Critics of foreign lobbies in the nation's capital
are often dismissed as either hopelessly naïve, or as cranky isolationist
curmudgeons disinterested in embracing other cultures. Since it is natural for
a country to seek economic and cultural ties with other nations, the argument
goes, what other choice do people with competing interests in a globalizing,
capitalistic world have, in order to make themselves heard, except banding together
to petition those in power?
Obviously foreign lobbying is an age-old practice, and it will never go away.
Still, something must be done to curb the extravagances and indiscretions of
foreign lobbyists in Washington. A failure to do so can only invite ruin for
the United States and its citizens, because as with everything else in the so-called
"indispensable nation," lobbyists have simply gone overboard, feeling
themselves to be above the law and beholden to no one.
Now, they are not only continuing the old practice of pouring slop in the trough
of corrupt politicians, they are also endangering America's national security
by serving foreign interests, doing business with terrorists, and directly targeting
American citizens. Unfortunately, in 2005, we're a long ways away from Thomas
Jefferson's ideal of "peace, commerce and honest friendship with all
nations; entangling alliances with none."
Cunning, Diversionary Tactics
Perhaps the worst thing of all about the behavior
of the nefarious lobbyists is that they abuse the public trust. Sometimes they
manifest as the type of organization generally considered as being above-board,
in the economic and cultural sphere, in order to disguise criminal intent. In
an Antiwar.com interview last summer, FBI
whistleblower Sibel Edmonds gave a hypothetical example of how such "semi-legitimate
"…say, an Uzbek folklore society based in Germany. The stated purpose would be to hold folklore-related activities – and they might even do that – but the real activities taking place behind the scenes are criminal."
The "real activities" of such organizations, says Edmonds, can include
arms and drug smuggling in the area of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The close connection between lobbying and "semi-legitimate" activities was driven home for me the other week when I met in Skopje with an American "consultant" representing a businessman in a certain Balkan country. Apparently, the businessman was eager to do business in America, but did not have the right connections. How could he go about getting his foot in the door, he asked? According to the consultant,
"…we advised him to set up a foundation dealing with one of the usual Balkan issues, arms smuggling, human trafficking, ethnic rights, etc. Then we could see to it that this topic would come up in a congressional committee or sub-committee meeting. So he would have a chance to introduce himself, in his capacity as foundation chair, not as a businessman. And after the presentation, what if somehow they decide to talk business? Well, I wouldn't know about that, would I?"
Case Study 1: Larry Franklin and the AIPAC Spies
The scandals that have emerged over the past couple
years, largely in the context of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq War,
show clearly the extent of the danger America is facing due to out-of-control
Former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin is currently in the dock for repeatedly
passing top secret intelligence documents pertaining to Iran, the Khobar Towers
bombing and terrorist activities in Central Asia to his "handlers"
in the American-Israeli Public Affairs Council (AIPAC),
an organization that bills itself as "America's pro-Israel lobby."
Now, two senior AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, have also been indicted. According to Justin Raimondo, who has been following the story tirelessly, three Israeli embassy officials are also mentioned in the indictment.
That the FBI has apparently been investigating this bunch since 1999 sheds light on the enormity of the case; the more we learn, the more it seems that US foreign policy is under the control of those who wish to secure the realm – the Israeli one, that is. As the Franklin case shows, spies within the government willingly (it does not appear that Franklin wanted pay; he seems to have been doing it out of sheer devotion) collaborated with Israeli lobbyists, who in turn handed over sensitive data to their government. But Franklin was not alone; other American government officials, as yet unnamed, have also been indicted. Raimondo sums up the lobbyists' role succinctly:
"…What emerges from this indictment is AIPAC's role as an organization that functioned as a lot more than a mere Washington lobbying group, but rather one whose primary objective is intelligence-gathering on behalf of Israel.
"Rosen used AIPAC's resources, both financial and political, to carry
out a sophisticated spy operation inside the Pentagon, involving not only Franklin
but an entire subterranean network of informants and other assets, government
officials who regularly provided information and pushed Israel's agenda inside
the administration. AIPAC functioned, in effect, as an organized conspiracy
on behalf of a foreign power, a funnel that not only poured money into pro-Israel
candidates in both major parties and lobbied furiously on behalf of Tel Aviv,
but also operated as a virtual clearinghouse of classified information, laundering
it through the media – and, of course, funneling it back to their Israeli handlers."
Case Study 2: Sibel Edmonds and the Turkish FBI Infiltration
Another dimension of malevolent foreign lobbying
has been revealed in the testimony of Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI employee
and whistleblower. While the government has not allowed her full testimony to
come out, keeping her gagged under the State Secrets Act, enough has been revealed
to cast a light deep into the dark places inhabited by lobbyists, the politicians
they work with, and their spies within federal law enforcement agencies.
Edmonds' allegations point to another dangerous dimension of the lobbying phenomenon.
Whereas Franklin's crew seem to have been motivated out of a certain idealism
and patriotism to Israel – the classic state-sponsored brand of spying – the
people Edmonds was tracking as an FBI translator were of another breed. She
speaks of a shadowy world of foreign terrorists, gun runners, drug lords and
politicians, all of whom seem to have had a common meeting place (lobby groups
and other "semi-legitimate organizations," as she calls them) – like
some watering hole where all the wild creatures of the jungle come out to drink
And, according to Edmonds, they were all motivated by a single purpose – not by ideals or nationalism, but by sheer and simple greed. In the end, the whole business just "…boils down to a whole lot of money and illegal activities."
Although I tentatively take credit for
breaking the story a year ago, it has only been since
January that the mass media has really focused on one organization in particular
– the American-Turkish Council,
an extremely powerful Washington lobby group chaired by Brent Scowcroft and
supported by all of the biggest American and Turkish business interests; its
"Golden Horn" group of high-end contributors is pretty heavy on military
contractors, such as Boeing, Bechtel
International, BAE Systems,
Lockheed Martin, General
Grumman, Raytheon and United
As the above interview recounts in depth, one of Edmonds' co-workers in the FBI, Melek Can Dickerson, was a former employee of the ATC who, with her husband, a US Air Force man in the weapons procurement game, basically offered her membership in the exclusive organization; the implication was that Edmonds would be able to profit from sharing FBI secrets, or, as Dickerson herself was doing, block ongoing FBI investigations into Turkish nationals suspected of trying to breach American national security. Edmonds declined, and her resolute refusal to compromise American security and aid the criminals meant the end of her job.
According to a new article on whistleblowers in the latest issue of Vanity
"…Sibel later told the O.I.G. [Office of the Inspector General] she assumed that the A.T.C.'s board – which is chaired by Brent Scowcroft, President George H. W. Bush's national-security advisor – knew nothing of the use to which it was being put. But the wiretaps suggested to her that the Washington office of the A.T.C. was being used as a front for criminal activity."
Yet no matter how high the corruption may have gone within the organization, it was clear that at least individuals – as well as US elected officials that Edmonds is not allowed to name – were in on a major racket. Many of the wiretapped calls she processed at the FBI disclosed activities that could directly endanger the lives of American citizens, says the Vanity Fair article:
"…Another call allegedly discussed a payment to a Pentagon official, who seemed to be involved in weapons-procurement negotiations. Yet another implied that Turkish groups had been installing doctoral students at U.S. research institutions in order to acquire information about black market nuclear weapons. In fact, much of what Edmonds reportedly heard seemed to concern not state espionage but criminal activity. There was talk, she told investigators, of laundering the profits of large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder."
Hey, why should anyone care about who's getting their hands on black market
nukes, or passing around American secret military technology? Share the wealth,
Case Study 3: A Bewildering Pakistani Gaffe and Nuclear Nightmares
Another whistleblower, former FBI senior intelligence-operations
specialist John Cole, was also interviewed in the same Vanity Fair article.
After 9/11, this distinguished veteran became the bureau's national counter-intelligence
program manager for India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, he was soon deliberately
upstaged by higher-ups:
"…Early in the fall of 2001, Cole was asked to assess whether a woman who had applied to work as a translator of Urdu, Pakistan's national language, might pose a risk to security. 'The personnel security officer said she thought there was something that didn't seem right,' Cole says. 'I went through the file, and it stuck out a mile: she was the daughter of a retired Pakistani general who had been their military attaché in Washington.' He adds that, to his knowledge, 'Every single military attaché they've ever assigned has been a known intelligence officer.'"
This association "looked especially risky" to Cole, because Pakistan
was a volatile ally at best and its intelligence service, the ISI, had, after
all, created and propped up the Taliban in the first place. Besides, the article
adds, the government "…still contained elements who were far from happy
with President Pervez Musharraf's pro-American policies."
For discovering the potential security breach, Cole was congratulated by his superiors. Nevertheless, the Pakistani woman was given a job – with top-secret security clearance.
"…As of July 2005," reports Vanity Fair, "the woman was
still a bureau translator. Sibel Edmonds said she remembers her well – as the
leader of a group that pressed for separate restrooms for Muslims."
Since 9/11, scores of commentators and analysts have cautioned America to beware
of nuclear-armed "ally" Pakistan. Besides the ISI/Taliban connection
is the disquieting fact that the country's nuclear godfather, A.Q. Khan, is
the world's single greatest black-market nuclear proliferator. According to
The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, who told
the story in detail in March 2004, the shadowy international trade in black-market
nuclear goods that Khan masterminded had government sanction:
"…a Bush Administration intelligence officer with years of experience in nonproliferation issues told me last month, 'One thing we do know is that this was not a rogue operation. Suppose Edward Teller had suddenly decided to spread nuclear technology and equipment around the world. Do you really think he could do that without the government knowing? How do you get missiles from North Korea to Pakistan? Do you think A.Q. shipped all the centrifuges by Federal Express? The military has to be involved, at high levels.'"
Seven months later, UPI reported extensively on the global nuclear free-for-all described in Edmonds' testimony, again using the Khan case as the centerpiece. Citing a report from the Institute for Science and International Security, UPI revealed that Khan's supplying of uranium enrichment centrifuges to Libya and Iran made use of vast international resources and multiple countries – globalization at its finest:
According to Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the IAEA, "…nuclear
components designed in one country could be manufactured in another, shipped
through a third, assembled in a fourth, and designated for eventual turn-key
use in a fifth."
It all sounds too much like some big-screen action thriller. But that's the
way it was. According to the article, the centrifuges were assembled at workshops
in Turkey and Malaysia, using parts from Italy, Spain and elsewhere, smuggled
on German-registered ships, diverted to Dubai, repackaged and sent to Libya
under false end-user certificates.
Just as Sibel Edmonds has argued regarding her own case, protecting "foreign relations" has stymied any serious crackdown on such criminals. A.Q. Khan's popularity in Pakistan made it impossible for President Pervez Musharraf to give him anything worse than a slap on the wrist – a pardon with home confinement. As Hersh reported, referring to one American diplomat, this result came down to embarrassment and foreign relations:
"…the United States was unwilling to publicly state the obvious: that there was no way the Pakistani government didn't know about the transfers. He said, 'Of course it looks awful, but Musharraf will be indebted to you.'"
The sheer desperation that seems to drive America's foreign policy would be understandable if only the stakes weren't so high. One might understand why the administration would publicly and diplomatically protect Musharraf from being flayed alive, by quietly looking the other way in the Khan case. But still, this logic cannot explain why a covert entity such as the FBI would knowingly breach its own security standards by hiring someone who, in all likelihood, was passing on classified information to Islamabad – and who knows where after that.
All things considered, it is very hard to believe that certain US government officials, businessmen and lobbyists were unaware of the rogue trade in nuclear goods until Gadhafi spilled the beans. After all, if this is one of those black industries with profits in the "hundreds of millions of dollars," as Edmonds described it, one would hardly expect leaders who are already corrupted and irresponsible enough to not cash in.
But we shouldn't worry – it's not like the US is provoking a new arms race in one of the world's most volatile regions by ending a moratorium and selling Pakistan nuclear-capable F-16s or anything.
A congressional source cited
by Reuters said that the Bush administration's decision, made right before
Congress's summer recess, could help "…blunt any backlash among the friends
of India in Congress, of which there are many."
Indeed, the lobbying race between the two archrivals has ended exactly where the administration and its defense contractor allies hoped it would – mutual annihilation:
"…In an attempt to address India's concerns, the Bush administration is letting Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. compete for a potential $9 billion market in India for as many as 126 combat aircraft, as India replaces its fleet of Russian-built MiG-21s."
Case Study 4: Have Gun, Will Travel (to Kill US Citizens, That
A dangerous variation of the Larry Franklin variety
of lobbyist (i.e., one who is motivated by nationalist ideals) can be found
among different ethnic groups obsessed with whatever national cause they may
have. Larry Franklin may be dangerous as a spy for Israel, but he's certainly
not the sort who would strap on a Kalashnikov and hunt down Israel's enemies
by himself. But there are others who don't share his reticence.
Take for example the situation in Kosovo, where America is allegedly worshipped
and the legacy of NATO intervention carefully whitewashed as a "success."
Albanian-Americans very successfully lobbied (and subsidized) the former Clinton
regime into bombing Serbia in 1999, generating implausible sums of money overnight
and engaging in criminal activities to achieve their goal – an independent and
Serb-free Kosovo, which has
basically been achieved.
Take Florin Krasniqi, the Albanian whose entire American existence would seem to be one giant felony: first he smuggled himself illegally into the country from Mexico, and then started smuggling heavy weapons on commercial planes to arm his beloved "Kosovo Liberation Army" of thugs back home.
One might think that a man with such a track record might be laying low. The
truth could not be more opposite: this surprisingly wealthy roofer from Brooklyn,
like his lobbyist peers, is a fixture at
Democratic campaign rallies; a recent documentary shows him writing out thousand-dollar
checks, back-slapping with successfully-lobbied politicos like John Kerry, Wesley
Clark and other Clintonites with the profligate, self-assured zeal that
could only be displayed by a criminal who has significant political allies.
Now, Krasniqi has had a book and now two documentaries made in his honor, in which he takes great pride in recounting how easy it is to procure powerful .50 caliber rifles, and how great America is because "…with money, you can do amazing things in this country... Senators and congressmen are looking for donations, and if you raise the money they need for their campaigns, they pay you back."
Indeed. There's only one problem with this happy little story. Krasniqi, the
inveterate displaced "patriot," has said that Kosovo must be independent
– and that if the UN does not leave, they
will be forced to leave: "…Kosovo is up in the air… we will throw the
United Nations out." As has been clear all along, the timid internationals
will run out with their tails between their legs if
the going gets rough.
If there was any question regarding just how such an effort would be achieved, Krasniqi makes it very clear:
"…We have a team of snipers here in the U.S. ready to be dispatched on very short notice."
This is something for every American to think about. Currently thousands of Americans, both soldiers and civilians, are serving in Kosovo. You may even know one of them. Now Krasniqi's bombastic threat has been backed up the shadowy "Albanian National Army" which very recently sent a letter to the UN in Pristina, ordering all foreigners to leave Kosovo immediately – or else.
For American soldiers and civilians to be killed by the same people they came
to liberate six years ago, and by guns sold in America and with the blessings
of bought-off elected officials in Washington – folks, this will not just be
ironic, it will be criminal. Like all of the examples recounted above, it will
constitute yet another embarrassment of shortsighted foreign policy, and yet
another example of how government officials are willing to endanger their citizens
in order to profit from self-seeking foreign lobbies. Our third president is
no doubt rolling in his grave.