How corporate, foreign influence creeps into Congress

Sue Mi Terry, a leading expert on the Korean Peninsula who held senior positions at prestigious think tanks like the Wilson Center and the Council on Foreign Relations, was indicted in July on charges of acting as a foreign agent for South Korea. For over a decade, Terry publicly advocated in favor of South Korean policy positions and fed information to South Korean officials, allegedly in exchange for luxury goods, expensive dinners, and funding for a Korea-focused policy program.

Tucked within that indictment was a rare reference to a little-known congressional disclosure requirement known as a “Truth in Testimony” form. This form asks House hearing witnesses to disclose funding from foreign governments and federal grants related to the hearing subject, among other things, in order for lawmakers to be aware of potential conflicts of interest. It also asks if the witness is a registered foreign agent.

Between 2016 and 2022, Terry testified three times on U.S.-Korea policy and claimed she was not a registered foreign agent each time. The indictment alleged that, “In acting as a foreign agent without registering with the Attorney General and without disclosing her status as a foreign agent, Terry portrayed herself as unbiased and independent, preventing Congress and the American public from fairly evaluating Terry’s testimony as the testimony of an agent of the [Republic of Korea] Government.”

The Department of Justice’s assumption here is that Congress is typically able to fairly evaluate the testimony of witnesses. But on Capitol Hill, avoiding transparency on Truth in Testimony disclosure forms is the norm, not the exception.

Last month, RS reported that between 2021 and 2024, 89 percent of think tank affiliated witnesses at the House Foreign Affairs Committee worked for organizations that accepted foreign government funding. Over half of these witnesses did not disclose any foreign government funding.

Another third of all think tank witnesses come from organizations that do not disclose any donors at all. Many of these “dark money” think tanks simply claim the “Truth in Testimony” questions don’t apply. After all, how could anyone fact-check them?

Ironically — by way of comparison to other think tankers — Terry was relatively forthcoming in her 2022 Truth in Testimony form. Terry, who had been warned by the FBI previously, listed dozens of the Wilson Center’s foreign government donors, including dollar amounts for grant details not listed on the Wilson Center’s website.

But this general lack of transparency is a feature, not a bug, of the current system. Most witnesses exploit a loophole in the system that allows them to testify in their “personal capacity.” In other words, they declare they aren’t representing any entity and are merely testifying on their own behalf, even if they do just happen to work for an organization that receives considerable funding from foreign governments or weapons manufacturers that stand to benefit from the witnesses’ recommendations.

“Testifying in one's personal capacity is a way of sidestepping transparency,” explained Eli Clifton, Senior Advisor to the Quincy Institute and Investigative Journalist at Responsible Statecraft. “It's a way of avoiding actually complying with the rules.”

Ninety of the 137 think tank witnesses since 2021 have used this loophole — just over 65 percent. For instance, at a 2023 HFAC hearing on the Abraham Accords, Atlantic Council Distinguished Fellow Daniel Shapiro claimed, “I am representing myself and my personal viewpoints.” By invoking this loophole, he avoided disclosure of the Atlantic Council’s funding from countries such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, funders that have a clear stake in expanding the Abraham Accords.

At an HFAC hearing on gray zone tactics, Elisabeth Braw, a Senior Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute — a prominent conservative think tank which does not disclose its funders — invoked this loophole. Braw even initially said that she was representing her employer, before using a pen to cross out her answer and claim she was only representing herself. All eight AEI witnesses since 2021 have invoked this loophole.

In the next session, Congress — including the Senate, which currently does not require any witnesses to disclose potential conflicts of interest — should take critically important steps to better understand potential conflicts of interest behind the witnesses testifying before it. First and foremost, the Truth in Testimony form should be revamped to eliminate the “personal capacity” loophole.

Second, Congress should ask witnesses to disclose organizational funding from private companies that have a vested interest in the committee, such as Pentagon contractor funding of witnesses at the House Foreign Affairs Committee. From 2021-24, think tanks that testified at the HFAC received at least $20 million from the top 100 Pentagon contractors. None of that was disclosed to Congress, simply because lawmakers didn’t ask.

The House Armed Services Committee does ask a similar question, and witnesses are more transparent about funding from weapons manufacturers. When testifying at a hearing about the Replicator Program — a new Department of Defense initiative to develop autonomous swarms of drones — Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute Bryan Clark disclosed industry funding from Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics, companies which have a stake in the outcome of the hearing. This should be the gold standard of transparency in Washington.

Thanks to a rule introduced by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) in 2021, witnesses do have to disclose other organizations that they have legal obligations to. “Hearings are opportunities to get answers for the American people — we need to know about foreign influence or any risk of self dealing with the witnesses called before Congress,” said Porter. The 119th Congress could take this a step further by asking about private funding sources related to the committee or hearing.

Lastly, the 119th Congress should ask witnesses to list all high-dollar organizational foreign government funding. The current question only asks witnesses to list foreign government funding “related to hearing’s subject,” leaving the question open for too much interpretation.

“Foreign governments throw around money to think tanks with prestigious names to color their interests as American national security interests.” a congressional staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told RS. “We need more transparency to know who is funding these witnesses.”

But a rule is only good as it’s enforced. As is, Congress lacks enforcement mechanisms to ensure non-governmental witnesses comply with truth in testimony disclosure. That should be remedied.

In a recent brief titled “Renovating the People’s House,” Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute, and Zach Graves, Executive Director at the Foundation for American Innovation, proposed empowering the House Ethics Committee to determine whether witnesses have violated truth in testimony requirements and, if so, bar them from future testimony. “Upon a timely review and finding of a violation, the House Ethics Committee should notify the Clerk, who should maintain a public list of persons currently or previously barred,” the report reads.

These recommendations will not fix everything, but witnesses are legally required to tell the truth under oath if they want to testify to Congress. Schuman explained in an email to RS that “If submission of this information is under oath, and you commit perjury, that in theory might raise the stakes and encourage greater compliance.”

These commonsense proposals have bipartisan support in Congress. After Porter’s 2021 rule, Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind) introduced a rule later that year with 40 co-sponsors that would have, among other things, closed the personal capacity loophole for foreign government funding. “Congress works best when all the cards are face up on the table,” said Banks.

Among those co-sponsors was Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). In 2020, Johnson also oversaw the publication of the Republican Study Committee National Security Strategy, which proposed a more institutional approach to transparency. The task force report, signed off by Johnson, concluded that “think tanks and similar nonprofit institutions receiving significant funding, over $50,000 a year, from foreign governments, foreign political parties or foreign military entities, should be required to disclose that information for purposes of identifying conflicts-of-interest.”

“Who funds you?” is a normal question in academia, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be a standard question on Capitol Hill. The same way a medical researcher would disclose pharmaceutical funding of their research at a conference or journal, think tank analysts ought to disclose certain private and foreign government funding when testifying on defense policy. If a think tank analyst has good arguments, their arguments will be uplifted — not diminished — by transparency.