Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our names, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Marshall Hashim and James Allen.
They're both both research associates with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy.
And they got this important article at TomDispatch.com and therefore at Antiwar.com as well.
Lobbying for war.
Welcome to the show.
How are you guys doing?
We're great.
Thank you for having us.
Yes, thank you.
Yeah, very happy to have you here.
And I just love this kind of reporting.
It's my very favorite talking about the lobbying of the military industrial complex.
The arms manufacturers, the very biggest ones you're picking on here.
Lockheed and Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman must be in there somewhere too.
And the influence that these groups have on Capitol Hill, essentially strictly through the money that they recycle, the tax dollars that they cash in and then recycle in small amounts to the congressmen who apportion it.
So I don't know.
Go ahead.
Talk about the Yemen war and whatever you want.
Great.
So, Scott, as you mentioned, these big companies such as Northrop Grumman and Orbital ATK, they have all been spending millions of dollars on lobbying.
And these lobbyists, such as the McKeon Group and American Defense International, have been representing these U.S. defense contractors as well as representing their biggest buyers, being Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
So they're essentially double dipping in the Yemen war and profiting greatly off of it.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's funny because Yemen is, I guess, kind of considered a smaller war.
Certainly doesn't get very much attention.
And maybe even the arms sales involved might even pale in comparison to, I don't know, Iraq War II.
But that's a pretty high bar, right?
Where anything less than that seems like no big deal.
But in fact, I guess you're telling me, according to these companies, the Yemen war is everything, of the highest importance to them and their business model.
Right.
As you're saying, Scott, it's very it's actually extraordinary the amount of money that is involved here.
Our Center for International Policy last year documented that companies like defense contractors sold $4.5 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia and $1.2 billion to the United Arab Emirates in 2018 alone.
And another job of these lobbyists, right, is to to make, to give these their clients good press.
Right.
So they want the UAE and the Saudi Arabia to look as good as possible.
And they also want the defense contractors to look as good as possible.
So they don't want us talking about these types of issues and about the Yemen war and the devastation.
Yeah.
So that's important why we talk about it.
As you guys point out here, very real consequences for the people on the ground in Yemen.
And we saw that this week, yesterday, I assume today, too.
But massive airstrikes on Sana'a and children killed, civilian homes destroyed.
And these are, without question, American bombs delivered by American planes.
Yes.
At several of the sites such as the wedding we highlighted in our piece, they found fragments from Raytheon, from Lockheed Martin, from Northrop Grumman.
And it has been more than one time that these bombs have been found in devastating attacks against school buses of children, against weddings and funerals and even hospitals.
We had the electricity and the water and the sewage and the grain silos and every civilian target that can find the local car dealership up there in Sana'a, according to Matthew Akins, the great reporter who went up there to the north of the country.
And so, yeah, that's a ring on the cash register each time.
Now, here's my favorite part.
Before we get into Buck McKeon and this group and their particular antics, my favorite paragraph that you guys hear, I'm going to cheat and read here.
Boeing spent $15 million on lobbyists.
This is in a year.
Lockheed Martin, $13.2 million.
General Dynamics, $11.9 million.
Raytheon, $4.4 million.
In other words, yeah, sure, a lot of money to any one of us.
But for these corporations, this is chump change.
This is just absolutely cents on remainders on the kind of checks that they're cashing from the U.S. Treasury Department on the receiving end of the success of what all this lobbying accomplishes.
A couple of steak dinners and a little bit of campaign money will go a hell of a long way for these companies up there.
Exactly, Scott.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
But that money, while it might not seem right a lot to them, it does get a lot done in terms of their lobbying operation in Washington.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, I think maybe you guys, I'm terrible at the math, so I've got to rely on you, but maybe just calculate it as compared to investing in the stock market or any other kind of investment.
What percentage return these companies are getting per year for this kind of money?
Honestly, I'm a little more passionate than you.
I wouldn't be able to give you that figure.
I'm sorry.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I don't mean to put you on the spot this moment, but just for your next report.
Absolutely.
That would be something to look at.
Because I think, I mean, I'm just hazarding a guess, but I think this is probably the most profitable scam in all of world history here, when you look at essentially a trillion dollars or more per year being spent.
Most definitely.
Right.
And it's shocking when you see that we really have these sort of lobbying firms that are able to really do work for two clients at the same time and to satisfy two clients, right?
You have them being able to help the UAE, but also at the same time help their defense contractors.
So really they could do one meeting that could benefit both of those clients.
A big part of this too, and thank goodness I don't live in Washington, D.C., but I know how this goes, is it's the diffusion of responsibility here where, hey, all I'm doing is offering a bunch of jet planes.
And if the U.S. government and its strategic thinkers and generals in charge and whoever, national security officials, if they want to buy them, well then, hey, I'm just here to supply them and this kind of thing.
And everybody has just a piece of it.
So no one's really responsible for building this massive military machine that we don't need whatsoever.
It's constantly looking for trouble wherever it can and all of these things.
Because essentially, you know, I don't know if this is the exact old saying that they use, but something to the effect of, hey, as long as it's all within the rules of the game, as long as it's all within the laws of democracy, you can lobby.
And that means if you're selling H-bombs or F-16s or M-16s or tube socks or whatever it is, you go for it, right?
What's wrong with that?
As long as you're just playing that particular role and you're not in violation of the law, then it's not even questionable.
It's just business.
Exactly.
It is very sad to look at the numbers and how much money these lobbyists and contractors get.
And you see the numbers of innocent Yemenis dying at the same time.
And to them, it's just the cost of doing business.
And somebody else's decision, hey, Obama started it and Trump thinks it's important that we keep doing this.
Why deny him the equipment our soldiers need out there to do their job or any kind of rationalization?
Once you break it into pieces like that, each person in the chain has their own rationalization and how it's their fault, I guess.
That's something I hate to give credit to Michael Moore, but that's something that he shows in one of those movies as he goes and interviews the nice old grandma that works at the bomb plant, who explains that, you know, she's just taking care of her family like a good matriarch should.
And she hopes that those bombs are being used to protect our boys out there, even though, come on, you know, you don't use bombs like that for ground support for the infantry.
You know what I mean?
A little bit big for that.
But it's somebody else's problem, not hers.
She's just doing the best she can in life.
And I don't mean to pick on her, just that she's a great example of how it works, you know, the economics of it all.
Absolutely.
Hey, y'all, quick note about a couple of upcoming events.
I'm going to Childerburg, which is at, I think, what, Lake Buchanan, coming up on June 8th and 9th.
Just Google search up the Childerburg there and you'll find it.
If you're in the Texas Hill Country or somewhere in Central Texas or I guess anywhere, come on out and it's going to be a big camp out and fun time out there at Childerburg, June 8th and 9th.
And then also I'm doing Porkfest in New Hampshire.
That's on June the 12th, just a couple of days later there.
And I'm going to be sharing a stage with Michael Bolden from the Tenth Amendment Center, the great standup comedian and Libertarian podcast host Dave Smith, as well as Jacob Hornberger, founder and president of the Future Freedom Foundation, who I'm trying to convince to run for president of the United States as a Libertarian Party candidate.
So that should be a lot of fun.
Childerburg, June 8th and 9th, and Porkfest on June 12th with Michael Bolden, Dave Smith, and Jacob Hornberger, too.
So anyway, talk to me about Buck McKeon because he's no little old lady.
He knows better.
Yeah, well, we like to say that Buck McKeon is the swamp.
He started his career in Congress in the early 90s, beginning in 1993, as a representative for the 25th seat for California.
And during that time and during his campaigning, he actually received a lot of money from Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.
And they were his top campaign contributors.
And in 2009, he became chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
And this committee is very powerful.
And as chairman, he's able to preside over basically these arms companies and what their actions are.
And he was able to basically represent them from inside Congress.
And in 2015, when his tenure ended, he started the McKeon Group, a lobbying firm, and he started representing them outside of Congress as well.
And in 2016, he took on all of these big defense contractors and Saudi Arabia.
And he receives a lot of money from both parties involved.
So he essentially double dips in the Yemen war.
And, you know, you see also with different bills and whatnot, the Yemen resolution brought forth by Senator Sanders and Senator Lee to basically pull American support.
You see the McKeon Group during that time go to Congress and talk to different senators in regards to the Yemen resolution.
And you can see that his group gave campaign contributions as well to the same senators, even on the same day, like Senator Jim Inhofe.
And they then proceeded to vote in favor of Saudi Arabia.
Yeah, you know, that's really the thing of it, right?
We have the direct hands on, you know, virtually red handed sort of connection there.
No, no question about the correlation and the causation.
There was a piece that Tom also ran by Ben Freeman where he talked about, I forget which senator, who was good on a Yemen resolution.
I forget exactly which one, I guess in 2017, and was going to vote the right way.
And it even said good things about it, I think.
And then a lobbyist who represented Saudi Arabia, he didn't give him Saudi money, but he just donated personally, wink, wink, $2,000.
$2,000 to this senator's campaign.
And then that's it.
You can buy genocide for a couple of grand from this guy who flip flopped right over and gave him his vote.
A prominent Democrat.
I'm sorry, I forget the name.
Yeah.
And it's a bipartisan issue.
You know, you have these lobbyists going to talk to both sides of the political spectrum.
And it doesn't matter to them as long as the outcome is the same and in favor of their clients.
Then it doesn't matter if they're left leaning or right leaning.
Yeah.
Just to piggyback off of Michal, all of this is perfectly legal.
These contributions that happen on the same day, this is all legal.
Lobbyists are, at the end of the day, American citizens and they can give money to who they choose.
Even if it's for a person that they're lobbying.
That's a good argument for body cams and this kind of thing, right?
Where all these congressmen and senators ought to have to wear a cam when they're on the job like a cop.
And at night, too.
All day, every day, we ought to be watching these guys.
Just so, hey, those are the rules, but we want full transparency of who's bribing who here.
Because this kind of thing, especially, yeah, it's worth mentioning, you guys talk about.
When you're talking about the war on Yemen, this is the poorest, weakest country in the world.
We could find a pick on here where the people are starving to death and everybody knows it.
As you mentioned, bombing hospitals when people got cholera.
And this is sick.
This is the kind of thing that there's no real debatable question about whether this should be happening at all.
Attacking, fighting against this country that never did anything else.
Because supposedly, they're friends with the Iranians or some kind of thing.
That's no cost to Spelly.
This whole thing is madness.
And it's going on and then you guys found the key to it.
It doesn't have anything to do with the situation other than who's cashing in on the bombs being dropped.
The rest of this stuff is just details, including little babies laying down, dying.
Absolutely.
I mean, the devastation in Yemen, we've seen thousands of civilians have been killed.
Over 10 million right now are at risk of starvation and death, according to the Human Rights Watch.
And for what, right?
For this sort of business model that we talk about in our piece.
I mean, it's really costing the lives of Yemenis here.
Yeah, and you know, not to justify it the other way or anything, but they're not even stealing anything of value or anything, right?
Just on the economic model of it all.
All the vested interests in America who are cashing in on this, they're cashing in on the money as it flows out.
But at the end of the war, even if they got what they wanted and put Hadi back on the throne, which is never going to happen and everyone in the world knows it, but even if they got that still, then what?
We get a bunch of free oil and free money or some kind of reward for that?
Some kind of tribute paid back to the empire?
No.
All the money is just made off of us, the taxpayer, by the arms manufacturers as they spend the money, as they, you know, they turn into these weapons and destroy stuff with it, including the bombs themselves.
So that's a pretty, you know, kind of obviously short term and faulty model for an empire and not a sustainable one for the long term there.
Yeah, correct.
Hey y'all, here's the thing.
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You know what, could you do me a favor and name more names and accuse certain congressmen of certain specific acts?
Because I know my audience would like some details about these things, you know?
Well, like we said, we had Senator Jim Inhofe was contacted by Buck McKeon.
If you actually look into the Foreign Agents Registration Act website and you go to the McKeon group, you can see who they contacted in regards to the resolution.
And then you can go to congress.gov and see how they then voted.
And, you know, we've had people from both sides of the party.
We had, you know, Mitch McConnell receive money as well and vote in favor of the Saudis.
On the left side, we had, you know, they contacted Senator Martin Heinrich.
So it really can be anyone.
And it's a matter of actually how they end up voting, whether they decide to align their interests with the American people or align their interests with the Saudi government.
Right.
Yeah, and that's the real point here too, right, is if anyone ever complains about the Israel lobby or the Saudi lobby or something, it makes it sound like, oh, you're scapegoating some foreigners for making it this way.
But to me, it seems like the real point is not that the Israelis or the Saudis or the English or anybody else have, you know, total power over American policy.
Just they have a lot more power and influence over American policy than the American people do.
And that's the comparison that matters is how come we have no say in this at all, but His Highness has so much instead.
Right.
And that's also, you know, what we hope to do at the Center for International Policy with our particular project is we want to render these things transparent.
All of this happens behind closed doors.
It happens with FARA and things that people don't know how to decode.
That's sort of what our job is to look at all of that information, all these foreign principals, foreign registrants, look at the documents that they're submitting and analyzing that information to make that digestible for people so that they can understand what's happening.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I think it's great work that you've done here, and I really appreciate both of y'all coming on the show.
Thank you so much for having us.
Thank you.
Especially late on a Friday afternoon, too.
So please go and have a good weekend.
You as well.
You as well.
All right, you guys, that is Mishal Hashem and James Allen, both research associates with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy.
That's internationalpolicy.org.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
