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

46. Adam Bernstein, “Tyrants’ Lobbyist, Flamboyant to the End.” Washington Post, May 3, 2005 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050201380.html); Richard Leiby, “Fall of the House of von Kloberg,” Washington Post, July 31, 2005 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/30/AR2005073001401.html). Von Kloberg apparently committed suicide in 2005.

47. Freeman, op. cit.

48. The member of the Washington Strategic Consulting Group here cited is Adwoa Dunn-Mouton; the former ambassador to Angola is Donald Steinberg. Both are referenced in: Mother Jones : Joshua Kurlantzick, “Putting Lipstick on a Dictator.” Mother Jones, May 7, 2007 (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/05/putting-lipstick-dictator).

49. This is based on a database by ProPublica and the Sunlight Foundation that tracks firms, their work, and campaign contributions to various politicians by firms, whose clients often include foreign countries (http://foreignlobbying.org/).

50. Rosie Gray, “Covert Malaysian Campaign Touched a Wide Range of American Media.” Buzzfeed, March 1, 2013 (http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/covert-malaysian-campaign-touched-a-wide-range-of-american-m). I’m just looking at what Trevino said again—this was at the bottom of the piece—an update—I’m not exactly sure how to characterize it. From Buzzfeed:

Trevino called back to say that he had actually checked with his legal counsel in 2011 after being questioned by Politico, but had been told at the time that he didn’t need to register anywhere.

“Ben Smith had actually asked me if I was a foreign agent back in 2011,” Trevino said.

“I asked a lawyer friend, my counsel. I said, hey, is there anything I need to comply with? He came back and said no.”

“After the Guardian thing, I reached out to a different counsel, and I did some googling and found out about FARA,” Trevino said.

Page 85—not an error at all but I guess I’d question putting Daschle in as a one off. He seems a consummate insider to me. He does seem relatively confined to health care, though.

Page 91—Endnote 95. The 2007 Mishkin report sentence is better cited with this: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/08/01/the-past-lucrative-life-of-feds-mishkin/

51. Ibid. In an update towards the end of the article, Gray reports having heard more from Trevino, as follows:

Trevino called back to say that he had actually checked with his legal counsel in 2011 after being questioned by Politico, but had been told at the time that he didn’t need to register anywhere.

“Ben Smith had actually asked me if I was a foreign agent back in 2011,” Trevino said.

“I asked a lawyer friend, my counsel. I said, hey, is there anything I need to comply with? He came back and said no.”

“After the Guardian thing, I reached out to a different counsel, and I did some googling and found out about FARA,” Trevino said.

52. See, for example, FARA’s FAQ (http://www.fara.gov/fara-faq.html).

53. As John Newhouse of the World Security Institute said in 2009: “Since 1966, when FARA was amended, there have been only three indictments on alleged FARA violations and no successful criminal prosecutions” (John Newhouse, “Diplomacy, Inc: The Influence of Lobbies on U.S. Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2009 [http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/Diplomacy_Inc_FA.pdf]). Since then, the case referenced in this article has been prosecuted: Jan Witold Baran and Robert L. Walker, “Former congressman Mark Siljander sentenced for FARA violation.” Wiley Rein LLP, March 15, 2012 (http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=8120140b-2495-4b9f-86cf-54c12a53d5c6).

54. John Kurlantzick, “When Lobbyists Work for Authoritarian Nations.” Newsweek, July 26, 2010 (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/26/the-hired-guns.html).

55. Office of Senator Claire McCaskill, “Schumer, McCaskill, Obama Call on Justice Department Watchdog to Probe Lax and Uneven Enforcement of Foreign Law.” Office of Senator Claire McCaskill, July 10, 2008 (http://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=300414); Larry Margasak, “Foreign Agents Law Said Full of Loopholes.” AP News Archive, June 19, 1991 (http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1991/Foreign-Agents-Law-Said-Full-of-Loopholes/id-3a396ea11e1aa55b51c8564611287530).

56. Rosie Gray, “How Foreign Governments Make Sure You Don’t Know They’re Lobbying You.” BuzzFeed, March 21, 2013 (http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/how-foreign-governments-make-sure-you-dont-know-theyre-lobby).

57. Eli Lake, “Ukraine’s DC Lobbyists in Disarray as Dictator Flees.” The Daily Beast, February 25, 2014 (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/25/ukraine-s-d-c-lobbyists-in-disarray-as-dictator-flees.html).

58. Kevin Bogardus, “Justice amps up enforcement of law on foreign advocacy.” The Hill, October 28, 2011 (http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/190379-officials-turn-up-enforcement-of-foreign-lobby-law).

59. For more on that, Ben Freeman, author of The Foreign Policy Auction , is interviewed by Michael K. Busch, who teaches international relations at City College of New York. “FDL Book Salon Welcomes Ben Freeman, The Foreign Policy Auction: Foreign Lobbying in America,” FDL Book Salon, December 2, 2012 (http://fdlbooksalon.com/2012/12/02/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-ben-freeman/).

60. John Newhouse, “Diplomacy, Inc: The Influence of Lobbies on U.S. Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2009 (http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/Diplomacy_Inc_FA.pdf).

61. Ken Silverstein, “How Bahrain Works Washington.” Salon, December 8, 2011 (http://www.salon.com/2011/12/08/how_bahrain_works_washington/).

62. John Kurlantzick, “Putting Lipstick On A Dictator.” Mother Jones, May 7, 2007 (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/05/putting-lipstick-dictator).

63. Flexibility is so much a part of the shadow elite MO that I coined these “flex” terms to describe them: “flexians” (players who work on their own), and “flex nets” (when they operate as part of a network). For definitions and characteristics, see Janine R. Wedel, Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market . New York: Basic Books, 2009, pp. 13-21; and endnote below.

“Flex nets” are, among other things, circles of shadow elites who work together over many years and keep coming up in different incarnations vis-à-vis each other. For definition and characteristics, see endnote below and also Wedel, Shadow Elite (pp. 15-19). The dozen or so players I call the “Neocon Core,” who helped push the United States to war in Iraq in 2003, are perhaps the quintessential case to date of a flex net (see Wedel, Shadow Elite , pp. 147-191). Since the 1970s, members of this Neocon core have pioneered practices at the nexus of official and private power.

For recent or relatively recent examples of “flexians,” see cases in this book and in Arianna Huffington, “The First HuffPost Book Club Pick of 2010: Shadow Elite by Janine Wedel,” January 6, 2010 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-first-huffpost-book-c_b_412999.html).

64. The following features make flex nets effective and distinguish them from other influencers such as lobbyists, interest groups, conspiratorial groups, Mafias, cliques, and elites. (Of course, these groupings have by no means disappeared; some are even nourished by the same transformational developments that feed flex nets, as described in Chapter 1.)

First, flex nets form an exclusive informal network that serves as an intricate spine. While their roles and the organizational and political environments in which they operate may change, the group provides continuity. Unlike lobbyists (who offer politicians support and resources in exchange for access and preference in policies) and interest groups (which defend the interests of a particular group or promote a political cause [see, for instance, Vernon Bogdanor, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Institutions . Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987, p. 295; W. Grant, 2004. “Interest Groups,” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics , eds. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2003; and David Robertson, The Routledge Dictionary of Politics , 3rd Edition. London and New York: Routledge, 2004, p. 41]), flex nets are not formal or permanent entities and do not aspire to being so. Although members of flex nets are united by shared activities and interpersonal histories, the existence of the network is unannounced. Flex nets also are not conspiracies, whose members must keep their activities and, often, the very existence of their group, secret. While some of the group’s activities in support of its goals are publicly unrevealed, others are fully in the open, invite media attention, and may even be crafted by public relations specialists.