The Perfectly Legal Ways Foreign Powers Subvert American Democracy
The Perfectly Legal Ways Foreign Powers Subvert American Democracy
President Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the
Oval Office in March 2018. (Evan Vucci / AP)
Foreign influence in America is the topic du jour. From the impeachment
inquiry into President Trump's request that a foreign power investigate a
political opponent to the indictment of associates of his personal attorney,
Rudy Giuliani, for illegally funneling foreign money into U.S. elections,
the nation has been transfixed by news of illegal foreign influence in the
political process. While such efforts to subvert American elections garner
headlines, there remains a treasure trove of perfectly legal ways foreign
powers are subverting American democracy. And they're not waiting for
election day - they're doing it every single day of the year.
"Legislation Is Prepared by Lobbyists All the Time"
Foreign powers have a remarkably direct way of making sure their voices are
heard in Washington: let their lobbyists script what various members of
Congress say. That may sound wild, but it's actually commonplace. Lee Fang
of The Intercept reported a typical example of this recently. He discovered
that, on November 13, 2017, Representative Ed Royce (R-CA), then chairman of
the House Foreign Affairs Committee, read verbatim into the congressional
record a set of talking points given to his office by lobbyists working for
the Saudi government. As Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) and a bipartisan
group of lawmakers debated invoking the War Powers Act to end U.S. support
for the war in Yemen, Ari Fridman, a lobbyist working for Hogan Lovells,
itself representing Saudi Arabia, distributed Saudi talking points to Royce
and others. In a C-SPAN video from the debate on the floor, Royce can be
seen parroting these very talking points, word for word.
This might seem like an extraordinary success for any lobbyist of a foreign
power, but it's actually quite common. A report by the Project On Government
Oversight (POGO), co-authored by Ben Freeman, for instance, documented
multiple examples of foreign agents writing speeches, even legislation, for
members of Congress. Most notably, their investigation unearthed documents
showing a foreign agent had provided track-change edits on a proposed bill
to a staffer working for Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI). When the legislation
was finally introduced by the senator, it included the exact language the
lobbyist had suggested. Asked about this, that agent responded, "It's not
unusual for us to comment back and forth" with Congressional staff about
legislation. He added, "Proposed legislation is prepared by lobbyists all
the time."
In our post-Citizens United world where, thanks to that 2010 Supreme Court
decision, money is considered speech when it comes to campaign finance,
agents working on behalf of foreign governments regularly "speak" with their
pocketbooks. The Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for
International Policy (CIP), where we work, has repeatedly reported on how
agents of foreign governments make campaign contributions to the
congressional representatives they're contacting on behalf of foreign
powers.
Sometimes they even make such donations on the very day they meet with the
member of Congress. In investigating the Saudi lobby in 2018, we found at
least five instances when lawmakers received campaign contributions on the
day they or their staff spent time with someone working for the Saudis.
Firms representing Saudi Arabia gave this way to Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK),
Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Senator Tina Smith (D-MN), Senator Ben
Cardin (D-MD), and Representative Mike Conaway (R-TX). Even more striking
are contacts (and contributions) made just prior to important votes on
Capitol Hill. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), for instance, received a total of
$3,000 from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a firm representing the Saudis,
in the four days before a March 20th, 2018, vote on a War Powers Resolution
introduced to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. (One of
those contributions came on the day of the vote.) Nelson, who has since lost
his Senate seat, ended up voting against the Yemen resolution in line with
Saudi interests.
While foreign nationals are prohibited from making campaign contributions -
exactly what presidential lawyer and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's
Ukrainian associates are accused of orchestrating - nothing prohibits
citizens working on their behalf from such donations. Some would argue that
gestures of this sort look remarkably like bribery, but they are perfectly
legal, according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), as long as
any contributions an agent reports are "from your own funds and on your own
behalf."
Buying Think-Tank Thinking
Foreign powers have ample ability, through their lobbyists, to directly
influence congressional legislation. They also have at least three indirect,
perfectly legal avenues for trying to shift U.S. foreign policy in their
favor: think tanks, the media, and academia.
As CIP's recent report on the influence of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in
America documented, lobbyists hired by foreign powers often work directly
with influential think tanks to shape the narrative about the countries they
represent. They meet with think-tank experts, provide them with talking
points, offer research assistance, and sometimes even give them
all-expense-paid trips to the country in question.
Such talking points are disseminated to think-tank pundits in part to
influence what they'll write or say. Their work, in turn, is often shared by
various congressional offices. This process is effectively talking-point
laundering. A foreign power's message is communicated to sympathetic
think-tank experts who then echo the talking points in their work, speeches,
or even testimony before Congress without having to disclose their
connections to that country.
For example, as our UAE report documented, Michael Knights, a senior fellow
at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has an extremely close
relationship with lobbyists working on behalf of the UAE and his public
comments often echo their talking points. An article Knights wrote on June
14, 2018, on the UAE's move to "liberate" the Yemeni port of Hodeidah,
deeply embroiled in the Saudi-UAE war in that embattled land, closely
mirrored an article disseminated by Hagir Elawad & Associates, a firm
working on behalf of that country. It, in turn, had been written by Anwar
Gargash, the current UAE minister of state for foreign affairs.
FARA filings show as well that Knights has a very close relationship with
Richard Mintz, managing director of the Harbour Group, which also represents
the UAE in Washington. He reportedly coordinated with Knights on four
separate trips to visit UAE forces in Yemen. Afterward, Knights would write
a distinctly uncritical analysis about UAE operations in Yemen, never, for
instance, mentioning the targeted-assassination program that UAE officials
oversaw there or the fact that those same forces gave U.S.-supplied weapons
to al-Qaeda and other militant groups in that country. He also dismissed
accusations of war crimes by UAE forces as just the work of "local proxies."
While registered foreign agents legally have to declare anything they
distribute on behalf of a foreign power, there is no such requirement for
think-tank experts. In fact, such institutions don't even have to disclose
that they receive funding from foreign powers. Under current law it's
perfectly legal for scholars whose work is funded by a foreign government to
craft an article with that government's registered foreign agents without
disclosing any of their ties.
This can become particularly problematic when such experts testify before
Congress without disclosing their potential conflicts of interest. The House
of Representatives requires witnesses to fully reveal foreign funding before
testifying, but in many instances, such experts don't disclose the money
their institutions receive from foreign governments. A POGO report found
that the existing House rule relating to testimonial transparency is
remarkably weak, allowing many witnesses to adopt a particularly narrow
interpretation of the "issues related" to their testimony. In the process,
they simply don't disclose their foreign ties.
Experts from the Atlantic Council, which received at least $2,585,000 in
foreign funding in 2018, for example, failed to disclose this funding when
appearing before Congress. Perhaps most notably, two Atlantic Council
experts who testified on "reforming the National Security Council" and
"defeating terrorism in Syria" didn't reveal the more than $1 million
dollars the Atlantic Council received from the United Arab Emirates embassy
in Washington, even though the UAE undoubtedly had an interest in each of
those issues.
Shaping the Media Narrative
Media outlets are another prime target of foreign influence operations. Some
governments, of course, run their own media outlets in America and many of
these are required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
China's CCTV and Russia's RT, which was deemed "the Kremlin's principal
international propaganda outlet" in the Director of National Intelligence's
report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, are obvious examples.
And, of course, foreign powers continue to engage in a number of illegal
Twitter and Facebook activities meant to influence domestic politics, as
well as American views of their own countries. In early November, for
example, two former Twitter employees were charged with spying for Saudi
Arabia and accessing the private information of the Kingdom's critics in the
U.S.
Generally ignored, however, are the ways in which foreign powers often
engage in legal media manipulation that neither they, nor such outlets, are
required to tell viewers or listeners about. One of the most common tactics
is simply to work closely with reporters covering issues of importance to
them. No surprise then that the Center for International Policy's
investigations have consistently found journalists among the top targets of
registered foreign agents. In some cases it's fairly easy to see how this
influence gets converted into extremely positive spin on their behalf.
Take, for example, OZY, which brands itself as "news for the disruptive."
Its reporters were contacted repeatedly by UAE agents in late 2017 and early
2018 regarding "story ideas" and to arrange interviews. This courtship
culminated in two extraordinarily flattering OZY pieces, one describing
Dubai's "Museum of the Future" and the other portraying Dubai as "one of the
world's new fashion capitals," ignoring the fact that you can face up to
three years in prison, especially if you're a woman, for dressing
inappropriately there.
Foreign Influence in the Ivory Tower
While foreign influence in Washington has consistently made front-page
headlines, it's arguably just as pervasive at American universities. Chinese
influence has, for instance, garnered considerable attention in recent
years. That country's Confucius Institutes, ostensibly language and cultural
centers at American colleges paid for by the Chinese government, have been
the focus of eye-opening congressional investigations on the role foreign
governments can play on campus. As a Senate investigation reported in early
2019, "Confucius Institute funding comes with strings that can compromise
academic freedom," allowing the Chinese government to play censor at
academic conferences on U.S. soil and even censor course materials critical
of China.
Chinese influence on campus has garnered headlines, but that country is just
one of more than 100 that have funneled $9-plus billion in foreign money to
U.S. college campuses in the past five years, according to the Department of
Education - and China isn't even the biggest player among them. That honor,
believe it or not, goes to little (but wealthy) Qatar, which has given more
than $1.3 billion to American universities since 2014, nearly three times as
much as the Chinese. Its officials, in turn, have gone to great lengths to
ensure that the strings attached to such funding aren't known to the public.
They even sued the state of Texas to prevent Texas A&M, one of its top
grantees, from having to disclose the details of its relationship with
Qatar.
While at least two dozen universities are severing ties with Confucius
Institutes, schools have been far more reluctant to cut ties with other
authoritarian governments. After the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the
Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, for example, universities and think
tanks faced considerable pressure to sever ties with Saudi Arabia, but few
did. Since 2014, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the
most prestigious universities in the country, has received the most money
from the Saudis - at least $77 million, according to Department of Education
records.
Following outrage after Khashoggi's brutal murder, MIT began a reassessment
of its financial ties with the Kingdom. However, in February, when that
assessment was finished - and outrage over Khashoggi's murder was no longer
front-page news - a letter sent to the school's students and teachers
concluded that the faculty should be able to "continue their current
engagements with colleagues, students, and public and private research
sponsors in Saudi Arabia. as long as these projects remain consistent with
MIT policies and procedures and U.S. laws and regulations."
Saudi influence on campus can be even more direct than funding. In at least
one case, a registered foreign agent working on behalf of that country was a
professor on a college campus. According to a report by Brian McGlinchey, an
expert on Saudi influence in America, in 2018 Bill Smullen, former chief of
staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, was more recently a registered
agent working on behalf of Saudi Arabia while serving as director of the
Maxwell School of National Security Studies at Syracuse University. FARA
filings show that Smullen was paid to provide "public relations support" for
the Saudis, while serving as the head of that prestigious national-security
program. When asked if the Saudi money might lead him to show them in a more
favorable light at Syracuse, Smullen quickly dismissed the idea, saying, "I
don't think there is any conflict of interest."
Expanding the Spotlight to Perfectly Legal Foreign Influence
The scrutiny placed on malign actors like Rudy Giuliani's associates and
their alleged dealings with Ukrainian elites to compromise an American
election is certainly warranted. We live in a world in which the ability of
foreign powers to undermine American democracy (as this country once
undermined democracies elsewhere) remains a genuine threat. Seldom, however,
does anyone even think about the influence operations of foreign powers -
operations that are perfectly legal and don't garner headlines.
The American political system, which has always been vulnerable to outside
influence, is arguably more susceptible to foreign meddling now than it has
been in decades - and most of it is perfectly legal. From woefully
inadequate disclosures regarding conflicts of interest by witnesses
testifying before Congress to foreign agents filling campaign coffers and
literally writing our laws, as well as influencing think tanks, media
outlets, and universities, there remain a host of legal ways for foreign
powers to try to bend our policies and thinking to their will. While it's
imperative that we be vigilant in rooting out illegal foreign influence, if
American democracy is to remain "of the people, by the people, and for the
people," a bright light should be directed onto all forms of influence that
seek to undermine it.
Ryan Summers and Ben Freeman / TomDispatch