Thread by @StringwallApp

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog Please allow me to share a few paragraphs from this @TheAtlantic article about Paul Manafort.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic All of the money Congress began spending on anti-communist proxies represented a vast opportunity. Iron-fisted dictators and scruffy commandants around the world hoped for a share of the largesse.

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic To get it, they needed help refining their image, so that Congress wouldn’t look too hard at their less-than-liberal tendencies. Other lobbyists sought out authoritarian clients, but none did so with the focused intensity of Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly.

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic The firm would arrange for image-buffing interviews on American news programs; it would enlist allies in Congress to unleash money. Back home, it would help regimes acquire the whiff of democratic legitimacy that would bolster their standing in Washington.

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic The firm won clients because it adeptly marketed its ties to the Reagan administration, and then the George H. W. Bush administration after that.

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic In one proposal, reported in The New York Times in 1988, the firm advertised its “personal relationships” with officials and promised to “upgrade” back channels “in the economic and foreign policy spheres.”

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic No doubt it helped to have a friend in James Baker, especially after he became the secretary of state under Bush. “Baker would send the firm clients,” Kelly remembered. “He wanted us to help lead these guys in a better direction.”

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic 🚨🚨🚨
But moral improvement never really figured into Manafort’s calculus. “Generally speaking, I would focus on how to bring the client in sync with western European or American values,” Kelly told me. “Paul took the opposite approach.”

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic ⬆️⬆️ Did you catch that?
The point was NOT to make dictators and criminals more friendly to democracy. The point was to make democracy more friendly to dictators and criminals.

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic In her memoir, Riva Levinson, a managing director at the firm from 1985 to 1995, wrote that when she protested to her boss that she needed to believe in what she was doing, Manafort told her that it would “be my downfall in this business.”

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic The firm’s client base grew to include dictatorial governments in Nigeria, Kenya, Zaire, Equatorial Guinea, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia, among others.

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic Manafort’s firm was a primary subject of scorn in a 1992 report issued by the Center for Public Integrity called “The Torturers’ Lobby.”

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic I’ll stop there. My point is that the Reagan and Bush camps literally teamed up with the Manafort and Stone camp to sell public policy to hostile foreign adversaries and global organized crime. Any nasty ideology was fine, as long as it was opposed to Soviet communism.

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic Paul Manafort worked for a law firm called Vorys Sater Seymour & Pease, in the late 1970s. They sent him to Beirut to represent a large Saudi construction company. Was this company Saudi BinLadin Group owned by the bin Ladin family?

@arapaho415 @TeresaCCarter2 @insiderfilms1 @sisu_sanity @clearing_fog @TheAtlantic During that era, the KGB had a special interest in Lebanon, because they considered it a good spot to target and recruit Americans. 🤔