Janine Wedel - Unaccountable - How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security

In the United States, this is by no means just a Republican-dominated trend, as we will see with players who are generally Democrats affiliated with the defense-strategy think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS). (Though, as you will see, conservatives do appear to be more adept at creating networks of think tanks.)

Nor is it by any stretch solely an American phenomenon, as we’ll see in various examples later in the chapter.

Before examining some examples of the archetypal of the new-style think tank, let me say that I spent several years as a senior fellow of the New America Foundation, a “post-partisan” Washington-based think tank, while writing my last book, Shadow Elite . (The New America Foundation is funded largely by foundations; government; technology companies, including Facebook, Netflix, Google, and Microsoft; private donors, including Google’s Eric Schmidt; and a few other businesses.) Let me also say that not all think tanks conform in all—or even necessarily most—aspects of the archetypes I lay out here to illustrate how what are called think tanks can skirt or evade accountability. All, however, are subject to the pressures of our shadow-elite era.

OWN-A-TANK ADVOCACY

Just what is Third Way, less than a decade old? On the face of it, it is a self-proclaimed centrist think tank, founded by Wall Streeters, telecom veterans, and former Clintonites, with members of Congress as honorary co-chairs. 13It was named “2013 North American Think Tank of the Year” by the British monthly Prospect . But like many other new-style think tanks, it seems like a vehicle for wealthy people to launder ideologically charged influence into difficult-to-trace advocacy.

A recent fight between the organization and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a fierce crusader for financial reform, ended up illuminating the issue of think-tank disclosure (namely, the lack thereof). Her demand for transparency goes to the heart of the problem with think tanks and unaccountable influence.

It began on December 2, 2013, when Third Way’s president and senior vice president for policy wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed warning that “nothing could be more disastrous” for Democrats than to embrace the kind of populism advocated by Senator Warren and the mayor-elect of New York, Bill de Blasio. 14

Warren fired back just two days later with a letter sent to the CEOs of America’s top banks, urging them to voluntarily disclose any financial contributions they make to think tanks: 15

Policy makers need access to objective, quality research. . . . [P]rivate think tanks are well suited to provide this research . . . but for it to be valuable, such research and analysis must be truly independent. If the information provided by think tanks is little more than another form of corporate lobbying, then policymakers should be made aware of the difference.

In a way, this was a bit of a proxy fight, targeting banks directly. But perhaps it was a worthy one, because it unleashed more scrutiny on just who funds Third Way—and what agendas might lie behind it.

A senior vice president of Third Way eventually acknowledged that a “majority” of its funding comes from its board of trustees, and a majority of the trustees come from the financial industry. 16 The Nation , poking around Third Way’s annual report, found a half-million-dollar donation from Peck, Madigan, Jones & Stewart, “a corporate lobbying firm that represents Deutsche Bank, Intel, the Business Roundtable, Amgen, AT&T, the International Swaps & Derivatives Association, MasterCard, New York Life Insurance, [pharmaceutical trade group] PhRMA and the US Chamber of Commerce, among others.” 17

The magazine also notes a $50,000 donation from healthcare giant Humana, which Humana reports as “non-deductible lobbying.” In a later article, The Nation adds telecom giant Qualcomm, whose $25,000 donation is filed in the annual report under the rubric of “trade associations.” 18

Third Way has caused ripples in both the financial and healthcare industries since its formation; in 2009, a draft memo arguing against the so-called public option for healthcare reform became public, with the Huffington Post noting that one of the authors was a former Blue Cross-Blue Shield consultant and another “a former corporate attorney with Hogan and Hartson, a Washington-based law firm and top healthcare industry lobby shop.” 19

A year earlier, Truthout reported that Third Way was advising Jay Rockefeller, who was then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on “messaging” when it came to pushing for retroactive immunity for telecom executives who cooperated with the government’s warrantless spying in the years after 9/11. 20

Among the reported Third Way trustees at that time with connections to the telecom industry was Reynold Levy, a former AT&T executive. Truthout flags four others who also have telecom ties. That might explain why the organization was intent on defending Senator Rockefeller in the New York Times back in 2007 against criticism that he was taking donations from telecom executives seeking immunity. The Times describes Third Way as a “moderate Democratic policy group that has supported immunity for the phone carriers,” but fails to mention the group’s own connections to telecom executives and companies. 21

So much for transparency and accountability.

Another of the think tank’s areas of interest is recasting entitlement reform as something progressives should care about. This shouldn’t be surprising, given that a Third Way co-founder is said to be an “acolyte” of longtime austerity hawk and billionaire Pete Peterson. 22

So what is new about Third Way? While a think tank with an ideological agenda may be old-hat, the lack of transparency in Third Way’s operations and media outputs, the amount of big money these days sloshing around looking to be translated into political action, and the freshly pressed dress with the sheen of neutrality that then appears on the runway, all together form a new fashion.

THE THINK TANK–INDUSTRY-GOVERNMENT-MEDIA NEXUS

How is war strategy “sold” these days? The Vietnam War was essentially sold to the establishment and the public by a small circle inside the Pentagon, including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The Pentagon Papers, leaked from within the bureaucracy, did much to buttress the public’s gathering disenchantment. But in the shadow-elite age, war plans have been sold by celebrity generals who are melded with media and think tanks supported by defense contractors. The target of our disenchantment, if we are disenchanted, is thus removed from us, the public, several steps farther.

It might seem incongruous to see the words “think tank” and “hot” in the same sentence. But it is fair to say that for the crucial years in the latter half of the 2000s, the Center for a New American Security was indeed hot. In 2009, the Washington Post described it as the “It” think tank for its sphere of influence in military policy. 23

But what does that mean, exactly? Typically, it means that the think tank is having real influence on public policy. Because it is a think tank, and—in this case—a very new one, it is hard, if not impossible, to truly capture its reach.

CNAS was founded in 2007 by Kurt M. Campbell, who focused on international relations and security in top positions in government and the military (in addition to business endeavors, another think tank, and a column for the Financial Times ), and Michèle A. Flournoy, who worked for the Department of Defense before affiliating herself with a university, a consulting group, and another think tank. Campbell and Flournoy defined the mission of CNAS as promoting “strong, pragmatic and principled national security and defense policies” as an alternative to the failed ideological approaches of the outgoing Bush administration. 24Delivering the opening keynote for the think tank was then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had her eye (and apparently still does) on the White House.