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Think
Tanks for Sale or Rent
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your friends to like this.
In a eyebrow-raising 4,000-word exposé, "Foreign
Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks" published in the New
York Times on September 7, Eric Lipton, Brooke Williams and Nicholas
Confessore look into the novel issue of foreign governmental financing
for American think tanks.
The trio found that while the total scope "is difficult to
determine … since 2011, at least 64 foreign governments, state-controlled
entities or government officials have contributed to a group of 28 major
United States-based research organizations." Using the sketchy
available information, they estimate "a minimum of $92 million in
contributions or commitments from overseas government interests over the
last four years. The total is certainly more."
In exchange for this largesse, the research institutions in question
offered their donors two main benefits: One, they pressured staff members
both to "refrain from criticizing the donor governments" and
"to reach conclusions friendly to the government [that had provided]
financing." And two, they have been "pushing United States
government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors'
priorities." The result: Overseas money has thrown doubt on the
legitimacy and objectivity of think-tank research while
"increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a
muscular arm of foreign governments' lobbying in Washington."
My responses, a week later, to this bombshell of a report:
Some of this funding has been given clandestinely, with think tanks
taking money under the table while benefiting from a moral image of
disinterestedness. In the most prominently egregious example, the
government of Qatar, as the NYT reported, "funneled hundreds of millions to
Hamas-led Gaza and encouraged its rocket and tunnel assault on
Israel," also signed a four-year $14.8 million deal in 2013 to fund
the Brookings Institution where Martin Indyk serves as vice president and
director of the Foreign Policy Program. Indyk worked for Secretary of
State John Kerry from July 2013 to June 2014 as special envoy for
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. As someone on the same payroll as is
Israel's mortal enemy, how could Indyk be expected to act in a neutral
way?
Martin Indyk
(right) with his former boss, Secretary of State John Kerry.
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The president of Brookings, Strobe
Talbott, not only did not apologize or show a shred of embarrassment
that foreign governments underwrote some 12
percent of his funding, but had the temerity to respond that
"think tanks should take money from foreign governments."
Deploying such self-serving buzzwords as "governance" and
phrases like "the philanthropic culture is changing," he
fatuously argued that it "is entirely appropriate for us to work
with [governments] when we have the capacity to contribute analysis and
prescription on issues that they are dealing with in the policy
realm."
The Brookings
Institute, founded 1916, is both the oldest American think tank and a
leader in taking monies from foreign taxpayers.
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The Times article exposed – astonishingly – the corruption of
liberal establishments such as the Brookings Institution, the Center for
American Progress, and the National Democratic Institute. How honest,
honorable, and unexpected from a newspaper that has become the nation's
billboard for unthinking liberal bromides. Conversely, the exposé found
not a penny going to conservative institutions such as the American
Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Hudson Institute.
(If the Times continues with journalism of this caliber, I might
even pay for its iPhone app!)
Mitchell Bard
tells about the real Middle Eastern lobby working in Washington.
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Similarly, concerning the Middle East, where the article mentions
several countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE) whose
governments play this influence-and-opinion-buying game, not one of them
is called Israel. This pattern emphatically verifies the thesis presented
by Mitchell Bard in the subtitle his 2010 book, The Arab Lobby: The
Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East
(Harper). As Steven
J. Rosen, formerly of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,
notes, if "measured by level of effort, if not results, the Arab
lobby is equal, or superior to, anything done by the friends of
Israel."
Finally, the Times exposé placed all think-tanks on the
defensive. If white-shoe
organizations like Brookings are on the take, none of us is exempt from
suspicion. In this light, the organization I head (slogan:
"Promoting American interests") immediately issued a press
release, "The
Middle East Forum Takes No Funds from Foreign Governments,"
which stated unequivocally that "we have never sought or taken
funding from any foreign government, nor from any agent of a foreign
government. And we never will."
More broadly, as John
B. Judis argues, "foreign funding of think tanks is corrupting
our democracy." Therefore, it's time for all research organizations
presenting themselves as providing objective analysis to take a similar
pledge, or else to label clearly who bought and paid for their
conclusions.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org)
is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2014 by Daniel Pipes. All
rights reserved.
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