'Foreign Agents' explores the U.S. citizens lobbying for foreign governments

Transcript

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. The Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election alerted many Americans to the vulnerability of our Democratic institutions to tampering by forces from abroad. Our guest today, investigative reporter Casey Michel, argues in a new book that the threat is far greater than we realize. Most of it, he says, comes from American citizens willing to promote the interests of brutal, undemocratic and anti-American regimes for a price. American lobbying for foreign governments in the U.S. isn't new, he says. He cites examples from the 19th century and from the 1930s when an American public relations guru made a fortune whitewashing the record of Nazi Germany. But he argues it's far more extensive now, and some of the players are surprising. They include not just professional lobbyists, law firms and publicists, but former U.S. government officials and members of Congress from both parties, as well as universities and think tanks who accept eye-popping sums from foreign governments. There have been laws for years requiring registration and disclosure of these efforts, but Michel says they've been mostly ineffective.

Casey Michel is director of the Combating Kleptocracy program with the Human Rights Foundation. He's the author of a previous book titled "American Kleptocracy." His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and other publications. His new book is "Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists And Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around The World." Well, Casey Michel, welcome to FRESH AIR.

CASEY MICHEL: Dave, thanks so much for having me.

DAVIES: You know, you tell us early in the book about a guy named Ivy Lee. This is the guy in the 1930s who blazed the trail on this activity. He was a publicist, kind of invented modern public relations in the eyes of some. He represented some of the corporate titans of the early 20th century, who faced scandals from their treatment of workers or environmental damage, whatever, and did his best to clean up their images. Then he gets interested in Europe. How does he end up associating with Nazi Germany?

MICHEL: Ivy Lee is probably best remembered to this day as the so-called father of the public relations industry. He worked in the late 19th and early 20th century, really creating the playbook, for what we now understand as public relations. He invented the first press release. He created the first kind of crisis management playbook for how industrialists or political figures could overcome scandals. And he was wildly successful. He ended up working with some of the most prominent figures in America at the turn of the 20th century, folks like the Rockefellers, folks like Woodrow Wilson and Charles Schwab, and he really became a celebrity unto himself, a very, very, very well-known figure and the creator of this industry. But by the 1920s and the 1930s, he realized that he did not have to conduct business only in America and that there were clients abroad that were eager for his services as well. And so he took his talents abroad. He went to Rome to work for Benito Mussolini and his new rising fascist government. He went to Moscow to effectively whitewash the new Soviet regime then grabbing the reins of power, and most spectacularly and most notoriously, he ended up in Berlin, working for the new Nazi regime and selling his services to the highest rungs of the Nazi government then taking root in Germany and setting the stage for the eventual Second World War.

DAVIES: Yeah, he worked for a private firm, really, but in fact, represented the interests of the Nazi government a lot, and as we would eventually learn, met with some of the senior officials, including one meeting with Hitler. What did he actually do for the Nazi regime? How did he sell or try to improve their image in the United States?

MICHEL: He did a few things. One of those was domestically in the United States of America. He monitored the conversations, monitored the media coverage of the Nazis. Again, Hitler taking power in 1933, 1934 - there were still plenty of questions, certainly plenty of concerns, but plenty of unknowns about the Nazis. One of the things that Lee did for his clients back in Berlin was keep them updated about what Americans were saying about them, and he had sit-down meetings with the highest ranks of the Nazi establishment with Joseph Goebbels, and even with Adolph Hitler himself. And he provided talking points for them, about how they could play down concerns about antisemitism in the United States, about how they could recruit sympathetic journalists to their cause and how they could defend Hitler's rearmament and Hitler's creation of entire Storm Trooper brigades by saying these are simply patriotic Germans who wanted to make sure to defend the Fatherland. They never had any offensive or aggressive concerns or considerations. And that folks, really, at the end of the day, shouldn't be worried about them, and even at the 10,000-foot level, really shouldn't be worried about this new regime in Berlin. Maybe they're not the most democratic we've ever seen. But certainly, they won't end in disaster whatsoever. We should, at the end of the day, support the Nazis.

DAVIES: He eventually attracts the attention of members of Congress, and there's a hearing of the House American Activities Committee, which people will remember was active in the McCarthy era later. What happened when Ivy Lee came to explain himself?

MICHEL: The conversation was initially very cordial, but as time went on, legislators and those at the hearing that day began realizing that Lee wasn't simply some individual American gallivanting around Berlin, meeting with private companies. He was having sit-down meetings with the highest ranks of the Nazi establishment and acting again, as this kind of navigator or guidepost for how the Nazis could improve their image in the United States of America, could sell their regime to potentially sympathetic Americans, and beyond that, could grab power that much further in Berlin, silencing criticism and launch eventually the world into the Second World War.

DAVIES: So Ivy Lee, this publicist who made all this money, did all of this work to help and promote the image of Nazi Germany - it all came apart really after he faced a hearing in Congress, and his career soon came to an end. But there was a lot of outrage about it. And this in part led to the passage of a law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, to try and require some registration and disclosure of these activities. It imposed some reporting requirements. It was strengthened by Congress again in 1966, but you write it was never really that effective. Why not?

MICHEL: So, this law was passed shortly after Lee's hearing, which in many ways, shocked a lot of Americans, that someone like Ivy Lee could be turned into a mouthpiece for a regime like the Nazis in Germany and do so in secret with other Americans not having any awareness until the congressional hearing about what he was doing. And so, legislators passed this new regulation. It was called the Foreign Agents Registration Act or FARA. And when that was initially passed, that required all Americans who were working on behalf of foreign regimes, acting as effective propagandist for those regimes - they had to disclose what they were doing and who they were doing it for and how much money they were making along the way. They had to share that information with the federal government, which would then publicize and publish that information for other Americans to look through it. The problem, though, is you can have the most progressive piece of pro-transparency legislation that you want on the books, If it's not enforced, and if no one's actually paying attention to it, then it's hardly worth the paper that it's written on. And unfortunately, for the first three-quarters of a century that the Foreign Agents Registration Act existed, for decades after the Second World War, it effectively kind of fell into disuse. It was this forgotten backwater of foreign lobbying transparency requirements that it wasn't really until the 21st century that folks realized, maybe we should finally begin paying attention and enforcing these regulations.

DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Casey Michel. His new book is "Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists And Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around The World." We'll talk more after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MATT ULERY'S "GAVE PROOF")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with investigative reporter Casey Michel. His new book shines a harsh light on Americans enriching themselves by representing foreign governments in Washington, including many brutally autocratic and undemocratic regimes. It's called "Foreign Agents."

You know, the modern era of foreign lobbying in a way comes in the 1980s, and a key player is Paul Manafort, who's a name that people will recognize from his association with Donald Trump, but he was a Republican operative who helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency in 1980. And then when Reagan took office, he opened a Washington lobbying shop. It was kind of a game changer. He worked with Roger Stone, and a guy named Charlie Black. What did they do that was new and effective?

MICHEL: What Manafort and his colleagues were able to do in many ways was similar to Ivy Lee, because in a similar way to Lee creating the public relations industry, as we know it, Manafort in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, was creating the lobbying industry as we now know it. He was marrying not just the kind of traditional lobbying of having these conversations with policymakers to push preferred policy - he was actually creating a new paradigm in which he was both lobbying and consulting. That is to say, he would bring the clients that he was representing directly to policymakers in Washington. He was kind of closing this loop that had existed earlier and making money hand over fist. He was creating new avenues, new pathways for those in the private sector to directly access those policymakers themselves. And then when those policymakers needed to run for reelection or needed help with fundraising, he would be able to go out of his way to help with that as well. So he was creating this brand new playbook for how any firm or for how any industry could directly lobby policymakers, and then beyond that, how the policymakers in Washington and in Congress themselves could remain in power, and could use those networks and could use those financing streams to help their own reelection.

DAVIES: So he had a firm that did political consulting. It helped get people elected to Congress, to the Senate. And then when he came to those same lawmakers who he had helped put in office, saying, hey, I've got a client here from whatever country or whatever firm that needs some help, the lawmaker is talking to the person he depends upon for reelection. So there's this confluence of interest, or you could see it as a conflict of interest, right?

MICHEL: You're exactly right. He's called before a hearing, and he's facing very critical questions. And one of his questioners says, is this not simply influence pedaling, at the end of the day? And Manafort looks up and says, I suppose you could call it influence pedaling, if you like. But again, what he preferred to call it was lobbying. And again, this is how the lobbying industry in and of itself transformed in the late 20th century. And in a certain sense, in hindsight, it almost kind of appears surprising that someone didn't necessarily think of this earlier, how to close these loops, how to create this kind of closed system where folks like Manafort and his colleagues could be paid time and again for multiple services that they were providing, again, for constituents in the private sector, as well as in the public sector, kind of creating the, quote-unquote, "swamp," as we know it. But Manafort was the one who had the vision. He was the one who had the insight. He was the one who had the resources that at the end of the day, he could actually create or recreate the industry in his own image.

DAVIES: So what's interesting here is that you have him now being really effective as a lobbyist because he's also helping these people get elected. So he can be an effective lobbyist. The question then is, who does he represent? And of course, there are plenty of corporate and private interests. But he ends up getting clients abroad. And they're some of the shadiest folks in the world in a way, right? I mean, dictatorial regimes, ones with brutal human rights records - do you want to pick an example and tell us about this?

MICHEL: Dave, you're exactly right. Unfortunately, there are plenty of candidates to choose. I think the one that maybe encapsulates this work is when Manafort ended up working for the regime in the Philippines, in Manilla, under Ferdinand Marcos, who was a yearslong dictator, a close ally of the United States of America during the Cold War. But by the mid-1980s, Marcos appeared to be on his last legs, which is when Manafort stepped in

Manafort didn't technically work for Marcos alone. He signed an agreement with a nominally private organization. But, again, that was an effective cutout for this yearslong dictator himself. And what Manafort was essentially charged with was manipulating a Filipino election that would allow Mr. Marcos to remain in power effectively in perpetuity. And Marcos - you know, he unleashes violence on anti-regime protesters. He does attempt, and at least initially successfully, to steal the election itself. But eventually, the protesters do overwhelm him, and he is forced to flee the country. And unfortunately, that means that his wife, Imelda Marcos, had to leave her thousands of pairs of shoes behind. So in that sense, Manafort was actually not successful in keeping Marcos in power in perpetuity, but that gave folks a sense of what he was willing to do for the right bidder and for the right buyer.

DAVIES: Yeah, one detail of that story that I love is that the first contract he gets is almost $1,000,000 and the payment is brought to him in person by Imelda Marcos of the legendary shoe collection. Yeah. You know, this kind of activity does get attention, eventually. I mean, others realize that there's money to be made from representing these folks, and there are other lobbying shops starting to do it. This gets the attention of journalists and some, you know, civic organizations that are interested. And you write about efforts to do reporting on this, including a couple of occasions where reporters posed as someone looking for lobbying help from a odious regime to see just how far some of these regimes would go, including one, there was an effort by the satirical monthly Spy Magazine to pose as modern-day Nazis and approach a lobbyist to ask them for help promoting Nazism in Germany nowadays, things like, maybe we can reinvade Poland. Tell us how that works.

MICHEL: Spy Magazine, which in the early 1990s had this great spread detailing all of the worst American firms that were working for some of the worst regimes on the planet - and in one of those cases, they posed as German neo-Nazis and called up one of the most, at that time, notorious American lobbyists, a gentleman named Edward von Kloberg, who worked, again, with a range of the most heinous dictatorships around the planet, including folks like Saddam Hussein. And they called him up. And they asked him what it would take to get him to work on behalf of and launder the image of these German neo-Nazis, these far-right Germans, that, as you mentioned, were interested in not only seizing power in Berlin, but reinvading Poland, and I'm sure many other countries along the way. And Kloberg, and folks can read through the transcript, was only too happy to take them on as clients. He was eager. He was excited. He was talking about the meetings he would set up in the United States of America, including figures David Duke, the former head of the KKK, so on and so forth. There was absolutely no bottom for folks like von Kloberg, and certainly, there was no bottom for the industry in and of itself.

DAVIES: So there was some reporting that exposed the extent to which these private lobbyists would take money to promote just about anybody doing just about anything. Did it have any positive effect?

MICHEL: Unfortunately, it did not, Dave. I wish I could say that it did. I think one of the most remarkable case studies from this era that I had the chance to write about, there was another reporter, a gentleman named Ken Silverstein, who worked at Harper's Magazine, who again, posed as a representative of one of the most Stalinist, totalitarian dictatorships still on the planet in the country of Turkmenistan, and he successfully reached out to PR firm after PR firm to ask if they wanted to work for the Turkmen dictator. And again, over and over and over again, these firms all said, yes. When Silverstein eventually reported this in Harper's Magazine, I would like to think that the PR firms would have been chastened. They would have had to kind of come-to-Jesus moment, realizing what they were doing. But instead, what happened is they all closed ranks. They all in a unified voice, criticized Silverstein, criticized Harper's Magazine and claimed that they did nothing wrong. Certainly they were committing no crimes, but even ethically, morally, they did not see themselves doing anything incorrectly whatsoever. And again, I think that symbolizes so much of the ethos of this industry, certainly that era that continues to this day.

DAVIES: You know, one of the things that I learned covering politics, and this might surprise people, but companies that do lobbying - they get to know lawmakers, and they, as a company or as individuals, make political contributions to the lawmakers that they're lobbies, that this is legal, it happens all the time. One of the things you write about is that companies that were representing foreign governments, particularly dictatorial foreign governments, where they could loot untold millions and maybe even billions from their own national treasuries, could pay money to the lobbying companies, and then they could in turn make contributions to the elected officials and candidates, in a way, kind of putting foreign money into the American political system, which is barred by campaign finance law. You're not allowed to make foreign contributions. Tell us about this practice.

MICHEL: Yeah, Dave, I think this is, frankly, one of the most shocking things that I found on my end in putting this book together. And again, it's not that this is illegal. The scandal really is what is legal. These foreign dictatorships have been spending billions in recent years on lobbyists on these PR firms, law firms, accounting firms, consultancies, so on and so forth. And many of these firms are then in turn donating directly to the congressional officials, to the federal officials. And what we saw is that some of these donations come on the exact same day that these firms are having sit-down meetings with the officials to lobby on behalf of their foreign dictatorial clients. It is still illegal for foreign regimes or foreign nationals to donate directly to American officials or to American campaigns. But these firms are certainly a handy cutout. And as one of the researchers that I quote in the book said, at the end of the day, a dollar is a dollar, and that money is fungible, and these firms are certainly a very effective cutout if a foreign regime wants to mask its funding of American officials.

DAVIES: Right. We should say that it is illegal for anybody to serve as a conduit for a foreign contribution to an American candidate. But, of course, as long as nobody owns up to the fact that it was a one-for-one deal, the two legs of the transaction are technically legal, right?

MICHEL: That's exactly right. And again, I think at the end of the day, the numbers do speak for themselves. One of the firms I write about that other researchers have covered, certainly they're donating widely to plenty of elected officials around Washington, but they are donating twice as much to those that they are lobbying directly on behalf of their foreign dictatorial clients. They are donating magnitudes more to those that they are directly trying to access on behalf of their dictatorial regimes that they represent, as well. And, again, I think that speaks for itself.

DAVIES: I'm going to take another break here. We're speaking with Casey Michel. His new book is "Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists And Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around The World." He'll be back to talk more after this break. I'm Dave Davies. And this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF ANDRES VIAL, ET AL.' "BLUEHAWK")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. Our guest is investigative reporter Casey Michel. His new book shines a harsh light on Americans who are enriching themselves by representing the interests of foreign governments in Washington, including many brutally autocratic regimes and countries that oppose U.S. interests. He writes that the players promoting these countries include not just professional lobbyists and publicists, but countless former government officials of both parties, as well as major universities and nonprofit think tanks. His book is "Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists And Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around The World."

You know, Paul Manafort, who kind of got this game going, in some ways, in the 1980s and kind of revolutionized lobbying, becomes an even bigger story in the early 2000s, helping a Ukrainian politician named Viktor Yanukovych. He was a pro-Russian politician with ties to oligarchs and mobsters, who was driven from power in an uprising in 2004 after a disputed election, and Manafort was engaged to come, you know, kind of revive his career, and so he comes in and does a personal and strategic makeover - clothes, hair, talking points - and kind of also cynically developing a political strategy based on ethnic division in the country. It actually works, and Yanukovych actually eventually becomes president again. There's a lot of history here involving Russia's role, but what I'm interested in you telling us is how Manafort benefited exactly. This was quite a windfall for him, wasn't it?

MICHEL: Yes, it was. This was one of Manafort's - at least until 2014, one of his clearest success stories, how he transformed this kind of clear, thuggish, would-be autocrat into someone that folks could look at as a democratizing figure - as even a pro-Western figure that was worth electing to the highest rungs of power in Ukraine, even though there were still, obviously, plenty of concerns about his pro-Kremlin leanings and his links to oligarchs. Manafort did not do this out of the goodness of his heart. He did not do this because he cared about Ukrainians or Ukraine's pro-Western trajectory. He did it because he got unspeakably wealthy in the process, and we know this because of documents that have come out in Ukraine, thanks to Ukrainian investigators, and because of documents and statements that later came out in American criminal trials. Paul Manafort made tens of millions of dollars from his arrangement in Ukraine. He had access, again, to the highest wrongs of power. In Ukraine, he had what one journalist called walk-in rights with President Yanukovych - that is to say, he could go into the Ukrainian president's office whenever he wanted and offer his advice. This was Manafort's closest brush with true power to that point, and he took full advantage of it.

DAVIES: Yeah, and just to add a bit of color here, describe the house that Yanukovych built (laughter).

MICHEL: It's unfair to call it a house, Dave.

DAVIES: Right.

MICHEL: This is a palace, right? This is dozens of rooms with gilded marble staircases, a garage for a fleet of dozens of high-end cars. There is a lake outside with an actual, proper galleon that is stowed there. There is a petting zoo with ostriches and crocodiles - and, as memory serves, there was even a massive nude portrait of the president. This is where so much of the money that he and his family and friends who had looted from the Ukrainian populace - this is where that money went to, this incredibly gaudy construct that, if folks visit Ukraine, they can actually still see, and Manafort was there all the time. There is one scene in which he is enjoying the hot tub with the then-Ukrainian president, but they're talking about the future of Ukraine. They are talking about, beyond that, how to potentially enrich themselves, their family members and their closest friends, as well, so that figures like Yanukovych can remain in power for years and years and years to come, and truly cement what was, very clearly, a pro-Kremlin autocracy in the middle of Ukraine.

DAVIES: Manafort's career crashes, eventually, when all this comes to light, and he's charged and pleads guilty to a whole host of crimes - including tax evasion, and lying in official interviews, and violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and all of these things - although was ultimately pardoned by Donald Trump. But the interesting question that's raised here is that, you know, it was actually during the Trump administration when there were actually real investigations and consequences for people failing to register their work as foreign lobbyists.

MICHEL: That's exactly right, Dave. This is one of the great ironies, is that it wasn't until Donald Trump was president that folks in the United States of America not only realized how much of a threat these foreign lobbying networks are and how much something like the Foreign Agents Registration Act should be enforced but realized that they could actually prosecute some of these Americans - these American firms who had been acting for years as foot soldiers for dictatorships around the world and had now embedded themselves firmly into the political firmament in Washington, D.C. And so it is while Donald Trump is president that we see the prosecution of Paul Manafort, that we see guilty pleas from figures like Mike Flynn, who was the former national security advisor for Donald Trump, who also worked as a foreign agent for the Turkish government. You know, we see convictions or guilty pleas for a range of other figures, many of whom are in Trump's orbit, but not all of them. Some are Republicans. Some are Democrats. It's very much a bipartisan approach.

DAVIES: And I think we should underline the point that this didn't happen because Donald Trump said, hey, this is an issue. I want you to focus on it. It's because the Justice Department still had a great deal of independence, and the folks there said, we got to do something about this.

MICHEL: We were extremely fortunate, Dave, to have an independent Department of Justice that could act in all Americans' benefit, and not simply at the behest of a president. It was because of the independent Department of Justice that we saw the ramp-up of funding for investigation and for enforcement, and again, these successes built upon themselves. It's no surprise that during those Trump years, while we saw these prosecutions, the registrations for foreign lobbyists in Washington skyrocketed. They went up something like 50% over a very short period of time, allowing Americans that much more information about what these foreign lobbying networks were actually doing in Washington - and elsewhere.

DAVIES: We need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Casey Michel. His new book is "Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists And Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around The World". We'll be back after this break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF VIJAY IYER'S "BLACK AND TAN FANTASY")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with investigative reporter Casey Michel about his new book called "Foreign Agents." It looks at Americans who are enriching themselves by representing foreign governments in Washington.

You know, it's interesting that we've talked about law firms and lobbyists and publicists that make money representing foreign governments. This goes beyond those kinds of organizations, including some, you know, nominally charitable nonprofit organizations. Some of them quite well known. You mentioned the Clinton Foundation, for example. I mean, do they belong in the same camp here?

MICHEL: I describe the Clinton Foundation, as well as other nonprofits, to illustrate that what we kind of traditionally understand as lobbying has transformed in 21st century. Again, these regimes are not going just to the PR firms, or the law firms, or the consultancies anymore. They are now going to places like nonprofits, in this case, the Clinton Foundation, because as they see it, that allows them access to policymakers in Washington, to the highest rungs of the American political establishment, and then beyond that, the ability for these regimes to influence and access American policy for their benefit. Because that is what it comes down to at the end of the day - these regimes trying to do whatever they can to make sure legislators in Washington pass pro-regime policies that will allow these kleptocratic figures or authoritarian networks or dictatorships writ large to remain in power in perpetuity.

And I will just say one thing about the Clinton Foundation - they never registered as foreign lobbyists. They didn't necessarily need to in terms of the actual regulations we have on the books, but I do not think it is any surprise that the donations, the gifts, the significant contributions from authoritarian governments and dictators around the world, the millions or tens of millions of dollars donations to the Clinton Foundation all spiked when Clinton appeared the likely 2008 Democratic nominee, and then collapsed thereafter, and then spiked once more when Clinton appeared the 2016 Democratic nominee, and then collapsed once more. You know, following the chart of this, it's kind of like a roller coaster, really. I have no doubt that these authoritarian and autocratic governments thought that they were accessing the potential next president and getting in good graces to effect policy thereafter.

DAVIES: So money comes rushing in from shady sources while Hillary Clinton is a potential candidate. And I guess the important question is, is there any evidence then that the Clinton Foundation acted to support those regimes?

MICHEL: There's no evidence that the foundation themselves did. Again, the foundation does wonderful work. But when regime like the Saudis or the Algerians or oligarchs from places like Russia or Kazakhstan are sending millions, in some cases, tens of millions of dollars to an organization, that has to raise red flags, especially because of who is running that organization and the access to power itself. So I don't know if it's fortunate or unfortunate. Obviously, Hillary Clinton never ended up in the White House itself, but certainly a case is to be made that these regimes saw an ability, saw an opening to access who they thought was going to be the next American president.

DAVIES: Another destination for foreign governments' donations that you're write about are colleges and universities - a lot of big prestigious ones, right? I mean, they get research grants all the time from private donors. What do we know about them accepting money from foreign governments and its impact?

MICHEL: This was one of the most fascinating parts of the book. Universities, since the mid-20th century, have been required to disclose to the federal government all significant gifts that they have received from foreign governments and from foreign sources. But similar to the foreign lobbying sector, they spent decades not doing that whatsoever. And then beyond that, the regulators and legislators in Washington were effectively asleep at the wheel and didn't require universities to disclose any of this information whatsoever. So for decades, we were effectively blind as to how foreign governments and foreign regimes were sending millions and millions and millions of dollars to American higher education institutes, American colleges and universities. And then beyond that, we don't know what they were doing with that or what they were expecting from that money. And I do think it is, again, one of these ironies of the Trump era that it wasn't until the Trump administration came to power that we saw the very first investigation into the topic, and lo and behold, the Department of Education looked at a handful of some of the most elite institutes in the United States, places like Yale, places like Cornell, and a handful of others, and realized there were billions of dollars that had never been disclosed. And again, these aren't from democratic allies, places like Canada, the United Kingdom. These are from some of the most repressive regimes on the planet, places like China, places like Saudi Arabia, places like Qatar, so on, and so on, and so on, that had just never been disclosed to the government or to the American populace.

DAVIES: Is there evidence that any of these educational institutions bent their research or restricted how those funding countries might be written about or talked about?

MICHEL: Yes, there is. What we do know is some of the universities that were, for instance, receiving funding donations or maybe even contracts out of China - they played down rhetoric on places like Taiwan or Tibet or the concentration camps that are being built for the Uyghur and Muslim minority in China. We know that some of the schools that accepted funding from some of the Gulf dictatorships clamped down on conversations, clamp down on resources for things like LGBT youth at those universities. But these are only a handful of these universities when we're actually talking about hundreds and hundreds of American colleges that still haven't seen that much scrutiny whatsoever.

DAVIES: You know, kind of widening the lens here a bit - you know, governments do lobby other governments. In Philadelphia, I covered City Hall for many years. And every mayor I covered had hired professional lobbyists to represent the city's interests in the state capital, Harrisburg, and in Washington. That's, of course, different from a brutal dictatorship, but Philadelphia felt like things are going on in those places, and they need someone looking out for their interests and getting, you know, social service funds for people that some might regard as undeserving. I mean, there's always controversy about policy. Is this a slippery issue?

MICHEL: You know, to play devil's advocate, those that are working in this space - certainly, on the one hand, they argue, none of this is criminal. But there is an argument that these lobbyists are the ones that are the most familiar with the contours of policy-making, with who to access, who to communicate with, who to reach out to, who to target, that whether their constituents and clients are domestic or whether they are foreign, at the end of the day, these are effective navigators of the halls of power in Washington. And isn't it beneficial to have someone or some firm like that looking out for those who want the most effective ways of actually passing policy? I think there's an argument there, and, of course, at the end of the day, lobbying is a constitutionally protected right. The right to petition the government for redress of grievances is right there in the First Amendment. But this is where theory becomes practice. What we have seen, at the end of the day, is not simply these American firms pointing their clients to the best policymaker or the best legislator. What we have seen, at the end of the day, is dictators come rushing in with bottomless pots of money to swamp out any criticism, to flood out anyone who might be opposed to those regimes and to bury any critics with these fleets of lobbyists that they hire. They can silence their primary opponents and their primary critics domestically through things like state security services, but they can silence their critics abroad, as well, in places like the United States of America, by simply drowning them out and allowing these regimes to hold on to power that much longer - to immiserate their populations, to destabilize entire countries and to continue enriching themselves as much as they want and continue this kind of kleptocratic carousel as long as they can.

DAVIES: Is there hope for more regulation? You know, as you say, I mean, there is a right to petition the government, which means that this is speech of a kind.

MICHEL: Yeah.

DAVIES: It's hard to muzzle it, but are there things that can be done to bring greater attention to this and discourage it?

MICHEL: Absolutely, there are, and I think it's not a matter, Dave, of banning this practice, necessarily. As you just mentioned, again, lobbying is a constitutionally protected right. It's not a matter of making it illegal, but it is a matter of shining a light and requiring the disclosure of what these networks are actually doing and, again, how much they're being paid, who are they targeting and what are they actually doing on behalf of their dictator clients abroad, which is what brings us back to something like the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which was passed, again, back in the 1930s, back into the Roosevelt administration, and was one of then and remains to this day one of the most progressive pieces of legislation. It just has to be enforced.

DAVIES: You know, we're about to embark on another presidential contest. What do you think we might expect in terms of foreign activity, foreign intervention?

MICHEL: Well, Dave, that's a great question. I certainly expect that we'll see more things like hacking campaigns, and certainly, we've already seen evidence of that - of course, 2016, most spectacularly, with Russia, but we've seen other countries get into that game, as well. But, you know, at the end of the day, Dave, I wouldn't be surprised if we simply see kind of a building-out of the networks that already exist because these American firms - these American law firms and PR firms and consultancies that are now foreign agents, you know, these Americans that comprise the foreign lobbying industry - you know, they're not going anywhere any time soon, and they are as much a part of the American political firmament, on both sides of the aisle, as they have ever been, so I would not be surprised if we see regimes and governments elsewhere signing up more of these firms, signing up more of these Americans and spending millions of dollars more on these foreign lobbyists in Washington and elsewhere, trying to access those they think will gain power or those, even after the election, who have been duly elected and are looking for new policy, looking for new ways to craft American foreign policy or American foreign aid or American military aid. You know, these systems have been built up for years and decades, and even though we are now paying more attention to them, that doesn't mean they have dissipated whatsoever. I mean, this is, again, a multibillion-dollar industry that we've only just now begun waking up to the threats of, the impacts of, and I have every confidence that this industry will continue for the foreseeable future.

DAVIES: Well, Casey Michel, thank you so much for speaking with us.

MICHEL: Dave, thanks so much.

DAVIES: Casey Michel's new book is "Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists And Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around The World." Coming up, Carolina Miranda reviews a YouTube documentary about the spectacular failure of a "Star Wars"-themed hotel in Orlando. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRIAN ENO & JOHN CALE SONG, "SPINNING AWAY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.