Public Intelligence

The legal team defending former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn against sexual assault charges has informally sought public relations advice from a Washington consulting firm run by former CIA officers and U.S. diplomats, Reuters has learned. TD International is the same company Strauss-Kahn, then a private citizen, hired in 2007 to advise him on how to navigate international and Washington politics in his bid to become managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Documents filed in 2008 with the Foreign Agents Registration section of the U.S. Justice Department show that Strauss-Kahn, who is French, retained TD International as his “U.S.-based communications resource.”

Though horrified by those alleged crimes, the French press and political elite on Monday seemed perhaps more scandalized still by the images of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s brusque treatment by the New York police, and his exposure in the American media. “I found that image to be incredibly brutal, violent and cruel,” the former justice minister Elisabeth Guigou told France-Info radio on Monday, referring to widely published photographs of a beleaguered-looking Mr. Strauss-Kahn, handcuffed and led by several New York police officers. “I am happy that we do not have the same judicial system.” As justice minister, Ms. Guigou, now a parliamentarian, oversaw the passage of a law prohibiting the publication of photographs of handcuffed criminal suspects.

The defendant engaged in oral sexual conduct and anal sexual conduct with another person by forcible compulsion; the defendant attempted to engage in sexual intercourse with another person by forcible compulsion; the defendant subjected another person to sexual contact by forcible compulsion; the defendant restrained another person; the defendant subjected another person to sexual contact without the latter’s consent; and in that the defendant intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose, forcibly touched the sexual and other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading and abusing such person, and for the purpose of gratifying the defendant’s sexual desire.

The French political bigshot who heads the International Monetary Fund was arrested for allegedly sodomizing a Manhattan hotel maid today — getting hauled off an Air France flight just moments before takeoff from Kennedy Airport, police sources told The Post. Three Port Authority detectives pulled Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the plane’s first-class cabin just two minutes before it was due to depart for Paris, the sources said. Strauss-Kahn, 62, was turned over to NYPD officers from the Midtown South precinct, and the case is being investigated by the Special Victims Unit.

The euro zone’s decision to include the International Monetary Fund in any Greek rescue plan extends the Fund’s influence to a large swath of the world economy—and gives a political boost to its managing director. Over the past two years, the IMF has worked with the European Union to bail out EU members, including Latvia and Hungary. Now it is clear that the IMF mandate reaches also to Portugal, Spain and other troubled members of the 16-nation euro zone, said Domenico Lombardi, a Brookings Institution expert on the IMF. “Any possible (economic) contagion to Portugal and Spain (from Greece) should be under control,” because of IMF and euro-zone involvement, he said.

G20 finance leaders on Saturday took aim at excessive bank pay and risk-taking at the root of the financial crisis and insisted trillions of dollars of emergency economic supports would be needed for some time. Although the global economy looks brighter than when the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers met in April, their closing statement said they would not remove economic stimulus until the recovery was well entrenched.

The agreement reached at Doha in May 2008 paved the way for the election of a new president and the formation of a new national unity government, which was sworn in on July 11, 2008. The government’s principal task is now to prepare for the legislative elections of May 2009. In parallel, the country’s main political forces have resumed their national dialogue under the auspices of President Suleiman, with a view to finding a solution to the contentious political issues that have fueled internal strife and dissent.