How Middle Eastern Powers Fund Washington's Think Tanks

The following article by Ben Freeman, Director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy and author of The Foreign Policy Auction, is very helpful. But I disagree with his suggestions for dealing with the think tanks, which only create a cat-and-mouse game that takes too much time, personnel, and taxpayer money to police.

In my view, the think tanks, a.k.a. policy institutes, are thinly-disguised lobbying firms but without having to register as lobbyists. It's past time to upgrade U.S. law in that regard. 

Wouldn't this be unfair to the policy institutes that aren't mouthpieces for factions in Congress in bed with foreign governments?  What policy institutes would those be?  

This isn't just about the influence wielded by Middle Eastern governments. It's the entire U.S. legislative-White House nexus that has corrupted what were supposed to be academic institutions. I think the system is rotted to the core. 

From Ben Freeman writing for Tomdispatch, published February 21, Following the Foreign Policy Money Trail in Washington.

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Those who run Washington generally trust the inhabitants of think tanks of their political bent to provide the intellectual foundations upon which much of public policy is built. At least in some cases, however, that trust couldn’t be more deeply misplaced, since cornerstones of the ever-expanding think-tank universe turn out to be for sale.

Every year foreign governments pour tens of millions of dollars into those very institutions and, though many think tanks are tax-exempt non-profits, such donations often turn out to be anything but charitable gifts. Foreign contributions generally come with critically important strings attached -- usually a favorable stance toward that country in whatever influential work the think tanks are doing.

In other words, those experts you regularly read or see on [TV], whose scholarship and advice Washington’s politicians and other officials often use, are in some cases being paid, directly or indirectly, by the very countries on which they are offering advice and analysis. And here’s the catch: they can do so without ever having to tell you about it.

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