By Shane GoldmacherFollow on January 10, 2014
And so there was Dennis Hastert, who presided as speaker in the Abramoff era, on the same flight to Istanbul as members of Congress. Lobbyists had been intimately involved in the
months of planning for the trip, with dozens of back-and-forth emails, phone calls, and meetings on Capitol Hill. As the trip neared, one lobbyist at Hastert’s firm, Laurie McKay, held conference calls and emailed daily with the schedulers of the eight House members who participated: Republicans Virginia Foxx, George Holding, Adam Kinzinger, Todd Rokita, Lee Terry, and Ed Whitfield, and Democrats Sheila Jackson Lee and Chellie Pingree. McKay even escorted three of them to Washington Dulles International Airport and helped them check in with Turkish Airlines.Former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (Chris Kleponis/Getty Images)Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Federal records indicate that five lobbyists—Hastert, Gephardt, Robert Mangas, Janice O’Connell, and an undisclosed lobbyist with the Caspian Group—joined the congressional delegation at some point in Turkey. How could this be? Didn’t the 2007 rules ban lobbyists from such overseas excursions?
picture by gagrule.net
It turns out that the Turkey trip was sanctioned under a 1961 law, the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act, which allows foreign governments to shuttle members of Congress and their staffs abroad if the State Department has approved the destination nations for “cultural exchange” trips. About 60 countries have such clearances. Despite the 2007 post-Abramoff travel law, lobbyists are still able to plan and attend these MECEA journeys.
Of all the loopholes that allow special interests a role in congressional travel abroad, none is as shrouded in secrecy as this one. The trips fall into a bureaucratic black hole. There is no centralized list of lawmakers who participate. The itineraries and costs stay secret, unlike privately sponsored trips. And lobbyist involvement never has to be disclosed.
Neither Congress nor the State Department claims to keep complete records, each saying the burden falls on the other. “Nope, that’s not something that we have to do,” State Department spokeswoman Susan Pittman said of collecting itineraries. The House Ethics Committee has said it has “no jurisdiction.” The Senate Ethics Committee pointed to the thin record of existing public documents.
Jock Friedly, creator of the website Legi- Storm, which tracks congressional travel and finances, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the State Department for more detailed information several years ago. “I got bupkes,” he said. “I got basically nothing.” No reply to a National Journal FOIA request came in time for publication.
It is impossible to say yet how many such lobbyist-backed trips occurred last year. None of the eight lawmakers who went to Turkey have disclosed their trip yet—nor have they needed to. The trips are reported only on annual financial forms, which won’t be released until June, at the earliest.
National Journal’s investigation uncovered the Turkey trip through a review of foreign-government lobbying records maintained by the Justice Department and filed by Gephardt Government Affairs, Dickstein Shapiro (Hastert’s firm), and the Caspian Group.
These foreign-sponsored trips are increasingly popular. NJ’s review found that at least 18 lawmakers went abroad this way in 2013, including a 10-member delegation of the Congressional Black Caucus to China. While the final figure will likely be higher, 18 already equals the total number of lawmakers who went abroad on MECEA travel between 2006 and 2009, according to a Washington Post database of this type of travel published last year.
The bonds that Gephardt and Hastert built in Turkey could prove invaluable for all their paying clients, no matter who picked up the tab for the trip. Gephardt’s other clients include Google, General Electric, and Goldman Sachs—and that’s just the G’s. Perhaps that’s why federal records show that lobbyists with Gephardt’s and Hastert’s firms contacted about four dozen congressional offices in the first six months of 2013 alone to dangle a free trip to Turkey.
Gephardt’s firm declined comment for this story; Hastert’s did not respond to inquiries.
The two former congressional heavies certainly spent enough time with the Turkey delegation to make an impression. “He had a farm, and we talked about farming and [agriculture] issues,” Pingree said of Hastert. “We had a chance to bond.”
Which, for the lobbyists, is exactly the point. “Whenever you spend a few days with somebody, unless you’re not very good at your job, you’re going to bond with them, to create some ties with them that will likely last beyond the trip,” said Abramoff, whose trading of overseas junkets for congressional favors landed him and former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, among others, in prison. “That’s why people do these.”
Pingree said that, at the time, she hadn’t thought of her hosts’ status as registered lobbyists. “I can picture one of them calling me up and saying, ‘Hey, I met you on the trip,’ ” she said in a recent interview. But, she quickly added, “I don’t think, personally, it would make a difference.”
No other lawmaker returned calls about the trip.
Source: http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/how-lobbyists-still-fly-through-loopholes-20140110