How Foreign Tyrants Contract American Lobbyists to Whitewash Their Crimes

On May 19, 1934, a man named Ivy Lee sat in front of a row of American congressional officials, all of whom were trying to determine whether Lee was secretly working for a new regime in Germany known as the Nazis.

Lee wasn’t an unknown figure to these officials. There in his starched collar and his pinstriped suit, his heavy cheeks beginning to sweat in the stuffy room, Lee cut a familiar look. By the early 1930s, Lee was already an American celebrity: a man close to politicians, tycoons, and cultural icons alike, steering their careers and their policies—and the direction of the country writ large. Not long before, Lee had launched a brand-new industry, which quickly roared across the nation. To his proponents, this new enterprise was the savior of American capitalism: an amalgamation of advertising and advice, useful to both business owners and political forces trying to navigate the strains of the early twentieth century. To his detractors, it was simply an excuse to plaster decorum on outright deceit, spinning lies in the service of deep-pocketed clients who were trying to protect their wealth from the masses.

The field was still hazy to most Americans, including those congressional officials now peering down at Lee. “Your business is what?” asked John McCormack, a Democrat who chaired the committee Lee sat in front of, known as the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Lee looked back at him. “It is very difficult to describe, Mr. Chairman,” he replied. “Some people call it ‘publicity agent.’ Some people call it ‘counsel in public relations.’ But that would give you a general idea of it.” Even Lee may not have known what he’d launched.

But others noticed. This new industry—this new field of “public relations,” as it was eventually described—had brought Lee clients from across the country. There were the giants of the Gilded Age who’d turned to Lee to help bury controversies—people like the Rockefellers, who relied on Lee to help cover up some of the worst massacres in American history. There were the copper and steel and banking magnates, turning to Lee to thwart any kind of regulatory oversight. There were the plutocrats of the railroad industry, who still maintained a stranglehold on American transit, depending on Lee to retain their monopolies. And there were the politicians of the era, deep in the pockets of these American oligarchs, relying on Lee’s assistance in blocking the progressive forces rising around the nation.

But they weren’t the only ones. As Lee found success after success in America, international clients came calling, from across the political spectrum. The forces of fascism gaining ground in Italy welcomed Lee with open arms. Rising totalitarians in Moscow were likewise eager to see what kind of opportunities Lee might be able to unlock.

And there, in Germany, was a client who recruited Lee in the early 1930s: a company named I.G. Farben, which was concerned, as Lee told American officials on that day in 1934, with how Germany was perceived in the United States—and how Lee might be able to improve things.

The higher-ups at I.G. Farben knew Lee’s talents. They’d read about his connections and his cant, his willingness to open doors for—and whitewash—whichever clients were willing to pay the most for his services. As Lee revealed to congressional investigators, I.G. Farben was happy to pay for Lee’s work, for some of these “public relations” services they’d heard so much about, if only he’d make it easier for Germany to improve its image in the United States—and expand the efforts and success of a new dictatorship building in Berlin. “The directors of the company told me they were very much concerned over the German relationships with the United States, and antagonism toward Germany in the United States,” Lee admitted during the hearing. “They wanted advice as to how those relations could be improved. So they made an arrangement with me to give them such advice.” And that, to Lee, was all it was: an honest arrangement, based on honest advice. He’d broken no laws. He’d committed no crimes. And he was happy to take payment—the equivalent of more than half a million dollars, adjusting for inflation—for just such assistance.

Lee claimed that the guidance he offered was only to I.G. Farben— not that such advice was especially controversial, anyway. He told his German counterparts that if they wanted the regime in Berlin—which Lee preferred to refer to as the “German government” rather than Nazis—to succeed, they should avoid blatantly obvious propaganda. “Our people regard it as meddling with American affairs, and it was bad business,” Lee claimed. (When McCormack asked if Lee would ever consider acting as a mouthpiece for propaganda, Lee stiffened, saying that he’d “taken the position long ago that I would not disseminate anything, any [propaganda], however innocuous.”) Instead, Lee advised that the Nazis should “establish closer relationships…with American press correspondents located in Germany” and try to get those journalists to disseminate Nazi messaging. That, Lee told his German partners, was key: finding trusted mouthpieces and middlemen who could blast Nazi messaging far and wide, all for the sake of improving relations between the United States and Germany.

But as the questions continued, Lee revealed that it wasn’t just advice he had provided. He admitted that he’d also charged one of his employees to monitor American media for “what they are saying about Germany.” Lee would then relay the themes, as well as his thoughts, to his German contacts. All the better for German counterparts to craft their messages for American audiences—and for American audiences to understand that this new regime in Berlin was one worth supporting.

The hearing never grew heated, never grew especially raucous. (As Lee cooed at one point, “My dear sir, I am perfectly delighted to cooperate.”) His polished demeanor, though, belied a tension Lee had never known: a tension suddenly bubbling to the surface, breaking around Washington, spilling across Europe. Because no matter how much Lee tried to deny any connection between the Nazis and I.G. Farben, the American legislators refused to bite. “In other words, the material that was sent here by [I.G. Farben] was material spread—we would call it propaganda—by authority of the German Government,” Rep. Samuel Dickstein said at one point, pointing to items I.G. Farben had shipped to Lee. “But the distinction that you make in your statement is, as I take it, that the German Government did not send it to you directly; that it was sent to you by [I.G. Farben].” As Dickstein laid out, Lee’s claims that he’d advised only I.G. Farben were a deflection. In reality, the company—a conglomerate later responsible for, among other things, producing the poison gas that would slaughter millions of Jewish victims—was simply a cutout, a middleman between Lee and his ultimate Nazi clients. As Lee mumbled in response, “Right.”

As the hearing wore on, and as the connections between Lee and the Nazis became obvious, Lee’s defenses began to slip. He admitted he’d been recruited by I.G. Farben chief Max Ilgner, a Nazi collaborator who would later oversee key pieces of Germany’s economy during the Second World War. He admitted meeting directly with Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and having a “very interesting conversation” with the war criminal. He’d even met personally with Adolf Hitler, telling the tyrant that he’d “like better to understand him if I could”—all the better to help craft the Nazis’ message for American audiences. And he admitted that he’d advised the Nazis—via their I.G. Farben cutout—on the best way to spin Germany’s growing stockpile of military weaponry, “to make clear to the American people” that these arms weren’t actually a threat.

As Lee finished testifying, he thanked the officials, once more with the kind of obsequious, oleaginous manners that had served him so long. His body, and especially his scalp, ached, and he’d already begun making plans for a trip back to Germany, hoping to enjoy the soothing spa treatments that he thought might help. At fifty-seven, he deserved a breather, a break from this sudden pressure from Americans wondering just who he was working for, and just what impact he might be having on American policy. Plus, he wanted to check in on those clients he’d just described: those Germans who’d paid him phenomenal sums to help open doors, crafting messages for unsuspecting audiences—crafting messages that would help the Nazis rise, reign, and wreak havoc across the European continent.

Lee left that afternoon, sweat curdling around his collar, preparing for projects and clients to come. He had no inkling that the fallout from the hearing he’d just participated in would, in only a few short months, kill him, detonating the reputation he’d spent decades building—or that, nearly a century later, the kinds of links he’d created with the Nazis would come roaring back and nearly undo American democracy in the process.

In early 1986, just over fifty years after Lee’s hearing, a man named Jonas Savimbi touched down in Washington. Even among the characters and charlatans bouncing around the U.S. capital, Savimbi brought an odd, conspicuous look. With a bushy black beard and slanted red beret, he preferred the kind of revolutionary attire made famous by communist guerillas elsewhere. And that made a certain sense: Savimbi had risen to prominence among the leftist anticolonial movements blooming throughout southern Africa, espousing the kinds of pro-communist rhetoric that were anathema to America’s geopolitical ends.

But Savimbi had since gone through a complete change, transforming from his communist chrysalis into a supposed “freedom fighter” in the new nation of Angola, then emerging from centuries of Portuguese colonization. Backed by the far-right apartheid regime in South Africa, Savimbi turned against his former leftist comrades who’d seized power in Angola. And he’d had more success than most anticipated, with his insurgents clawing territory from the Angolan government—launching Savimbi into a new role, as one publication called him, as the “Che Guevara of the right.”

That success came saturated in horrors, with Savimbi authoring appalling crimes across the country. His forces had not only “committed atrocities against children,” as one journalist later recounted, but had even “conscripted women into sexual slavery.” Even during an era of Cold War proxy wars, Savimbi stood apart. As one analyst described, the warlord was unique in African history “because of the degree of suffering he caused without showing any remorse.” (To take just one example, Savimbi “personally beat to death a rival’s wife and children,” as The New York Times reported.) Thanks to his efforts, Savimbi almost singlehandedly extended Angola’s post-colonial civil war—a war that would claim the lives of hundreds of thousands, decimating the new nation in the process—for a new generation.

By the mid-1980s, though, Savimbi’s forces were running low on arms and ammunitions. The Americans had cut him off years earlier, unwilling to work with a man who, among other things, bombed civilians and Red Cross facilities alike. He’d already traveled to Washington multiple times, seeking to lift the ban on American support for his forces, without success. No doors opened. No help came.

But he’d try once more, beret in hand, looking for whatever aid he could find: Searching for the kinds of heavy arms that the United States doled out to other anti-communist leaders around the world. Looking to convince American policymakers that his was a worthy cause, and that concerns about atrocities against children and women were mere rumor—or that even if they’d happened, well, they’d been for the greater good, hadn’t they?

Landing in Washington, Savimbi hopped in a waiting stretch limousine, beginning his tour of the American capital. And it didn’t take long for him to realize that this time would be different—that unlike those previous trips to the United States, doors now opened wherever he went, with praise and promises flooding this supposed “freedom fighter.”

There were stops at multiple think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, where prominent conservative Jeanne Kirkpatrick dubbed Savimbi a “linguist, philosopher, poet, politician, warrior” and “one of the few authentic heroes of our time.” There were interviews with major American newscasters, including ABC’s Nightline and CBS’s 60 Minutes, and even chatter about potentially landing on the cover of Time magazine. And at the Washington Hilton, Savimbi gave the keynote speech at a lavish banquet for the American Conservative Union, where he shared the dais with then-vice president George H.W. Bush. Both men received raucous applause from the crowd, with Savimbi joking that he’d “been following [Bush’s] career for a long time, from afar, from the bush!”

It was, all told, a publicity coup for Savimbi. As The Washington Post wrote, it was “a welcome…unlike anything Washington has ever seen for an African guerrilla leader.”

The trip not only ushered Savimbi into halls of power long blocked to the warlord, but it immediately jump-started the flow of arms Savimbi had long demanded—all the better to beat back his communist opponents, regardless of the women and children caught in the crossfire. As a capstone to his trip, Savimbi received a “bootlegged copy” of President Ronald Reagan’s forthcoming State of the Union address, where the American president would specifically mention Angola and would pledge that, moving forward, America would “support with moral and material assistance [Angolans’] right not just to fight and die for freedom, but to fight and win freedom.”

The trip was an unmitigated success—and couldn’t have been more different from Savimbi’s previous, futile efforts to curry favor with the Americans. For observers, the shift appeared abrupt, almost jarring. With one trip, a decade’s worth of regional policy—which had effectively blocked all aid to Savimbi—had flipped, for no obvious, exogenous reason. It was enough to give observers whiplash.

Yet Savimbi hadn’t accomplished this transformation alone. He’d had help from a new figure, and a new force: a man who’d taken gargantuan sums from the guerrilla leader and become Savimbi’s Svengali in the process, steering the warlord through Washington. A man who, like Lee before him, preferred the shadows and the back rooms, whispering advice and navigating unseen hideaways. A man who cultivated links with powerful figures in America and then took his talents global, working for the most authoritarian, fascistic clients he could find in the process. And a man who would later watch everything he’d worked for collapse in infamy—but not before devastating, perhaps fatally, American foreign policy in the process.

It was a man who reignited Lee’s legacy, ushering in a new age of unrepentant Americans willing to sell their services to dictators and autocrats abroad. Mercenaries cloaked in three-piece suits and gleaming loafers, skirting and subverting regulations in the service of madmen and tyrants, adding a sheen of respectability to those behind the greatest global horrors of the past half century. Men who, in another age, might be considered traitors, and yet who remain welcomed by polite society, spinning their clients and shifting the direction of American foreign policy—and American democracy—in the process.

Men who are considered, to use the technical term, “foreign agents.” And men who have all followed in the footsteps of the foreign agent who helped Savimbi and who continued Lee’s legacy: Paul Manafort.

The narratives of Lee and Manafort are cornerstones of a far broader story: the creation and expansion of the world of foreign lobbying in the United States, and the transformation of American industries into platforms for foreign governments trying to upend and redirect American policy. And it’s the narratives of those men that highlight the contours of this transformation—and reveal how they followed remarkably similar paths, from distinction to disaster.

Lee, still considered the “father of public relations,” blossomed into one of the most influential voices of post-World War I America. He then took his services abroad, and watched his reputation crash on the shoals of rising fascism.

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Excerpted from Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World by Casey Michel. Copyright © 2024 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, a division of Macmillan, Inc.