NYT Investigation Reveals: "Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks--Brookings, Atlantic Council

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Shocking Revelations....Brookings Institute and Atlantic Council.....others.

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Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks

By ERIC LIPTON, BROOKE WILLIAMS and NICHOLAS CONFESSORESEPT. 6, 2014
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WASHINGTON — The agreement signed last year by the Norway Ministry of Foreign Affairs was explicit: For $5 million, Norway’s partner in Washington would push top officials at the White House, at the Treasury Department and in Congress to double spending on a United States foreign aid program.

But the recipient of the cash was not one of the many Beltway lobbying firms that work every year on behalf of foreign governments.

It was the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit research organization, or think tank, one of many such groups in Washington that lawmakers, government officials and the news media have long relied on to provide independent policy analysis and scholarship.

More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

The money is increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington. And it has set off troubling questions about intellectual freedom: Some scholars say they have been pressured to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influence-at-think-tanks.html?_r=0

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Think Tanks as Lobbyists: Exposé Shows U.S. Groups Receive Millions to Push Foreign Nations’ Agendas

Democracy Nowinterview with one of the reporters on NYT REPORT:

A New York Times exposé reveals more than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials. Some scholars funded by the think tanks say they faced pressure to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing their work. The groups named in the report include the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Atlantic Council, and most of the money comes from countries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, including the oil-producing nations of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Norway. Few of them have registered with the Justice Department as "foreign agents" that aim to shape policy, as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act. We are joined by Brooke Williams, a contributing reporter at The New York Times who co-wrote the new article, "Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks."


Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a New York Times exposé which finds some of the most influential think tanks in the United States are awash in funds from foreign governments. According to the investigation published over the weekend, quote, "More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities."

The story is headlined "Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks." It reveals most of the money comes from countries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, including the oil-producing nations of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Norway. Some scholars funded by the think tanks say they faced pressure to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research. Among the organizations named in the report are the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Atlantic Council.

For more, we’re joined by one of the article’s authors, Brooke Williams, contributing reporter at The New York Times who co-wrote the piece. She’s also an investigative journalism fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

Brooke Williams, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about what you found.

BROOKE WILLIAMS: Thank you for having me. Well, we found tens of millions of dollars, as much as $92 million—and that’s a bare minimum—from foreign governments and foreign-controlled entities to think tanks, mostly in Washington, D.C. We also found a window into—to examine how the think tanks are interacting with the governments. And this is something that we’ve done for the first time. Think tanks have always—some of them have always published lists of donors. However, we could never tell what the foreign governments were paying for exactly, and usually not how much money they provided. We used public records from one of the governments and provided a window into how the think tanks were interacting. And what we found were some agreements in which the foreign government, Norway, in particular, was explicitly asking a think tank to approach—

AMY GOODMAN: The think tank being?

BROOKE WILLIAMS: The Center for Global Development—and to approach U.S. policymakers with a specific objective that was in the government’s interest. And we found that donors—

AMY GOODMAN: What were they asking for?

BROOKE WILLIAMS: They were asking for—to double spending in a foreign aid program. And a portion—a progress report that they sent to the Norwegian government said, "Target [group]: U.S. policy makers," and then listed the policymakers that they would be targeting.

AMY GOODMAN: And the foreign aid money would go to where?

BROOKE WILLIAMS: The foreign aid money, it was doubling U.S. spending money to—it’s a deforestation effort, so it’s a climate change agenda.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about other examples that you found.

BROOKE WILLIAMS: We found letters, for instance, from think tanks such as the Atlantic Council, and they’re on the document viewer that’s on—readers can see on the website, in which—

AMY GOODMAN: You built the database?

BROOKE WILLIAMS: I built the database. And so, yes. And this is the first of its kind, in which we can really track how much money. I mean, it’s coming from all over the world, but, as you mentioned, certain areas are more heavily involved. But we found letters, for instance, from the Atlantic Council to a Norwegian energy minister, inviting them to attend an event and saying to the state-owned oil company, "If you attend, you know, this will really benefit your interests." We found in one case a Brookings scholar saying that he would help to bring along a State Department official to a meeting, and Norway is a major donor to Brookings.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me get—bring in Brookings’ response, who we called. This is a message published by Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution, in response to the New York Times article on foreign powers buying influence at think tanks. Talbott writes, quote, "By disregarding important facts and taking information out of context, the reporters drew inaccurate conclusions that misrepresent the work of Brookings and ignore the institutional safeguards we have in place to ensure complete independence for our scholars’ research and policy recommendations." Your response to that, Brooke Williams?

BROOKE WILLIAMS: Brookings does have institutional safeguards, and we examined them, and we included them in the article. I think it’s important to remember, however, that even with explicit rules, there can be implicit understandings. And as you can see in the article, we spoke with scholars who said donations from foreign governments led to implicit agreements, and that they would refrain from criticizing the donor governments. So even with explicit agreements, there can be implicit agreements and pressure to self-censor.

AMY GOODMAN: You talked about the Atlantic Council, and you feature a photograph, in addition to in the text, of Michele Dunne, who resigned as head of the Atlantic Council’s center for the Middle East after calling for a suspension a military aid to Egypt in 2013. Explain what happened and what this has to do with your central point in this article.

BROOKE WILLIAMS: Well, it comes back to the idea that scholars rely on funding from donors. And, you know, Brookings, for instance, said their senior scholars, they have an understanding and agreement that senior scholars, even if a donor pulls funding, will not lose their jobs because of that. Right? And so, this goes back to safeguards in place at institutions. And in that case, the Atlantic Council declined to comment much on what happened there, but I think it comes back to the idea of feeling pressure to self-censor and what might happen if a scholar were to criticize a donor government.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the laws in the United States, not just the rules of these different organizations, around the issue of registering as a lobbyist.

BROOKE WILLIAMS: Right, yeah. So the law pertaining to foreign government interests is much more strict than the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which, you know, we know, companies register to lobby. So, it requires foreign government interests who are attempting to influence public opinion or policy to register as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. And those filings are extremely detailed. They contain the dates and contacts of reporters, think tank officials, you name it. They listed the dates of contact, the purpose, whether it was by phone or in-person meeting. And it goes back to World War II, in an effort for the U.S. government to distinguish between Nazi Germany propaganda and research. And so, this—

MUCH MORE with VIDEO AT:

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/8/think_tanks_as_lobbyists_expose_shows#

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