Bill Berkowitz
January 4, 2006

The longest yarn: A history of pay to play at right wing think tanks

Revelations that Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bought op-ed pieces from fellows at right wing think tanks should unleash an investigation into two decades of so-called research paid for by conservative philanthropies

"Despite its centrality to political debate, economic research is a very low-budget affair. The entire annual economics budget at the National Science foundation is less than $20 million. What this means is that even a handful of wealthy cranks can support an impressive-looking array of think tanks, research institutes, foundations, and so on devoted to promoting an economic doctrine they like...The economists these institutions can attract are not exactly the best and the brightest...But who needs brilliant, or even competent, researchers when you already know all the answers?" -- Paul Krugman, Slate, August 15, 1996)

Several decades ago, when veteran radio news reporter Scoop Nisker closed out his broadcasts by telling his audience that if they didn't like the news they should "go out and make some of your own," little did he imagine that the Bush Administration, and a host of its surrogates, would become masters of that domain.

Earlier this year, the public was startled to discover that the Bush Administration had been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to Black conservative columnist and radio and television talk show host Armstrong Williams to flak for the "No Child Left Behind Act." Those revelations not only called into question the columns and commentaries Williams had produced around Bush's education legislative centerpiece, it also rendered Williams' entire body of work suspect.

At the end of last month, the New York Times revealed that the Pentagon had been paying Iraqi newspapers to publish "good news" stories about the situation in country; stories that had been generated by the Pentagon itself.

Political analyst and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan argued, during a session on MSNBC's Hardball, that "deception, misinformation, disinformation, deceit, [and] propaganda" in times of war was acceptable.

Buchanan pointed out that "the Pentagon and our guys over there have got every right to have good news put into the media and get to the people of Iraq, even if it's got to be planted or bought."

On Friday, December 16, another branch from the "pay to play" tree of journalism came crashing to earth.

Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the fiercely libertarian Cato Institute, resigned after BusinessWeek Online revealed that he had been paid ample chunks of change by indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff to produce columns in support of issues of interest to Abramoff and his clients. Many of these columns were related to Indian gambling, and "extol[ing] the virtues of the free-market system" particularly in the Northern Mariana Islands, the New York Times reported. .

After the Business Week story appeared, Bandow resigned from the Cato Institute, and the Copley News Service -- which syndicated his columns -- suspended him, pending further investigation.

(In a recent piece in the New York Times, Philip Shenon described Jack Abramoff as "a major Republican Party fundraiser" who is the "focus of a federal corruption investigation in Washington involving gifts to lawmakers." Abramoff, Shenon wrote, is known to be among the "most generous lobbyists" with an uncanny ability to direct "political contributions to lawmakers who could help his clients.")

Bandow apparently accepted as much as $2000 an article, for writing some 12 to 24 Abramoff-inspired pieces over a several year period beginning in the mid 1990s, BusinessWeek Online reported.

The story also named Peter Ferrara, of the Lewisville, Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation. Ferrara who admitted to receiving money from Abramoff, was at first quite cavalier about the situation: "I do it all the time," he said. "I've done that in the past and I'll do it in the future."

In its piece, BusinessWeek Online reported that Tom Giovanetti, the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), said that he saw nothing wrong with "pay for play" op eds.

Within days both Ferrara and Giovanetti backtracked. In a press release dated December 19, Giovanetti claimed that he had been quoted out of context, arguing that the Institute "has never engaged in what is being called 'pay for play' op/eds." Giovanetti added "to the best of our knowledge, no op/ed ever written on an IPI byline was written either directly or indirectly as a result of lobbyist influence or payment."

Ferrara also tried to clarify his position in an IPI official press release also dated December 19:

For many years, I have had the honor of having my writing widely published on a variety of public policy issues. My writing has always reflected my free market and socially conservative views and philosophy, without exception. I have not nor would I ever take financial support to write anything that I did not think was good public policy or that was against my economic or social philosophy.

I follow an unqualified policy of not taking money from lobbyists for op-eds, which I established on my own years ago. I rely solely on financing from my foundation employers for financial support.

I am glad to ask people to contribute to my work if they agree with what I have been writing for years now and want to support it. That is what I was referring to in the quote in this regard in the BusinessWeek Online article.

If I were paid by a newspaper or a syndicator to write a regular column, I could not possibly take money from any outside party for that work, as that would betray the newspaper or syndicator employing me. As a freelance writer who submits individual articles to publications, I must honestly follow the disclosure policies of those publications. These are the rules I follow.

I have already acknowledged that, years ago, Jack Abramoff was among those who provided occasional financial support for my work. Any crimes or unethical practices of his do not make anyone he raised money for or contributed to in the past unethical. I have not dealt with or received any contributions in any form from Abramoff for years now.

With specific regard to the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), a think tank with which I am affiliated, I have never written anything under an IPI byline that was financially supported or otherwise motivated by anyone other than IPI.

Since the 1980s, the political landscape has become thick with conservative and libertarian think tanks. For a time, it seemed that every other week or so, yet another press release announced the establishment of a new think tank or public policy institute. During this period, more than 100 such organizations were founded, staffed and funded. Some appeared to be fly-by-night operations run by one person or by a skeleton staff whose sole purpose was to issue canned press releases on the public policy issue of the day. Other organizations appeared to engage in original research and received a substantial amount of funding support from conservative philanthropies and foundations.

Special studies, op-ed pieces, and so-called "highly documented" studies, covering a broad swath of conservative/free market issues cascaded forth from these institutions. Similar to the Bush Administration's faith-based initiative, where little attention has been paid to discovering whether these groups actually serve the public better than government agencies, much of the information generated by these think tanks was accepted without much investigation into the substance of their assertions. It appeared that the sheer volume of the material that was generated -- especially when similar-conclusions came from different groups -- was enough for editorial writers, reporters, op-ed writers and radio talk show hosts to spread their findings as gospel.

"Paying to play" is not a new phenomenon, nor I suspect, limited to right wing think tanks. However, over the past two decades, conservative philanthropists and foundations have spent their money wisely.

In the introduction to its 1996 report titled Buying a Movement: Right Wing Foundations and American Politics, People for the American Way pointed out that

"Each year, conservative foundations channel millions of dollars into a broad range of conservative political organizations. Their recipients range from multimillion-dollar national think tanks to state policy centers, universities, conservative journals, magazines and student publications, right-wing television networks and radio programs, and community projects. The issue work funded by these conservative givers ranges from military and fiscal policy to education funding to health and welfare program analysis to environmental deregulation to libertarian workplace policy, and more."

"Conservative foundations have overt political and ideological agendas and invest comprehensively to promote a given issue on every front. In the words of the director of one foundation, the right understands that government policies are based on information from "a conveyer belt from thinkers, academics and activists," and provides funding accordingly."

"Indeed, the foundations are supporting the work at every station on the conveyer belt. They fund national conservative "think tanks" to package and repackage conservative issue positions; state think tanks to lend a local flair to these issues; national political groups to lobby in Washington and shape national media coverage; state-based groups to do the same in the states; grassroots organizations to stir up local activism; national and state media to report, interpret and amplify these activities; scholars to record the history of such activities and push the intellectual boundaries of the issues; graduate students to form the next wave of scholarship and movement leadership; and college newspapers to shape the milieu in which America's next generation of political leaders comes to their political awakening."

Uncovering the ties -- and the amounts of money involved--between researchers and op-eders at right wing think tanks and industry lobbying groups and /or their powerful political patrons is no easy task. As the New York Times' Philip Shenon recently noted, "Executives in the public relations and lobbying industries say that the hiring of outside commentators to promote special interests - typically by writing newspaper opinion articles or in radio and television interviews - does happen, although it is impossible to monitor since the payments do not have to be disclosed and can be disguised as speaking fees and other compensation."

Nevertheless, on Friday, December 23, Shenon reported that at least two other researchers at the Institute for Policy Innovation -- founded by former Texas Republican Congressman Dick Armey in 1987 -- "had relationships with industry trade groups.

On October 25, IPI's Susan Finston wrote an opinion piece for The Financial Times in which "she called for patent protection in poor countries for drugs and biotechnology products." Last month Finston also penned a column that appeared in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal which "called for efforts to block developing nations from violating patents on AIDS medicines and other drugs," Shenon reported.

In both cases she was identified as a "research associate" at IPI. However, according to Shenon, "Neither mentioned that, as recently as August [she] was registered as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry's trade group. Nor was there mention of her work this fall in creating the American Bioindustry Alliance, a group underwritten largely by drug companies."

He also pointed out that Merrill Matthews Jr.writes for major newspapers under the IPI banner, advocating policies promoted by the insurance industry, even though he is a registered lobbyist for a separate group backed by the insurance giants.

Given his previous comments on the matter, it was not surprising to read that the president of IPI told Shenon "Lobbying is not a four-letter word."

Both Finston and Matthews deny any wrongdoing.

While the reputations of Doug Bandow and Peter Ferrara have been severely damaged by the BusinessWeek Online revelations, investigations into the buying and selling of columnists probably will not end with these two cases

Just as the incompetence of former FEMA head Michael Brown led enterprising reporters to look into a host of Bush Administration appointments whose qualifications are suspect, "pay to play" revelations could shed some needed light on a much larger question; the honesty and ethics of the "research" that has been produced by right wing think tanks over the past two decades.