Nuclear Astroturf from CASEnergy in the Florida Sun-Times

[bananas]

CASEnergy is a nuclear greenwashing front group created by H&K for NEI.
One of their marketing techniques is to create astroturf, here is an example.
From the CASEnergy website:

http://blog.casenergy.org/2011/08/casenergy-member-jerry-paul-touts-nuclear-energy-in-op-ed/

Aug 30
CASEnergy Member Jerry Paul Touts Nuclear Energy in Op-Ed

Former Florida Rep. Jerry Paul, a CASEnergy member who served as principal deputy administrator of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, penned an op-ed for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which ran over the weekend.

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The article is full of misinformation, what makes it astroturf is that it doesn't mention he's a paid shill:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/outlook/sfl-outlook-nukerealities-82811,0,3327716.story

Five realities of nuclear energy to reassure public
Jerry Paul South Florida Sun-Sentinel
August 28, 2011

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Former state Rep. Jerry Paul served as principal deputy administrator of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, and worked as a control room reactor engineer.

Sourcewatch shows that this kind of deception is typical for H&K:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Clean_and_Safe_Energy_Coalition

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The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) described CASEnergy as a front group for the nuclear power industry, created by the PR giant Hill & Knowlton. <3>

The CJR criticised the Washington Post for simply referring to Moore as an "environmentalist" and a co-founder of Greenpeace — without mentioning that he is funded by the nuclear industry. A string of other newspapers followed suit, failing to mention that Moore is also a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry. CJR said it is "maddening that Hill & Knowlton, which has an $8 million account with the nuclear industry, should have such an easy time working the press".

The words "clean" and "safe" were deliberately used as part of the nuclear industry's multi-million pound campaign to repackage itself. It is interesting that the industry carries on using these words even after similar campaigns were found to be misleading.

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One of H&K's biggest hoaxes got us into the first Iraq war:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=The_babies-from-incubators_hoax_and_war_in_the_Persian_Gulf

Citizens for a Free Kuwait (CFK) was a front group established by the Hill & Knowlton PR firm to promote the 1991 U.S. war in the Persian Gulf (Operation Desert Storm).

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In fact, the most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."

Three months passed between Nayirah's testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony. In an opinion column in the New York Times in January 1992, MacArthur wrote that "a Hill and Knowlton vice president, Gary Hymel, helped organize the Congressional Human Rights Caucus hearing in meetings with Mr. Lantos and Mr. Porter and the chairman of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, Hassan al-Ebraheem. Mr. Hymel presented the witnesses, including Nayirah. (He later told me he knew who she was at the time.)"<1>

If Nayirah's outrageous lie had been exposed at the time it was told, it might have at least caused some in Congress and the news media to soberly reevaluate the extent to which they were being skillfully manipulated to support military action. Public opinion was deeply divided on Bush's Gulf policy. As late as December 1990, a New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that 48 percent of the American people wanted Bush to wait before taking any action if Iraq failed to withdraw from Kuwait by Bush's January 15 deadline.85 On January 12, the US Senate voted by a narrow, five-vote margin to support the Bush administration in a declaration of war. Given the narrowness of the vote, the babies-thrown-from-incubators story may have turned the tide in Bush's favor.

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H&K is also famous for representing the Tobacco industry:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hill_%26_Knowlton

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In December, 1953, H&K designed the tobacco industry's strategy for counteracting scientific evidence which linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer. The campaign began with the publication of a full-page newspaper ad called The Frank Statement <2> which was printed in hundreds of newspapers throughout the USA in January, 1954. H&K also helped organize the Council for Tobacco Research <3>. As a result, H&K was named a co-defendant of Philip Morris in numerous tobacco lawsuits.

A H & K employee was also responsible for producing and distributing a 1954 booklet titled Smoke Without Fear, which sought to blunt public fears about the dangers of smoking. A copy of the booklet is available here.

A 23-page paper titled Health and Morality -- Tobacco's Counter Campaign, is a historical account written in 1992 describing the key part that Hill and Knowlton played on behalf of the tobacco industry in obfuscating the link between tobacco use and disease for decades to come.

The 23-page document details the history of John W. Hill, founder of Hill and Knowlton, who helped a panicked tobacco industry stave off a wave of public fear over the allegations that smoking caused lung cancer in the 1950's. With John Hill's deft coaching, the industry published its 1954 "Frank Statement to the Public" and formed the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (forerunner of the Tobacco Institute). A quote from the document is as follows:

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