GMF Trying to Make Sure Georgia Stays United With West

Here is more from Axios reporter Dave Lawler:

I'm coming to you from the Republic of Georgia, where I spent the past four days as part of a German Marshall Fund delegation observing Sunday's presidential election and meeting with the leading candidates, the current president, foreign minister, speaker of parliament, and leaders in civil society, the clergy and business. What I saw and heard here will comprise the top half of today's edition.

The German Marshall Fund (GMF) recently held an event entitled "Keeping Georgia's Euroatlantic Future on Track."  GMF Senior Fellow Laura Rosenberger recently spoke about foreign election interference.

Last year, GMF, in partnership with the government of Georgia and the Heritage Foundation, held a conference marking the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the US and Georgia.

In 2012, GMF, in partnership with the Center for Independent Journalism from Romania, organized a study tour to Georgia prior to elections there.

Funding for GMF comes from a number of domestic and foreign entities, including USAID, US State Department, US Defense Department, US Mission to the European Union, NATO, the European Commission, Airbus, BP, Boeing, Daimler, Google, Exxon, Microsoft, and the governments of Germany, Sweden, Norway, Taiwan, Finland, Latvia, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

In related GMF news, Karen Kornbluh will join the think tank as director of its new technology policy program and senior fellow.  She most recently was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and served as policy director to Barack Obama in the Senate and was ambassador to the OECD in the Obama Administration.

Also, GMF and Energy Cities just launched an 18-month transatlantic project addressing the role of cities in driving the energy transition.

Atlantic Council Working With Facebook to Fight Election Disinformation

Here is more from an Atlantic Council press release:

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (@DFRLab) today announced a partnership with Facebook to independently monitor disinformation and other vulnerabilities in elections around the world. The effort is part of an initiative to help provide credible research about the role of social media in elections, as well as democracy more generally. 

The Atlantic Council and Facebook’s partnership will promote and supplement @DFRLab’s existing #ElectionWatch efforts and allow for greater capacity building with journalists and civil society to incorporate similar methods into their own work.

The @DFRLab is at the forefront of open source research with a focus on governance, technology, security, and where each intersect. By publishing what it can prove, or disprove, in real-time, the @DFRLab is creating a new model of research and education adapted for impact, as well as building a global network of #DigitalSherlocks. The @DFRLab remains committed to identifying, exposing, and explaining disinformation where and when it exists. 

Daily Caller headline: George Soros-linked think tank partnership with Facebook.

Common Dreams headline: "Alarming:" Facebook teams up with think tank funded by Saudi Arabia and military contractors to "protect" democracy.

Google's Jigsaw has also announced that it will help political campaigns thwart cyberattacks.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece about how Atlantic Council is working to secure future US elections.

Putin's Think Tank Planned US Election Attack?

Here is what Reuters is reporting:

A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters.

They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election.

The institute is run by retired senior Russian foreign intelligence officials appointed by Putin’s office.

The first Russian institute document was a strategy paper written last June that circulated at the highest levels of the Russian government but was not addressed to any specific individuals.

It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said.

Russia, however, is denying the Reuters report that RISS drew up a plan to sway the US election.

The New York Times is reporting that RISS is known in Russia as a "semiretirement refuge" for former intelligence officers.

Leonid Bershidsky says that many are "seriously overestimating" the power of the think tank.  He notes that until 2009 it was part of the SVR, Russia's intelligence service.

According to the University of Pennsylvania, Russia has 122 think tanks.

Top Think Tanker May Have Violated Multiple Election Rules

More think tankers seem to be getting into trouble these days for a whole host of reasons.

Here is the latest example from The Daily Caller:

A top official at the Atlantic Council violated the think tank’s “ethos and policies” by not disclosing email exchanges with the Hillary Clinton campaign in which he offered himself up as a campaign surrogate and also proposed hosting an event that would be critical of Donald Trump.

The emails, sent by Peter Schechter, the director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, raise questions about whether the think tank violated IRS regulations prohibiting tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations from engaging in political activity in support of or opposition to political candidates.

The emails were released earlier this month by the website DC Leaks. They were hacked from the Gmail account of Capricia Marshall, a Clinton campaign fundraiser and ambassador-in-residence with the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

In a March 17 email, Schechter offered his services as a campaign surrogate to Clinton campaign foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy, Laura Rosenberger.

He also proposed hosting a forum at the Atlantic Council which would focus on “US-Latin American relations in a Trump era.”

The event was held on June 27 at the Washington D.C.-based think tank. It was not an overt attack on Trump. Instead, Schechter and his panelists, which included four former George W. Bush administration officials, chipped away at Trump’s policy positions on immigration and trade with Mexico.

The article goes on to quote Atlantic Council spokeswoman Nicole Hobbs who said that Mr. Schechter's email exchanges with the Clinton campaign violated the think tank's "ethos and policies" but not the federal tax code.  More details can be found at the link above.

The Tiny Office Writing the Future of America

The Huffington Post has a piece entitled "The Future of America is Being Written in This Tiny Office," which highlights the work of the Hillary Clinton campaign's Brooklyn headquarters office, a team that is collecting and synthesizing all the pro-Clinton think tank policy papers into actual policy as she strives to become the next US president.

Here is an excerpt:

This summer, I stopped by Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters, where the policy team occupies prime real estate. The three senior advisors—Jake Sullivan, Maya Harris and Jacob Leibenluft—share an office steps away from those of campaign manager Robby Mook and chairman John Podesta. (O’Leary is now leading the official transition operation in Washington.) About a dozen more policy aides occupy nearby cubicles, below a sign that says “Nerds” and “Wonks for the Win.” This team manages more than 30 outside working groups that include academic heavyweights, think tank experts and trusted advisers like Sperling and Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress. It’s an impressive crew, but perhaps over-qualified when it comes to some of the matters that have convulsed this particular election, like the size of Trump’s hands or the semiotics of Pepe the Frog. “It’s not exactly clear what to do with all of that horsepower,” says a person familiar with the process. “There is just this mismatch between capabilities they have and what’s actually required in this campaign.”

Among the think tanks that are heavily advising Mrs. Clinton are Center for American Progress (CAP) and the Roosevelt Institute (as we recently wrote about here).

Former CFR Scholar Axed From Trump Campaign

Here is more from Newsmax:

A foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump is reportedly stepping down from the campaign – and pushing back on allegations he had private communications with top Russian officials.

Carter Page called the allegations "just complete garbage" in an interview with the Washington Post, but said was taking a leave of absence because they were causing a "distraction."

U.S. intelligence officials were looking into whether Carter had met privately with Kremlin-aligned Russian figures while on a trip to Moscow in July, Yahoo News reported last Friday.

Carter Page was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the director of the think tank's online roundtable of the Caspian Sea Region.  After his stint at CFR, he spoke at the think tank on several occasions.

Nixon's Think Tank to Host Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to embrace think tank land.  Having scooped up a number of advisors from think tanks, he is now being hosted by a Washington, DC think to give a major foreign policy speech.

Here is more from The New York Times:

Donald J. Trump will deliver his first foreign policy address at the National Press Club in Washington next week, his campaign said, at an event hosted by an organization founded by President Richard M. Nixon.

The speech, planned for lunchtime on Wednesday, will be Mr. Trump’s first major policy address since a national security speech last fall.

The speech will be hosted by the Center for the National Interest, formerly known as the Nixon Center, and the magazine it publishes, The National Interest, according to a news release provided by the Trump campaign.

The group, which left the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in 2011 to become a nonprofit, says on its website that it was founded by the former president to be a voice to promote “strategic realism in U.S. foreign policy.” Its associates include Henry A. Kissinger, the secretary of state under Nixon, as well as Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama and a senior adviser to Mr. Trump. Roger Stone, a sometime adviser of Mr. Trump, is a former Nixon aide.

Here is what Politico is reporting about the speech.  Here is what Brookings Institution scholar Thomas Wright is saying about the speech.

Dimitri Simes, the President of the Center for the National Interest (CNI) and a former aide to Richard Nixon, was reportedly on Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) foreign policy advisory team in 2014.

This Free Beacon article says that for years, Simes and CNI "have provided a sympathetic platform for the Russian government in the heart of the DC policy establishment."

Among those on the Board of Directors of CNI include Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Leslie Gelb (President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations), former Gov. Jon Huntsman, Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad, Admiral Michael Mullen, Grover Norquist, Brent Scowcroft, Jeffrey Bewkes (Chairman/CEO of Time Warner), billionaire Peter Peterson, and Julie Nixon Eisenhower (daughter of Richard Nixon).

Henry Kissinger is the Honorary Chairman of CNI, and Maurice Greenberg is Chairman Emeritus of CNI.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on think tanks possibly controlling a Trump presidency.  Here is a previous post on how Donald Trump sees think tanks.  And here is a previous post about how Donald Trump has an affinity toward Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) president Richard Haass.  Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post showing that Trump has been consulting with think tanks for quite awhile now.

Update: Foreign Policy has a new parody piece entitled "Breaking: Richard Nixon Does Not Endorse Donald Trump."  The author, who pretends to be Richard Nixon, says, among other things, that he objected to the Nixon Center name change to Center for the National Interest, and said that the new name is "the sort of pointy-headed doublespeak that passes as nuance in the campus tearooms."

Also, John Bolton of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) said that Trump's foreign policy analysis was right on target.  Matt Mayer of AEI said that the devil is in the details in Trump's foreign policy speech.  Michael Auslin of AEI said that Trump "is still at sea" in Asia.  And here is Derek Scissors of AEI on Trump's speech and trade.