Nick Nichols

Nick Nichols (real name: David Nichols ) co-founded the Nichols-Dezenhall public relations firm (which became Dezenhall Resources after he left in September 2003). He is now chairman of the communications firm CounterPoint Strategies.

Nichols "develops and teaches graduate-level crisis management courses at the Johns Hopkins University...in crisis management and risk communications."

Background
"Mr. Nichols began his career as an investigative news correspondent. He subsequently became chief of staff for the Wisconsin legislature’s joint committee on finance, and was later appointed state deputy secretary of revenue. He relocated to Washington, D.C. to become senior media spokesperson for the Cuban-Haitian Task Force under the Carter and Reagan administrations, where he managed crisis communications following the controversial 1980 Mariel boatlift. Before forming Nichols Dezenhall, Mr. Nichols was senior vice president and account group manager at Needham Porter Novelli (Omnicom), then the fourth largest public relations agency in the world." (2005)

Modus operandi
In a March 2001 speech to the National Pork Producers Council annual meeting - titled "Stopping the Attackers in Today's Assault Culture" - Nichols outlined the sort of aggressive strategies he recommended to counter activist groups. "Nichols recommended gathering as much information about activist groups and launching guerrilla campaigns to destroy their credibility," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported.

"Nichols' advice is to show how activists have wrong facts, fabricated crises in the past, exist beyond the cultural mainstream and are supported by 'money-grubbing lawyers'," O'Dwyers reported. (Sub req'd)

According to O'Dwyers, Nichols presentation included projecting quotes from Al Capone ("You can get more with a smile, a kind word and a gun then with a smile and a kind word.") and George Carlin ("If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten!")

Ron Arnold connections
The first edition of Nichol's book - Rules for Corporate Warriors - was published by Free Enterprise Press, a part of Ron Arnold's Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE).

Nichols joined the CDFE as a Senior Fellow in January 2005.

Climate change
Nichols is on the advisory board of Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Nichols and the CDFE's Paul Driessen wrote "Global warming: Science versus Spin," an essay for The Science and Environmental Policy Project, dated 13 July 2003.

Books

 * Nick Nichols, Rules for Corporate Warriors How to Fight and Survive Attack Group Shakedowns, Merril Press; September 27, 2001.

Articles by Nichols

 * Henry I. Miller and Nick Nichols, "CEOs Should Mind Their Own Business", ''Investors Business Daily", December 28, 2005.

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Dezenhall Resources
 * Eric Dezenhall
 * Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow