PJM Exclusive: Two U.S. Lobbyists Paid $5.4M By Libya To Boost Regime’s Image
Five years ago, the Libyan government decided to obtain lobbying heft in Washington, D.C. They went to two organizations — the Livingston Group and the Monitor Group — whom they paid $5.4 million for lobbying services.
The story of the selling of Libya to the United States is a fascinating tale of how liberal academics and former members of Congress united to attempt a repackaging of Libya’s Gaddafi family as human rights reformers. PJM has pieced together the story of how the dictatorial regime was shamelessly presented as reformers to Congress and to Washington policymakers.
Gaddafi’s government — officially named the “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” — first hired the Livingston Group, founded by former House Speaker Rep. Robert Livingston. For $2.4 million a year, Livingston, a Republican, represented both Gaddafi and his second son Saif Al Islam Al Gaddafi. Tripoli then secured the services of the Monitor Group, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, image consulting firm founded by a group from the Harvard Business School. They tried to groom Saif as a “thought leader” in Europe and in the United States, and reportedly received $3 million for the attempted makeover.
With the Monitor Group in the lead, Saif was groomed as a Westernized, sophisticated new generation of young Arab leader. Monitor, which has 30 offices around the world, especially sold Saif to the British public as a new Muslim face for “progressive” Libya. The British political elite bought the image, especially at the London School of Economics — Saif gave the school a gift of $2.5 million, and he was rewarded with a Ph.D.
Last week, news of Saif’s multi-million dollar gift led to the firing of the university’s head.
From South Capitol Street — a stone’s throw from the U.S. Capitol building — former House Speaker Livingston used his Washington Rolodex to contact U.S. Defense and State Department officials, members of Congress, and defense contractors on behalf of the regime. After receiving the $2.4 million retainer, Livingston also agreed to represent Saif on a pro-bono basis. Livingston introduced Saif to human rights activists in Washington as the head of an official “charity” — the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation.
Meanwhile, around 2006, the Monitor Group corralled a variety of policy academics to vouch for the authenticity of Saif and his father. It recruited a number of high-profile people ranging from historian Francis Fukuyama to Benjamin Barber, an anti-Western author and an in-house intellectual at the Clinton White House. Also recruited was Harvard’s Joseph Nye, who coined the phrase “soft power”: using diplomacy over military “hard power.” Nye served on Clinton’s National Intelligence Council and was a personal adviser to Saif when he wrote his Ph.D. thesis at the London School of Economics. The Monitor team also included LSE’s professor emeritus Anthony Gibbons, who has been an apologist for Gaddafi for many years. Only recently has it come to light that since 2006 Gibbons has been on the payroll of the Monitor Group. He made two trips to Libya, in 2006 and 2007.
The Livingston campaign for Gaddafi and his son illustrates how former members of Congress on both sides of the aisle enrich themselves on behalf of dictatorships. A PJM review of the latest documents filed by Livingston with the U.S. Department of Justice, dated February 2010 and earlier, provides a road map of lobbying row and how it may open doors for dictators.
In a single six-month period, Livingston arranged for Libyan Ambassador Ali Aujali to hold private meetings with 23 members of Congress — nearly half of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. In the words of their September 18, 2009, filing, all of their activities “can be defined broadly as constituting political activity.”
Livingston staff planned for the arrival of a Libyan military delegation and a separate visit by Col. Gaddafi’s national security chief. The lobbyist’s staff reached people in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the office of the undersecretary of defense, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. They also contacted the Defense Department’s Libya country director and the defense attache at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli. They additionally spoke to a retired Marine lieutenant general who heads up Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems in the Middle East.
The Livingston Group contacted the State Department about the Libyan military arrivals. Records show that they reached out to the Office of Maghreb Affairs in State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, a foreign affairs officer at State’s Office of Regional Security and Arms Transfers, and the Libyan desk officer.
The Livingston and Monitor groups made sure to present the “soft” side of Gaddafi’s Libya. In March 2009 they organized meetings with several human rights organizations. Les Campbell, the regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Democratic Institute, was approached by the Livingston Group’s Lauri Fitz-Pegado who suggested a meeting with Saif Gaddafi and Youssef Mohamed Sawani, the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation’s executive director. He said the meeting, which was attended by Human Rights Watch and the International Republican Institute, went badly. He told PJM:
My impression was that this was one of these typical “let’s try to put a different face on a repressive regime” type of attempts.
“With the Monitor Group in the lead, Saif was groomed as a Westernized, sophisticated new generation of young Arab leader. Monitor, which has 30 offices around the world, especially sold Saif to the British public as a new Muslim face for “progressive” Libya. The British political elite bought the image, especially at the London School of Economics — Saif gave the school a gift of $2.5 million, and he was rewarded with a Ph.D.”
Saif was spokesman for Libya at the beginning of the protest in Libya.
It appears Livingston Group and Monitor group failed with their grooming.
Somebody please tell me what is wrong with this picture.
Who better than to be professional whores than lobbying ex politicians-NO bloody terrorist is off limits IF the price is right-and self important elitists from the likes of Harvard and their smug colleagues?
In fact, Harvard-as well as others-has taken so much money from the bloodied hands of Middle East despots/terrroists that they are swimming in it.
Les Campbell, the regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Democratic Institute says “Paying high-priced help to basically spin tales based on zero evidence of change in the country, I don’t know if that’s sleazy, but it’s a very questionable undertaking.”
Well, Les, I can tell you, it’s not only sleazy, it borders on the treasonous when past presidential cabinet figures and congressional luminaries take blood money to whitewash our Muslim enemies. These Muslim enemies are paying to have us murdered in Iraq, Afghanistan, and even in Europe and America — these Muslim enemies finance and erect mosques and other Islamic indoctrination centers where Islamic subversion of the Constitution is preached and taught. These Muslim enemies fund ALL of the Islamic terrorism — more than 10,000 attacks globally, more than 1,000 per year, since 9/11.
Abetting them, encouraging them, covering for them in any way, in my opinion, is treasonous behavior. It is also the deepest form of betrayal of our civilization, and menaces our way of life by keeping us ill-informed about the exact nature of this Muslim enemy, and the doctrine of Islam which he operates under. This treason, this betrayal, exists on both sides of the political aisle, whether by a hand-holding cheek kissing president Bush 2, or an appeasing terror apologist like Obama. All the $25,000,000 endowments for Clinton libraries, all the $2,000,000 honoraria for Bush1 to speak in Kuwait, ALL of it is a betrayal, and an abetting of a mortal enemy at a time he is waging a war of Jihad against us.
Its hard to tell whether this lobbying has any effect on congress, the president, or the government in general. But It tells you a whole lot about the character of the people who would take the foreign money and try to “launder” their image. Pathetic.
so what? Lobbies are usually lobbying for lots of inmoral things.. but Qadaffi name sells and make good headlines. Stop the lunacy and try to eliminate the entire lobbying system.
A lot of this was reported in February:
http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2011/libya-and-algeria-rocked-protest-have-history-us-lobbying/
And last week:
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/03/01/us-consulting-group-working-for-libya-did-not-register-as-foreign-agent/
Also, Tony Podesta was not Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. His brother, John Podesta, who runs the Center for American Progress, was Clinton’s chief of staff.
Honestly, I do not understand what information in this article qualifies as an “exclusive.” A Google search featuring “Livingston” and “Libya” produces no shortage of information on the firm’s work on this subject.
Also, it is important to note from a recent Times-Picayune article that Livingston’s firm has not represented the government since 2009:
“We continued to represent Libya and its charitable foundation until the following summer when Scotland released the man implicated in the bombing of 103, ” Livingston said. “His highly celebrated reception in Libya together with Gadhafi’s controversial trip to the UN in New York made continued representation of the country unacceptable to us at TLG. We terminated the contract on September 1, 2009.”
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/02/former_rep_bob_livingston_says.html
Former Rep. Bob Livingston says events in Libya are a tragedy
Published: Tuesday, February 22, 2011, 12:08 PM
Updated: Tuesday, February 22, 2011, 4:00 PM
By Jonathan Tilove, The Times-Picayune
WASHINGTON — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has long had a reputation in the United States as a bizarre and dangerous leader. So it is easy to forget amid the current chaos that only a few years ago the Libyan leader had made dramatic moves to moderate his image and improve Libya’s relations with the United States, renouncing his nuclear weapons program, denouncing the 9/11 attacks, and agreeing to pay reparations to families of those killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Those moves culminated in normalization of relations with the United States, a process in which former Rep. Bob Livingston and his firm, The Livingston Group, who were retained by the Libyan government in 2008, played an important role.
Livingston, who severed his relationship with Gadhafi and his representation of Libya in September 2009 when Gadhafi returned to his old form, said that as he watches in dismay his former client’s behavior in the unfolding events in Libya, he is glad, at least, for changes that were made during Gadhafi ‘s sojourn of a few years into a saner statecraft.
“The events in Libya are tragic,” Livingston said Tuesday. “Gadhafi has clearly gone off the deep end, and firing on his people is totally criminal and unacceptable. We wish the Libyan people a peaceful resolution and hope the country doesn’t descend into greater chaos or domination by radicals.
“In any event,” Livingston said, “I’m especially glad that the country no longer has nuclear capability, and because we currently enjoy normalization of relations with Libya, I’m hopeful that the U.S. will have some influence over future decisions by the Libyan people.”
Livingston said that the Libyan government approached The Livingston Group in early 2008 to help them normalize relations with the United States.
“After checking with the Bush administration and learning that President Bush had quietly assisted Gadhafi to remove all vestiges of their nuclear weaponry and send it to Knoxville, Tenn., we were encouraged by people in the State Department to undertake the project on the supposition that normalizing relations would be in the very best interest of the United States,” said Livingston.
“We signed up for the job and on Aug. 3, 2008, in the last vote before the August recess, we successfully convinced both the House and the Senate to unanimously approve the normalization. We worked concurrently with the attorneys for the plaintiffs to obtain a settlement of litigation filed by the families of the victims of Flight 103.”
Livingston said he is “very proud” of that work because, “bringing them under our tent by taking their nukes, settling the Pan Am 103 matter for families of victims, and ensuring that we no longer had a hostile enemy, were all reasons for us to assist in the normalization of relations.”
“We continued to represent Libya and its charitable foundation until the following summer when Scotland released the man implicated in the bombing of 103, ” Livingston said. “His highly celebrated reception in Libya together with Gadhafi’s controversial trip to the UN in New York made continued representation of the country unacceptable to us at TLG. We terminated the contract on September 1, 2009.”