Foreign Agents
How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World
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- USD 15.99
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- USD 15.99
Descripción editorial
A stunning investigation and indictment of a segment of the United States' foreign lobbying industry, and the threat to end democracy.
For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they've not only entrenched dictatorships and spread kleptocratic networks, but they've secretly guided U.S. policy without the rest of America even being aware. And now, some of them have begun turning their sights on American democracy itself.
These Americans are known as foreign lobbyists, and many of them spent years ushering dictatorships directly into the halls of Washington, all while laundering the reputations of the most heinous, repressive regimes in the process. These foreign lobbyists include figures like Ivy Lee, the inventor of the public relations industry—a man who whitewashed Mussolini, opened doors to the Soviets, and advised the Nazis on how to sway American audiences. They include people like Paul Manafort, who invented lobbying as we know it—and who then took his talents to autocrats from Ukraine to the Philippines, and then back to the White House. And they now include an increasing number of Americans elsewhere: in law firms and consultancies, among PR specialists and former lawmakers, and even within think tanks and universities.
In Foreign Agents, Casey Michel shines a light on these foreign lobbyists as some of them—after decades of installing dictators and corrupting American policy—embark on their next mission: to end America’s democratic experiment, once and for all.
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Corruption on behalf of despots is the stock in trade of American lobbyists who work for foreign governments, according to this masterful exposé. Michel (American Kleptocracy), director of the Combatting Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation, surveys many such lobbyists, with a focus on two egregious examples. One is pioneering PR man Ivy Lee, whose clientele included the government of Nazi Germany, which he advised to court American public opinion by playing down the antisemitism and playing up the anti-Bolshevism. The second is Republican political consultant Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's 2016 campaign manager, who was fired from the campaign when his work advising the pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich in the early 2010s came to light. Michel also investigates other vectors of foreign influence, including the Clinton Foundation's receipt of donations linked to Saudi Arabia and other countries, presumably given in anticipation of a Hillary Clinton presidency; huge donations to American universities and think tanks by foreign countries, including China; and a notorious 2013 congressional junket to Azerbaijan during which the legislators received lavish gifts from the Azeri government. Michel's portrait of endemic corruption is disturbing; lobbying firms, he finds, do little more than serve as conduits for channeling foreign bribes to American officials. The result is a hard-hitting takedown of a cynical industry.
