country's image and endangers the lives of Americans abroad.

The ace in the hole was the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in June of 2004, ruled that the prisoners had a right to either due process or release. In recent months, the messaging has extended far afield of that ruling, especially as reports of torture and abuse have allowed us to lobby reporters and editorial columnists with renewed urgency.

In the beginning, however, the High Court judgment was our main weapon. The cause was then so unpopular that we had to recast the dialogue - to, in a sense, make the Supreme Court our de facto client. To be sure, the Shearman team, headed by partner Thomas Wilner, recognized that a top-notch legal effort would not be sufficient. The cases would have to be pled in the court of public opinion just as surely as they would be pled in a court of law.

At the outset, when the Supreme Court was our only cudgel, the entire issue of foreigners secretly imprisoned by the United States received little traction in the national media. Gradually, we forced more attention in the traditional "liberal press" with interviews and articles in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

But that was hardly enough. We needed to reach the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Sacramento Bee as well. We also noted something interesting. From the very beginning, certain organs of conservative opinion, like the National Review, were already on our side, fired by constructionist passion for Constitutional rights and due process. Why not undermine the opposition by reaching out to a yet broader spectrum of conservatives?

Shearman's Wilner became the main spokesperson for the efforts on behalf of the Gitmo detainees. Indeed, he's been our other ace in the hole. In our work, we sometimes come across attorneys who resist any attempt to mount a vigorous public campaign, or they vet the terms of each communication so circumspectly as to neuter it altogether.

By contrast, Wilner is a media-savvy, media-experienced lawyer who never needed explanations of why were doing what we had to do. At the same time, we know from experience where the legal and PR strategies don't overlap. A parallel and fluid relationship with the legal team requires great effort to ensure that the PR strategy does not ever conflict with the legal agenda.

Also crucial, we optimized a new website. "Optimization" means posting sites with sufficient meta-tags and embedded key words to maximize visitors throughout the world. That website - www.kwaitifreedom.org - remains a repository of information for journalists and other audiences as well as a tool of powerful advocacy for our clients. It also underscores our "human faces" strategy. You can simply see these "real" people on the website.

The tandem efforts of the legal and PR specialists have yielded good results for The Kuwaiti Family Committee. The past 14 months of public relations outreach have produced literally thousands of news placements.

You often hear lawyers and clients disclaim any attempt to directly influence juries and judges. Nonsense! PR does just that, and it does so honorably. Our news feed, including dozens of op-eds by both Wilner and Khalid Al-Odah, reached the public and Congress directly, raising awareness of the situation in Guantánamo. In turn, such public awareness would ensure that judges knew that people were paying attention, that the prisoners weren't forgotten, and that it was indeed a viable as well as correct position to affirm due process in this situation.

The judges working on the detainee cases have openly cited stories that resulted from the media outreach in some of their rulings, which generally have been favorable to the detainees' cases. As Michael J. Glennon, a professor of international law at Tufts University, told the Washington Post: "The discomfort some justices may have with U.S. foreign policy is bound to lap over into their views of the legal issues. There is no question the justices live in this world and they read the newspapers."

To date, six of the detainees have been set free, and the legal and public relations teams continue to coordinate efforts to help free the remaining six. Considering the mood of the country just one year ago, we take immense pride in showing just what public relations can accomplish, not with slick talking points, but with a just cause and indefatigable advocacy.

About the author

Richard S. Levick, Esq., rlevick@levick.com, is President of Levick Strategic Communications, which has directed the media in the highest- profile matters, from Guantánamo and Napster to the Catholic Church controversy and the Rosie O'Donnell Rosie magazine lawsuit. Their latest book, "365 Marketing Meditations: Daily Lessons for Marketing & Communications Professionals is available at Amazon.com, as is their classic Stop the Presses: The Litigation PR Desk Reference."

Copyright © 2005 Richard Levick. All rights reserved.

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