Massey Energy Hires Public Strategies In Wake of Mine Tragedy

WPP-owned Public Strategies has been hired by Massey Energy Co. following an incident in which 29 miners died at one of the company’s coal mines in West Virginia earlier this month.

Public Strategies is staffed by political heavyweights including former George W. Bush staffers Dan Bartlett and Mark McKinnon, as well as Jeff Eller, a former White House aide to then-President Bill Clinton.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news and has some background on the connections between the two companies:

Public Strategies also has ties to Massey’s lead outside director, retired Navy Admiral Bobby Inman, a longtime professor at the University of Texas’ Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, which is supported by the LBJ Foundation; Public Strategies’ chairman Jack Martin – a longtime Democratic Party hand – is a foundation board member, and McKinnon is a lecturer at the LBJ School.

Goldman Sachs is also working with Public Strategies. Newsweek correspondent and MSNBC analyst Richard Wolffe briefly worked for the firm this past fall.

RELATED: What if Only PR Pros From Massey Energy Were ‘Reporting’ On the W.V. Mining Disaster?

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