Dirty Deeds Don't Come Cheap

There's a famous saying of unknown provenance, falsely attributed to Voltaire, which goes something like this: "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will die to defend your right to say it." It's a maxim commonly offered not just by free speech absolutists, who at least have a worthy principle to uphold, but also by the pin-striped, cigar-chomping criminal defense lawyers who make a killing, so to speak, representing the most vicious and unrepentant murderers.

Yes, yes, O.J. Simpson deserved the best legal defense the system could offer. But I'm under no obligation to respect the ambulance-chasers who took time out of their day to argue his case. (There's a moral difference, I should note, between public defenders earning poverty-level wages and the sharks that, one can't help but notice, have a curious proclivity to work only on behalf of the very guilty and the very rich).

This self-righteous justification is uttered not only by criminal defense attorneys but also Washington lobbyists, and that both professions fall back upon it shows a similarity having little to do with sleazy characters like Jack Abramoff. The "everyone deserves a defense" defense is the exact same excuse offered by lobbyist Laurence Socci to Harper's Washington Editor Ken Silverstein, whose book Turkmeniscam investigates the seedy underworld of the lobbyists and public relations consultants who do the bidding of dictatorial regimes.

"As a lawyer, I would have no problem representing a rapist or child molester, although I despise both crimes," Socci wrote to Silverstein, a refrain expressed by many a defense counsel. "As a lobbyist, I believe that everyone deserves an opportunity to be heard before Members of Congress." That the countries these lobbyists are tripping over one another to represent also have gobs of money to throw around is assumed to be little more than a coincidence.

Inspired by the lobbying scandals that ensnared Republicans on Capitol Hill in the ugly twilight of GOP congressional rule, Silverstein hatched an ingenious plan: pretend to be an employee of a foreign concern with business interests in a particularly odious dictatorship and make the rounds to D.C.'s top lobbying shops to see which, if any, would agree to work on behalf of said dictatorship. Posing as an actual official from the foreign government would be too risky. Never mind the accent and swarthy complexion, a quick call to the embassy of the country in question would easily expose the plot. So posing as an international man of intrigue would have to do.

Silverstein chose Turkmenistan, a country which annually receives the lowest possible ratings for civic and political rights from Freedom House and that until recently was ruled by a crazed, Soviet-era apparatchik who renamed months after family members. Turkmenistan has vast oil deposits, a random virtue that complicates American foreign policy in a way that, say, the abundant supply of mango in the jungle junta of Burma does not. Sending inquiries to 4 lobbying firms, Silverstein was able to pique the interest of two. What he found wasn't pretty.

That half of the firms Silverstein contacted did not want to meet with him should not be taken as a sign of conscientiousness on their part; Silverstein balked at one's requirement that he sign a nondisclosure agreement (thus rendering his mission as an investigative journalist moot), while another requested information about his fake company so detailed it would foil the plot. In other words, neither firm was bothered by the prospect of flacking for a comically evil regime. That enthusiasm was made clear when Silverstein sat down with executives at two of the remaining firms, both of which were desperate to flak on behalf of the government of Turkmenistan.

Such yeoman's work would come with a cost, of course. One firm estimated annual fees starting at $600,000. The other's cost exceeded $1 million. The lobbyists approached their dirty business with a gallows humor, one told Silverstein that while he had some important contacts in Turkmenistan thanks to prior work on behalf of another company doing business there, "the previous government had a history of shuffling ministers. I won't pursue the metaphor."