Do you think Lincoln would have been pleased to have this PR(ropaganda) firm use his name for their marketing purposes?

The Lincoln Group has a K Street address and an executive in charge of “insight and influence.” It was not a household name in the Washington influence industry, however, when a controversy started after recent reports that the firm, while working under a U.S. military contract, had paid Iraqi journalists to place pro-democracy stories in the media there.

That’s because Lincoln was formed just two years ago, when two thirty-somethings, Christian Bailey, an Oxford University graduate from England, and Paige Craig, a former Marine who once attended West Point, decided that post-invasion Iraq would be a great business opportunity. And it wasn’t until last year that Lincoln won its first federal contract.

The founders’ initial plan in late 2003, to help commercial clients do business in the new Iraq and publish a business magazine there, stalled when the insurgency escalated in the spring of 2004, company officials said in recent interviews. But they said the same deterioration in security made the U.S. military realize that it needed to do more to reach out to the local communities.

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