Im-Politic: Why I’m Not a Think Tank Hypocrite

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business groups, Clyde V. Prestowitz, Economic Strategy Institute, Google, idea laundering, Im-Politic, John B. Judis, Jr., manufacturers, New America Foundation, The New Republic, think tanks, Trade, U.S. Business and Industry Council, USBIC Educational Foundation

Freelance journalist and author John B. Judis is a long-time professional friend. He’s also a pioneer in the study of think tanks and how they’ve added to the corruption of America’s policy-making process, especially in Washington, D.C., where so many of them are headquartered and concentrate their efforts.

So it’s with a double dose of regret that I write this dual-purpose post – which will aim to explain why he’s recently done me a not-trivial injustice in describing me and my relationship with the think tank complex, and in the process contributed to the mis-impression that all organizations that seek to influence policy are alike in their basics.

The problem was created last week in John’s otherwise insightful New Republic article on the uproar kicked up by the news last month that the New America Foundation think tank fired a prominent researcher (and his entire team at a particular program) because their work had begun threatened to antagonize a major donor to the Foundation – Google. You can read my take on this super-revealing incident here.

Because his work on the subject has been so important, I was initially pleased to see John cover the controversy, and even more pleased that he decided to quote me. Unfortunately, he mysteriously decided to use the passage (from that above RealityChek post) in a decidedly and unjustly unflattering way. As John wrote:

“The controversy over New America…has prompted hand-wringing among Washington’s policy community, but some of it seems self-serving. ‘Slowly, and not so surely, the American media is waking up to the pervasiveness of corporate corruption of the nation’s think tank complex,’ wrote Alan Tonelson, who did research for decades at the Business and Industrial Council, which got much of its funds from Roger Milliken and Milliken & Co.”

I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive in believing that this paragraph insinuates that I’m a hypocrite. That is, I’d belonged to that Think Tank World for decades, and now that it’s becoming fashionable, have decided to bite the hand that fed me.

What John didn’t seem to realize is that the work for my former long-time employer that he refers to was done for a business group, not a think tank. As a result, whereas I’ve criticized think tanks for their lack of transparency regarding their (corporate) funders, and accused them of “idea laundering” (that is, issuing materials that push the special interest agendas of their funders while garbing them in quasi-academic raiment), the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC) can’t fairly be accused of this practice even it had been a think tank because its orientation has always been obvious from its name.

Unlike the case with the Brookings Institution or the Center for Strategic and International Studies or the Heritage Foundation or the Carnegie Endowment or the Peterson Institute, when a policymaker or journalist received some information from USBIC, it couldn’t have been clearer that it represented a particular perspective, rather than the work of some disinterested scholar esconced in a ivory tower.

Of course, we tried to be as accurate as possible – both because we were confident enough in the substance behind our viewpoints that we felt no need to exaggerate or soft-pedal or leave out context when such tactics might have strengthened our case, and because those who depart from the conventional wisdom nearly always receive greater and harsher scrutiny than those who stay comfortably inside it.

Moreover, we spent countless hours trying to publicize exactly who we were – an association of smaller manufacturers who had largely rejected an offshoring business model and sought to oppose its nurturing by government trade policies. The reason? We wanted to make sure that our audiences knew that not all businesses or manufacturers favored such policies.

In addition, because the organization wasn’t a household name, whenever we identified ourselves as authors of an article written for an outside publication, we included a brief description of USBIC – something on the order of “an association of small, mainly family-owned, domestically focused manufacturers.” The same went for whenever we were interviewed for an article or broadcast segment. And if we’d been given more space, we’d have been happy to go into more detail.

Now, to be completely accurate, I was employed by the Council’s think tank wing – which we called the USBIC Educational Foundation. And that doesn’t look like a terribly transparent name at first glance. But only at first glance, since even the most casual research effort will reveal the connection. 

Moreover, as with the Council, when the Foundation marketed materials and speakers (like me), it was made completely clear that the very purpose was to represent the views of this distinctive group of manufacturers. In other words, that was the point. I only wish we had been more successful in debunking the stereotype of all industrial companies as footloose multinationals that roamed the world in search of the lowest labor and other costs, heedless or uncaring about the impact on the domestic U.S. economy.

Much the same holds for the organization I worked for previously – the Economic Strategy Institute (ESI). Although the name was less transparent than USBIC’s, from the very start, founder Clyde V. Prestowitz, Jr. strove tirelessly to publicize ESI’s corporate backers, and for a reason very similar to USBIC’s – he wanted to inform policymakers and journalists that not all industries and companies that dissented from an orthodox free trade line were “losers” that were simply seeking government protection from superior competitors. Nothing made that point more clearly that noting that many of ESI’s supporters (like Intel and Motorola) were leaders in the world’s most advanced industries.

Indeed, John might have mentioned that I wound up leaving ESI after a few years precisely because these donors changed their tune on trade issues for various reasons – and unfortunately, the Institute for the most part changed with them, along with venturing into new areas. I was fortunate to find a more like-minded group in the form of USBIC precisely because the Standard Operating Procedure of the donor community have always ensured that organizations analyzing these international economic issues in unconventional ways would be few and far between.

As a result, the tale above should also make embarrassingly obvious that if an author like John wanted to use a policy analyst as an example of opportunistic tut-tutting about the system that long supported him and his family, I was anything but that guy. In that vein (as is clear from the above link), John might have mentioned that I have written about the practice of idea-laundering for more than ten years.

So I hope that John keeps training his eye on the think tank world and the troubling role it plays in the national policy and political worlds. I just hope that his next offerings make their points more carefully and precisely.

Im-Politic: Why Washington’s Latest Think Tank Scandal Should Matter – but May Not

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corporations, corruption, democracy, Google, idea laundering, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, New America Foundation, Silicon Valley, special interests, think tanks

Slowly, and not so surely, the American media is waking up to the pervasiveness of corporate corruption of the nation’s think tank complex. I say “slowly” because revelations of the way these special interests – which include foreign governments – have used these supposedly quasi-academic institutions to promote and defend their own selfish agendas has tended to drip out in individual exposes usually separated by years (literally). And I say “not so surely” because these reports rarely connect any of the important dots. Worse, it’s ever clearer that the Mainstream Media itself is a big part of the problem.

The latest example: the uproar set off by revelations that the New America Foundation (NAF) recently fired a team of analysts because it started goring the ox of one of the organization’s main funders, Google.

It’s been gratifying to see that nearly everyone who has commented on this incident considers NAF and Google to be in the wrong, and no one whose work I’ve seen has given the slightest credence to the organization’s insistence that the team was canned because he wasn’t sufficiently collegial in his work habits.

Much less gratifying has been the almost equally widespread tendency to interpret the incident as a sign that Google itself has become way too powerful on America’s policy and intellectual scenes, and in underhanded ways. Or that Silicon Valley itself is now exerting way too much of this power just as sneakily, and without adequate checks.

That’s all true, and important. What’s been almost completely missed, however, is that Google’s muscle-flexing is anything but limited to Google or to the tech sector or to the New America Foundation. It is now Standard Operating Procedure in the think tank world, which has become what I’ve called an idea-laundering racket. That is, donors use the tanks they support to dress up various self-serving ideas in respectable-looking scholarly raiment that can be sold to policy-makers as the products of disinterested truth-seeking.

Not that special interests lack the right to bring their concerns to official-dom. But they should be correspondingly obligated to display some transparency – and where they’re determined to be secretive, or to capitalize on the general public’s understandable unwillingness to investigate the information they do need to disclose, the press needs to step in. Sadly, it’s almost unheard of for journalists to link think tank staff quoted in news articles as scholarly experts to the donors that pay them and the agendas they’re pushing.

Indeed, as I’ve documented, there’s a strong tendency on the part even of news organizations that have reported on think tanks’ corporate and other special interest connections to ignore their own findings and permit idea laundering as usual.

One big reason that’s become clearer to me than ever as I’ve been looking into the NAF scandal is the remarkable extent that journalists have formally been part of its operations and structure. The informal connections between journalists and think tankers have always been important, however neglected. Think tank staff and establishment journalists tend to come from the same kinds of fairly affluent backgrounds, have attended the same kinds of schools, graduate with the same kinds of ideas, and – since so many are clustered in Washington, D.C. – live in the same kinds of neighborhoods, send their kids to the same schools, and generally move in the same social circles.

Moreover, it’s been routine for media figures to take sabbaticals at think tanks to write books or just get some relief from the day-to-day grind and study subjects in depth. How realistic is it to expect any of them to turn around and then bite the hand that literally fed them?

The inevitable result is downright scary if you believe (as you should) that a robustly functioning democracy depends in large measure on individuals and institutions playing distinct roles that enable them to function as balancers and watchdogs or simply reinforcers of needed degrees of political and social pluralism. When they interact too closely and especially too systematically, temptations to scratch each other’s backs inevitably mushroom.

But perhaps more subtly, and therefore more importantly, these actors (especially the individuals) just as inevitably begin to know and understand each other too well, to like and admire each other too much, to recognize each other’s wants and needs too willingly, to agree with their legitimacy too thoroughly, to avoid any potential awkwardness or unpleasantness, and to cut them considerable slack when any kinds of trouble arise. And as these patterns emerge and consolidate, the lines separating these actors blur, their independent outlooks start dissolving, and they begin to merge into a genuine establishment (or “swamp,” if you will) with a common mindset, a consequent tendency toward group-think, and an increasing dedication to promoting and protecting its position – which tends to be pretty privileged.

In this vein, NAF’s journalistic connections are truly eye-opening. Its first board chairman was The Atlantic‘s James Fallows. An early president was Steve Coll, formerly with the Washington Post and The New Yorker. One of its board chairs today is National Review Executive Editor Reihan Salam, and he’s joined on this body by Fallows (still with The Atlantic), Steven Rattner (a New York Times columnist and financier), David Brooks (another New York Times columnist), and Washington Post columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria.

NAF also has developed a network of “media partners” that regularly publish its material via syndication deals. These news organizations include The Atlantic, Quartz.com (which is owned by The Atlantic‘s parent company), Slate, National Review (Salam’s publication), and TIME.  

The organization’s governmental connections are extensive as well. Like more and more think tanks, NAF also gets funding from the U.S. and foreign governments and international organizations. These official donors include the U.S. State Department and Agency for International Development, the U.S. government-funded U.S. Institute of Peace, the European Union, the European Commission, Norway’s foreign ministry, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Germany’s Embassy to the United States. (See NAF’s latest Annual Report for documentation of current Board members and donors.)

Again, it’s been encouraging to see NAF take its lumps. But real progress toward breaking up the Washington swamp won’t be made until journalists and policymakers start treating the think tanks with the skepticism they deserve, and if not ignoring the information they generate, at least considering the source much more exactingly before internalizing and further propagating it.

And all RealityChek readers will easily be able to tell whether the NAF scandal brings genuine change. Check your favorite news sources to see whether NAF staff keep appearing as founts of scholarly wisdom – and when they are used, if the reporters or anchors in question tell you whose signing their paychecks, and what stakes these donors have in the issue in question. And look for the same treatment for all the other major think tanks. Even better? Start giving them heck in their comment sections and on social media when they don’t.

Im-Politic: The New York Times Fails the Test of Media Bias on Refugees/Terrorism

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ABC News, Al Qaeda, Cato Institute, FBI, Im-Politic, ISIS, Jeff Sessions, jihadists, media, media bias, Middle East, New America Foundation, Obama, radical Islam, refugees, September 11, terrorism, The New York Times

The New York Times has long proclaimed itself to be the nation’s (and maybe the world’s) newspaper of record, dedicating to publishing “All the news that’s fit to print.” But when it comes to its coverage of the debate over admitting refugees from today’s war-torn Middle East, the paper’s approach seems to be “All the news that fits support for leniency.” For twice within the last week alone, The Times has put out features that completely ignore some of the most important facts that have complicated this controversy.

Last Friday, The Times ran an item emphasizing how long refugees from Syria must wait to enter the country, and how many background checks they face. That’s undoubtedly useful information. But did reporters Haeyoun Park and Larry Buchanan even mention the complete absence of independent corroborating information available to the federal or United Nations officials trying to vet them? No. Did their editors believe that such information was pertinent, and that Times readers deserved to know it? Apparently not.

In fact, there’s no evidence that the reporters consulted with specialists on refugee admissions and border security who harbor major doubts about screening’s sufficiency. Nor is there evidence that the editors requested more diverse sourcing. This conclusion seems justified because the only sources of information listed at the item’s end are agencies of an Obama administration that’s been vigorously, and often belligerently, insisting that the vetting situation is under control, and two non-profit organizations that strongly support this position. So the article unavoidably created the impression that not only are current Syria refugee procedures painstaking, but that they are painstaking enough.

Comparable lapses characterize today’s Times offering on “the origins of Jihadist-inspired attacks in the U.S.” According to this article, “All of the Sept. 11 attackers entered the United States using tourist, business or student visas. Since then, most of the attackers in the United States claiming or appearing to be motivated by extremist Islam were born in this country or were naturalized citizens. None were refugees.”

That’s important to know. But it’s at least as important to know that Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions has released a list of 12 vetted refugees who this year alone have been charged or implicated in federal courts of participation in Jihadist attacks in the United States.

In addition, two years ago, ABC News reported that “The discovery in 2009 of two al Qaeda-Iraq terrorists living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky — who later admitted in court that they’d attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq — prompted the [FBI] to assign hundreds of specialists to an around-the-clock effort aimed at checking its archive of 100,000 improvised explosive devices collected in the war zones, known as IEDs, for other suspected terrorists’ fingerprints.”

ABC then proceeded to quote by name the FBI agent in charge of the bureau’s Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center as stating that “We are currently supporting dozens of current counter-terrorism investigations like that.” Moreover, according to the report (which quotes numerous other FBI agents by name), “Several dozen suspected terrorist bombmakers, including some believed to have targeted American troops, may have mistakenly been allowed to move to the United States as war refugees….”

These disclosures don’t invalidate the article’s claim about the great number and severity of the terrorist threats to Americans that have not come from refugees. But they completely invalidate the clear suggestion that tighter restrictions on refugee admissions, which President Obama has so far adamantly refused to consider, can not meaningfully enhance Americans’ security. Nor did either Times piece mention the live possibility that the refugee threat could grow significantly going forward, as the Middle East experiences ever heavier, bloodier conflict, and as the U.S. and other militaries keep failing to put the kind of pressure on ISIS that kept Al Qaeda on the run for much of the post-September 11 period.

Also revealing – and unacceptable: Similar to the first piece, none of the “security experts” quoted in the piece contradicted the Obama line. The only ones mentioned by name come from the New America Foundation, which has a long record of backing the president’s domestic and foreign policies, and the Cato Institute, which has long favored an Open Borders approach to American immigration policy. How difficult would it have been for Times reporters Sergio Pecanha and K.K. Rebecca Lai to find specialists who disagreed? And again, did their editors even make this request?

The point here isn’t that Mr. Obama and his supporters are indisputably wrong and that their opponents are indisputably right about refugee policy. The point is that the issue is complicated, that important evidence can be cited to support both of the groups of approaches that have recently emerged, and that a responsible newspaper would not have pretended that the case for the status quo is airtight. If the powers-that-be at The Times want to make that case (as is of course their right), they should use the editorial page.