Litigation communications · Case

Ambassador R. James Woolsey

When a former director of the CIA is drawn into the biggest investigation in the country, the public account has to be exactly right — and exactly consistent with the legal one.

The situation

In 2017, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey became part of the national story surrounding the Special Counsel investigation. He had attended a September 2016 meeting — later examined by the FBI and the Office of the Special Counsel — that reporters connected to Michael Flynn and to officials of the Turkish government. The coverage was constant, and much of it was speculative.

What LUCID did

LUCID’s Jonathan Franks served as Ambassador Woolsey’s spokesman and managed his national press throughout that period. Ambassador Woolsey cooperated with investigators; our job was to make sure his account was stated accurately and consistently in public while he did — and to keep a speculative story from hardening into a false one.

That meant handling the reporters covering the investigation and keeping his on-record appearances disciplined and on point — including CNN, CBS’s Face the Nation, MSNBC’s Hardball, Fareed Zakaria’s program, and Fox News.

Why it matters

High-stakes legal scrutiny is fought in two places at once. We work with counsel, never around them, and nothing said in public contradicts the record. That discipline is the whole job in litigation communications.

The engagement was reported by outlets including NBC News, the Washington Examiner, MSNBC, and The Hill.

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