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Allawi Uses Loophole to Keep Backers Secret
It's official: Ayad Allawi is no longer represented by Barbour Griffith & Rogers, the White House-connected lobbying firm he retained to sell the U.S. government on his "parliamentary coup" to become Iraq's next prime minister. Well, sort of.
Allawi doesn't want to disclose who's paying BGR's $300,000 fee. But since Allawi admitted on CNN that he's not paying the bill himself, BGR has to either disclose to the Justice Department which "agent of a foreign principal" it receives money from or violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Disclosure, however, is for amateurs.
Yesterday, BGR took an anticipated third option: changing its filing with DoJ so that BGR no longer represents Allawi, but rather his political party, the Iraqi National Accord. Christina Davidson reports for IraqSlogger (sub. req.) that since political parties aren't required to disclose their sources of funding under FARA, "BGR has managed to pull an easy sidestep in order to maintain the anonymity of Allawi's backer."
Josh
Zachary
Naive Query: Isn't the Iraqi National Accord funded primarily by our very own CIA? If so, why can't the DOJ demand further information? Exactly what is the law on this?
Isn't this group/party/whatever similar to the Iraqi National Congress set up by us for Chalabi?
The mind reels! I'm getting a headache.
September 5, 2007 7:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why can't the DOJ demand info? Why would it want to, given its connections to the Barbour firm, the Bush White House, blah, blah, blah.
September 5, 2007 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where does it say in FARA that political parties are excluded? I am looking right now. The first thing I've found is from form OMB_1105_0001, FARA Registration Statement.
The term ''foreign principal'' includes a foreign government, foreign political party, foreign organization, foreign individual and, for the purpose of registration, an organization or an
individual any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign government, foreign political party,
foreign organization or foreign individual.
September 5, 2007 8:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
§ 611. As used in and for the purposes of this subchapter--
(a) The term "person" includes an individual, partnership, association, corporation, organization, or any other combination of individuals;
(b) The term "foreign principal" includes--
(1) a government of a foreign country and a foreign political party;
...
(The exception)
(d) The term "agent of a foreign principal" does not include any news or press service or association organized under the laws of the United States or of any State or other place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, or any newspaper, magazine, periodical, or other publication for which there is on file with the United States Postal Service information in compliance with section 3611 of Title 39, published in the United States, solely by virtue of any bona fide news or journalistic activities, including the solicitation or acceptance of advertisements, subscriptions, or other compensation therefor, so long as it is at least 80 per centum beneficially owned by, and its officers and directors, if any, are citizens of the United States, and such news or press service or association, newspaper, magazine, periodical, or other publication, is not owned, directed, supervised, controlled, subsidized, or financed, and none of its policies are determined by any foreign principal defined in subsection (b) of this section, or by any agent of a foreign principal required to register under this subchapter;
...
§ 612.(a) No person shall act as an agent of a foreign principal unless he has filed with the Attorney General a true and complete registration statement and supplements thereto as required by subsections (a) and (b) of this section or unless he is exempt from registration under the provisions of this subchapter. Except as hereinafter provided, every person who becomes an agent of a foreign principal shall, within ten days thereafter, file with the Attorney General, in duplicate, a registration statement, under oath on a form prescribed by the Attorney General.
...
The registration statement shall include the following, which shall be regarded as material for the purposes of this subchapter:
...
(5) The nature and amount of contributions, income, money, or thing of value, if any, that the registrant has received within the preceding sixty days from each such foreign principal, either as compensation or for disbursement or otherwise, and the form and time of each such payment and from whom received;
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fara/links/indx-act.html#611b
There is no loophole.
September 5, 2007 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even if future payments are made by the Iraqi National Accord BGR is still required to disclose the source of the funds they have already received.
September 5, 2007 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fuzz would appear to be correct, a straight legal regarding would appear to not show a loophole.
September 5, 2007 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fuzz would appear to be correct, a straight legal regarding would appear to not show a loophole.
September 5, 2007 9:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gee, if that's definition under FARA, we'd better get the Attorney General right on that.
Oops, maybe the Deputy. Or shall I say the acting Deputy. And he can act as the AG, too.
And then the acting Associate AG can act as Deputy, or maybe they can take turns as AG. They can have a special hat they wear when they're the AG. I always do that when I'm playacting.
Or maybe the Solicitor General can take care of it. Oh yeah, Clement isn't exactly the right one, either. He doesn't exactly care about what's really legal, does he?
Lucky Allawi, lucky BGR. Unlucky Iraqis. No matter what.
September 5, 2007 10:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Haven't you heard?
Laws stopped being relevant on Jan 20, 2001.
September 6, 2007 12:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
So is this the plan? Do they intend to just brazenly invent a non-existent "loophole"?
Can we get some media organization to sue?
September 6, 2007 12:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Remember...these are the folks the Senate sends subponeas to and they say "No!" and nothing happens. These are the folks who say the Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply to them. These are the folks who say they don't torture. These are the folks who say the Vice President's office is not part of the Executive Branch. These are the folks who say the President doesn't have to obey any parts of any laws passed by Congress he doesn't agree with.
And you ask if they "intend to just brazenly invent a non-existent 'loophole'?"
Yes....this has been another simple answers to simple questions.
The code, appropriately, is sail
September 6, 2007 1:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
FUZZ--YOU ROCK!!!
September 6, 2007 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would guess that one of the major reason BG&R no longer represents Allawi but his "political party" instead is the fact that TPM Muck shined its journalistic flashlight into this dark corner of cockroaches. When the lights came on, the cucurachas moved to another dark corner. Just keep shining that little light around the room, Spencer, and sooner or later those little creatures will run away. Just speculating here, but it is likely that BG&R will resign the account five minutes before we find out that Allawi is using U.S tax dollars to fund both his party and his PR firm. Good work, TPM.
September 6, 2007 5:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Even if foreign political parties were excluded, BGR should have had to identify the original funds provider before the change!
Crescit eundo
September 7, 2007 7:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Didn't we just know that the slime, H. Barbour, would get around the spirit of the law here. It is amazing the lengths this crew in power now will go to in order to skirt the law. No doubt history will label this era of our history as the MOST corrupt in this century even though there are so many years to surpass the shady manipulations of this crew. I never thought I would look at Bill Clinton as being absolutely saintly compared with this crowd. Actually I was a Republican before this Bush Mafia came to power.
September 8, 2007 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
PJ- I doubt anyone will come back and read this thread, but thank you so much. That really means a lot to me after being branded a troll on this site and having people follow me around and rate all my comments zero just because I made them.
I care deeply about keeping the conversation truthful, even if that means disagreeing with folks from time to time.
As a bit of extra-extra-fun trivia for anyone who happens to come back and read this, I have gotten toasty drinking Ed Rogers' bourbon out of a BGR tumbler while wearing one of his Air Force One bathrobes. I also own a large stuffed elephant that was a gift from Haley Barbour to Haley Rogers, Ed's son.
September 9, 2007 2:20 AM | Reply | Permalink