MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Imagine you're the president of a small African country. You have good relations with the U.S. You receive millions of dollars in development assistance every year or you get some sort of preferential access to American markets. Then something happens, maybe political winds shift with the new administration, maybe the Department of Treasury or USAID changes their policy priorities or maybe a congressman from Northern Virginia sponsors a non-binding resolution nobody notices, denouncing the way your country treats religious minorities.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIAll of a sudden, you find yourself on the other side. Small shifts in U.S. government policy have huge implications in other corners of the globe, so governments and political parties turn to diplomats for hire, former Washington officials who know how decisions are made and how to influence policy. We wanted to explore how it works, when it works and whether international actors should have influence on U.S. policymaking. So we invited Herman "Hank" Cohen, principal of Cohen and Woods International. He was an assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1989 to 1993. He now teaches, of course, in U.S. policy in Africa at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Hank Cohen, thank you for joining us.

MR. HERMAN COHENWell, good afternoon. It's a pleasure.

NNAMDIJoining us by telephone is Lanny Davis. He is principal of Lanny J. Davis & Associates. He's a former White House special counsel for President Bill Clinton. Lanny Davis, thank you for joining us.

MR. LANNY DAVISThank you, Kojo. It's a pleasure and a privilege to be on your show. I used to be a regular on some of the predecessors that you had in your great, great position.

NNAMDIAnd I'm glad to have you here, Lanny. There are lots of reasons why a foreign government would want to lobby Washington and we'll be exploring them today. But first, a sense of how this process. Lanny, what got you into this business? How do you get into this business in the first place?

DAVISWell, kind of accidentally. In the case of Equatorial Guinea, which is the pronunciation that Spanish-speaking people use for Equatorial Guinea, it’s a Spanish-speaking country, I was asked by somebody that was doing business in the country about how do you get a country that is in such difficulty in terms of its perceived reputation on human rights and on all of the sensitive political issues that the human rights community is concerned about, how do you get them favorable media and favorable relationships here in the United States?

DAVISAnd my answer was, you don't, unless they are willing to either put facts out that change the perception or change policies that create facts that change the perception. So my only ability as -- I remember, when I worked in the White House, this expression being used. You can't erase facts. You have to deal with them or change them. So in this case, the president of Equatorial Guinea heard me say to him that you need to commit yourself to a campaign in a public commitment to reform many aspects of your government. And certainly in the world of transparency, you need to be more transparent.

NNAMDIA little...

DAVISSo -- and then...

NNAMDI...a little bit -- go ahead, please.

DAVISWell, that's all. That was my advice and he accepted that advice. And before the world's media and Cape town, South Africa, on June 28, he gave a speech committing to these policies. And then, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote him a letter congratulating him for those commitments and offering to help him implement policies. And that's where we are right now.

NNAMDILet me stay with Equatorial Guinea for a little while, Lanny Davis, because as you pointed out, President Obiang has begun to try to rehabilitate his image in the international community. But there has been some setback in that regard. Earlier this year, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative excluded Equatorial Guinea because it failed to meet transparency requirements. Could you respond to that, please?

DAVISYes. It was quite a disappointment. President Obiang is committed, despite that decision, to continue trying to meet the criteria. What was not transparent was the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, where they used the word transparency, but then they were not transparent about explaining why Equatorial Guinea was denied an extension of time. That was the decision. They were over the deadline and they asked for an extension of time. But they allowed 15 or 16 other countries, some of whom have pretty -- a difficult government, so to say, the extension of time. And when we asked, well, why did you make the distinction, we never got an answer.

DAVISSo despite the lack of transparency of the EITI process, I have certainly been a strong supporter of transparency in everything that I've done since my days at the White House, certainly in what I do now. And President Obiang, rather than picking up his marbles and going home and saying, you don't want me to continue, then I won't, issued a statement saying, okay, we'll be back and we'll try to meet your criteria.

NNAMDILanny Davis, principal of Lanny J. Davis & Associates. He's a former White House special counsel for President Bill Clinton. We're talking about lobbying for international clients here in Washington and inviting your calls at 800-433-8850 or you can go to our website, kojoshow, and raise a question there. What do you think? Should foreign governments be able to lobby Washington institutions? Would you draw a distinction between a poor developing country and the wealthy developed one? 800-433-8850.

NNAMDIJoining us in studio is Herman or Hank Cohen. He's the principal of Cohen and Woods International. Hank Cohen, most Americans probably don't know how the sausage is made, so to speak, when it comes to government policy. So if you're coming from a country like Ethiopia, it's a pretty steep learning curve for those governments and it isn't exactly obvious who you'd want to lobby.

COHENYou're exactly right because the U.S. government is so complicated that you have to learn how to navigate. And many of these African embassies have very small staffs. It's not like the French embassy or the Japanese embassy. They can just fan out all over Washington and find what's happening. Some of these embassies have four, five people. So they'll hire someone with a lot of experience like myself and say, look, we have these problems with trade, with foreign aid, with human rights issues. Can you show us how to operate here, where to go?

COHENSometimes the embassy will say, well, we deal with the State Department, that's all we need to do. But that's absolutely wrong. There are so many different centers of power, like various committees in Congress, the Treasury Department that you mentioned earlier, the Agriculture Department. All of these people have a say in what policy is going to be. So they need to know how to navigate and hiring someone who has the experience is usually very helpful to them.

NNAMDIIs there a major distinction, Lanny Davis, between the approaches that can be taken by wealthy nations and poor nations? For wealthy nations like Germany or France, the job of monitoring legislation or keeping contacts with U.S. government officials seem to fall on their diplomatic core. They know how the system works, where the pressure points are, how to engage government. For many poor countries, there's a huge learning curve because they have fewer resources. Is that correct, Lanny Davis?

DAVISIt's correct. And you're right for more reasons than you realize and certainly than I realize. So one of the -- I knew that there were meager Washington resources. Equatorial Guinea was a poor country, then it discovered oil and it became pretty popular, at least among the oil companies. So I thought that there would be at least more facility to get facts and information and -- because of the discovery of oil. But it's just recent that they discovered oil.

DAVISAnd the basics of a communication system just aren't there. There are very few -- everybody has cell phones, but cell phones don't always work. There are very few fax machines. There are very few computers. And when you go to a government ministry, there are very few people. So in order for me to do my job, which I regard more as providing technical advice -- I haven't really done any lobbying in the sense of advocating or trying to persuade people here in America since my approach to President Obiang, is you've got to change the facts on the ground about all of these important issues of democracy and human rights and independent judiciary and reform in order for you able to be effective or you're just wasting your money.

DAVISThe difficulty, Kojo, is as simple as how to get through to a ministry to get information, that there's are so few people there to answer the phone. So the third world environment, that's a greater challenge than, as you just pointed out quite correctly, if you're dealing in France or Germany or the U.K.

NNAMDIThere's another aspect of it, Hank Cohen, that Lanny Davis just brought up in talking about Equatorial Guinea and President Obiang, in that there's some of the people in countries you've both worked for in recent years have had bad reputations in the international community. Some of it admittedly undeserved, but I guess it is what it is. How do you deal with that?

COHENWell, first of all, you have to get the facts. I had an interesting experience about 15 years ago. The president of Mauritania, which is up in Northwest Africa, next to Morocco, and he said, look, we're having a terrible problem. There are lots of people, ex-Mauritanians who are living in the U.S., they're going around writing letters to Congress saying we have slavery, that were selling and buying people. And I said, well, do you? He said, well, you know, we're like the U.S. We have a history of slavery where the Arabs were engaged in slavery with Africans, but we outlawed that 40 years ago and we don't have it anymore. So I said, why are they doing this?

COHENHe says, well, you know, we have a lot of poor people in this country so some of the ex-slaves still live with the ex-masters. There's no place to go. So they're putting out all this propaganda that we still have slavery. So Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey,, who has a lot of ex-Mauritanians in his constituency, he slipped in a rider in an appropriations bill which says, we cannot give any aid to Mauritania until the President of the United States certifies that they have no more slavery. So he said, can you help us with this? He says, you know, you've been here before. You know there's no slavery here.

COHENSo I said, what am I going to do? So I worked with the Mauritanian ambassador here, who himself is a very black person, and he's the ambassador. And I took him around to congressmen and he explained, look, we used to have slavery and it's over. It's over and done with. But still, they were very skeptical. And Congressman Payne of New Jersey was very much into the Africa scene. He says, well, look, okay, let's say you have ex-slaves. What are you doing to help them, help them better their lives, make them literate? So I went back to the president and I repeated this and he says, Okay, okay. I just got $5 million in debt relief from the World Bank. I'll apply it only to literacy programs for the descendants of the ex-slaves and I hope that helps.

COHENBut, still, we couldn't get rid of this legislation. So I went to the State Department and Bureau of Human Rights. I said, look, somebody's got to go over there and investigate. Is this true or not? So they said, you're right. So they send somebody over, spent a couple of months there and came back and said, you know, there's no slavery. There are still some vestiges out in the far east of the country where ex-slaves are living with ex-masters, but there's no buying and selling of people anymore. So they changed the human rights report and said slavery is over. And that solved the problem. So frequently, you have these individual problems based on misconceptions or opposition politicians trying to muddy the waters.

NNAMDIHow do you handle this issue of perception, Lanny Davis? You have been talking about President Obiang. If I asked human wa -- Human Rights Watch, they would probably say he's just a brutal dictator, a bad guy. When it comes to lobbying issues, like it or not, there's almost always a good guy/bad guy conversation. How do you feel when you are -- accept or deal with a client who, or by association, you are seen as the bad guy. How does that perception affect whether you decide to take the client at all? Oops, I think we've lost Lanny Davis.

DAVISNo, no.

NNAMDIOh.

DAVISI missed -- I'm sorry, I missed your opening sentence. I lost the first half of it. So would you repeat that, Kojo?

NNAMDIThe perception that a client is a bad guy, said if I asked Human Rights Watch about President Obiang in Equatorial Guinea, they would say he's a brutal violent dictator. He's a bad guy. And Lanny Davis..

DAVISRight.

NNAMDI...by association is a bad guy, too. But you knew about that perception before you took that client. How does it affect your decision to take a client? And how does it affect how you deal with that client?

DAVISWell, personally, I'm interested in the facts and rhetoric doesn't constitute facts. But to the extent that there are facts that are justifying that conclusion from Human Rights Watch -- and I'm assuming that some of those conclusions are based on actual events and actual facts. I started out with the assumption, with President Obiang, that he had to turn the page and do it in a way that was credible. So that's what I undertook is to try to get his government to get better.

DAVISAnd he agreed for the world's global media in Cape Town, South Africa, in a conference sponsored by Fortune, CNN and Time Magazine, in a public speech, lasting 20 minutes, he committed publicly to a five-point program of reform and transparency, democracy, the return of the Red Cross to do human rights evaluation and monitoring and an independent judiciary in due process, in other words, all the things that Human Rights Watch would want him to commit to, he committed to publicly.

DAVISAnd then, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Prize Winner, just wrote him a letter. It was, at least, publicly encouraging him and saying, I'd like to help you. So I would hope that the human rights community that I respect, consider myself to be a member of, would want to help him get better, rather than simply using the rhetoric of an evil dictator.

NNAMDISo a lot of times when you represent the client, you also have to ask the client to change his or her behavior. Lanny Davis, I know you have to go, but just quickly, earlier -- because we've been talking about governments so far, how about non-governmental organizations? Earlier this year, you appeared -- I heard you on Democracy Now as a spokesperson for the Honduran business community as that country dealt with a major political crisis. How do you deal with non-governmental organizations or political groups that -- in other countries that require you to represent them or ask you to represent them?

DAVISWell, you're really raising a very challenging problem, which you heard on Democracy Now because I was being accused of defending what they were calling a coup when I was not representing the government being accused of a coup. I was representing as a business community that was trying to get a reconciliation in a peaceful outcome so there'd be no bloodshed. And that was the role that you heard probably on that show.

NNAMDIYep.

DAVISI didn't get too much of a chance to offer my perspectives because there was quite a ideological interviewer going on. But the fact is, it's harder if you're taking on the mantle of government representation without actually having it. In that case, I was representing the business community and yet was being asked to defend the government. So in the case of Equatorial Guinea, I only have to repeat, there's a long way to go.

DAVISThe speech that we had with President Obiang giving it, is really what you just said, Kojo. It's an opportunity to turn the page, try to get right with the United States and the world community on all these human rights and important issues. And I -- if I get -- and President Obiang is successful, even if he takes a few steps forward, that's good. And I hope that your listeners would agree that especially a country that has these energy resources that wants the United States to be a trend and it took the initiative to reach out to me, that we ought to be encouraging good steps to continue by this country.

NNAMDILanny Davis, thank you very much for joining us.

DAVISThank you, Kojo, very much. Good luck to you.

NNAMDILanny Davis is a Principal in Lanny J. Davis and Associates. He's a former White House special counsel for Bill Clinton. We're having a conversation about lobbying for international clients in Washington. If you happen to think an international leader happens to be a brutal dictator, do you think that that individual or that government should be represented by a lobbyist here in the United States?

NNAMDIYou can call us 800-433-8850. Or do you think that there are some regimes that are simply too distasteful to be represented? 800-433-8850 or you can go to our website, kojoshow.org. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Hank Cohen. He's a principal in Cohen and Woods International and we'll be joined by Bill Allison. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWe're discussing lobbying for international clients in Washington and taking your calls at 800-433-8850. Joining us studio is Herman or Hank Cohen. He's a principal in Cohen and Woods International. He's an -- was an assistant secretary of state for African Affairs from 1989 to 1993. He now teaches a course on U.S. Policy in Africa at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

NNAMDIHank Cohen, the conversation we were just having with Lanny Davis, Junior has to do with representing governments that are perceived to be dictatorships. And I’m wondering, is a dictatorship in the eyes of a behold -- of the beholder? Sometimes in this country, we have a tendency to project our own politics onto other parts of the world, left leaning identify with left wing leaders, right leaning people identifying with right wing leaders. But when it comes to a continent like Africa, those labels don't necessarily tell us very much, do they?

COHENThat's true. There's a lot of authoritarian governments in the world, including Africa. And they have -- some have their friends, some have their enemies. I remember when I was in government, the republicans hated Angola and Mozambique because they were Marxist. And the right wing countries, they hated Angola, Mozambique. The left wingers hated Mobutu and Congo because he was a ruthless dictator being propped up by the Nixon administration or by the Reagan administration. So this -- but in general, we run into problems with representing foreign governments is gross human rights violations. That is the key problem. It's very, very difficult to accept a job working for a government like that.

NNAMDIAnd is it possible in that situation, as Lanny Davis indicated that he did with President Obiang, that you can advise a client or a prospective client, you've got to change things on the ground before I represent you or you've got to change things on the ground so that I can adequately represent you?

COHENI agree with fully with Lanny Davis. They have to have the political will in order to begin reforms. It doesn't mean that overnight they're suddenly going to become angels. They have to begin a process of reform. I had an experience with Charles Taylor, the famous President of Liberia. He won his election in 1997 after a long civil war, which was very devastating. And the election was considered free and fair and he asked me to come over and say, look, let's have a three-month contract and you'll advise me of what I have to do to get going in the world.

COHENSo I worked out a program with his finance minister to get involved with the World Bank to reform the economy and to reform the political system. I said, look, if you can do this, it'll be the beginning of your return to, you know, normal status. So after three months, I saw that he was not interested so I said good-bye. You know, some companies wouldn’t do that. They'd stay on and on just to collect their money. Usually, these are the big law firms that say, you know, we'll take anybody. But it has to be a process that the client begins and sustains.

NNAMDIJoining us now by telephone is Bill Allison. He is editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation and coordinator of ForeignLobbying.org. Bill Allison, thank you for joining us.

MR. BILL ALLISONThank you for having me on, Kojo.

NNAMDIBill, every few months, we'll end up seeing an article about some dictator in some other part of the world taking out a large contract with a local lobbyist and we'll see a wave of articles about how opaque the system is. But it turns out that this is a relatively strongly regulated system, at least compared to lobbying for domestic clients, isn't it?

ALLISONIt really is. I mean, one of the amazing things about the law that requires foreign agents to lobby, it actually goes back to World War II or pre World War II. The United States government was concerned about influence by agents of the Nazi government trying to influence U.S. policies and so they came up with this way of tracking people who represent foreign governments. And they have to report far more information than any domestic lobbyist.

ALLISONFor example, you can see the names of everybody that a foreign lobbyist is meeting with, like every member of congress, every staffer. They file these reports semi-annually, that's twice a year. And for example, if somebody -- if, you know, when -- you know, Lanny Davis hasn't filed a form yet, but when he does, he'll file something with the U.S. justice department saying every U.S. official he met with. If he's talking to reporters about Equatorial Guinea, he'll have to file information about that.

ALLISONYou'll really be able to see what he's doing. And that's when that -- with domestic law being like, for example, Exxon Mobile or British Petroleum or any of these companies that, you know, spend millions dollars trying to influence the United States government, they will only have to say that they lobbied, for example, the House of Representatives or the Senate or the Department of Energy. They won't list the specific people. They won't say when they were showing up and they won't have to describe the type of things that they were talking about.

NNAMDISo that if Hank Cohen has a conversation with the editorial board of a newspaper in an international lobbying context, he has to report even that?

ALLISONExactly. I mean, one of the things that's really interesting when you go through Foreign Agent Registration Act filings, is that if you search for things like the New York Times -- we actually do a database that's called Foreignlobbying.org. And if you search for things like New York Times or like editorial board meeting or a newspaper column, you'll find instances of lobbyists, you know, giving the talking points to the journalist, trying to represent what their position is.

ALLISONAnd, you know, and it's kind of funny. The -- a lot of these foreign lobbyists or foreign agents are people not from, say, you know, the government relations world or typical lobbyist, but they're actually people from the public relations world and advertising. And they do a tremendous amount for foreign governments trying to burnish their images.

NNAMDIWe're talking, of course, about the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires all lobbyists for foreign powers to disclose their contacts. That means revealing a great deal of detail, Hank Cohen. How does that affect your ability to lobby effectively?

COHENWell, it depends. I didn't find a hindrance at all. I don't mind whose -- who knows who I see. And my -- the way I operate it, I never went to the congress by myself or to see staff members of congress. I always took the local ambassador of that country with me. So they, in effect, were the spokesperson. I would give him ideas, this is what you should say and this is the questions they're going to ask you. You know, that's -- it goes back to my own experience in government. This is what I was doing on the opposite side of the table. So -- but still I had no problem in letting the world know what I was doing. In fact, I felt better about it because people would think, maybe, you're sneaking around and that sort of thing. So let it all be in the open. I didn't care.

NNAMDIOnto the telephones, here is Waco (PH) in Silver Spring, Md. Waco, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

WACOYeah, my question goes to Mr. Herman Cohen about the (unintelligible) Mr. Cohen's group puts him on power 1991. And (unintelligible) is in power, and they becomce more (unintelligible) human rights violation (unintelligible) this government.

NNAMDIDid -- go ahead, please.

WACOWhat do you say about this kind of, you know, relationship...

NNAMDII am not sure I heard the first part. Did you say that Mr. Cohen put him in power?

WACOYeah, Mr. Cohen's group put him in power 1991...

NNAMDIOh, yes. I know he was involved in the negotiations between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

COHENYes, well that's when I was assistant secretary of state...

NNAMDISure.

COHEN...and we were trying to end the war between the rebels, the northern rebels and the Eritrean rebels and the government. And we did some mediation and the war came to an end successfully. They had a transition and the current head of the government there took power at that time and he turned out to be less than democratic. He was authoritarian. So a lot of the Ethiopians outside of Ethiopia, especially in this country, they feel betrayed and they tend to put some of the blame on me. Because if I hadn't done my mediation, he wouldn't of gotten to power.

COHENAnd the Eritreans, of course are totally opposite because of my mediation. They became an independent country. So when I get into a taxi cab now, if the driver's Ethiopian, he gives me a lecture. He says, now, Mr. Cohen, you did a bad thing. And if it's an Eritrean, he says, Mr. Cohen, you can ride free.

NNAMDIReally. Bottom line is that right now, the Ethiopian government is represented in Washington by -- not your firm, but by DLA Piper. And we found that out, Bill, because it’s available at your website. You run a website called ForeignLobbying.org. It's a partnership between Sunlight Foundation and the investigative journalism project, ProPublica. Tell us a little bit about it.

ALLISONWe took a year's worth of lobbying reports. This was going -- this is all for calendar year of 2008. The problem with these forms is -- I mean, they're wonderful. They have a wealth of detail and fantastic information. The problem with them is, is that they're all on paper, some of them even handwritten. And when the justice department puts them online, they put them up as images. You can't search for these documents or find things or add up numbers very easily. So we hired an outside firm to do the data entry, which we carefully reviewed and checked to make sure it was all right.

ALLISONAnd then, we essentially made this database that allows you to search for lobbying firms or foreign governments or members of congress and see who's representing which particular country and how much they're spending. And, you know, oddly enough, Ethiopia, which does not have quite make the top 10 list, is right up there with the amount that they've spent. I mean, number 10 on our list was Equatorial Guinea with 2.4 million and Ethiopia spent, you know, close to -- over $2 million on lobbying. So they are right near the top of the outside of foreign governments using these kinds of U.S. representatives.

NNAMDIAnd when word got out about that, the very large Ethiopian Diaspora here was not very happy. Here is Aroga in Washington, D.C. Aroga, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

AROGAYes, sir, Kojo. Thank you very much. My question is for Mr. Cohen. Mr. Cohen, he destroyed my country -- our country. The first thing is, I just want to -- you know, the background. When the military government was in Ethiopia, nobody like him, but we didn't see a lot of Ethiopian. They leave the country. They were over there.

NNAMDIYou're talking about the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam?

AROGAYes, yes. When he was over there, yes. And I will tell you the difference between Mengistu and this fascist people, now they are ruling our country. But what he did, Mr. Cohen, the first thing is, he did not try to unite my country. He tried to become independent Eritrea, and his (word?) also pushed him out, you know, that they -- Mengistu. After he lived there...

NNAMDIAroga -- Aroga, we already discussed the negotiations that lead to the creation of an independent Eritrea. It's very difficult for me to go back, at this point, and have a discussion or argument about whether or not Eritrea should be independent and exist. I know you are, as many Ethiopians in this region are, very dissatisfied with the government that Ethiopia has in place right now. But Mr. Cohen does not represent that government, and he talked, in fact, about his role in the negotiations some time back. So if there's a new issue you'd like to raise, I'd be happy to discuss it, but I don't want to go back there to that negotiation.

AROGAOh, okay. Just that, you know, if you don't like that one, just -- I will go to the other, you know, another, you know, another way. Look at -- this guy, the new government, the first thing when he, you know, just like, you know, with Cohen, with the help of Mr. Cohen, he came to the United Nation, he told them to give them independence for Eritrea, number one. You know the leader -- he's --

NNAMDII think once again -- once again we are getting into the internal politics of Ethiopia. And Arago, that's not where I want to go at this point. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, we will continue this conversation on lobbying for international clients in Washington and take your calls at 800-433-8850 or you can go to our website, make a comment at kojoshow.org. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWe're talking about lobbying for international clients in Washington with Bill Allison. He joins us by telephone. He is editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation and coordinator of ForeignLobbying.org. Joining us in studio is Herman or Hank Cohen. He's a principal in Cohen and Woods International. He was an assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1989 to 1993. He now teaches a course in U.S. policy in Africa at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Bill Allison, who is doing lobbying work in Washington, international clients that is?

ALLISONI mean, among the big ones--you know, and some of it's really surprising. Countries like -- you know, Morocco spends a tremendous amount of money lobbying. One of their big issues has been Western Sahara, which was one of the last colonial enclaves owned by...

COHENSpain.

ALLISON...or controlled by European countries, controlled by Spain and then it became -- it was supposed to be granted independence. Morocco took part of it. I believe -- I can't remember if it was Algeria took another --

COHENMauritania took...

ALLISONMauritania -- I'm sorry.

COHENYeah.

ALLISONMauritania took the other slice of it. And that has been a huge issue for Morocco. And they've spent, you know, more than 3.3 million lobbying when we looked back in 2008. United Arab Emirates is another country that spent a whole lot. United Kingdom has spent a lot, but they spend it mostly on kind of advertising and less on diplomacy. Iraq and Afghanistan are actually both climbing.

ALLISONTurkey is one of the biggest spenders on lobbying. And one of the things their biggest issues is whenever the House proposes a resolution, talking about Armenia and what happened there, whether or not it was a genocide or not, Turkey springs into action. And it's kind of amazing how many offices they'll hit and how many lobbyists they'll employ doing that. But, you know, just in a general sense, I mean, a lot of times you'll see foreign lobbying being done by countries that -- smaller countries that don't have kind of the diplomatic core that a large country like Germany or France or the United Kingdom has.

ALLISONYou know, when we talked to the Cayman Islands, who hire lobbyists, and they basically said that we don't have an embassy in Washington so, as a result, we hire lobbyists to rent one. We hire people with access to U.S. government officials. And it's a lot cheaper than developing a diplomatic core who would be stationed in Washington for years and years learning the ropes of the capitol. So in that sense, you see a lot of that. You see a lot of countries that are negotiating trade and defense deals, spending money on lobbying.

ALLISONAnd another big one, like when India was considering the nuclear deal, we did a pilot program of that project for this, looking at 2007 when India was talking about the nuclear deal with the United States. They spent a ton of money of lobbyists, you know, going to meet members of Congress, trying to sell the Bush administration's nuclear deal with India to Congress.

NNAMDIYou had an interesting article about Poland, too, Poland lobbying the U.S. to back away from missile defense.

ALLISONThat was -- that was another report that we did, yeah. They -- that Poland was actually spending on money on that. I think one of the most interesting stories I've heard lately comes with something called vulture funds, where -- and this is -- you know, there's a company called Kensington International. It's based in the Cayman Islands. And what they'll do is -- you know, when you think about a lot of the third-world countries, and particularly when you think about -- and developing countries like in Africa and, you know, say Congo, which had, you know, tremendous problems with corruption under the Mobutu regime, they borrowed a ton of money which just kind of disappeared.

ALLISONThey defaulted on a lot of the debt. And what a company like Kensington International does is they buy this debt on the open market for pennies on the dollars and then they go to court against the current government and attempt to force them to pay or make good on the previous regime's debt. And Congo hired a bunch of lobbyists to go to the United States and basically try to fight against these vulture funds from -- you know, obviously there's a problem with the, you know, the creditors are out of their money.

ALLISONThere's, you know, the people in the countries didn't benefit from the loans, but you end up kind of penalizing them twice. If they didn't get the benefit of the first round of loans, you know, that money was either, you know, wasted or lost through corruption or for whatever else, and then they're going to have to pay a second time for it, you know. So there's no development to kind of support those kinds of loans and so the countries are being penalized a second time. So the vulture fund is like one of the really interesting things where foreign lobbyists have gotten very involved in trying to, you know, limit what courts are able to do in terms of these kinds of, you know, sovereign debt.

COHENAnd they got some sympathy on the hill also because these vulture funds are sort of preying on third-world countries. So some congressmen were on the side of the countries.

ALLISONYeah, absolutely.

NNAMDIOnto Martin in Silver Spring, Md. Martin, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. Hi Martin, are you there?

MARTINYes, Kojo. I am here.

NNAMDIGo right ahead, please.

MARTINYes. The mention about the extractive mines industry pay as you -- publish as you pay figures that you publish when you receive money from the mineral resources that you have, one of your interviewers, they said that Equatorial -- he cited Equatorial Guinea. And Equatorial Guinea happens to be one of these countries that voluntarily sign up for the pay -- publish as you pay -- pay as you publish, which is non-government organization that tries to help transparency.

MARTINSo my question is, I find it paradoxical that somebody would refuse to publish what he receives in terms of revenue for natural resources. At the same time, they spend huge amounts of money to come and pay lobbies to whitewash their image. I don't understand the idea behind that.

NNAMDILanny Davis, who represents Equatorial Guinea, as he says it's called, is not here with us anymore, Martin. But the argument he made is that the extractive industries transparency initiative refused to reveal the reasons why it excluded Equatorial Guinea because it failed to meet transparency requirements. It said it did not specify what transparency requirements Equatorial Guinea did not make. You seem to know what those transparency requirements were.

MARTINYes. Yes. Kojo, I happen to have done some work on this issue a couple of years ago when I was in Cameroon. And the basic requirement for you as a signatory to the extractive minds initiative is to publish the amount of money that you received from the huge amount of resources -- petroleum resources. So the only thing that (unintelligible) and I want to add (unintelligible) of Cameroon, which is my country, can do and fall into trouble with this organization, is not to publish what they receive.

NNAMDIOkay.

COHENNo. Actually, publish...

NNAMDIHere is Hank Cohen.

COHEN...publish what you pay is just the opposite. They're asking the companies that pay these governments for the resources, they should publish the money they're paying to the government. So what happens is, many governments will tell these companies you are forbidden from publishing this information. So this is a violation of the extractive industry agreement. This is really the problem. So no company that gives money to Angola, for example, will publish it.

COHENHowever, I'd like to point out that Nigeria, which is a big oil producer, they have successfully transitioned into total transparency. So you can read in any Nigerian newspaper, any day, how much money they're making from sale of oil.

NNAMDIAnd when we talk about non-state agencies -- and Martin, thank you very much for your call, I guess somebody like Martin or others would say, if you have a government like Mr. Obiang's or oil companies on one side and on the other hand you have advocacy organizations that presumably cannot afford lobbyists, that it's not a fair fight.

COHENWell, I wouldn't say that. I think the advocacy organizations do very, very well. In fact, sometimes they're much stronger -- they're much stronger than lobbyists. Morocco was mentioned on the Western Sahara issue. They've spent millions on lobbyists, but yet the Western Sahara advocates, who say this is a colonialized country and they should have freedom and all that, they're doing much better. There's a great deal more sympathy for freedom for Western Sahara, and get them out of Morocco, than Morocco has in this country.

NNAMDIYou know, last year the government of Uganda was the subject of international condemnation after a bill was introduced and passed that would make homosexuality a crime punishable by death. One of the reasons we found this intriguing is because what was last known at the time, was that links between religious leaders in this country and politicians and religious figures in Uganda played a role in this. I bring it up because in some instances, non-state actors are as important or even arguably more important when it comes to laws that get passed both here and abroad. Care to comment, Bill Allison?

ALLISONObviously, you know, outside groups have a tremendous amount of influence. I mean, I think the one thing that I'd say if we could just return to the inside game though, I mean, one of the things that I think is so interesting about foreign lobbying is how many of these folks are people who are former government officials, used to the work for the U.S. government, have gone through the revolving door and then, you know, rely on their old contacts as lobbyists and as, you know, foreign agents to facilitate these meetings, to put influence on the U.S. government.

ALLISONI mean, that's like a hugely important part of these -- important aspect of foreign lobbying and something that we talk about a lot in our database. I mean, you look at -- you've got, you know, former majority leader -- you've got people like Richard Gephardt. You've got somebody who was -- and Robert Livingston, head of the House Appropriations Committee and later was -- for a few days, was speaker of the house designate for the Republicans after Newt Gingrich stepped down -- before he had to step down.

ALLISONYou know, you've got like a tremendous number of high-ranking folks, you know. Former presidential candidates like Bob Dole have been registered as foreign lobbyists. So clearly these are people with inside influence. And when you compare that to, like, a lot of the outside groups and -- you know, we've been following them very closely in the U.S. Election Campaign at reporting.SunlightFoundation.com about what they're spending and how they influence -- yeah.

ALLISONThey can be tremendously influential and they can also avail themselves of insiders. A lot of these, you know, outsider groups are headed by the likes of Carl Rove, the former Bush administration political guru. So, you know, so clearly there's a little bit of both. There's some of these, you know, outside grass roots organizations or, in some cases, astro turf organizations and then there's the insiders who know how to work the corridors of power.

ALLISONOne of the nice things about the FARA database is you can kind of track both types of organizations that we do on ForeignLobbying.org and really see -- which will be updated, incidentally, next week -- you can really how these things play out and who's being contacted and what different strategies they're using to influence U.S. public opinion.

NNAMDIThank you very much. Onto the telephones. Here is Tarek in Chantilly, Va. Tarek, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

TAREKGood afternoon, gentleman. My question is did the Egyptian government do any lobbyists in Washington to replace President Mubarek, which is I am one of the big supporter for his son to take over. I wonder if they do anything for supporting Gamal to take over after his dad.

NNAMDIDo you have any information at all, Bill Allison, on the Egyptian government and...

ALLISONThey're one of the top spenders. And actually, one of the things that they're really looking at is, I mean, trying to delink military support from human rights issues. They've -- there was, you know, one meeting that was set up with -- between people from the Egyptian Ministry of Defense by the Leffler Group (sic) and some others, which was, you know, one of the big lobbying -- or insider lobbying firms in town and Egyptian defense officials and, you know, U.S. government military officials to talk about arms purchases.

ALLISONAnd what was funny was that there were actually two lobbying firms facilitating this meeting and they represented firms like Lockheed Martin and General Electric and some others that were selling, you know, the actual goods to them. So you kind of have this insiderism there. But yeah, Ethiopia -- or, I'm sorry, Egypt is one of the bigger spenders...

NNAMDIHere...

ALLISON...when we looked at this back in -- in 2008, they made our top ten list.

NNAMDIAnd here is Esa in Baltimore, Md. Esa, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

ESAYes. My question for Bill is, when is he going to put AIPAC on his list and if it's on there and has he ever seen "The Hidden Truth About Palestine"? He can YouTube this and your listeners could also. Just to tell your viewers on what I'm talking about here, AIPAC is...

NNAMDIThe American Israeli Public Affairs committee. Bill Allison, any information on AIPAC?

ALLISONAbsolutely, although not in the foreign lobbying database. AIPAC is for -- I mean, way back in the 1960s, there was in effort to get AIPAC to register as a foreign agent. They don't -- I mean, they -- my understanding is that -- well, first of all, the Justice Department has not gone after AIPAC and has not tried to force them to register. It may be because their sources of funding are primarily in the United States so they don't necessarily represent a foreign government. They do -- I mean, you know, as a political action committee, they're only able to raise money from -- you know, that part of the organization is only able to raise money from U.S. donors.

ALLISONAlthough, obviously, they have -- you know, AIPAC is a complicated organization. They can take -- if I'm not mistaken, I think they have C4s and C3s and other kinds of things as well as a pack so they can -- so basically we don't who all their donors are, but they have never had to register as a foreign agent so they're not in our database. I certainly think that --you know, I mean, what the Sunlight Foundation would advocate for is that any group like AIPAC or General Motors or, you know, whoever it happens to be, should have to provide the same level of detail that people provide on the Foreign Agent Registration Act, under that, you know, for their lobbying activities.

ALLISONWe would like to see a lot more transparency from AIPAC and from a lot of other organizations as well.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, Esa. We're just about out of time, Hank Cohen. But this past April, Jamaica erupted in violence when authorities in that country moved to arrest a drug kingpin. For months, the U.S. had demanded the arrest for extradition to New York, but the Jamaican government dragged its feet. It soon emerged that someone in Jamaica had paid a Washington lobbyist to try to get the Obama administration to ease off the pressure. It didn't quite work out.

COHENYeah. Well, it became an issue of drugs or this guy in Jamaica who was a very popular guy. He was helping a lot of poor people with his drug money. So the Jamaican government said, why go against this fellow? It's bad politics. But eventually, the power of the United States over Jamaica was much too strong.

NNAMDIPrevailed. Herman Hank Cohen is a principal in Cohen and Woods International. He was an assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1989 to 1993. He teaches a course in U.S. policy in Africa Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Hank Cohen, thank you for joining us.

COHENYou're very welcome.

NNAMDIBill Allison is editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation and coordinator of ForeignLobbying.org. Bill Allison, thank you for joining us.

ALLISONThank you very much.

NNAMDI"The Kojo Nnamdi Show" is produced by Diane Vogel, Brendan Sweeney, Tara Boyle, Michael Martinez and Ingalisa Schrobsdorff. Diane Vogel is the managing producer. Our engineer today, Andrew Chadwick. Dorie Anisman has been on the phones. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.