Bob Menendez is the latest politician to sell out to America's adversaries

In July, Robert Menendez of New Jersey won The ignominious distinction becoming the first sitting U.S. senator to be convicted of acting as a foreign agent. federal indictment The indictment alleged that Menendez, then the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for shoddy or nonexistent work, a luxury vehicle and “other things of value” in exchange for using their influence to do Egypt’s bidding in Washington.

Casey Michel’s lively new book, “Foreign Agents,” unravels the incentives and temptations that have led so many prominent American figures to lobby on behalf of foreign governments that clearly do not stand for American values. Menendez does not appear in this story until the epilogue, but many other well-known figures — Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose foundation donors, Michel says, are “a list of the most reprehensible regimes in the world”; Rudy Giuliani; and a plethora of blowhards and hackers who masqueraded as statesmen during the Trump administration (including Michael Flynn and Ric Grenell, whom Michel accurately calls a “buffoonish troll”) — accept compensation, as New Jersey’s senior senator did, while helping foreign governments get something from our own. Most have simply been smarter than Menendez, who, federal prosecutors say, stuffed money into his clothing pockets and then claimed he had inherited the practice of hiding money from banks. His parents, Cuban refugees.

This is all a bit absurd, wherever the money is hidden. Why would respectable American officials help burnish the reputations of foreign governments—including those in Latin America, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East—that violate human rights and revel in their own corruption? The answer is this: Willie Sutton When asked why he robbed banks, he replied: “Because that's where the money is.”

Corruption is Michel's theme. He leads the The fight against kleptocracy program at the Human Rights Foundation, and her first book was the well-received 2021 “American kleptocracy.” In the foreword to “Foreign Agents,” he describes this new book as a chronicle of “Americans who have chosen to take their talents to despots and dictators willing to foot the bill and degrade American democracy in the process.”

Michel largely dispenses with outrage, and wisely so: his cast of characters and their various dealings are scandalous enough on their own. Instead, he sticks to the famous observation that Michael Kinsley made in 1986 about Wall StreetAlthough this applies just as easily to Washington: “The scandal is not what is illegal, the scandal is what is legal.”

And true entrepreneurs retain their influence even after leaving office. Former House Speaker Dick Gephardt, a Democrat from Missouri, lobbied in favor of Turkey's attempt to Preventing official recognition of the Armenian genocide. Giuliani promoted by serbian Nationalists with ties to accused war criminals. Both had once vied for the Oval Office, albeit quixotically. They settled for something less imposing, but arguably more lucrative.

Sometimes foreign governments seek political outcomes: favorable contracts or security arrangements. Often, they want access, which anyone who has spent enough time on the Acela between Midtown Manhattan and Capitol Hill can provide. Above all, they want to look good.

Michel tells how a lobbying effort turned Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi, who is reported to have supervised the torturein the Washington spotlight during his trip there in 1986. Savimbi had his reputation burnished by the notorious Paul Manafort, who would emerge 30 years later as Donald Trump’s second presidential campaign manager in 2016. (Manafort was later jailed for conspiracy to defraud the United States and was pardoned in 2020 by then-President Trump.) Michel describes Savimbi standing on stage at an event with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. The two “received raucous applause,” Michel writes. Two years later, Savimbi would return, this time Meeting with then President Reagan at the White House

Michel may not like lobbying, but it is the field of public relations — “an amalgam,” he writes, “of advertising and consulting,” those quintessentially American occupations — that truly makes him angry. On a deep and really quite disturbing level, this is a book about how much people are willing to pay to have the truth subverted to their advantage, and how eagerly some will do so for the right price. Michel writes that “no industry has become more embedded in modern dictatorship — in the transformation of the foreign lobbying world, in Washington and elsewhere — than the American public relations industry.”

Saudi Arabia paid public relations giant Edelman nearly $10 million to improve its image in the United States. Edelman’s work “included sending out regular press releases celebrating themes such as ‘women’s inclusion in business’ and ‘redoubling efforts to empower women and youth.’” According to an investigation by the GuardianLast year, TikTok Hired SKDK, the country's leading public relations firm as the social media company feared being banned in the US. One of SKDK's founders, Anita Dunn, was until recently one of President Biden's closest advisers.

No one receives harsher treatment from Michel than Ivy Leeconsidered the founder of public relations. “Foreign Agents” opens with Lee testifying before Congress in 1934, as lawmakers demand to know about his new client: the German conglomerate IG Farben, which had supported Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

“Company directors told me they were very concerned about German relations with the United States and antagonism toward Germany in the United States,” Lee said of his new Nazi-aligned bosses.

Michel writes that, as a “direct response to Lee’s pro-fascist efforts,” Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in 1938, but the law needed enforcement that never materialized. That absence, Michel writes, “led to an explosion of foreign agents saturating Washington, all in the secret service of foreign benefactors around the world.”

According to Michel, Manafort, the other villain in the book, was exceptionally adept at exploiting FARA loopholes. Michel claims that he was the one who “first brought together the worlds of lobbying and political consulting,” essentially expanding Lee’s remit beyond public relations.

Then there are the offenders in other fields, such as the law firm DLA Piper, which Michel describes as further expanding the already generous boundaries of the lobbying industry. He describes a “simple cycle” that prevails in Washington and that undermines the pro-freedom messages that regularly emanate from that city’s redoubts of power: “Regimes fund lobbying firms, which then act as middlemen that can siphon wealth from dictators to lawmakers, who can then use that wealth to get re-elected and then pursue pro-dictatorship policies much further afield.”

If you drive around the suburbs of Washington DC (say, McLean, Virginia, or posh Potomac, Maryland), you might be struck by the number of mansions. Isn't this the residence of government employees? What kind of Department of Labor lawyer can afford a $30 million mansion?

They probably won't be able to, but if they decide to work for Beijing or Riyadh, it will be a different story.

Alexander Nazaryan writes about politics, culture and science.