Trita Parsi and lobbying

News of this Washington Times investigation into the activities  of the National Iranian American Council and its director, Trita Parsi, has been buzzing Washington for weeks before its publication today.

Eli Lake does a thorough job (he Takes the Cake!), but I’m not certain it merits Jeffrey Goldberg’s "retraction of his retraction" of his earlier statement that Parsi is a lobbyist for Iran.

In fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, and unlike Goldberg, I’m not going to wait for Parsi to make the case.

Let’s see what the story says and doesn’t say.

What it doesn‘t say:

I don’t see clear evidence that Parsi lobbies for Iran, for three reasons:

* First, the evidence Lake cites is inconclusive. Here it is, two thirds down (although it is teased throughout the article):

E-mail correspondence between Mr. Parsi and Mr. (Javad) Zarif (then U.N. ambassador to the United Nations) show Mr. Parsi suggesting that the Iranian diplomat meet with members of Congress.

"Happy to hear that you will meet with [Rep. Wayne] Gilchrest and potentially [Rep. James] Leach. There are many more that are interested in a meeting, including many respectable Democrats," Mr. Parsi wrote in an Oct. 25, 2006, e-mail.

Mr. Gilchrest, a Maryland Republican who left office in 2009, said he remembered meeting with Mr. Parsi but did not consider him a major player in his efforts to meet Iranian officials.

"Trita was one person that we would use as a source of information. But I would not say we viewed Trita as a lobbyist," Mr. Gilchrest said. "He was a small part of our circle who wanted to meet with Iranians."

A spokeswoman for Mr. Leach, an Iowa Republican who left office in 2007 and now serves as chairman of the National Endowment for Humanities, said, "Hundreds of people attempt to make appointments with members of Congress every week. Chairman Leach has no memory of Trita Parsi or the National Iranian American Council."

Elsewhere, Eli says he has other emails supporting this contention, but this would seem to most damning.

Did Parsi arrange these meetings? Or did he suggest them? Or did he merely hear of them and is saying "Good job"? There is, in the email’s last sentence, the suggestion that Parsi would like to help set up more meetings; did this come to fruition? Did Parsi actually walk any Iranian official into a meeting with a lawmaker or an administration official?

* And second, is it "lobbying for Iran" even if he did? As Eli makes clear in the story, a primary interest of Parsi and NIAC are the removal of some sanctions and the prevention of some others; but this is a shared interest with Iran, and does not mean NIAC and Iran share precisely the same interests. In fact, Eli makes clear that NIAC has dissented strongly from Iran’s repression after the likely-rigged June 12 election.

Should an environmental lobbying group, for instance, embrace an Israeli unrenewable resource-saving initiative, and then walk an Israeli official through Congress to pitch it, would that be lobbying for Israel? Would that mean the environmentalists are necessarily embracing the Israeli government’s policy on settlements?

Israel has repressive laws when it comes to non-Orthodox Judaism and expansive laws when it comes to recognizing gay unions short of marriage. What happens when the Reform movement or Aguda lobby on Israel-related issues? Does it mean they’re embracing the whole package? How could they?

* Finally, the suggestion that NIAC and Parsi have somehow run afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act requires the kind of expansive interpretation of FARA that exists only in the fevered imaginations of isolationists at IRMEP — the premiere purveyor of the calumny that AIPAC is a fifth column.

(Warning: Not suitable for the fainthearted "geese for gander" hectoring break upcoming):

This is directed to some of the folks who have been gleefully peddling truncated versions of this story in advance of its publication.

Really? The mere setting up of meetings between lawmakers and officials of a foreign country violates FARA?

I mean, f****** really? Really?

Let me explain something, very clearly and slowly: Laws, in these here United States, do not recognize religion, identity or cause. If this loony reading of FARA ever obtains, it will eventually bite some folks so hard in the ass there won’t be enough left to keep the hot tub from sucking you into its depths.

(Hectoring break over. Another upcoming.)

What it does say:

NIAC is clearly a lobby. Efforts by Parsi to claim its lobbying falls within the 20 percent that allows it tax exemption seem, to me, to be laughable.

Most damningly, Eli gets his hand on this memo from Patrick Disney, NIAC’s acting policy director:

However, in a July 2008 memo obtained by The Times, Mr. Disney quoted the Lobbying Disclosure Act – a law that says even the preparation of materials aimed at influencing legislation or policy must be disclosed to the public – and said he and a colleague should register as lobbyists.

"Under this expansive view of ‘lobbying,’ I find it hard to believe Emily, and I devote less than 20 percent of our time to lobbying activity. I believe we fall under this definition of ‘lobbyist,’ " he wrote, referring to NIAC’s legislative director at the time, Emily Blout.

This is what Disney tells Eli:

When I wrote the e-mail in question, I was a 22 year old with no legal education, but was asked to research and give an opinion about a complex legal matter.

The opinion I expressed in the email was erroneous, and has since been clarified by legal professionals who have found NIAC is in full compliance with the law. The practice of using out of context and partial e-mails is poor journalism; and it is one of the reasons Americans are losing faith in the media.

Puh-leeze. Then, he was a 22-year-old naif, now he’s a hard-bitten … 23 year old? Anyhoo, my 11 year old knows percentages. And I know Eli, he’s a professional, and I think he’s giving us what matters here, however much I disagree with some of his conclusions.

There are any number of reasons why a non-profit would seek to maintain tax exempt status, but the most compelling of these is the kickback donors get April 15. It makes it a lot easier to persuade folks to cough up.

That leads to what is what I consider the article’s central revelation: Parsi is not the sainted savior of Iran.

Now, Parsi would be the first to acknowledge this, at least the "sainted" part, but it’s kind of gotten lost as NIAC has emerged in Washington is the most credible voice on Iran. Andrew Sullivan calls Parsi "one of the Iranian coup’s most tenacious and dedicated opponents," and Parsi is ubiquitous on the cable news networks as a voice for expatriate Iranians.

I’ve covered this diaspora a couple of times in the past; it is a thoroughly vexing knot to untie. It is hard, if not impossible, for an outsider to find out who, if anyone, actually speaks for the entire community. Not that it’s easy with the Jews, but there are ways to make educated assessments (more below).

So what is the evidence that NIAC is a "leader" "advancing the interests of the Iranian-American community"? (Tip to NIAC’s webmaster: Running a banner rotating different photos of the same people is not gonna convince anyone.)

Here’s what Parsi tells Eli:

The organization has between 2,500 and 3,000 members, according to Mr. Parsi, but had fewer than 500 responses to a membership survey conducted last summer, internal documents show. Yet NIAC asserts that it is the largest such group and represents the majority of the nearly 1 million Iranian Americans.

AIPAC claims, last I heard, 100,000 members. J Street claims 110,000 people in its network (a status nowhere near as committed as dues paying member, but still easily dwarfing NIAC). Even multiplying NIAC’s number by six to compensate for the 1:6 ration of Iranian-to-Jewish Americans, that still clocks in as teensy.

What’s more, virtually absent from any public discussion of NIAC — although Parsi does not avoid it in discussion — is the salient fact that some of its members have interests in opening up business with Iran. Here’s Eli on Parsi’s erstwhile partner in seeking to establish an Iranian American advocacy group:

According to documents, Mr. Parsi appeared at times to be coordinating his advocacy work with Mr. (Siamak) Namazi, who was until 2007 a managing director of a company called Atieh Bahar. Atieh Bahar is the international consulting arm of the Atieh Group, a Tehran-based holding corporation for concerns that have contracts both with Iranian government ministries and Iran’s banks, as well as international firms looking to do business in Iran. Had Congress lifted sanctions, Atieh Bahar stood to benefit.

Mr. Namazi has since left Iran and is based in the United Arab Emirates. The head of Atieh Bahar, Bijan Khajehpour, was arrested after the June 12 elections and imprisoned for several months, apparently because the current Iranian government distrusts anyone who has traveled frequently to the United States.

And this is delicious:

When George W. Bush was president, NIAC also argued against U.S. funding for the promotion of democracy in Iran, arguing that it would hurt the opposition by tainting them as U.S. tools — a position also taken by some prominent Iranian reformers including Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi.

At the same time, between 2002 and 2007, NIAC received a little less than $200,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy to build the capacity of Iranian nongovernmental organizations. The partner for the initial grant was an Iranian nongovernmental organization called the Hamyarand Foundation, whose founder is Mr. Namazi’s father.

Let me take this in four points:

* Whatever else this evidence suggests about NIAC, it would seem to reinforce Parsi’s argument that its relations with the Iranian government are less than loving.

* Gaming government for personal gain is older than the Republic. George Washington led the campaign to open up the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, an expansion that not coincidentally would make him and his family big bucks. In our lifetimes, its most commonplace manifestation is making money off your career in public service; this has become not merely a practise, but a tic in this town. Condi Rice and Stephen Hadley have just opened up an advice-for-bucks shop (Motto: "Learn from our mistakes!"). There was a slight kerfuffle when Ronald Reagan took $2 million for a speech he gave in Japan not long after he left office; nowadays, no one much bothers to check out how Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are keeping comofrtable.

* That doesn’t make it right. Whether it is or not it is above my pay grade; but surely, it’s always worthy of examination. The folks exercised about Peter Galbraith’s millions made through profiting off the advice he gave the Kurdish government might take a gander or two at what NIAC is up to. 

* Donors to AIPAC, J Street, any number of pro-Israel groups don’t expect a payoff. In the case of the exemptionless non-profits (like AIPAC and J Street), in fact, donors just about throw their money away.

This does not make the policies they advocate right, far from it — surely there’s a disgusting joke out there about the merits of spending an hour with a whore as opposed to a true believer — but, in terms of assessing what folks are asking for, the pro-Israel lobby is transparent, in the word’s exact sense. This is worth keeping in mind. (Although, note to Goldblog: AIPAC may be staffed and run by Americans, but it was founded at the behest of Abba Eban, who was not an American.)

Finally, in the realm of NIAC ain’t saintly, Eli’s terrific opener:

Shortly before Barack Obama took office, leaders of a prominent Iranian-American group in Washington began to fret.

If the new president were to tap former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross to oversee the nation’s Iran policy, they feared their long-running effort to persuade American officials to lift sanctions could wind up in tatters. Patrick Disney, acting policy director of National Iranian American Council (NIAC), summed up the strategy: "Create a media controversy" concerning Mr. Ross, whose support for a tough line on Iran was well known.

"Those groups that feel comfortable being more aggressive in opposing Ross publicly (possibly Voters for Peace, [Friends Committee on National Legislation] , Physicians for Social Responsibility, others) will do so," Mr. Disney wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Washington Times, "while others who may have less latitude on the matter will declare their preference for a more agreeable envoy."

(Warning, another hectoring geese-gander session will wrap this up. Look away now.)

It’s worth noting here that NIAC was among the groups denouncing (shock! shock!) the Chas Freeman "debacle." Apparently trying to keep Dennis Ross from getting a job for being exactly what he has always claimed to be — an Israel intimate with a profound skepticism of Iran’s intentions — is somehow more holy than keeping Freeman from being hired for what he emphatically was not: a contrarian independent.

Here’s a tip: The way to end smear campaigns against presidential hires is to, well, end smear campaigns against presidential hires.

Postscript: NIAC is rebutting Eli here. It doesn’t add much except for name-calling about "neo-conservatives."