For Pacifica Radio, February 20th, 2022.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
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I have got Ben Freeman again.
He is a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and he has a book called The Foreign Policy Auction.
I didn't know that.
What a great name, too.
Previously, he was director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy.
Welcome back to the show, Ben.
How you doing?
I'm good, Scott.
Thank you for having me back on.
Very happy to have you here.
And if that wasn't clear, the point of your work is keeping track of foreign governments who lobby the U.S. government to have their way.
And as we've discussed repeatedly, countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia seem to have far more influence than the American people when it comes to American foreign policy.
And boy, oh boy, I mean, I guess I kind of already knew this, but I also learned a lot about the Ukraine lobby as it has matured in the last few years in Washington, D.C.
This piece is at ResponsibleStatecraft.org, Army of Ukraine Lobbyists Behind Unprecedented Washington Blitz.
So give us the bad news here, bud.
I feel like I only have bad news when I talk to you, Scott.
But in this case, it's it's another example of a foreign powers lobbyists, PR folks that are really helping to drive the narrative for U.S. foreign policy here in the U.S.
So if you're reading the newspaper right now or turning on the news, you're seeing everything about what's going on in Ukraine, the Russian tensions over there.
And if you followed my work at all in the past, you know what I'm probably going to tell you next, that a lot of that narrative is being driven by lobbyists that are working for the folks behind that fight.
So what we've dug into at the Quincy Institute is taking a hard look at everything that the Ukraine lobby has done surrounding this conflict and other issues, too, including the Nord Stream pipeline, which we can talk some more about as well.
And frankly, what we found, Scott, was an unprecedented campaign.
I've been looking at foreign governments influence operations for 15 years now.
I've never seen anything like what Ukraine has done in this past year.
What?
Wait a minute.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, compared to AIPAC, which rules D.C. with an iron fist.
Yeah.
I think what separates Ukraine from something like AIPAC, let's say, is that AIPAC doesn't actually have to do as much.
You know, it's well, that's right.
They've already laid the groundwork there, haven't they?
That's right.
That's right.
You know, it's almost like somebody who has that really big bodyguard, you know, standing right behind him.
They don't have to say as much because they've got this big, scary guy behind them.
For Ukraine, it's a different story, though.
The Ukraine lobby has really had to work, that, you know, they've had to roll up their sleeves and put in the time to try and steer U.S. foreign policy in their direction.
And so what they've done in terms of the activity, it blows everybody else out of the water, whether it's AIPAC, you know, the Saudi lobby, the Emiratis, whoever it is.
They're doing multiples of time more work than any government that I've ever looked at.
All right.
So give us some details there to illustrate what you're talking about.
Yeah.
So what we found, we took a look at all their Foreign Agents Registration Act, their FARA filings in 2021 to try and put this all in perspective.
And so what we found was actually more than 13,000 reported political activities, which is just nuts.
And that was split down kind of three big avenues of influence that they were working on.
It was Congress.
And that was the media.
And it was think tanks.
The vast majority of that work was was directed at Congress, more than 8000 times that Ukraine's lobbyists reached out to folks in Congress, 8000 times.
So a majority of all House and Senate offices were contacted by these folks.
Some offices that we looked at, like Ron Johnson, for example, who has been a real kind of Russia hawk, folks at his office were contacted almost every other day by Ukraine's lobbyists.
So it's been a literal full court press from Ukraine's lobbyists.
And let me stop you right there, too, because, I mean, am I right that 8000 is just kind of camouflage for all the times that they didn't self-report or all the times they hired a lawyer to do their lobbying for them or whatever kind of loopholes to or how's that work?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, no.
That's exactly right, Scott.
This is just what we know that they've done.
This is just what they have self-reported.
And as we know from lobbying activity and from what we've seen in the past, what they report is often just a fraction of what's actually going on.
So I always like to say, we know they've done at least 8000 of these contacts with Congress.
There's all the unreported activity we don't know about.
And there's probably some folks out there that are doing lobbying type work that should be registered under the proper disclosure statutes, but they're not.
So I'm sorry to interrupt your train of thought, but you're so smart, you'll pick it right back up again.
But on the thing about the lawyers there, you taught us before.
I forget now who it was that had hired the lawyers, if it was Raytheon or if it was the Saudis themselves or who it was who would.
I forget if they just hired a lawyer first or they hired a PR firm to hire a lawyer or they hired a lawyer to hire a PR firm, but to give three thousand dollars to a senator to buy his vote.
So that was a pretty major loophole there using a lawyer instead of a K Street lobbyist, right?
Right.
This is what we call the legal exemption under FARA.
And the way it's supposed to work is that, you know, if somebody is just your lawyer, they're representing a foreign government just in a courtroom and doing that type of stuff.
They don't have to register under FARA.
But what we know very, very often happens is that you might hire a lawyer ostensibly for a court case.
But then that lawyer goes on CNN, they go on Fox News, you know, they've got an NPR story coming out and they're effectively serving as a PR person for you.
And so this loophole then gets exploited all the time.
You know, Saudis, Emiratis, you name it.
A lot of foreign governments are exploiting this to have people who are on their payroll but not registered under FARA still doing ostensibly PR work on their behalf.
Yeah.
All right.
So I'm sorry.
Back to the influence on the senators, the congressmen, their staff, et cetera, wherever you were there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's really crazy, Scott.
We documented over 8,000 different times Congress gets contacted.
A majority of all members of Congress are contacted.
They even have sit down meetings with some key members of Congress.
So, you know, for example, Ted Cruz, he's really been driving this anti-Russia hawk narrative and, you know, wants to sanction folks connected to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
These Ukraine's lobbyists have actually met with Ted Cruz himself.
And in fact, one of Ukraine's biggest lobbyists right now who heads a firm known as Yorktown Solutions, he's actually a former Cruz staffer.
This guy directly worked for Ted Cruz.
So he's got a direct line of communication directly to Cruz, who is really the champion for all things anti-Russia in Congress right now.
Amazing.
And hey, did you see where Rand Paul was throwing some shade at his friend too?
And they republished it at the American Conservative, but it was a statement that Rand had put out where he said, hey, listen, it's no coincidence.
In fact, he called it mercantilism.
I love it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was a great.
It's no coincidence that the senators pushing for this happen to be from the states that have an interest in exporting natural gas.
This is just right.
Straight cronyism.
This ain't free market capitalism, man.
This is corruption.
Right.
Right.
And I would say Rand's points on all of this have been very good, too, to, you know, he's asking all the right questions about what what is the U.S. doing in Ukraine?
What are what are the U.S. interests there?
Like, independent of what Ukraine's interests are, what's the U.S. interest in going into World War Three with Russia?
Yeah, you'd think that's a pretty good question, but it takes the son of a Paul to even bring it up like, hey, wait a minute.
We're willing to risk literally everything for what again?
Right.
Right.
And I think that's why it's so alarming, too, to see, you know, all of the the seeming like the Washington consensus, the blob is in overdrive right now and it just seems to be itching for war.
And, you know, whether it's think tanks or it's the media, it just seems like everybody is pushing this narrative, pushing us towards war.
But you really don't hear from the folks that are could potentially be on the front lines of that.
You know, the U.S. soldiers who've been activated to go over there, not to mention the over 70,000 DOD personnel that are already stationed in Europe.
I think if you ask those folks, they're not very keen on going to war with Russia over some issues in Ukraine.
Yeah.
All right.
Hang on a second there, Ben.
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Now let's get back to anti-war radio, talking with Ben Freeman from the Quincy Institute.
And look, I can report to you that regular people have been, again, very successfully influenced by the TV to believe that Putin is Hitler.
If we don't stop him at Ukraine, he's going to end up conquering all of Europe.
It's going to be just like Hitler all over again and all these narratives.
And they get it from not just CNN crazies, but from the NewsHour on PBS too.
This is what everybody apparently is paid to believe and then go on TV and say.
And when they all agree, then, geez, they must know what's going on or what are they so afraid of, you know?
Right.
And I would say, too, from our research, this dives right into another aspect of what we've been looking at with Ukraine's influence, and that's on the media.
I don't think it's any accident that the narrative that we're getting from the media about this is so hawkish, because in some senses, that's by design.
Ukraine's lobbyists contacted media outlets more than 2,000 times last year.
They had meetings with key officials from, you know, CNN, Fox News, CNBC.
You go down the list of outlets and chances are they've either had a face-to-face meeting with Ukraine's lobbyists or they've been on the phone with them or received literally hundreds of emails in some cases.
And the lobbyists, too, are going very directly to influence in some cases.
They're planning op-eds.
They're helping to shape all of these narratives that we're hearing.
So it's really no accident that the media seems very hawkish on this issue right now.
Yeah.
Well, and who's sticking up for the other side of the story there?
Russia must have some kind of, you know, lobbying.
They obviously work very hard at pushing RT out there and that kind of thing.
Do they do anything else?
Do they have lawyers and K Street lobbyists that go up to the Hill and tell their side of the story?
Yeah, they do.
There are a couple of issues going on here.
Number one, they do have their own side of this lobbying and influence operation.
Frankly, Russian state media is not really good at convincing Americans to change their tune.
But the real influential side of this for the Russians are the pro-Russian pipeline interests and principally this Nord Stream 2 pipeline being built by the Russian energy company Gazprom.
And Gazprom has a bunch of lobbying firms working for it and other folks working on the pipeline, too.
But unfortunately, all of these folks are registered under what's called the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which is really just supposed to be for foreign businesses, not for foreign governments.
And so, unfortunately, we don't really know a lot about what they're up to.
I can't really provide to your listeners any detailed account of what the Russian lobby is doing because they're not registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
They're registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.
And I don't think they should be, frankly, because, you know, we know Gazprom, who's building this pipeline, this is a Russian state-owned company.
And because they're a Russian state-owned company, they should be registered under FERA.
So there's really an uneven playing field when it comes to the transparency behind the lobbying fight.
Yeah.
Hang on just one second.
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Well, OK, but beyond, you know, direct disclosures and all that, are you under the impression that they lobby on the Hill very much or they just deal with the State Department anyway?
Or do you think if you could compare their activity on the Hill to Ukraine or to Saudi or whatever, where would you rank it, do you think?
Oh, I don't think on the Hill that they have anywhere, anywhere near the sway of the Ukrainians are certainly.
Nobody wants to be seen with them at this point anyway, right?
So they just do all that.
State Department.
They're toxic.
I mean, they're toxic.
If you're a if you're a lobbyist for Russia, you know, you're you're a salmon swimming upstream and there's just bears everywhere trying to eat you.
Hey, Senator Sessions, a conservative Republican, longtime, you know, I don't know how many terms he served, but many served.
I hate that.
But, you know, that's what they call it anyway.
He was accused of high treason for meeting with the Ukraine with pardon me, with the Russian ambassador in his Senate office in front of his staff who are all retired army officers.
And this was supposedly part of, you know, yeah, anyway, toxic kind of association.
You don't want to have much to do with their point made.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, Russia is just such a scarlet letter right now on the Hill that it's just so hard for their lobbyists, the folks on their side to get anything done there.
See, here's the thing, man, right?
Like when you're young, you think that adults know everything.
And then when you're a regular guy, you think that congressmen know things.
But then when you pay much attention to this stuff for very long, you realize that they're too busy to really know things.
That's what their staff is for, telling them what they know and whatever.
And then their staff are young people who don't really know much, except that what they just heard from the lobbyists who dropped by.
And it's a very kind of enclosed sort of a bubble of a ecosystem of a, you know, echo chamber kind of a thing there where, thank God the Quakers are here, right?
Without the FCNL, who's going to come to the Hill and say, well, actually, you know, that's not entirely right.
There's another side of the story here you guys should know about.
And it's really that easy, right?
Buy some lobbyists, create a narrative, and stick it in the brain of Pelosi and her people, and you rule the day.
That's it.
Right, right.
I think it's the dirty little secret of Washington that the nation's laws are being written by 24-year-old kids.
Oops.
And it's true, everything you're saying makes sense.
Still has the AIPAC trademark at the bottom of the thing.
Right, right.
And we see this with foreign lobbying, too, because, you know, people's bandwidth is so small.
And so you see members of Congress reading speeches that were written by foreign lobbyists.
You know, a congressman named Ed Royce did this a few years ago.
He was literally reading Saudi talking points verbatim on the House floor.
And so you're like, what, like, is this just laziness?
And I think that's part of it, you know, because these folks, you know, there's a little bit of laziness, and they don't have enough time on their hands.
So when a lobbyist comes in and says, oh, don't worry about it, you know, make your job really easy, you know, here are the talking points, or in some cases, lobbyists will literally write pieces of legislation for members of Congress.
And that's not an exaggeration at all.
We've seen this happen on many occasions before.
And so but when that happens, you as the average voter have to say, what the heck am I doing here?
You know, why does why am I even voting?
Does my vote even matter if these people are just introducing legislation that's literally written by lobbyists?
Yeah, crazy.
All right.
Sorry.
Hang on just one second for me there, Ben Freeman.
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Now let's get back to our interview with the great Ben Freeman.
All right, so now talk to us about the think tanks too.
You know, for some reason, when I was reading your article, I was reminded of the first time I ever heard that term, think tank.
What's a think tank?
Nobody told me that.
Well, it's the arms manufacturers.
They're good at engineering, but they're not that good at writers, so they've got to hire some eggheads to write some studies to be the excuse for why the military needs to buy weapons from them is essentially all it is, right?
But then I guess this kind of goes unremarked upon, unnoticed, and maybe I think you've told me before that you think this is kind of a new phenomenon in the last generation or so, where you really have the think tanks also directly sponsored by foreign governments to incredible degrees here, where there's no disclaimer when you hear from an expert from the Atlantic Council that this guy's paid by the Germans and the Qataris or whoever it is to tell you this point of view here, you know?
So can you, first of all, describe a little bit of that think tank world from your point of view, if you could, and then where it intersects with our story here with the Ukrainian lobbyists?
Yeah, yeah.
It's a great question.
It's one of my favorite topics.
I think when we're talking about think tanks, think tanks in theory are designed to be something of a bridge between the ivory tower, between academia and those eggheads on that side and their fancy research, and connecting that to actual government policies.
So in other words to say, we've got all this fancy scientific research out there, how do we actually translate that into good policies for the US government?
That's ostensibly what think tanks are supposed to do in theory.
In practice, think tanks sometimes do that, but more often than not lately, they kind of serve a function as de facto lobbyists in many cases, where the funders of think tanks are asking for specific types of research, in some cases very specific individual reports and even articles to be written.
And so there's a growing pay to play component to the work that think tanks are doing now.
That may or may not be problematic to an individual person if they're okay with who those funders are.
But I think it gets into some very interesting questions when those think tanks are being funded by foreign governments, particularly authoritarian foreign governments.
And this is what I found in my research, is that foreign money is just pouring in the think tanks.international policy, where we tracked over $170 million going to the nation's top think tanks.
And one of the biggest contributors to think tanks is actually the United Arab Emirates.
And we know from multiple different examples that the UAE isn't just handing over these millions of dollars and walking away.
The UAE is asking for very specific things, arms sales, for folks to turn a blind eye to the situation in Yemen.
And in some cases, too, they're looking to get specific US weapon systems sold to them, like US military drones, which they've recently been authorized to buy from the US too.
The other thing on think tanks, I think is worth noting too, is that they can serve as what I like to call holding tanks, where people go and join a think tank that, you know, might lean a little to one side of the aisle or the other.
And they just kind of hang out there until their party gets back in the White House.
And so then they can leave the think tank and go back into the next Republican or Democratic administration.
So in this way...
Does he coin that phrase?
No, I'm sure somebody else, much smarter, said it before I did.
But...
No, I like that.
So, for example, the Center for a New American Security, during the last years of W. Bush, when they were gearing up to take over the Obama government and launch the surge in Afghanistan.
Exactly right.
I think CNAS is a perfect example.
And you know, you look down the roster of CNAS now and you look at Biden administration folks, the Biden administration is now filled with former CNAS people.
And these are folks who, under the Trump presidency, they just sort of went to CNAS, in many cases were just sort of holding out there and biding their time till they could get back in.
And so Biden wins the presidency and then swoop.
It's right back into the executive branch.
And I expect it to happen again for CNAS and other think tanks like it.
You know, when when there's a Republican back in the White House, they'll once again, you know, leave the administration and just jump back right back into the Democratic holding that tanks and just wait there for a few years until they can jump right back in again.
So can you tell us about the Atlantic Council?
Sounds nice.
We like the Atlantic Ocean.
That's a that's a nice place full of fish for us to eat and things like that.
So what could possibly go wrong?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a great question.
I live down in Florida now, and so I'm right by the Atlantic Ocean and I love it.
But the Atlantic Council.
What a great name for a council.
I don't know.
Right.
Wonderful.
Wonderful.
The Atlantic Council is is a favorite topic of mine, frankly, in that the Atlantic Council has what I think is the notorious title of getting money from a more diverse set of foreign governments than any other think tank in D.C.
By my calculations that they've in the last five years, they've received contributions from more than two dozen foreign powers.
And this includes in the current circumstance, getting sizable contributions from Ukraine.
In fact, the second wealthiest man in Ukraine is not only a big donor to the Atlantic Council, he sits on the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Council.
And on top of all that, he's conducting surveys about the current crisis, which the Atlantic Council is then featuring prominently in the work of its scholars and other folks on its website.
And then on top of that, Scott, what's going on in the back end is that behind the scenes which folks aren't seeing is that Ukraine's lobbyists are meeting with the Atlantic Council like crazy.
In fact, just in twenty twenty one, Ukraine lobbyists met with met with emailed or had phone calls with the Atlantic Council scholars almost six hundred times.
This includes meetings with key Atlantic Council scholars who are pushing for really heavily militarized U.S. responses to the crisis there and folks who are pushing for the U.S. to provide sanctions on the Nord Stream two crisis.
So the Atlantic Council, to me, at least in the current crisis, is really a think tank that epitomizes this interaction that we can have between foreign governments, lobbying efforts and the work that things think tanks are doing to promote the interests of those foreign powers.
Right.
All right.
Well, that's something else.
And I guess it explains a lot of what's going on right now on TV and in D.C.
So I really appreciate your insight here today, man.
Great stuff.
You bet, Scott.
One of these times I got to come on here with good news, you know, say something like, you know, foreign lobbying is over.
You know, we figured it out.
Americans back in control.
You know, we got the lobbyists out of the way.
Yeah.
AIPAC forced to register as foreign agents.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
We'll get them one day, Scott.
Exactly.
All right.
Well, thank you again, man.
Really appreciate it, Ben.
Thank you, Scott.
Always a pleasure.
Aren't you, guys?
That is Ben Freeman.
He is over at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Responsible statecraft.org is their website.
And this important piece is called Army of Ukraine Lobbyists Behind Unprecedented Washington Blitz.
And that has been anti-war radio for this morning.
Again, I'm your host, Scott Horton, editorial director of Antiwar dot com and author of Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism.
Find my full interview archive at Scott Horton dot org and at YouTube dot com slash Scott Horton Show and support KPFK at KPFK dot org or call 818-985-5735.
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