Reportedly hoping to land "a nice local technology story," a partner in the Washington DC area firm Rock Creek Creative [3] "issued a news release touting the company's role in (Ukraine [4]'s) Orange Revolution." Instead, Russian media "seized on Rock Creek's release as proof that the United States had meddled in the Ukrainian presidential election." The firm later backpedaled, saying it had been hired by the nonprofit Global Fairness Initiative just "to develop a Web site [5] and strategy for a February 2004 conference in Kiev called 'Ukraine in Europe and the World.'" The incident, which "embarrassed the Yushchenko regime," was "a catastrophe," said Global Fairness Institute's director.