New Report: Heritage Foundation Has Cozy Ties with South Korean Weapons Maker

Investigative journalist Eli Clifton has penned a new piece on pay for play at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.  Here are some excerpts:

The conservative Heritage Foundation has consistently fought international treaties banning weapons that pose an outsized threat to civilians in the war zone. This would include anti-personnel landmines, cluster munitions, and “killer robots”—as well as regulations that would enforce arms embargoes on human rights offenders. And yet, Heritage fails to disclose a possible financial incentive for taking these positions.

Heritage received at least $5.8 million from the Hanwha Group between 2007 and 2015, according to the organization’s annual reports reviewed by Responsible Statecraft. Between 2010 and 2014, Hanwha—a South Korean conglomerate that has produced landmine and autonomous weapons systems—contributed a minimum of $1 million per year, making Hanwa one of the Heritage Foundation’s biggest donors. Hanwha was not listed as a donor after 2015, but Heritage permits donors to make anonymous contributions and Heritage and the Hanwha Group did not respond to questions about whether the funding arrangement continued after 2015.

However, Korean media regularly reports on the close relationship between Heritage and Hanwha, and suggested their friendly relationship was alive and well, at least as recently as October 2018 when Heritage Foundation founder Edwin J. Feulner and Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn met in Seoul.

Mr. Clifton is the research director at the Quincy Institute's Democratizing Foreign Policy Program.  Last month he wrote a piece about Taiwan's funding of US think tanks.

"Think Tank" With Qatari Ties Registers as Foreign Agent

Here is more from Foreign Lobby Report:

A Washington nonprofit that describes itself as an “independent research institute” has registered as a foreign agent of Qatar after coming under scrutiny from the Department of Justice.

The Qatar-America Institute (QAI) registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in late May, according to a lobbying filing made public this afternoon. In the 51-page filing, the institute reveals that it received a $5.2 million pledge from the Qatari Embassy in Washington, plus another $1 million from the embassy, the Qatar National Tourism Council and the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy through March 2019.

The institute was formed in September 2017 to promote US ties with Qatar after rival Gulf states Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates cut diplomatic ties with Doha and launched multi-million-dollar US public relations campaigns against the country. Those countries’ attempts to influence US policy via think-tanks have also come under scrutiny.

Here is QAI's hompepage.  Qatar is considered a top funder to US think tanks, with a recent study showing that it gave US think tanks at least $8.5 million from 2014-2018.

Update: Qatar-funded think tank moves to drop "lobbyist" label.

New Piece Sheds Light on Taiwan's Funding of US Think Tanks

Eli Clifton has a new piece on Taiwan's funding of US think tanks entitled "Taiwan Funding of Think Tanks: Omnipresent and Rarely Disclosed."  It was co-published by The American Prospect and Responsible Statecraft, a publication of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Here are some excerpts:

Pushing back on bellicose statements from both parties requires credible policy advice from experts, many of whom are based at Washington research institutes. But five of the capital’s most prominent think tanks have been producing policy papers urging closer U.S. ties with Taiwan — a territory locked in an uncertain legal status that threatens to be a flashpoint between Beijing and Washington. These seemingly impartial research institutions are pushing for expanded arms sales and trade agreements with Taiwan without widely disclosing their high-level funding from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO), Taiwan’s equivalent to an embassy.

The five think tanks — the Brookings Institution, the Center for American Progress, the Center for a New American Security, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Hudson Institute — all disclose their funding from TECRO but bury it deep on their websites or annual reports.

None of their researchers disclose the potential conflict of interest between Taiwanese funding and advocating for more security guarantees for and trade with Taiwan.

Some think tanks have already pushed back at the piece, as if often the case with investigative reporting on foreign funding of think tanks.

The author, Eli Clifton, said that the first thing the spokesperson for the Center for American Progress (CAP) told him when asked about CAP's Taiwan funding was "I'd like to know if you plan to note in the story that you are a former CAP staffer who left ThinkProgress, since that is a clear conflict of interest."

At the end of the piece, Clinton notes that he and Ben Armbruster, the managing editor of Responsible Statecraft, are former employees of CAP.

Bonnie Glaser, a Senior Adviser for Asia and Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), had a back-and-forth with Clifton on Twitter, with Glaser saying that all reports her program has published that were funded by Taiwan have included a statement on funding sources.  Clifton notes, however, that other pieces CSIS has published have not disclosed Taiwan funding.

Clifton has written other pieces about think tank funding in the past, including this 2013 piece about Taiwan's funding of American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece about Taiwanese think tanks setting up shop in Washington, DC.

Update: In response to the piece, China's foreign minister said that US think tank should be fair and objective.

New Report Documents UAE's Deep Ties to Think Tanks

The Center for International Policy's (CIP) Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative (FITI) has published a new report showing the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) deep connection to US think tanks.

Among other things, the report found that UAE foreign agents had contacted 200 congressional offices, 18 think tanks, and most mainstream media outlets in 2018. Those 18 think tanks were contacted a total of 85 different times last year (and that is just contacts that were reported).

The top five think tanks most contacted by UAE foreign agents were:

1. Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP): 18
2. Middle East Institute (MEI): 14
3. Center for American Progress (CAP): 11
4. American Enterprise Institute (AEI): 10
5. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS): 5

The report says that UAE foreign agents "directed their efforts towards some of the most prominent and influential think tanks in D.C. and towards experts at think tanks the UAE was directly or indirectly funding."  In turn, the report added, "UAE foreign agents often help to distribute the work of these experts at think tanks the UAE is funding."

Over the past year, there has also been a significant effort to track Saudi influence at US think tanks.

Japanese Government Funding More Japan Chairs at Think Tanks

Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is making an intense push to fund more Japan Chairs at think tanks in the US and Europe as is seeks to influence Western allies.

In March, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) announced the establishment of a new full-time Senior Fellow for Japanese Studies who will be based at the think tank's London headquarters.  The position, which has not yet been filled (job ad here), was created through a multi-million dollar donation from the government of Japan.

In the United States, the Hudson Institute is also launching a Japan Chair, with President Donald Trump's former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster to be the new chair.

Some of the people spotted in attendance at a launch event for Hudson's Japan Chair, according to Politico, include:

H.R. McMaster, Ken Weinstein, Matt Pottinger, Patrick Cronin, Mike Pillsbury, Scooter Libby, Jim Carafano, Leslie Schweitzer, Francesca Craig, Dave Lawler, Zeke Miller, Josh Rogin, Halley Toosi and Steve Herman.

In 2018, after being pushed out of the Trump Administration, McMaster returned to Stanford's Hoover Institution.  McMaster had his first stint at Hoover in 2002 as a national security affairs fellow and then served as a visiting fellow from 2003 to 2017.

He has also been a Consulting Senior Fellow at IISS.  Conservatives launched numerous attacks (see here, here, and here) for his affiliation with the UK-based think tank.  Dr. Patrick Cronin, who holds Hudson's Asia-Pacific Security Chair, formerly served as Director of Studies at IISS.  Cronin recently left the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) to join Hudson.

The largest and most influential Japan Chair is at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).  It is run by Dr. Michael Green, former Senior Director for Asia at the National Security Council (NSC).

In 2018, Hudson hosted more than 115 events in Washington, DC, including a major China speech by Vice President Mike Pence.  Hudson also says its experts penned 446 op-eds in major newspapers in 2018.

Last year, Hudson had total revenues of $17.5 million.  Of that, 40% came from individuals, 30% from foundations, 12% from corporations, 11% from endowment distributions, and 7% from governments.

Besides the government of Japan, other Japanese donors to Hudson include: All Nippon Airways (ANA), The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), Mitsui Corporation, and Hitachi.

Non-Japanese donors to the think tank include the Government of Denmark, MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, Rupert Murdoch, Northrop Grumman, Oracle, Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO), Boeing, and Ford Motor.

Besides think tanks, the Japanese government has also given generously to various US colleges and universities in recent years, including $5 million each to Georgetown, Columbia, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Hudson Official Quits After Learning of Donation from Putin-Linked Billionaire

Here is more from the New York Post:

Chaos has erupted at a conservative think tank after it was revealed that one of its new donors is Len Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born billionaire who owns the Warner Music record label.

Charles Davidson — the founder of the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, a group dedicated to exposing threats by authoritarian regimes to US democracy — said he quit as its executive director upon learning that the Hudson Institute had accepted a $50,000 donation from Blavatnik.

“Russian kleptocracy has entered the donor pool of Hudson Institute,” Davidson said in an exclusive interview with The Post. “Blavatnik is precisely what the Kleptocracy Initiative is fighting against — the influence of Putin’s oligarchs on America’s political system and society — and the importation of corrupt Russian business practices and values.”

Think tank donations have come under intense scrutiny in recent years, an many influential think tanks have been rocked by pay-for-play schemes involving foreign money.

A piece that recently appeared in the Washington Post has called on think tanks to sign a "democracy pledge" to accept funding only from democracies.

Interestingly, Hudson says that it "does not seek or accept financial contributions from non-democratic foreign governments or groups or individuals acting on their behalf."

Think Tanks Pressured to Take "Democracy Pledge"

This piece appeared in the Washington Post and was penned by Thorsten Benner, co-founder and director of the Global Public Policy Institute of Berlin:

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi has put the spotlight on think tanks and universities receiving funding from the Saudi regime. Under pressure by media reports, a few think tanks, such as the Brookings Institution, the Center for International Studies and the Middle East Institute, have decided to return Saudi money. Top universities such as Harvard, MIT and Georgetown have so far gotten away with their ties to the Saudi regime without confronting much public scrutiny. This makes it clear that most will act only when a questionable source of funding blows up in their faces.

Saudi funding is just the tip of the iceberg. Money from authoritarian governments is flowing into scholarship, not only from the Persian Gulf but also from the likes of China and Turkey. If leading think tanks and universities want to regain their credibility, they need to change course and commit to a “democracy pledge” to accept funding only from democracies.

The work of think tanks and universities is premised on independence, integrity and the search for truth. They are part of the very fabric of liberal democracy and embody the values of open societies. They stand for everything authoritarians despise: open debate, independent judgment, freedom of thought and freedom of speech. If think tanks and universities sell their brands to authoritarians, that has a corrosive effect not just on their own credibility. It also erodes their role as trustworthy pillars of liberal democracy.

It is high time for top universities and think tanks to change course and sign a democracy pledge to accept funding only from fellow democracies (i.e., countries classified as “free” in the Freedom House index). Some think tanks, such as the Hudson Institute and the German Marshall Fund of the United States, already subscribe to such a policy.

Since many of the US's top think tanks continue to heavily rely on foreign money, it is fairly unlikely that any of them will commit to the pledge.  That said, there will likely be more pressure and more internal debate within think tanks to do so in the years ahead as think tanks continue to lose credibility due to funding sources.

Think Tank CAP Fires Two Staffers Amid Leak Investigation

Here is more from The Intercept:

The Center for American Progress fired two staffers suspected of being involved in leaking an email exchange that staffers thought reflected improper influence by the United Arab Emirates within the think tank, according to three sources with knowledge of the shake-up. Both staffers were investigated for leaking the contents of an internal email exchange to The Intercept, but neither of the former employees was The Intercept’s source.

One of those fired, Ken Gude, was a senior national security staffer. He worked at CAP since 2003 and previously served as the progressive think tank’s chief of staff.

A CAP spokesperson acknowledged two employees were fired as a result of the leak investigation, but said that the leak was not the reason they were fired: “We are not going to discuss internal personnel matters, but no one was fired at CAP for leaking or whistleblowing.” Internally, however, multiple members of CAP leadership have used the leak as the leading rationale for the firings in multiple settings, sources said.

At issue was an internal debate over how to frame CAP’s response to the murder of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was dismembered by Saudi Arabian officials inside the nation’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

The initial draft of the CAP’s statement condemned the killing and Saudi Arabia’s role in it, calling for specific consequences. Brian Katulis, a Gulf expert at CAP, objected to the specific consequences proposed in an email exchange with other national security staffers, according to sources who described the contents of the thread to The Intercept. 

The UAE, Saudi Arabia’s closest ally, is one of the top donors to the think tank. Katulis is close with the UAE’s ambassador in Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba.

 Katulis is CAP’s link to Otaiba. As The Intercept has previously reported, Katulis worked with the diplomat to help organize UAE-sponsored trips to the wealthy Gulf country for American think tank experts, according to emails purloined from Otaiba’s Hotmail inbox.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) has experienced lots of drama the past couple years.  In April, the think tank was bashed for its response to sexual harassment claims. 

Mysterious Russian Money Flowing to Think Tanks?

Here is more from the Washington Post:

...The party, then known as the National Front and now called the National Rally, was having difficulty securing credit from traditional French banks. Le Pen accused the banks of discrimination for refusing to offer a loan. 

In search of money from a non-French bank, party officials turned to Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, a member of the European Parliament elected as part of Le Pen’s party bloc.

Through what he described as work on a French-Russian development-bank project in 2004 or 2005, Schaffhauser said he met a Russian businessman and member of parliament named Alexander Babakov, who in 2012 became the Kremlin’s special envoy for Russian organizations abroad.

Schaffhauser, for his part, said he received 140,000 euros, or about $181,000 at the time, for brokering the loan. His fee was deposited in what he described as a family foundation. He said people close to Babakov, the Russian member of parliament and special envoy, also discussed investing in his think tank.

WaPo notes that the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy has conducted a study of the loan along with Washington think tank C4ADS.

South Korea Blacklisting Think Tank Scholars for Criticizing Its North Korea Policy?

Foreign governments often demand a lot from the US think tanks they donate to.  In return for hundreds of thousands (and often times millions) of dollars each year, those foreign nations expect (and often demand) in return a specific outcome from the think tank product.  When a think tank does not tow the line, they often try to force out specific scholars, and, as a last resort, cut funding.

Here are a few excerpts from the One Free Korea blog, which is authored by Joshua Stanton:

The Chosun Ilbo and the Joongang Ilbo now report that the South Korean government directed the Korean Institute for International Economic Policy (KEIP) to cut most of its funding to Johns Hopkins University's US-Korea Institute (USKI), except for some Korean language and Korea studies training.  KIEP calls itself a "government-funded think tank," but it is a certain creation of South Korean law and has a "go.kr" web address.  And as you're about to see, it clearly takes its direction from the South Korean government.

Paradoxically, USKI is best known for publishing the reliably soft-line, anti-anti-North Korean, pro-"engagement" 38 North blog.  It's the last outlet you'd think Moon Jae-in's people would mess with.  USKI was founded in 2006, the year after the Korea Foundation pulled its funding from AEI.  According to USKI's website, it receives "generous support from the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP)," among others.  The Joongang Ilbo also reports that USKI runs a Korea training program for students entering the US State Department, which sounds like a great way to plant the seeds of long-term influence over our government's policies.

Not surprisingly, USKI and the KIEP have different explanations for KIEP's funding decision, and by the end of this post, you'll see why.  KIEP says the National Assembly demanded the cut over questions about transparency of USKI's budget.  But Robert Gallucci, the Director of USKI, says the real reason is that the Blue House wanted him to fire Jae Ku, one of the few right-of-center thinkers at USKI.  Later, Gallucci says the Blue House also told him to fire Jenny Town, a co-founded of 38 North.

Separately, a column in the Joongang Ilbo reports that the Moon administration has been blacklisting Korean and American scholars for criticizing its North Korea policy.  According to the column, the Sejong Institute's new management forced out David Straub, a highly respected Korea scholar, author, and former diplomat as a Visiting Researcher...Evidently, the Blue House objected to Straub's warnings that policy differences between Moon and Trump could lead to a "decoupling" of the US-Korea alliance. 

Johns Hopkins houses a variety of think tank and think tank-like entities, including the the Center for Transatlantic Relations and the the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI).

The following are some other Korea-related stories we've recently reported on:

• Meet the one-man think tank on North Korea. 
• Three of the top think tanks (Brookings, CSIS, Heritage) have former high-ranking CIA/intelligence officers running their Korea programs.
• Following his canceled nomination as US Ambassador to Korea, CSIS's Victor Cha joins MSNBC team as a Korean affairs analyst.
• A US spy agency is partnering with NGOs and think tanks to track North Korea.
• North Korea is reaching out to think tanks to understand President Trump. 

Update:  The Associated Press (AP) is now reporting that USKI, which was receiving $1.8 million each year from the Korean government, will close after it rejected South Korean demands to change its leadership.  Officials at Johns Hopkins said up to eight people could lose their jobs.

The Washington Post's Anna Fifield has some more interesting details about the situation.

High-Ranking Chinese Gov't Official Quietly Funding US Think Tanks

Here is more from Foreign Policy:

The Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), located just a short walk from Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., is one of the top international relations schools in the United States. Its graduates feed into a variety of government agencies, from the State Department to the CIA, and the military. Its China studies program is especially well known; many graduates come away with expert knowledge of the language, culture, and politics of the United States’ most important strategic competitor.

In August, SAIS announced a new endowed professorship in the China Studies department as well as a new research project called the Pacific Community Initiative, which aims to examine “what China’s broader role in Asia and the world means for its neighbors and partners.”

What the SAIS press release did not say is that the money for the new initiatives came in part from the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), a Hong Kong-based nonprofit. CUSEF is a registered foreign agent bankrolled by a high-ranking Chinese government official with close ties to a sprawling Chinese Communist Party apparatus that handles influence operations abroad, known as the “united front.”

The China-U.S. Exchange Foundation’s partnership with a premier U.S. academic institution comes amid a Chinese Communist Party push to strengthen its influence over policy debate around the globe. The Chinese government has sought to repress ideas it doesn’t like and to amplify those it does, and its efforts have met with growing success.

The article goes on to note that CUSEF, founded in 2008 by Tung Chee-hwa, a Hong Kong shipping magnate, has cooperated on projects with other prominent US institutions such as the Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Atlantic Council, Center for American Progress (CAP), East-West Institute, and Carter Center.

Forbes says that Tung Chee-hwa's net worth is around $2.3 billion.