Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World

1. “American Graphic: Two Views of Crime and Criminals,” Washington Post, August 12, 1980.

2. Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, Batman: Year One (Burbank, CA: DC Comics, 2015).

FOREIGN AGENTS BY THE NUMBERS

1. This data is from the years 1957–2016. Comptroller General of the United States, “Effectiveness of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as Amended, and Its Administration by the Department of Justice,” report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, B-177551, March 1974; Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, “Audit of the National Security Division’s Enforcement and Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” Audit Division 16–24, September 2016.

2. This data is from the years 1974–2014. Comptroller General, “Effectiveness”; Office of the Inspector General, “Audit.”

3. Ben Freeman, The Foreign Policy Auction: Foreign Lobbying in America (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2012).

4. Joseph J. Schatz and Benjamin Oreskes, “Want to Be a ‘Foreign Agent’? Serve in Congress First,” Politico, October 2, 2016.

5. Open Secrets, “Foreign Lobby Watch,” https://www.opensecrets.org/fara?cycle=2022, accessed 8 September 2023.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. “Alaska Investigation,” Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives, 16th Cong., 3rd Sess. (1869), 1–5.

10. The Clinton Foundation tax documents are found on the IRS’s Tax Exempt Organizations Search database, at https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/details/. For a more legible look at Clinton Foundation finances, see ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, “Bill Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation,” https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/311580204.

11. Elizabeth Redden, “Foreign Gift Investigations Expand and Intensify,” Inside Higher Ed, February 20, 2020.

PROLOGUE: BAD BUSINESS

1. Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City (New York: Vintage International, 2006).

2. Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, “Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities,” Hearings No. 73-DC-4, 73rd Cong., 2nd Sess. (June 5–7, 1934).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. David B. Ottaway and Patrick E. Tyler, “Angola Rebel Chief to Receive U.S. Praise, and Possibly Aid,” Washington Post, January 26, 1986.

9. Franklin Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler,” The Atlantic, March 2018.

10. Nicholas D. Kristof, “Our Own Terrorist,” New York Times, March 5, 2002.

11. Ibid.

12. Evan Thomas, “The Slickest Shop in Town,” Time, March 3, 1986.

13. Phil McCombs, “Salute to Savimbi,” Washington Post, February 1, 1986.

14. Ottaway and Tyler, “Angola Rebel Chief.”

15. McCombs, “Salute to Savimbi.”

16. Ottaway and Tyler, “Angola Rebel Chief.”

17. Patrick E. Tyler and David B. Ottaway, “The Selling of Jonas Savimbi: Success and a $600,000 Tab,” Washington Post, February 9, 1986.

18. Sean Braswell, “The Bloody Birth of Corporate PR,” OZY, October 24, 2015.

19. Lionel Zetter, Lobbying: The Art of Political Persuasion, 3rd ed. (Petersfield, UK: Harriman House, 2014).

20. “Archival Video: 1989: Paul Manafort Admits to Influence Pedaling [sic] in Wake of US Department of Housing and Urban Development Federal Investigation,” ABC News, April 11, 2016.

21. U.S. Congress, “Amdt1.4.1: Overview of Free Exercise Clause,” Constitution Annotated, https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-4-1/ALDE_00013221/, accessed 4 March 2023.

PART I: POISON

1. Everett Dean Martin, The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study (New York: Harper, 1920), 235.

1. DIRE CONSEQUENCES

1. Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (New York: Random House, 2017), 6.

2. Peter Grier, “The Lobbyist Through History: Villainy and Virtue,” Christian Science Monitor, September 28, 2009.

3. Ibid.

4. Tarun Krishnakumar, “Propaganda by Permission: Examining ‘Political Activities’ Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” Journal of Legislation 47, no. 2 (2021): 46.

5. Robert C. Byrd, The Senate, 1789–1989, vol. 2, Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, ed. Wendy Wolff (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), 492.

6. Ibid.

7. Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No. 21: Other Defects of the Present Confederation” (1787).

8. Thomas V. DiBacco, “150 Years Ago, Russia Bribed Congress to Vote for the Dough to Buy Alaska,” Orlando Sentinel, November 3, 2017.

9. Ibid.

10. Ronald J. Jensen, The Alaska Purchase and Russian-American Relations (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975).

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Tom Kizzia, “William H. Seward, Political Fixer,” AHS Blog, Alaska Historical Society, March 6, 2013, https://alaskahistoricalsociety.org/william-h-seward-political-fixer/.

18. Milton O. Gustafson, “Seward’s Bargain: The Alaska Purchase from Russia,” Prologue Magazine 26, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 261–269, https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1994/winter/alaska-check.