U.S. Government

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations hired APCO Worldwide to develop "positive U.S.-ASEAN ties." "President Bush has made establishing free trade agreements with each individual ASEAN nation a foreign policy priority," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The U.S. Administration also counts on ASEAN support for its war on terrorism." Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Viet Nam, Thailand, Cambodia, Brunei and Myanmar are ASEAN member countries.

"The model for me for someone in the public relations business is, to a certain extent, the U.S. military," journalist and Watergate legend Bob Woodward said in a keynote address to the Public Relation's Society of America's National Capital Chapter in Washington, D.C. PRSA's Strategist reports how Woodward, assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, defines the model PR professional. "The best sources for straight information were people in the U.S.

"'Word got around the department that I was a good Arabic translator who did a great Saddam imitation,' recalls the Harvard grad student. 'Eventually, someone phoned me, asking if I wanted to help change the course of Iraq policy,'" writes Asia Times (Hong Kong) correspondent Ian Urbina.

"The White House is shifting James Wilkinson, who helped run the U.S./U.K. coalition communications office in the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan, to the Pentagon's U.S. Central Command to serve as spokesperson for Gen. Tommy Franks," O'Dwyer's PR Daily writes. "That move is a 'big signal' that the U.S. is 'getting serious' about Iraq, according to a report in The Washington Times. Wilkinson has just returned from a trip to Morocco, where he practiced his Arabic language skills on the streets.