By: Ben Freeman
Oct. 4, 2018
Oct. 4, 2018
How Saudi Money Keeps Washington at War in Yemen
It was May 2017. The
Saudis were growing increasingly nervous. For more than two years they had been
relying heavily on U.S. military support and bombs to defeat Houthi rebels in
Yemen. Now, the Senate was considering a bipartisan resolution to cut
off military aid and halt a big sale of American-made bombs to Saudi
Arabia. Fortunately for them, despite mounting evidence that the U.S.-backed,
supplied, and fueled air campaign in Yemen was targeting civilians,
the Saudi government turned out to have just the weapon needed to keep those
bombs and other kinds of aid coming their way: an army of lobbyists.
That year, their
forces in Washington included members of more than two dozen lobbying and
public relations firms. Key among them was Marc Lampkin, managing partner of
the Washington office of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck (BHFS), a company that
would be paid nearly half a million dollars by the Saudi government in 2017. Records from the Foreign Agents
Registration Act (FARA) show that Lampkin contacted Senate offices more than 20
times about that resolution, speaking, for instance, with the legislative
director for Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) on May 16, 2017. Perhaps coincidentally,
Lampkin reported making a $2,000 contribution to the senator’s political
action committee that very day. On June 13th, along with a majority of his
fellow senators, Scott voted to allow the Saudis to get their bombs. A
year later, the type of bomb authorized in that sale has reportedly been
used in air strikes that have killed civilians in Yemen.
Little wonder that,
for this and his other lobbying work, Lampkin earned a spot on the “Top
Lobbyists 2017: Hired Guns” list compiled by the Washington publication
the Hill.
Lampkin’s story was
anything but exceptional when it comes to lobbyists working on behalf of the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was, in fact, very much the norm. The Saudi
government has hired lobbyists in profusion and they, in turn, have effectively
helped convince members of Congress and the president to ignore blatant human
rights violations and civilian casualties in Yemen. According to a forthcoming
report by the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative program, which I
direct, at the Center for International Policy, registered foreign agents
working on behalf of interests in Saudi Arabia contacted Congressional
representatives, the White House, the media, and figures at influential think
tanks more than 2,500 times in 2017 alone. In the process, they also managed to
contribute nearly $400,000 to the political coffers of senators and House
members as they urged them to support the Saudis. Some of those contributions,
like Lampkin’s, were given on the same day the requests were made to support
those arms sales.
The role of Marc
Lampkin is just a tiny sub-plot in the expansive and ongoing story of Saudi
money in Washington. Think of it as a striking tale of pay-to-play politics
that will undoubtedly be revving up again in the coming weeks as the Saudi
lobby works to block new Congressional efforts to end U.S. involvement
in the disastrous war in Yemen.
A Lobby to Contend
With
The roots of that
lobby’s rise to prominence in Washington lie in the aftermath of the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001. As you may remember, with 15 of those 19
suicidal hijackers being citizens of Saudi Arabia, it was hardly surprising
that American public opinion had soured on the Kingdom. In response, the
worried Saudi royals spent around $100 million over the next decade to
improve such public perceptions and retain their influence in the U.S. capital.
That lobbying facelift proved a success until, in 2015, relations soured with
the Obama administration over the Iran nuclear deal. Once Donald Trump won the
presidency, however, the Saudis saw an unparalleled opportunity and launched
the equivalent of a full-court press, an aggressive campaign to woo the newly elected president and the
Republican-led Congress, which, of course, cost real money.
As a result, the
growth of Saudi lobbying operations would prove extraordinary. In 2016,
according to FARA records, they reported spending just under $10 million
on lobbying firms; in 2017, that number had nearly tripled to $27.3 million.
And that’s just a baseline figure for a far larger operation to buy influence
in Washington, since it doesn’t include considerable sums given to elite universities or think tanks like the Arab
Gulf States Institute, the Middle East Institute, and the Center
for Strategic and International Studies (to mention just a few of them).
This meteoric rise
in spending allowed the Saudis to dramatically increase the number of lobbyists
representing their interests on both sides of the aisle. Before President Trump
even took office, the Saudi government signed a deal with the McKeon Group,
a lobbying firm headed by Howard “Buck” McKeon, the recently retired Republican
chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. His firm also represents
Lockheed Martin, one of the top providers of military equipment to the
Kingdom. On the Democratic side, the Saudis inked a $140,000-per-month deal
with the Podesta Group, headed by Tony Podesta, whose brother John, a long-time
Democratic Party operative, was the former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s
presidential campaign. Tony Podesta later dissolved his firm and has allegedly
been investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for serving as an unregistered
foreign agent.
And keep in mind
that all this new firepower was added to an already formidable arsenal of
lobbying outfits and influential power brokers, including former Republican
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who, according to Lee Fang of the Intercept,
was “deeply involved in the [Trump] White House hiring process,” and former
Senator Norm Coleman, chairman of the pro-Republican Super PAC
American Action Network. All told, during 2017, Saudi Arabia inked 45 different
contracts with FARA-registered firms and more than 100 individuals
registered as Saudi foreign agents in the U.S. They proved to be extremely
busy. Such activity reveals a clear pattern: Saudi foreign agents are working
tirelessly to shape perceptions of that country, its royals, its policies, and
especially its grim war in Yemen, while simultaneously working to keep U.S.
weapons and military support flowing into the Kingdom.
While
the term “foreign agent” is often used as a synonym for lobbyist, part of the
work performed by the Kingdom’s paid representatives here resembles public
relations activity far more than straightforward lobbying. For example, in
2017, Saudi foreign agents reported contacting media outlets more than 500
times, including significant outreach to national ones like the New York
Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and PBS,
which has aired multiple documentaries about the
Kingdom. Also included, however, were smaller papers like the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette and more specialized outlets, even ESPN, in hopes of
encouraging positive stories.
The Kingdom’s image
in the U.S. clearly concerned those agents. Still, the lion’s share of their
activity was focused on security issues of importance to that country’s royals.
For example, Saudi agents contacted officials at the State Department, which
oversees most commercial arms transfers and sales, nearly 100 times in 2017,
according to FARA filings. Above all, however, their focus was on Congress,
especially members with seniority on key committees. As a result, at some point
between late 2016 and the end of 2017, Saudi lobbyists contacted more than 200
of them, including every single Senator.
The ones most often
dealt with were, not surprisingly, those with the greatest leverage over U.S.
relations with Saudi Arabia. For example, the office of Senator Lindsey Graham
(R-SC), who sits on both the appropriations and armed services committees, was
the most contacted, while that of Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) was the top
Democratic one. (He sits on the appropriations and foreign relations
committees.)
Following the Money
from Saudi Arabia to Campaign Coffers
Just as there’s a clear
pattern when it comes to contacting congressional representatives who might
help their Saudi clients, so there’s a clear pattern to the lobbying money
flowing to those same members of Congress.
The FARA documents
that record all foreign-agent political activity also list campaign
contributions reported by those agents. Just as we did for political
activities, the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative program conducted an
analysis of all campaign contributions reported in those 2017 filings by firms that
represented Saudi interests. And here’s what we found: more than a third of the
members of Congress contacted by such a firm also received a campaign
contribution from a foreign agent at that firm. In total, according to their
2017 FARA filings, foreign agents at firms representing Saudi clients made
$390,496 in campaign contributions to congressional figures they, or another
agent at their firm, contacted on behalf of their Saudi clients.
This flow of money
is best exemplified by the 11 separate occasions we uncovered in which a firm
reported contacting a congressional representative on behalf of Saudi clients
on the same day someone at the same firm made a campaign contribution to the
same senator or House member. In other words, there are 10 other cases just
like Marc Lampkin’s, involving foreign agents at Squire Patton Boggs, DLA
Piper, and Hogan Lovells. For instance, Hogan Lovells reported meeting
with Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) on behalf of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
on April 26, 2017, and that day an agent at the firm made a $2,700 contribution
to “Bob Corker for Senate 2018.” (Corker would later decide not to seek
reelection.)
While some might
argue that contributions like these look a lot like bribery, they turn out to
be perfectly legal. No law bars such an act, and while it’s true that foreign
nationals and foreign governments are prohibited from making
contributions to political campaigns, there’s a simple work-around for that,
one the Saudis obviously made use of big time. Any foreign power hoping to line
the pockets of American politicians just has to hire a local lobbyist to do it
for them.
As Jimmy Williams, a
former lobbyist, wrote: “Today, most lobbyists are engaged in a system
of bribery, but it’s the legal kind.”
The Saudi Lobby
Today
Fast forward to late
2018 and that very same lobby is now fighting vigorously to defeat a House measure
that would end U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen. They’re flooding
congressional offices with their requests, in effect asking Congress to ignore
the more than 10,000 civilians who have died in Yemen, the U.S. bombs
that have been the cause of many of those deaths, and a civil war that has led
to a resurgence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. They’ll
probably mention Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent “certification”
that the Saudis are now supposedly taking the necessary steps to prevent more
civilian casualties there.
What they’re not
likely to mention is that his decision was reportedly driven by the head
of the legislative affairs team at the State Department who just happens to be
a former foreign agent with BGR Government Affairs, one of 35 FARA registrants working for Saudi Arabia at this
moment. Such lobbyists and publicists are using the deep pockets of the Saudi
royals to spread their propaganda, highlighting the charitable
work that government is doing in Yemen. What they fail to emphasize, of course,
are the Saudi blockade of the country and the American-backed, armed, and
fueled air strikes that are killing civilians at weddings, funerals, school bus trips, and other civilian
events. All of this is, in addition, helping to create a grotesque famine,
a potential disaster of the most extreme sort and the very reason such
humanitarian assistance is needed.
In the end, even if
the facts aren’t on their side, the dollars are. Since September 2001, that reality
has proven remarkably convincing in Washington, as copious dollars flowed from
Saudi Arabia to U.S. military contractors (who are making billions
selling weapons to that country), to lobbying firms, and via those firms
directly into Congressional coffers.
Is this really how
U.S. foreign policy should be determined?
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