The New York Times recently disclosed that the public relations representative for Sveltana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter who defected to the United States last month, is Hill and Knowlton, Inc. In 1950 Hill and Knowlton was retained for $100,000 as a public relations counsel to the Laureano Gmez regime in Colombia. The firm’s representative in Bogota, Rodrigo Royo, directly supervised the liaison with the Gmez regime. Royo is a veteran of Franco’s Blue Legion, an elite unit of the forces which took part in the Nazi invasion of Russia. Royo wrote a novel, The Sun and The Snow (Henry Regnery & Co., 1956), depicting the Blue Legion episode as a righteous crusade.
Laureano G6mes was himself closely associated with Franco. On returning to Colombia from Spain in 1949, his supporters declared that Franco had taught him repressive techniques capable of breaking up Colombia’s popular movement which was pushing for social reform.
In preparation for G6mez’ presidential candidacy on the Conservative ticket, the ruling Conservative Party, under President Mariano Ospina Perez, undertook a nationwide campaign of terror against the Liberals, who held a substantial majority at the time (Ospina Prez had. gained the presidency in 1946 only because of a Liberal split). The months of government-led assaults on the homes and meeting places of Liberal Party leaders and the torture and massacre of Liberal Party members and their families unleashed “la violencia,” which, to date, has claimed the lives of over 300,000 Colombians. (See also “Guerrilla Activity in Colombia” on page 3 of this Newsletter.)
Hill and Knowlton currently performs public relations services for the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well as for the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism and Finance, a prominent entity in the current expose of the links between the underworld and men in high positions in Bahamian business and government.
