Dentons has instructed an ex-CIA spook to investigate allegations that one of its partners penned an anti-US article which accused Barack Obama of faking Osama Bin Laden's death in order to declare war on Pakistan.

The inflammatory opinion piece, headed, "The Fog of War and the Murder of Osama Bin Laden - the inevitable war against Pakistan", was published in 2011 on a now-defunct website of Cage, a controversial advocacy organisation. 

The credited author of the editorial shares the same name as a commercial partner in one of Dentons' Middle East offices, and the article also states that the author is a lawyer. The Dentons partner, who worked at a Middle East firm when the article was published, denies it is him. RollOnFriday is not naming him because Dentons' investigation is ongoing.

The editorial lauded Bin Laden, who was killed by US special forces a few days before it was published, as having "dared to challenge the might of the superpower of our times".

It called Bin Laden's demise "cold blooded murder", and referred sarcastically to the troops who undertook the raid as "the ever so brave, wonderful, elite, perfect, Rambo-esque, no mistakes Navy Seals".

"A blood-thirsty American people will accept anything the US administration does on its behalf", continued the article, and described Bin Laden's burial at sea as "a deliberate attempt to humiliate the sensitivities of the enemies of the USA while at the same time appease the blood thirsty, feed-him-to-the-sharks, American public".

The author predicted that killing Bin Laden would destroy the US. "With it comes the demise and inevitable end of the American empire", they wrote.

The author also suggested Bin Laden’s death during the raid was faked. "The only 'evidence' we have of his killing is from the US administration which has historically lied to the world and covered up its actions in the name of national interests", they wrote. "Failure to provide any evidence whatsoever renders the whole episode a figment of a defeated American imagination".

The author concluded that the shooting of Bin Laden was manufactured by Obama to give a pretext for war with Pakistan. "To gain maximum political leverage Obama 'informs' the whole world that Osama bin Laden is dead and phase two of the inevitable war against Pakistan is activated", wrote the author. "If the Pakistani government can prove that Osama Bin Laden was not there in the first place it may well give them the diplomatic offensive it so desperately needs to prevent the war that Obama so desperately craves."


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Hampton Grover III was unsure about his firm's new Middle East campaign.


An individual purporting to be linked to Dentons' Saudi office complained to the firm's London management late last year that the partner wrote the article, and alleged that the views expressed in the article made members of the office "fear [for] our jobs, safety and families". 

Dentons tasked Kevin Hulbert, a senior adviser based in the firm's Washington, DC office, with investigating the allegations. Hulpert's previous career was at the CIA where he held a variety of high-level positions, before he moved to the FBI and provided policy advice to Donald Trump's White House.

Dentons said the partner denied being the author of the polemic, RollOnFriday has not identified evidence of other links between the partner and Cage.

In a statement Cage said, "The article is from 9 years ago. [The partner] has never been a legal advisor to CAGE and has not worked for us. The article was published as received in accordance with the policy at that time, which included the publication of significant amount of third party content on our site. Since then, following a restructure and rebrand of the organisation, our publication policy is more stringent, all articles and authors are vetted". It did not respond when asked if the Dentons partner was the author.

A spokesman for Dentons said, "Promptly after receiving an anonymous communication containing allegations against certain personnel...we attempted to engage with the anonymous sender and initiated an investigation of the claims. Our efforts to engage with the sender of the anonymous communications have not been reciprocated*. We take any allegation of violations of the law or Dentons Global Code of Conduct very seriously, and we have undertaken a thorough investigation of the claims involving both internal and external resources, which is ongoing".

*The same source has engaged extensively with RollOnFriday and provided a wealth of information. Watch this space.

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Comments

The Great Satan 07 February 20 07:47

Bloody hell. Someone didn’t do a very good job of clearing up his online history...

Great scoop RoF. 

Anonymous 07 February 20 09:14

So either:

1-another lawyer with his name wrote it (not too hard to find out)

2-it was him

3-someone pretended to be him

If 3, why did the partner let it stay up for years, why won't cage explicitly say it wasn't him, and why would anyone do that.

Questions, questions.

GWB 07 February 20 10:17

perfectly normal, I agree one can defend all the points quoted. But given Dentons just merged with two US firms, I can imagine some of its US staff and clients being put out if a partner has called them blood thirsty, mocked their troops and presaged the death of their country. 
 

dunno though. They could be fine with it. 

Anonymous 07 February 20 10:31

Characterising bin laden murdering 3,000 innocent people positively as ‘daring to challenge’ the US is pretty shocking. A lawyer at a global firm calling the US public blood thirsty is pretty shocking - certainly questionable in terms of alienating a major market. 

Lydia 07 February 20 11:23

Surely there cannot be many lawyers who think killing without trial is okay. Even after WWII we put people on trial at Nuremburg. We did not just kill them.

Anonymous 07 February 20 11:27

You can certainly defend each individual point, Lydia, and many in the world would agree with all of it, but taken as a whole, it's pretty unpalatable. A rant just the right side of blatantly cheerleading for terrorists.

Anonymous 07 February 20 11:44

You do wonder whether Dentons' strategy of buying up another law firm on a pretty much monthly basis allows them to do the necessary due diligence on who they're bringing aboard.

Realpolitik 07 February 20 11:56

Disturbing though this is, it might actually serve Dentons reasonably well.

Assuming it is the partner, Dentons will put out a statement saying that his views don't represent those of the firm, many apologies to those offended, words have been had, it was a long time ago when he was young and inexperienced, etc. etc. etc.

And that'll be it. And when a dodgy but wealthy Middle Eastern client who holds similar views is looking at a load of firms on a chunky matter, I wonder who'll get the instruction?

Of course he'll be persona non grata with his US colleagues for a while. But it's all about profit...

 

Caged 07 February 20 13:28

I am sure the partner is a beautiful young man who is extremely kind, gentle and soft-spoken. I blame the UK security services.

Anonymous 07 February 20 14:07

Dentons spokesman needs some training. The answer should be "we already knew about this because we conduct background checks and due diligence on new partners like any halfway decent law firm." The law firm of the future in tech and AI and they don't even know how to use Google??

Butthead 08 February 20 03:59

The statement by Cage is pretty damning, as is the silence: "It did not respond when asked if the Dentons partner was the author". Is this Partner the same [redacted by rof]? Where there's smoke there's fire.

Alastair Ricketts 08 February 20 10:21

ROF with the breaking news. The Americans' reported an investigation in Dentons Saudi Arabia this morning after the ROF exclusive. Seems Dentons is facing the heat after the ROF expose. Good job ROF! Keep rolling on...

What a shame 08 February 20 14:18

What a shame. Dentons use to be a top tier band 1 law firm in the Middle East. The Dentons Middle East practice has plummeted in the past five years closing offices in Bahrain and Kuwait, shrinking offices in the UAE, Doha, Saudi and Oman. The good people in Oman are with Clyde and Co. The Saudi offices no longer have any decent offering. How did Dentons in the Middle East fall so low? Bigger is not always better and the Dentons Middle East offices is a shining example of that. If Dentons wants to place a partner out to pasture, it seems that he or she goes to the Middle East. 

Would the SRA get involved in this? 09 February 20 08:15

Would the SRA get involved in something like this? The guy seems to be from the UK but is doing this outside of the UK? I would assume so? Maybe the investigation is being lead from the US to avoid the SRA? Dentons UK vereign LLP does not want to touch this one ...

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