Who's Lobbying Whom, Cross-Border Edition

The Foreign Agents Registration Act, passed in 1938 to track Nazi propaganda, requires lobbyists to disclose their clients, precisely whom they've lobbied on the Hill or in the administration, and what was discussed during those contacts.

FARA has been a useful, though limited, tool for reporters and the public trying to track lobbying efforts by foreign governments.

The problem is that these filings, until recently, have been on cumbersome, sometimes illegible paper forms, making it difficult to get a full picture of what countries and their lobbyists are up to and how successful they have been in getting policies changed to favor their agendas. The Justice Department digitally scanned the forms and posted them on its Web site two years ago, but it's still a tough slog to work with the data.

No more. The Sunlight Foundation, which promotes open government, and ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news operation, have teamed up to create a searchable, easily accessible, downloadable database of filings from July 2007 through the end of 2008 by about 300 foreign agents. It's searchable by country, lobbyist, issue and member of Congress.

No more tedious plowing through paper records, says ProPublica Managing Editor Stephen Engelberg. The new Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker (http://www.foreignlobbying.org) "allows users to follow foreign influence with just a few clicks of a mouse." Right there in the comfort of home, sipping on your latte.

You can find out who the big spenders were, based on their 2008 filings: the United Arab Emirates ($11 million), the United Kingdom ($6 million), Japan ($4 million), Turkey ($4 million) and Iraq ($3.7 million). Dubai, one of the emirates, hired and paid three firms -- DLA Piper, Mark Saylor Co. and Levick Strategic Communications -- more than $4.6 million in fees to make sure that Dubai Aerospace would get a green light in its purchase of two aviation companies. The UAE had nearly 2,000 contacts with members of Congress last year.

NATO ally Turkey led the field last year with 2,268 Capitol Hill contacts (meaning letters, meetings, phone calls, faxes, etc.), ProPublica reported, largely from its successful drive to block a congressional resolution branding the 1915 slaughter of Armenians as genocide. Our Canadian cousins had 1,300 contacts, while our new ally, Libya, had 1,200. No contacts were reported involving Facebook and Twitter, but some of those could start appearing in this year's filings.

Top lobbyists for foreigners included DLA Piper ($10 million), Livingston Group ($5 million), Cassidy & Associates ($2.5 million) and Fleishman-Hillard ($2.3 million.) As would be expected, members of the Senate and House foreign affairs committees were the most heavily importuned, with Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and his staff logging 173 contacts, easily outpacing Reps. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), with 105; Dan Burton (R-Ind.), with 100; and Howard Berman (D-Calif.), with 95.

Wexler's first-place finish, according to the analysis, apparently was sparked by his co-chairmanship of the Azerbaijan Caucus at a time when Azerbaijan was looking for better trade and investment opportunities from the United States.

And you can track 74 campaign contributions that foreign agents made to members they were contacting. Three of the contributions, to Reps. Burton, Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), and Donald Payne (D-N.J.), were made the same day they met with lobbyists from the PLM Group, a joint venture of the Livingston Group and the Podesta Group, according to the analysis.

What? You don't have a registered foreign agent working for you? Everyone's got one. Even the Dalai Lama! (Note: Not registering, aside from being bad form, can get the Justice Department after you.)

GOOD GUESSERS

And now, the winners of our Guess the Vote contest in June, to predict how many senators would vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Many entrants erred way high in their guesses, with some predicting she would garner more than 80 votes. Most of them may have expected that Sotomayor would pick up many more Republican votes than she eventually got. In the end, only nine GOP members voted "aye."

Four entrants landed right on the money, predicting that Sotomayor would receive 68 votes. First in with the right number was Washington lawyer James R. Klimaski. Brian Zeiher, an information technology consultant from Piscataway, N.J., was second, followed by Loudoun County civics teacher Chris Gauthier and then by Kevin Sturtevant, a senior vice president at Ketchum Services, a fundraising firm for nonprofits.

The remaining six winners were one vote off -- there were many in this category, so we had to use the tiebreaker prediction of when the Senate would vote. First in a large group predicting 69 votes was Anthony Cradit of Mesa, Ariz., an Arizona State University student who correctly predicted that the vote would be on Aug. 6.

Other winners in that group were Tim McFeeley, vice president at executive search firm Isaacson, Miller; John Modler, a retiree from Catonsville who's a former contest winner (in 2001); Paul S. Clark, a crisis communications consultant in Kensington and former communications director of the Office of Personnel Management; and Donald R. Hamilton, a retired foreign service officer who just moved back to this area. Ruth Goins, a D.C.-based nonprofit-sector consultant, predicted that Sotomayor would get 67 votes on Aug. 6.

Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks to all for entering.