Foreign Agents…….

Media Notes

by Janet Donovan | on September 20th, 2024 |

Photo credit: Courtesy of the author

Washington hostess Juleanna Glover turned her chic Kalorama home into the scene of an unforgettable soirée celebrating Casey Michel’s latest book, Foreign Agents. And no, the excitement wasn’t all about diplomatic drama—this was a high-octane dive into the sometimes confusing world of lobbying.

Described on Amazon this way: A stunning investigation and indictment of a segment of the United States’ foreign lobbying industry, and the threat to end democracy. They now include an increasing number of Americans elsewhere: in law firms and consultancies, among PR specialists and former lawmakers and even within think tanks and universities. In Foreign Agents, Casey Michel shines a light on these foreign lobbyists as some of them―after decades of installing dictators and corrupting American policy―embark on their next mission: to end America’s democratic experiment, once and for all.

So what brought Michel to the world of foreign agents? We paraphrase Casey’s response this way. Michel’s path into the world of foreign agents began after graduating university in 2010. He joined the Peace Corps and was stationed in Kazakhstan, despite his initial request to be placed in the South Pacific. This experience exposed him to life under a dictatorship and how such regimes manipulate their image and influence policies abroad. Following his Peace Corps service, he pursued a graduate degree in Russian studies at Columbia University, which proved more relevant than he anticipated. Casey attributes his current role and experiences to this unconventional journey.

Throwback to the Peace Corps

To better understand lobbying, we asked Michel to explain what a lobbyist does and how they go about it, using simple, everyday language.

“So there are a few kind of big things that lobbyists do. On the one hand, they organize meetings and sit down conversations with legislators and with congressional staff members, sometimes even members of the White House itself, and that way they can have direct access to advocating for whatever the cause is that they want to be advocating for. Maybe it’s the interest of a private company or a private individual, or maybe it’s something as broad as environmental regulations or healthcare reform – really, any topic or any entity under the sun you can lobby on behalf of. Again, these are public relations firms. These are law firms. These are consultancies. You could even extend it these days to those in the think tank community. Certainly, former members of Congress, former members of the White House, anyone and everyone can be hired as a lobbyist in the United States of America to go to Washington DC to have these kinds of meetings on behalf of their clients or certainly on behalf of the causers they’re advocating for.

That’s kind of one bucket that lobbying falls into. Another targets not the legislators themselves, but members of the media. So think things like media campaigns, sending talking points to journalists, organizing travel junkets for journalists or for editors, again, all on behalf of their clients in order to expose these journalists, whether in the print space or in the television space, to why it is they should be writing positive news about their clients. Again, whether they be causes or specific firms or specific individuals themselves, these are media campaigns. That’s the other kind of big bucket that these things fall into that these lobbyists work on. Those are the two big avenues. On the one hand, it’s actually organizing meetings with legislators themselves, or it is organizing media campaigns to try to improve the image of the clients that they’re working on. Now, there’s a range of other smaller things that they do, more particular things that they do, but those are the two kind of big buckets that lobbyists work and operate in the 21st century.”

Photo credit: Creative Commons

So basically lobbyists, legislators, PR folks and media can be bought. Is that what you are saying?

“They can open doors.They have certainly opened their doors time, and again. Lobbyists come with far deeper pockets than I think the rest of us have access to and if they are able to hire the right people for the right price, they can find any open door in Washington that they want. Now, of course, that doesn’t mean that’s necessarily a guarantee that they’ll get the legislation passed that they want or that they will even necessarily find the positive media coverage that they want. But that is certainly a significant step forward for achieving the goals that they have in mind.

Legally speaking, we allow it because in the first amendment of the American constitution, right next to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press, you also have one of these overlooked freedoms, which is the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, which is just kind of a convoluted way of saying any American can go lobby their own legislator or any legislator that they want on behalf of whatever cause is dear to their heart. So you or any of our other American family members or friends can go to their local legislator, their local house rep or senator, or even directly to the White House to advocate for, again, whatever cause they find dear.

The reason that I wrote the book in the first place is because most Americans simply aren’t aware that this industry even exists in the first place, let alone how significantly it has grown, let alone how big it is now.”