Lawyers Line Up to Get Piece of Embassy Lobbying Business by Larry Luxner If you want to see the trappings of diplomacy in Washington, take a drive along tree-lined Massachusetts Avenue, where the colorful flags of dozens of embassies flutter from the tops of stately mansions. But the real grunt work is done on K Street, NW, where sleek steel-and-glass buildings house many of the capitalís 17,500 or so lobbyistsóthe hired guns who, for a fee, try to sway the White House, Congress and a bewildering array of federal agencies on behalf of their various clients. Make no mistake about it: Lobbying is a booming business in the nationís capitalóas countries from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe increasingly look for more influence on Capitol Hill than their often underfunded, unsophisticated embassies can provide. And when it comes to the delicate art of lobbying on behalf of foreign governments, lawyers are usually better than public relations outfits. At least thatís the opinion of Paul S. Reichler, a registered l obbyist with Foley Hoag, which along with Akin Gump, Patton Boggs, Kirkland & Ellis and Piper Rudnick are among the biggest and most influential law firms in Washington. Foley Hoagís current clients include the governments of Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The firm also represents private clients in Malaysia. "When you lobby for a domestic client, there are domestic political issues and constituencies you can mobilize, and members of Congress have to be concerned about these domestic constituencies," Reichler told The Washington Diplomat. "However, when you lobby for a foreign governmentóapart from those few, like Israel, which have major domestic constituenciesóyou have to lobby on the merits. Electoral issues are not relevant. You have to be able to persuade lawmakers that doing what is favorable to your client is in the best interests of the United States." Reichler continued: "In order to have any chance of persuading, you have to master the facts. You have to become an expert on the substantive issues that affect relations between your client and the United States, because if you go into a meeting and youíre uninformed and you just mouth platitudes, the door will get slammed in your face." The 56-year-old Harvard Law School graduate said that being trustworthy is "a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one." "People, whether theyíre on the Hill or Foggy Bottom, will only want to see you because they consider you a useful source. You have to have access to information that they donít have," Reichler said. "Thatís why lawyers tend to be more effective at this, because weíre used to preparing cases for trial. We know the importance of studying and absorbing and organizing masses of facts into a comprehensive statement." Reichler should know. He lobbied for Nicaragua back in the 1980s, at a time when that Central American country was ruled by Sandinistas at war with U.S.-backed contras. "I represented the government of Nicaragua in a very famous lawsuit at the International Court of Justice over the mining of Nicaraguan harbors by the CIA, and we won that suit," he recalled. "That was part of our strategy. We figured that by winning that suit, weíd persuade enough members of Congress to vote against aid for the contras, and in fact thatís what happened." Reichler has been practicing law since 1973 and has been a registered lobbyist since 1980. He began representing Guyana in 1990, lobbying on a pro bono basis for opposition political leader Cheddi Jagan and his left-leaning Peopleís Progressive Party. Until recently, he also represented the Guatemalan government, serving as one of two international mediators in the boundary dispute between Guatemala and Belize. Foley Hoag continues to represent Haiti, "advising the government with respect to the Organization of American States mediation process and attempting to solve the political impasse that would allow democratic elections to go forward and reopen international financing for Haiti." The firm has also been very active in pushing for the enactment and expansion of the African Growth and Opportunity Act on behalf of Uganda. In fact, foreign government representation accounts for 40 percent of the business at Foley Hoagís Washington office, which has 16 lawyers. In addition, the firm has more than 250 attorneys at its Boston headquarters and is about to open a branch in China. Mark Cowan is a partner with Patton Boggs, whose annual revenues come to around $160 million. "We have one of the largest foreign representation practices in Washington," said Cowan, who spent seven years with the CIA before joining Patton Boggs four years ago. "Iím often the one talking to these countries." According to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Patton Boggs represents the governments of Angola, Costa Rica, Mexico, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It also works for half a dozen other countries, which the firm declined to identify. Itís difficult to get law firms to comment on specific cases or clients, let alone fees. One of the largest, Akin Gump, wonít even name the countries it representsóneither in interviews nor on its official Web site. "Thereís a wide disparity in fees," said Reichler. "Sometimes, a government will hire somebody to deal with one specific situation of a temporary nature. Other times, theyíll hire lobbyists to help in connection with a visit by a head of state. But a comprehensive lobbying program to deal with all of the issues is much more expensive." Very few such programs cost below $30,000 a month plus expenses, Reichler said, while very few are above $60,000 a month. The exceptions, he noted, are mainly Israel and Saudi Arabia, which "pay much more than that upper limit." Reichler represents no Middle Eastern governments, although he does have private clients in the predominantly Muslim nation of Malaysia. In October, Malaysiaís former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, outraged millions of Americans and others when he accused Jews of "ruling the world by proxy" and said that 1.3 billion Muslims could not be "defeated by a few million Jews." Reichler called the situation "unique," explaining that "with damage control, the best thing is to be honest. There is no point defending the statement itself. It was bad, it was wrong, and itís not appropriate to defend. But it is still possible to defend Malaysia, and in this particular case, it was important to point out that these were personal sentiments, not the policy of the Malaysian government." He added that Malaysiaís new prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, "is a very decent, open-minded and tolerant man who has a reputation for unimpeachable integrity." Another important law firm involved in lobbying is Kirkland & Ellis, which is considered among the top five firms most frequently used by Fortune 500 companies ranging from Abbott Laboratories to Morgan Stanley to Verizon. The companyís oldest and largest office is in Chicago, where 500 lawyers occupy 11 floors and provide a full spectrum of litigation, transactional, intellectual property, bankruptcy and tax services to publicly and privately held companies. The firmís Washington office, established in 1930, has around 140 lawyers with a special focus on legislative, regulatory and administrative law, and issues of public policy. Kirkland & Ellis also has offices in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London. Yet another heavy legal hitter in Washington is Piper Rudnick, which merged with Verner Liipfert in October 2002. The combined company has 900 lawyers and represents the governments of Afghanistan, Cote díIvoire, Cyprus, Ethiopia, India, Malawi, Slovenia and Taiwan. Partner Larry Levinson said the firmís foreign clients also include the Mexican Senate as well as Montenegro, the only former Yugoslav republic to remain politically linked to Serbia. Some countries do have important domestic constituencies. One of the most famous is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which for years has made sure that the United States remain a strong supporter of Israel through its lobbying campaigns. But other, lesser-known groups have also been quite effective on Capitol Hill. The Washington-based Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) recently spearheaded a fax campaign that got the Bush administration to reverse a controversial immigration proposal born out of post-9/11 concerns over terrorism. Armenia had been included on a list of countries whose nonimmigrant male nationals over the age of 16 must register and report their movements to the Immigration and Naturalization Services. Within the first 24 hours of issuing an "action alert," more than 10,000 ANCA members from all 50 states sent Internet-based protest faxes to Bush, expressing the Armenian-American communityís profound opposition to this action. Some 60 percent of those faxes came from California, home to many of the estimated 1.5 million Americans of Armenian origin. ANCA has also raised its voice on other issues, including an effort to increase trade between the United States and Armenia. Two bills, one in the House and one in the Senate, aim to extend permanent normal trade relations to Armenia, ensuring lower tariffs on Armenian imports to the United States and giving greater Armenian access to U.S. government credit facilities on a permanent basis. "We are not foreign agents," said Elizabeth S. Chouldjian, ANCAís communications director. "ANCA is a grass-roots organization with our main headquarters in Washington and regional offices in Boston and Los Angeles. We donít have memberships per se, but we reach tens of thousands of people on a weekly basis through our e-mails." On Dec. 9, ANCA launched its 2004 Voter Education Campaign, in which a four-page questionnaire will be sent to all presidential candidates and a two-page questionnaire to all incumbents and challengers seeking to win a seat in the upcoming 109th Congress. Responses to the questionnaires will be widely distributed to Armenian-Americans before election day "to help voters make informed choices at the ballot box on Nov. 2, 2004." Chouldjian told The Washington Diplomat that ANCAís main concern has been Turkeyís "ongoing denial" of the Armenian genocide of 1915, in which an estimated 1 million Armenians died. "Itís an issue that speaks to the heart of every single Armenian in this country," she said. "For years, the Turkish government has been hiring top lobbying firms in an effort to ëclean upí its massive human rights problems." Other policy issues at the top of ANCAís agenda include continued self-determination for the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh, conditions on U.S. aid to Azerbaijan and the Turkish blockade of Armenia. "The Armenian-American community has made great strides over the last few decades to express its concerns and reach out to elected officials, as any good citizen does," Chouldjian said. "Weíre working within the American political system to get our issues and concerns across." Larry Luxner is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.