Somewhere in Africa, a dictator sits in his presidentialpalace, alone and forlorn. Just recently, he deployed troops to quell anopposition rally and a few unarmed civilians were killed. Nothing out of theordinary, really; but this time the international press have descended on hiscapital. Foreign governments are calling for democratic reforms. And embarrassedinternational financial institutions, which have long subsidized the corruptregime, are openly discussing a loan cutoff.
As he ponders the gross unfairness of his current predicament, the dictator ismomentarily despondent. Abruptly, though, a smile comes to his face. There isstill plenty of money in his personal checking account--the state treasury--soall is not lost. Far from it. The dictator flips through his Rolodex and reachesfor the telephone.
Who's he gonna call? In all likelihood, lobbyist Herman Cohen in Arlington,Virginia. In recent years, Cohen has emerged as the influence peddler of choicefor African despots in need of a public relations buff-up. His access and clientlist are both sure to grow even more now that George W. Bush--under whose fatherCohen served as assistant secretary of state for Africa--occupies the WhiteHouse.
Lobbying for foreign governments almost always poses ethical dilemmas. AdwoaDunn-Mouton, a former staff director for the Senate Foreign RelationsSubcommittee on Africa, worked as a lobbyist for several African governmentsafter leaving Capitol Hill. She says that she tried to prod clients to takeconcrete steps toward democracy that would change international perceptions abouttheir governments. "They didn't want to hear it," recalls Dunn-Mouton, whoresigned after a brief career at the Washington Strategic Group, a Beltwaylobbying firm. "The whole point of hiring a lobbyist was to have someone spin thesituation so they wouldn't have to make real changes."
"Putting a happy face on murder and mayhem" is how Charles Lewis, executivedirector of the Center for Public Integrity, describes the role of lobbyists likeCohen who represent foreign dictators. "Most of the countries who hire them havevirtually no money, but they need professional schmoozers to promote theirregimes," he says. "They're paying for respectability and stature in Washingtonand, they hope, foreign aid and access to American markets."
Though a relative newcomer to the profession, Cohen has quickly become one ofWashington's best-known lobbyists for foreign nations. A key to his success isthe contacts he formed, at home and abroad, during a 38-year career in the StateDepartment (where he served as ambassador to Senegal, then to Gambia, before hebecame assistant secretary of state for Africa). Cohen cultivated close relationswith Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).In 1992 Mobutu's power was eroding and there was a strong internal push for atransition to civilian rule. Pro-democracy forces hoped Cohen, who went to Zaire,would press the tyrant to step down. Instead, he appeared on government-runtelevision and announced that the aging kleptocrat was "enthusiastic fordemocracy." In South Africa, Cohen and George H.W. Bush's administration liftedall sanctions on the apartheid regime in July 1991--a step opposed by NelsonMandela, who didn't become president of the country until three years later.
After checking out of government service, Cohen became head of the GlobalCoalition for Africa, a World Bank-affiliated organization that preaches orthodoxpro-business recipes for the continent. In 1994 he and James Woods, deputyassistant secretary of defense for African affairs under Ronald Reagan and GeorgeBush the elder, formed the lobby shop of Cohen and Woods International (CWI).Cohen boasted to Legal Times about the wide range of contacts--from heads of state to Central Bank governors--that he and his partner enjoyed in Africa. "You can count on one hand the number of [top leaders] we don't know," he said. Randall Robinson, president of the TransAfrica Forum, asserts in Defending theSpirit: A Black Life in America that Cohen failed to promote democracy while in office--something he could have done "with any competence and half a heart"--and that he seeks to collect "representation fees from the very African countries whose interests he formerly held in callous disregard."
In addition to offering clients strategic advice and chasing up foreigninvestment and aid, CWI staffers write speeches, arrange official visits to theUnited States, prepare briefing papers, testify before Congress, and spin themedia. Disclosure reports reveal regular contact between firm employees and ahost of Washington power centers--including the White House, the Pentagon,international lending agencies, and think tanks. CWI folks also serve as bigwigescorts: They may accompany, say, Mozambique's commercial attaché to ameeting with Edwin Barber of the Treasury Department's Office of African Nations;or they may introduce a top economic adviser of the Ivory Coast's president toMichael Newell, the country manager for Sub-Saharan Africa at the U.S. Trade andDevelopment Agency (to discuss "grant criteria").
Cohen has an especially easy time getting doors to open in the capital. Duringa four-month stretch in 1999, he attended a breakfast fundraiser forRepresentative Edward Royce, a California Republican who chairs the HouseInternational Relations Subcommittee on Africa; he lunched with Gayle Smith ofthe National Security Council; and he had dinner at his home with William Swing,U.S. ambassador to Congo. He's a regular on the Hill, where he meets with membersof Congress and key aides. "His name carries a lot of weight, with Democrats andRepublicans," says Charisse Glassman, a staffer for Democratic RepresentativeDonald Payne of New Jersey, who also sits on the Africa subcommittee.
One of CWI's first big lobbying contracts came in 1995, when the firm agreed,in exchange for $300,000, to coordinate media relations for Omar Bongo, presidentof Gabon. The firm's stated mission was to present Gabon as a "politically stableand economically successful country" and to "generate awareness of PresidentBongo and his national and international accomplishments." Among thoseaccomplishments was establishing the "very concrete process of democratizationand democratic reforms."
As the ink dried on the contract, the State Department released its annualreport on human rights around the globe. This report found that Bongo's securityforces were responsible for "many confirmed extra-judicial killings" and thatgovernment-sanctioned torture in Gabon was routine. ("Eyewitnesses reportedseeing prisoners tied to chairs, doused with ice water, or made to crawl on theirstomachs over gravel or sun-baked asphalt.") As to "the very concrete process ofdemocratization" that had supposedly taken place under Cohen's client--who hasbeen in power since 1967--the State Department said that the previous election inwhich Bongo allegedly won 51 percent of the vote was "marred by seriousirregularities, including a secret vote count that excluded all but governmentobservers. In Bongo's home region of Haut Ogoue, the number of votes cast forBongo was greater than the population reported in the 1993 census."
Bongo is not only a thug but a crook as well. It's impossible to know exactlyhow much money he has stolen from the national treasury, but a 1999 Senate reporton money laundering indicates that he deposited $130 million with Citibank'sprivate banking department. The report includes a memo that Citibank's AlainOber, a private banking officer who handled the account, sent to severalcolleagues, which reads: "[I] never asked our client where his money came from.My guess ... is that in view of the importance of our client's country as aprovider of cheap oil to France, it was (and still is) important that our clientstayed in power and thus the French government/French oil companies (Elf) made'donations' to him (very much like we give to PACs in the U.S.!)."
CWI's contract with Gabon lasted only a year, but there's been noshortage of business since. The firm's clients have included Tunisia, the IvoryCoast, Mozambique, and even Angola--despite the Bush administration's strongsupport for Jonas Savimbi, the guerrilla leader who has waged war on the country.Angola is stronger than Savimbi.
Perhaps the most notorious CWI client was Charles Taylor of Liberia. He tookpower following a seven-year civil war that Kenneth Cain describes in a HumanRights Quarterly article as "a relentless campaign of sadistic, wanton violence unimaginable to those unfamiliar with the details of man's capacity to visit the abyss." According to Cain, Taylor "inaugurated the use of grade school-age children as scouts, spies, and cannon fodder [and] explicitly employed terror tactics, ethnic cleansing, and political assassinations."
Taylor brought this charming style of rule to the presidency, which he assumedin July of 1997. Four months later, security forces kidnapped prominentoppositionist Samuel Dokie, his wife, a niece, and a cousin as the family wastraveling to a wedding. A week later, the four were found dead. All of them hadbeen tortured; Dokie's eyes had been gouged out before he'd been burned andbeheaded. In foreign policy, Taylor is chiefly known for his support of theRevolutionary United Front, a rebel group in neighboring Sierra Leone thatroutinely amputates the hands, legs, ears, and lips of anyone who opposes it.
A contract signed in 1999 by the two parties provided that CWI would be paid$300,000 to assist Taylor in "overcoming obstacles to a constructiverelationship" between Liberia and the U.S. government and otherwise help to easethe country's international isolation. Targets of CWI's lobbying includedgovernment officials plus "the business community, the press, non-governmentalorganizations, and the academic world."
A Capitol Hill staffer who asked not to be identified said that CWIadapted--understandably, under the circumstances--a low-key approach on behalf ofLiberia. "They never tried to say that Taylor was a good guy--they knew theycouldn't get away with that," he says. "They'd talk about how cutting off Liberiawould be counterproductive and would result in a lessening of U.S. influence."Despite its best efforts, CWI had only mixed results for Taylor. Bill Clinton'sadministration never imposed the broad sanctions sought by human rights groups,but it did shun the regime and bar all Liberian officials from entering theUnited States.
Among CWI's most recent clients--until he was murdered in January--was thepresident of Congo, Laurent-Desire Kabila, who drove Mobutu from power. He waspaying the lobby shop $250,000 to build "a more constructive relationship"between Congo and the United States. Cohen was working on the project with Edwardvan Kloberg, who stands out, even within the amoral world of Washington lobbying,for handling accounts that few will touch. His clients have included SaddamHussein of Iraq, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, and Samuel Doe of Liberia. (VanKloberg's exertions on behalf of the last two came to a sudden halt when theywere murdered in office following years of brutal rule.)
One of Cohen's specific tasks for Congo--and for another client, BurkinaFaso--is to water down legislation that would bar U.S. imports of "blooddiamonds," whose sale allows African governments and rebel groups to financetheir wars. Industry officials say that blood diamonds account for about 4percent of the world's $6-billion-a-year trade, while human rights groups arguethat 15 percent is a more accurate estimate.
Last year Democratic Representative Tony Hall of Ohio introduced legislationthat would require that diamonds sold in the United States--where two-thirds ofall diamond sales take place--be accompanied by a certificate of origin, toensure that no blood diamonds would be allowed in the country. Deborah DeYoung, aHall staffer, recalls that Cohen came by the office to voice his opposition tothe bill. "He said that our proposal wasn't workable and that we should look atother types of control measures, like monitoring ports," she says. "He wasadvocating an approach that wouldn't shut down an industry that's important tohis clients." In addition to African nations involved in the trade, the diamondindustry fiercely lobbied against the legislation. So Hall and other supportershave altered the bill in hopes of getting it through Congress.
CWI's most recent contract--a five-year deal at $600,000 per annum--was signedlast September with the government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. At the time,Mugabe was in desperate need of a PR face-lift. His nation's economy was inshambles; and 32 people, mostly opposition supporters, had been killed duringparliamentary elections held three months earlier. Meanwhile, Mugabe's landreform plan--which would seize 3,000 properties without compensation and givethem to landless blacks--was generating criticism, partly at home but mostlyabroad.
The contract calls for CWI to take the "necessary steps to overcome recentnegative publicity, and to restore enduring trust, confidence and mutual respectbetween Zimbabwe and the international community." Firm lobbyists arespecifically asked to smooth relations between Zimbabwe and the InternationalMonetary Fund, and to "counter anti-Zimbabwe content in the international media."As part of the latter effort, CWI is to establish a Web site that will providenews from Zimbabwe as well as information about business and tourismopportunities there.
CWI has been working especially hard to head off congressional passage of theZimbabwe Democracy Act, which sailed through the Senate Foreign RelationsCommittee last June but stalled on the House side. The bill would cut offAmerican aid to Zimbabwe and require the U.S. government to oppose any loans toMugabe's government by international lenders. Last September, to oppose the bill,Cohen personally met with Republican Representative Amo Houghton of New York.According to disclosure forms, Cohen "expressed the view that, while theobjectives of promoting democracy and respect for the rule of law were certainlylaudable, Zimbabwe should be given a few months to resolve its political crisisrather than rushing to impose external sanctions." Houghton's office refused tocomment on the meeting with Cohen.
In an interview with TAP, Cohen defended the role of the lobbyist in general and his firm's work in particular: "We advise clients on their situation in the U.S. and tell them that if they really want to improve relations, here are some things you have to do. We aren't able to get them any privileges that they don't deserve." He said that CWI has turned down clients--for example, the former dictatorship of General Sani Abacha in Nigeria, which he called "beyond the pale"--and that the firm resigned from the Liberia account after three months. "We saw there was nothing to be done, that the government just wanted us to wave a magic wand [to make its problems go away]." At the same time, Cohen said he'd be happy to renew his firm's contract with Congo if the new government there so desired, and he acknowledged that CWI hasn't been able to convince the government of Zimbabwe to improve its record on civil and human rights. "That's beyond our influence," he said.
Given the scope of Africa's troubles, particularly armed conflicts and humanrights-abusing governments, Herman Cohen's future prospects are rosy. After all,murder and mayhem are good for business. So, too, is a lack of conscience.
