Despots and oligarchs have many means to meddle in American politics
The extent of the foreign-influence industry may surprise you
外国影响力产业的规模可能会让你感到意外。
2024年9月05日 09:06 上午
Foreign Agents. By Casey Michel. St Martin’s Press; 368 pages; $30. Icon Books; £25
《外国代理人》，作者凯西·米歇尔。由圣马丁出版社出版，368页，售价30美元；艾康图书售价25英镑。
AS WELL AS the colourful details of corruption on a grand scale—the gold bars, the cash stashed in boots and jackets—a particular point stood out during the conviction in July of Bob Menendez, then the senior Democratic senator for New Jersey, on charges including bribery and fraud. He was also found guilty of acting as a foreign agent, passing information to Egypt and Qatar and using his sway as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (Mr Menendez maintains his innocence and has vowed to “aggressively” appeal all charges.) The industry of foreign influence in American politics had expanded into the top echelons of Congress.
除了那些关于大规模腐败的五花八门细节——比如金条、藏在靴子和夹克里的现金——今年7月，新泽西州的资深民主党参议员鲍勃·梅南德斯因为行贿和欺诈等指控被判有罪。他还被认定为外国代理人，向埃及和卡塔尔传递信息，并利用自己作为参议院外交关系委员会主席的影响力。(梅南德斯坚称自己无辜，并表示会“积极”上诉所有指控。) 外国影响力已经渗透到了美国政治的高层。
Casey Michel, a journalist who leads the “combating kleptocracy programme” at the Human Rights Foundation, an NGO based in New York, sets out to chart the origins and extraordinary scale of that industry. Much of it is legal even though operating in the shadows. The “foreign-lobbying complex”, as he calls it, is not confined to actual lobbyists, but extends into well-known law firms, top universities, high-profile charitable foundations and think-tanks, and involves former lawmakers as well as retired senior military officers. Its business includes laundering the reputations and furthering the aims of some of the world’s most ruthless regimes.
纽约人权基金会的凯西·米歇尔负责“打击腐败计划”，他开始研究这个行业的起源和惊人的规模。虽然很多活动都是在暗中进行，但其中不少其实是合法的。他把这个行业称为“外国游说复合体”，不仅仅包括实际的游说者，还涉及知名律师事务所、顶尖大学、高调慈善基金会和智库，甚至还有前立法者和退休高级军官。它们的业务包括为一些世界上最残暴的政权洗白声誉，帮助实现他们的目标。
The participants are thoroughly bipartisan. Mr Michel identifies several path-breakers in the field, such as the late Bob Dole, a Republican Senate leader and presidential nominee: he became a prime example of a prominent ex-lawmaker who “sold his reputation” to foreign bidders (in Dole’s case including Oleg Deripaska, a notorious Russian oligarch). Mr Michel also writes about the Clintons, who, through their foundation, “welcomed all manner of kleptocratic, dictatorial wealth”, including from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Oman. The foundation has also accepted mega-donations from Kazakh, Nigerian and Ukrainian billionaires.
参与者真的是各党派都有。米歇尔提到了一些在这个领域的先锋，比如已故的共和党参议院领袖和总统候选人鲍勃·多尔：他成了一个典型例子，作为前政客“出卖声誉”给外国投标者（多尔的案例中还包括臭名昭著的俄罗斯寡头奥列格·杰里帕斯卡）。米歇尔还谈到了克林顿夫妇，他们通过自己的基金会“欢迎各种腐败独裁者的钱”，这些钱来自沙特阿拉伯、科威特、阿联酋和阿曼等地。基金会也接受了哈萨克斯坦、尼日利亚和乌克兰亿万富翁的大额捐款。
Then there is Donald Trump, “surrounded by more covert foreign lobbyists than any US president before”. Mr Michel’s list includes Michael Flynn, briefly Mr Trump’s national security adviser (before his resignation for lying to the FBI about conversations with Russia’s ambassador), one of his foreign-policy advisers and the acting director of national intelligence.
然后就是唐纳德·特朗普，“身边的外国说客比任何美国前总统都多”。米歇尔提到的人包括迈克尔·弗林，他曾短暂担任特朗普的国家安全顾问（因为向联邦调查局撒谎，隐瞒与俄罗斯大使的谈话而辞职），还有他的外交政策顾问和代理国家情报总监。
Mr Michel highlights two key characters in the development of the foreign- lobbying complex. One, Ivy Lee, was a founder of the modern public- relations industry. After helping to polish the image of American business magnates including the Rockefellers he went abroad to tout for business in the 1920s and 1930s. His clients included Italy’s dictator, Benito Mussolini, and IG Farben, a German chemical company that would later become infamous for supplying Zyklon B for the gas chambers used to murder millions in the Holocaust. Hearings by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1934 exposed Lee’s work for the Nazis and led to the passage, four years later, of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), designed to bring this murky world into the light.
米歇尔提到，在外国游说体系的发展中，有两个关键人物。其中一个是艾维·李，他是现代公共关系行业的创始人。在帮忙提升像洛克菲勒这样的美国商业巨头形象后，20世纪20年代和30年代他开始出国推销业务。他的客户包括意大利独裁者墨索里尼，还有IG法本，这是一家后来因向大屠杀中的毒气室提供齐克隆B而臭名昭著的德国化工公司。1934年，众议院非美活动委员会的听证会揭露了李为纳粹工作的事，四年后通过了《外国代理人登记法》(FARA)，目的是让这个黑暗的世界暴露在阳光下。
The other figure, whom Mr Michel describes as a “consigliere for despots”, will be familiar to followers of American politics. Paul Manafort, like Lee, was a Washington operator who went on to cultivate business abroad, running influence operations for Russian oligarchs and pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine. In 2016 he became Mr Trump’s campaign manager. When allegations emerged about secret payments he’d received from a Ukrainian autocrat, he resigned from the Trump campaign—though not before he’d shared campaign information with one of his foreign contacts, a Russian intelligence officer. In 2018 he pleaded guilty to failing to register his foreign-lobbying work and was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. In 2020 President Trump pardoned him.
米歇尔提到的另一位人物被称为“专制者的顾问”，对于关注美国政治的人来说，这个名字应该不陌生。保罗·马纳福特和艾维·李一样，都是华盛顿的操盘手，后来在海外发展业务，为俄罗斯寡头和乌克兰亲俄政客做影响力活动。2016年，他成了特朗普的竞选经理。当外界开始质疑他从乌克兰独裁者那里收取秘密付款时，他辞去了竞选职务——不过在此之前，他已经把一些竞选信息分享给了一位外国联系人，也就是一名俄罗斯情报官员。2018年，他承认没有登记自己的海外游说工作，被判七年半监禁。2020年，特朗普总统给了他赦免。
At times, Mr Michel comes across as overzealous. He treats all authoritarian regimes as equally heinous (is the UAE really on a par with Russia or China?). He denigrates juries for acquitting people he thinks should have been convicted. He fails to explain why foreign money that may influence think-tanks, say, is necessarily worse than Americans’ donations intended to exert sway. He can exaggerate people’s roles and also the impact of some of the lobbying efforts he describes.
有时候，米歇尔显得有点过于激动。他把所有威权政权都看作同样可恶（阿联酋真的能和俄罗斯或中国相提并论吗？）。他批评陪审团，因为他们放走了他认为应该被定罪的人。他也没解释为什么来自外国的资金（比如可能影响智库的那些）就一定比美国人的捐款更糟糕。还有，他可能会夸大一些人参与游说活动的角色，以及这些游说努力带来的影响。
Still, this book is an eye-opening depiction of an industry that has largely defied efforts to keep it in check. FARA has too often been ignored— though in recent years there have been greater efforts with enforcement— and many of the activities Mr Casey describes fall outside FARA’s scope anyway. Congress is considering proposals to widen the net. But who was said to be the main legislator helping to thwart them? Mr Menendez.
不过，这本书对一个几乎不受控制的行业进行了很有启发性的描述。FARA常常被忽视（虽然最近执法力度有所加强），而卡西提到的很多活动其实也不在FARA的监管范围内。国会正在考虑一些扩大监管范围的提案。但据说，主要阻止这些提案的人是谁？梅南德斯。
