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{{tobaccowikiShow badges| Tobaccowiki | Front groups}}'''APCO Worldwide''' was founded by the law firm of Arnold & Porter, one of Washington D.C.'s largest law firms, also well known as a tobacco industry law firm. It was founded in 1984 by [[Margery Kraus]] who served as its first president and chief executive officer. [http://www.apcoworldwide.com/content/bios/Kraus.cfm]. APCO APCO has offices and is headquartered in Washington D.C. and has offices in 24 locations in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa and employs 470 people. [http://www.odwyerspr.com/members/pr_firms_database/prda11a.htm]

"Core services include corporate'''APCO''' and its later manifestations, '''APCO Associates''', investor then '''APCO & Associates''' and '''APCO Worldwide''' have been through many changes in ownership and control since it was founded in 1984 by the law firm [[Arnold & Porter]]. One of the public relations company's main clients was itself: it is difficult to believe much of the company's claims and internal communication, historical propaganda.# It began life as the real-estate holding company for the partners of [[crisis managementArnold & Porter]]law firm which serviced Philip Morris at a board-room level. It was then known as '''A&P Co.''' and it was the brian-child of real estate partner Myron 'Mike' Curzan. It was run initially by one of the legal partners of the firm, '''Robert J Samors'''.# It was converted from a shelf-company to a public relations firm for the tobacco industry with the hiring of [[issue managementMargery Kraus]](from the "Close Up Foundation" -- her husband Steven was an A&P lawyer). It was initially known just as '''APCo''', government relationsand later, litigation communicationby capitalising the last letter, media as '''APCO.''' It began to provide services to tobacco companies other than Philip Morris, and then later still to companies outside the tobacco industry. The origin in Arnold & Porter were not admitted at this time (They are now included in the firm's puff pieces.)# It initially serviced only Philip Morris, and then the Tobacco Institute. But later it was expanded as a general-service public relationsfirm (hiding its tobacco industry connections) and became '''[[APCO & Associates]].''' Later, coalition buildingas it established offices outside the USA, opinion researchit changed the name to '''APCO Worldwide'''.# In 1991 it was said to have been 'acquired' from Arnold & Porters by the umbrella media firm [[Grey Communications International]] (GCI), market entrywhich made it a subsidiary of Grey Advertising, New York's largest advertising and public relations firm with about $7 billion in revenues. This later became Grey Global.# In July 1994 APCO were still using Arnold & Porter's fax number See list head EuroTASSC Prospective participants list. <table width="25%" bgcolor="eeeedd" border=1 rules=all cellpadding=5 align=right><tr bgcolor="cccccc"><th>ASSOCIATED ENTRIES</th></tr><tr><td>[[APCO Worldwide]] </td></tr><tr><td>[[APCO (Doc Index)]] </td></tr><tr><td>[[Arnold & Porter]]</td></tr><tr><td>[[Corporate Social ResponsibilityMargery Kraus]]</td></tr><tr><td>[[Grey Communications International|corporate social responsibilityGrey Communications]]</td></tr><tr><td>[[WPP Group]] &nbsp; & &nbsp; [[Martin Sorrell]]</td></tr><tr><th>CREATIONS FOR TOBACCO INDUSTRY</th></tr><tr><td>[[TASSC]] &nbsp; & &nbsp; [[Steven J Milloy]]</td></tr><tr><td>[[SEPP]] &nbsp; & &nbsp; [[S. Fred Singer]]</td><tr></table></table>[http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/ieg22d00/pdf] and online communicationEuroScience Project (Brussels) [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/qqn47c00/pdf]# In September 2004 APCO was supposedly absorbed by [[Martin Sorrell]] into his WPP Group (multi-media global giant) when they swallowed up the Grey Global empire. The WPP Group had [[Hamish Maxwell]] (retired Chairman of Philip Morris) as Non-executive Chairman from 1996 to 2001.# September 2004 is also given as the date in the APCO Puff piece claims,when " it states on its website''Margery Kraus led a management buy-out of her firm from Grey Global Group, making APCO one of the largest privately owned communications and public affairs firms in the world."'': [Note If the above doesn't make sense to you, then you are not alone.]

==DescriptionGeneral ==According Arnold & Porter was one of Washington D.C.'s largest law firms, and it was also well known as the Philip Morris board-room law firm. During the period of initial control of APCO by Philip Morris and the lawyers, it extended its role to become a general [[tobacco industry]] PR firm. It developed links to both Lorillard and RJ Reynolds Tobacco. It also developed a mythical legend about its website origins, claiming that APCO was founded in 1984 by [[Margery Kraus]] who served as its first president and chief executive officer. [http://www.apcoworldwide.com/content/bios/Kraus.cfm] and that she built this global giant singlehandedly. On the strength of this myth she has regularly been awarded achievement-awards: from the 1997 "PR PRofessional of the year" award; the 1998 "Businesswoman of the Year" award ... (virtually annually) ... to the 2006 award of "Washington PR Woman of the Year." She also received the Matrix Award for Professional Achievement (D.C. Association for Women in Communications), in 2006.   ==Real Origins==<B> Fortune Magazine</B> in July 1987 had something to say about the origins of the company. <BLOCKQUOTE> It comes as no surprise to find Washington public relations firms pursuing lobbying bucks; what does have some old-time noses out of joint is the flocking of local law firms in 2004the other direction, into PR and related fields.   The most notable example: Arnold & Porter, a prestigious 230-man law firm that three years ago formed <B> APCO Associates (Worldwide) , </B> a grab-bag subsidiary that provides lobbying, public relations, and a host of other services from real estate development to management consulting. Arnold & Porter set up APCO as a separate subsidiary mainly because it wanted to hire non-lawyers. The practice is allowed by the American Bar Association as long as the unchurched are not made partners or misrepresented to clients as lawyers. <B> APCO </B> is the brainchild of <B> Myron ''Mike'' Curzan </B>, a real estate lawyer and longtime Arnold & Porter partner. The idea came to Curzan four years ago as he helped a client, the University of California at Irvine, develop faculty housing. ''We ended up doing it all: hiring contractors, doing the bidding, developing bond financing, and managing the project,'' he says. Curzan brought in nonlawyer <B> Margery Kraus, </B> a vice president of a nonprofit foundation. Now APCO's president, Kraus says the operation has been profitable from the beginning and has grown to a staff of 54.   ''We're a one-stop shop in the truest sense,'' says Kraus. A few months back, the Advanced Center for Technology Training, a Michigan company, came seeking lobbying help to get federal funding for its product, a work station that retrains assembly-line workers, among others. ''They hadn't developed a business plan, didn't know their competitors, hadn't thought through their marketing strategy,'' says Kraus, who told them APCO could help them with all that and do the lobbying and PR too. [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/firtybe/fortune_archive/1987/07/20/69283/index.htm]</blockquote>  APCO now has offices and is headquartered in Washington D.C. and has offices in 24 locations in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa and employs 470 people. [http://www.odwyerspr.com/members/pr_firms_database/prda11a.htm] [Later claim is 600 professional staff] "Core services include corporate, investor and internal communication, [[crisis management]], [[issue management]], government relations, litigation communication, media relations, coalition building, opinion research, market entry, [[Corporate Social Responsibility|corporate social responsibility]] and online communication," it states on its website. The website calls the firm a "global communication consultancy" specilalizing specializing in "influencing decisionmakers and shaping public opinion by crafting compelling messages and recruiting effective allies."[http://www.apcoworldwide.com/content/services/index.cfm?id=8#coalition]  ==Helping Kazakhstan buy academic reports==In September 2008, it was revealed that the [[Kazakhstan]] government had paid [[John Hopkins University]]'s [[Central Asia-Caucasus Institute]] to author three reports about the country. The arrangement was brokered through APCO Worldwide, Kazakhstan's Washington DC lobbying firm. The Kazakh government paid $52,300 for reports titled "Kazakhstan's New Middle Class" and "Parliament and Political Parties in Kazakhstan." A third report, "Kazakhstan in its Neighborhood," was "also underwritten by the government," but lobbying reports that would disclose the amount paid for it are not yet available. The reports, issued by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins, do not disclose the Kazakhstan funding. Institute director [[S. Frederick Starr]] said their "relationship was only with the lobbying firm and not directly with the government." He added that "the entire editorial process was 100 percent in our hands." The author of the third report, [[Hudson Institute]] fellow [[Richard Weitz]], said, "It's an important topic so I would have written about it anyway." The Kazakhstan funding also required the Johns Hopkins Institute to sponsor "[[think tank]] discussions" on each report, "sponsored by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute." <ref>Emma Schwartz, "[http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5908348 Kazakhstan Pays for Academic Reports: Johns Hopkins Institute Says It Had Complete Independence]," ABC News, September 29, 2008.</ref>

[[Philip Morris]] hired APCO to organize the front group TASSC ([[The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition]]) in October, 1993 to help fight public health efforts to control [[Environmental Tobacco Smoke]] that occurred in the wake of the [[U.S. Environmental Protection Agency]]'s ruling that [[Secondhand smoke|secondhand tobacco smoke ]] was a Group A human carcinogen. APCO recommended that Philip Morris form a European TASSC group to: "Preempt unilateral action against the industry." [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/pqa35e00] A 1993 memo written by [[Tom Hockaday]] of APCO Associates lists individuals that could be approached on behalf of Philip Morris to lend their names to pre-written, favorable-to-tobacco opinion-editorial pieces on the subject of [[Environmental Tobacco Smoke]]. One of the people APCO considered approaching was [[Peter Samuel]], whose qualifications included the fact that he had "developed a book proposal to address unsubstantiated scares including [[Alar and apples|alar]], dioxin, DDT, ETS, [[asbestos]] and others." (Dioxin, the primary toxic component of Agent Orange, was found at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York and was the basis for evacuations at Times Beach, Missouri. Asbestos, a toxin and known carcinogen, causes the lung disease asbestosis and a cancer of the pleura called mesothelioma. DDT, a dangerous pesticide that can persist in the environment for up to 15 years, was banned in the United states in 1972.)[http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/bfn24e00]  APCO also established the '''[[Science & Environmental Policy Program]] (SEPP)''' for the tobacco industry with [[S. Fred Singer]] and [[Candace Crandall]] running a climate denial program, and establishing the '''[[Heidelberg Appeal]]''' to counter the 1992 Rio World Summit.

Philip Morris also hired APCO to manage a massive national effort aimed at altering the American juducial judicial system to be more hostile towards product liability suits ("Tort Reform"). [[Tort reform]] was an internal corporate program of Philip Morris, who led other companies into the plan. According to a 1995 Philip Morris Tort Reform Budget, the industry paid APCO Associates almost $1 million in 1995 to implement behind-the-scenes tort reform efforts. APCO's job was to create chapters of "grassroots" citizens' groups called [[Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse ]] (CALAs).(2047648299/8307) The budget shows the tobacco industry alone budgeted $21.8 million to fund the tort reform effort in the single year of 1995.<ref>Covington & Burling [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/khu28d00Tort Reform Project Budget] , Budget, October 3, 1995, Bates No. 2047648299/8307</ref>

In an internal 1993 budget review document for the Philip Morris Group of companies, APCO Associates was penciled in for $500,000 as a "corporate affairs consultant." On behalf of the tobacco industry and other corporate clients, it has created a number of industry [[front groups]], including [[The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition]], the [[American Tort Reform Association]], and many state and local branches of [[Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse]], or CALAs, which are fake grassroots groups that agitate for [[tort reform]].

<blockquote>APCO Associates, Inc. (APCO) specializes in grassroots oraanizing organizing and coalition building. We use political campaign tactics to create an environment in support of our client's legislative and regulatory goals...We utilize the most effective, up-to-datetechnology and campaign tactics to help you achieve your legislative and regulatory goals...APCO has built numerous national and state coalitions on a variety of issues including the environment, science, energy, trade, intellectual property, education, tort reform and [[healthcare]]....APCO applies tactics usually reserved for political campaigns to target audiences and recruit third-party advocates. Our staff has the political field experience and has written the direct mail, managed the telephones, crafted the television commercials and trained the grassroots volunteers. We apply these hard-learned skills and tactics to mobilize hundreds, even thousands, of constituents. Or,when just the "grasstops" are needed, we recruit just a few of a target's key friends or contributors to join us. No matter the issue, we bring together coalitions that are credible, persuasive and cost-effective.</blockquote> [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/acf57d00]

*[[Alisa Harrison]] Vice President, former director of communications for the [[U.S. Department of Agriculture]]

*[[Peter Hannaford]], former public relations/ communications adviser to [[Ronald Reagan]]

*[[Baxter Healthcare Corporation]] Corporation

*[[Novartis Pharmaceuticals]] Pharmaceuticals - Glivec

==External Linkslinks ==

[[Category:Public relations firms]] [[Category:U.S. Government PR Contracts]][[Category:Front groups]]