In 1934 the German Dye Trust retained public-relations pioneer Ivy Lee for $25,000 a year, ostensibly to promote the company's image in the United States. Lee's true client, though, was Adolf Hitler's regime, and his aim was to favorably influence American public opinion of the Third Reich. As part of his work, Lee produced a report suggesting that German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop "undertake a definitive campaign to clarify the American mind" via newspaper op-eds and radio addresses to the U.S. public.
Lee's arrangement was ultimately exposed, and the incident helped leadCongress to pass the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in 1938. FARArequired that representatives of foreign governments disclose their client list,the thinking apparently being that lobbyists would find it too embarrassing towork for dictatorial regimes if they knew that their activities would be madepublic. It was a strategy of name and shame, and in some places it could haveworked. Washington, unfortunately, was not one of them. From the apartheid regimein South Africa to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, foreign tyrants have had little troublefinding friends in the capital, whatever good intentions lay behind FARA."Jeffrey Dahmer had a lawyer, and every country with a terrible human-rightsrecord has someone in Washington to try to get them out of the soup," says asenior congressional aide who is frequently buttonholed by foreign lobbyists. "Ifyou have the money, you can hire yourself representation."
Nowhere is that truer than at the K Street offices of Jefferson WatermanInternational (JWI), a lobbying firm that that has promoted despots across threecontinents. And like Ivy Lee, JWI has sought to obscure its role by workingthrough front companies.
Founded in 1994 from the merger of two prominent local lobby shops, JWIemploys many executives who have passed through the Beltway's revolving door. Thefirm's top two executives are Ann Wrobleski, assistant secretary of state forinternational narcotics matters in the Reagan and Bush Senior administrations,and Charles Waterman, who formerly worked for the CIA's Near East division.(Waterman is one of at least four former spooks who hold high-ranking positionsat the lobby shop.) With those sorts of contacts, JWI boasts on its Web site, thefirm is "able to obtain early, authoritative information on international policydevelopments, decisions, and opportunities that can affect a country's or acompany's future ... . This information -- discreetly acquired, expertlyanalyzed, and reported on a timely basis -- lays the groundwork for effectivestrategies or signals the need for immediate action."
JWI has worked for a number of corporate clients, primarily in the arms andenergy industries. The company sought to improve relations between Bogotáand Washington for GPU International, a firm that owns a power plant in Colombia,and worked to promote Lockheed Martin's overseas sales.
JWI has also quietly taken part in a number of corporate coalitions, includingUSA*ENGAGE, which worked during the Clinton years to restrict trade sanctionsagainstcountries with poor human-rights records. USA*ENGAGE portrayed itself as adynamic "broad-based coalition representing Americans from all regions, sectors,and segments of our society." In fact, it was a front group led and controlled bylobbyists and big exporters -- among them, Boeing,Caterpillar, Unocal, andChevron -- anxious to keep China, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and other controversialregimes clear of trade sanctions. USA*ENGAGE's biggest success was a lawsuitoverturning the "selective purchasing" laws that had been passed in the state ofMassachusetts as well as in a dozen cities and counties. These laws bannedgovernments from awarding contract work to companies that trade with tyrannicalregimes.
But JWI's specialty is working directly for foreign regimes, be it fightingoff congressional sanctions, winning economic or military aid, or promotingAmerican investment. One of its first big clients was Franjo Tudjman of Croatia,who hired the firm in the mid-1990s in the midst of the Balkan wars. It was asensitive time for the Tudjman government, which along with the Serbian regime ofSlobodan Milosevic stood accused of war crimes against civilians.
Nonetheless, JWI assured Tudjman it could assist him. In a memo to theCroatian leader, Charles Waterman wrote that American foreign and defense policyis "primarily formulated" by the president, based on consultations with the StateDepartment, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the CIA. "It isimportant ... to have official and personal contacts at appropriate levels in allof these organizations," he wrote. "As you are aware, we are well positioned toassist in this process." Waterman emphasized that his firm would handle spincontrol for Croatia no matter how difficult the circumstances. For example, hewrote, Tudjman might find it necessary to seize control over territory that wasbeing patrolled by United Nations monitors. If he did, JWI would be standingready to counter "a wave of criticism" that Waterman predicted would quicklyarise.
JWI was put to the test not long after it finalized the deal with Tudjman,when Croatian troops launched Operation Storm in 1995. During that assault,Serbian villages in Croatia were sacked and burned, hundreds of civilians werekilled, and some 170,000 people were forced from their ancestral homes. "In termsof sheer numbers, it was the largest 'ethnic cleansing' of the war, though it wasnot as brutal as the worst Serb treatment of Bosnian Muslims," The New York Times wrote.
Not surprisingly, JWI saw things differently. "Clearly, we wouldn't supportgovernment-sponsored ethnic cleansing -- but we don't believe they're doingthat," Steve Ellis, the firm's senior vice president, told Legal Times. "We believe that [the Croatians] are doing the best they can."
Tudjman certainly seemed to think he was getting his money's worth with JWI.He continued to renew the firm's contract through the end of 1998. By the timethat deal expired, JWI had signed a $500,000 per year contract with the militarygovernment in Burma, which sought "strategic counsel and public-relationsservices." Burma is not your run-of-the-mill dictatorship. Opposition forces ledby Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi swept national elections in 1990,winning more than 80 percent of the seats in parliament and leading the generalsto annul the balloting and rule by terror ever since. As a recent story in TheWashington Monthly summed up, Burma's government is "every bit as tyrannical and insane as the regimes that rule Iraq and North Korea. Throughout the tropical nation, world-class drug lords operate a wink's length from the regime and heavily-armed ethnic militias roam wild, spreading narcotics, arms, and instability to neighboring countries."
Even JWI was apparently embarrassed by handling such an account, so a companycalled Myanmar Resource Development Ltd. played the cutout role that the GermanDye Trust had performed in the Nazi-Ivy Lee deal of 1934. The maneuver fooled noone. State Department memos from the period, uncovered by The WashingtonPost, showed that the Clinton administration recognized that JWI was working directly for the junta.
When she worked for Reagan and Bush Senior, Wrobleski had been an outspokencritic of the Burmese government, accusing it of being a leading exporter ofheroin to the United States. In 1989 she said that there was little hope thatBurma would crack down on drug trafficking "until a government enjoying greatercredibility and support among the Burmese people" replaced the military regime.
At JWI, where she handled the Burma account, Wrobleski helped paint anentirely different picture. One of her tactics was to provide Americanjournalists with all-expense-paid trips to Burma, where they would heargovernment officials express their supposed commitment to combating drugtrafficking. The plan backfired, however, when a Newsweek reporter noticed that a quantity of poppy plants destroyed for the benefit of the visiting scribes "had already been drained of opium." The Newsweek story also quoted a diplomat as saying that the junta's crop-eradication program was "window dressing," and described Burma as a "haven for retired opium warlords and their money."
JWI also launched an Internet newsletter, the Myanmar Monitor, which was supposed to "provide a broad and balanced view of Burma." This consisted of stories about tourism (visitors, it advised, would encounter a country where "loving kindness, sympathy, tolerance, benevolence, mutual regard, respect, and humanitarianism evolve out of Buddha's teachings") and the junta's fervent belief in political reform. One Monitor commentary hailed the generals for the way they "somehow managed to unify the country, restored social order and brought stability back to the nation."
Back in the real world, developments weren't nearly as promising. Among thedevelopments the Monitor somehow missed during this period were a roundup of opposition activists and the death of one who was forced to work as a military porter; the State Department's 1997 "decertification" of Burma, for the seventh consecutive year, as an ally in the war on drugs; and the regime's banishment from a London meeting of European and Asian governments. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook explained that Burma was "one of the few governments in the world whose members are prepared to profit out of the drugs trade."
After two years of working for Burma, JWI concluded that it should sever itsties to the regime. This did not arise from a fit of conscience. The decision wastaken after the generals -- angry that the United States and other Westernnations boycotted an international conference on heroin trafficking in Rangoon --stiffed JWI for its lobby fees.
Despite this bad experience, JWI continued to work for foreign despots. "AfterBurma, I guess they figured there was no point in screening their clients toocarefully," says the senior congressional aide. "Their virginity was alreadyshot."
One of JWI's current clients is Liberia, which pays the firm $300,000 annuallyfor advice on "matters related to political, economic, and commercial relationswith the United States." As with its Burma contract, JWI is not working directlyfor the government of warlord Charles Taylor but is retained by a corporatesponsor, in this case a company called AmLib United Minerals. That firm is headedby an American businessman, Kenneth Ross, whose family mines gold in Liberia.AmLib's chairman is a Liberian geologist named Nathaniel Richardson, whosebrother John is one of Taylor's most trusted military commanders and advisers.
Taylor heads one of the few regimes in the world that can give the Burmesegenerals a run for their money in terms of its wretched human-rights record.After years of factional fighting, Taylor won a presidential election in 1997 --the vote was "administratively free and transparent, but ... conducted in anatmosphere of intimidation, as most voters believed that Taylor's forces wouldhave resumed fighting," says the State Department -- and has plundered thecountry ever since. Most Liberians are desperately poor (per capita income isjust a few hundred dollars per year and unemployment stands at around 70percent), though Taylor lives in luxury thanks to his involvement in illegaldiamond and timber sales. This state of affairs is maintained by Taylor's goonsquads, which, according to the State Department's most recent annual globalhuman-rights survey, "committed many extrajudicial killings, and ... were accusedof disappearances of numerous persons. Security forces tortured, beat, andotherwise abused or humiliated citizens."
Ken Yates, a JWI executive, insists that Taylor's Liberia is misunderstood."There's a lot of disinformation out there, a lot of gray areas, mixtures ofvirtue and vice," he told the National Journal. To help out, JWI has helped set up meetings between Liberian officials and State Department aides. Last year, the firm ghostwrote a letter from Liberia's ambassador to the United States -- the aptly named William Bull -- to the House Africa Subcommittee, saying that Taylor has a "sincere desire ... to engage and work closely with the United States Government and US Congress in addressing issues of common concern."
The firm also puts out the Liberia Letter, which is posted on the embassy's Web site. Seeking to take advantage of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, JWI published an issue soon afterward that quoted Taylor as saying, "Your grief is our grief; your pain and anguish are also ours ... Where you go, Liberia will go."
JWI's work hasn't done Taylor much good. Last March, the Bush administrationbacked a UN resolution that banned travel by senior Liberian officials andMonrovia's chief financial and military supporters. On April 25 the InternationalCrisis Group released a report that named Taylor the "primary cause of the crisisin West Africa" -- the Liberian leader has supported a brutal rebel group inSierra Leone -- and called on Western nations to use sanctions to try to forcehim out of power.
Asked about his firm's lobbying activities, Yates replies, "We do not discussthe specific work that we do other than what we report under FARA." Nor willYates comment on the ethics of representing JWI's controversial clients,insisting instead that the firm has never worked for the governments of Liberia or Burma, but only for Myanmar Resource Development and AmLib United Minerals. "We are scrupulous about our FARA reporting and take it very seriously," he says. "What you see is what you get."
It's a distinction Ivy Lee would surely appreciate.
