Cassidy & Associates and APCO apparently got “punk’d” by Harper’s Magazine Washington editor Ken Silverstein, who posed as a consultant for a fictitious London-based investment firm with a stake in improving the public image of the central Asian of Turkmenistan, which is rich in natural resources but weak on human rights.

According to an excerpt of an article running in the July issue, Cassidy representatives in a meeting with Silverstein (who called himself “Kenneth Case”) touted their ability to polish the reputations of such democratically troubled nations as Equatorial Guinea. Where Parade Magazine had previously listed Equatorial Guinea dictator Teodoro Obiang as the world’s number 6 worst dictator, the following year he was no longer in the top 10. And they say PR/public affairs firm have troubling measuring results!

The excerpt does not include an account of what APCO told Silverstein/Case, and Harper’s did not reveal its game to either firm prior to publication, though the Wall Street Journal in its “Informed Reader” daily review of interesting media reports last week said APCO called Harper’s after the fact to express “disappointment.”