Earlier this year, one of Washington’s preeminent think tanks, the Atlantic Council, was caught in a pay-for-play scheme promoting an authoritarian regime that happens to pay some of its bills. The incident could reignite a burgeoning bipartisan coalition of anti-kleptocracy lawmakers that has put foreign corruption in its crosshairs.

The president of the Council, Fred Kempe, penned a glowing op-ed at CNBC.com on January 14 applauding the United Arab Emirates’ appointment of Sultan Al Jaber, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s CEO, to lead the U.N.’s COP28 climate summit. The article dropped in the midst of a backlash from climate activists who oppose the selection of an oil chief from a petrostate to head international climate talks. What the article didn’t disclose in its original version was that the Atlantic Council has received over $1 million in donations annually from the UAE for the past five years, along with gifts from various state-connected entities. The Gulf State monarchy has a long list of human rights abuses, according to the U.S. State Department, and is a close ally of Saudi Arabia.

After the Washington Free Beacon contacted CNBC for comment about the conflict of interest, the website issued a lengthy editor’s note at the top of the article copping to the omission.

I asked Eli Clifton, a policy adviser at the Quincy Institute, about the fallout from the op-ed. Clifton closely tracks foreign influence at U.S. think tanks and was one of the early voices who initially brought attention to the Atlantic Council’s lack of disclosure. He told me he’d never seen as harsh of a correction as the one put out by CNBC, which essentially claimed the outlet had been misled by Kempe.

"That editor’s note represented a direct collision between journalistic standards and the absence of these principles whatsoever at think tanks," said Clifton.

The editor’s note was enough of a scandal that the Council retroactively scrubbed its own website to include disclosures on several articles, including a write-up on the Council’s Global Energy Forum hosted in Abu Dhabi in January.

Kempe’s PR tour for Middle Eastern monarchies didn’t end with the CNBC op-ed though. Just a few days after the debacle, Kempe spoke on a panel at Davos entitled "Saudi Arabia’s Transformation in a Changing Global Context," and heaped praise on Saudi Arabia’s minister of finance, Mohammed Al-Jadaan—a "rock star," in Kempe’s words. "I hope that’s an accepted thing to call someone in Saudi Arabia, but you really are highly respected by all of your peers," said Kempe.

Needless to say, the Council’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia’s closest Gulf State ally were not mentioned to the audience members.

This slippage between neutral think tank analyst and paid lobbyist is not entirely uncommon in Washington, though it doesn’t often play out quite this brazenly. Ben Freeman is the former director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy and now a research fellow at the Quincy Institute. For him, what’s unnerving about the recent Kempe scandal is that the Council actually releases more details about its funding than many other think tanks. However, several of its largest donations remain anonymous, which has led to speculation.

"The op-ed shows that when think tanks don’t disclose information it makes it look like they have something to hide," said Freeman. "It’s not a scarlet letter to take foreign funding but these institutions need to disclose when they do."

Several recent flare-ups at think tanks have exposed the scope of the conflicts of interest and caught the attention of lawmakers.

This past summer, the head of the Brookings Institution, John Allen, stepped down amidst a federal investigation into illegal lobbying he did on behalf of Qatar. The Qatari government is a major backer of Brookings, which consistently sits at the top of international rankings for U.S. think tanks in terms of research output and influence. The FBI’s affidavit alleged that Allen violated foreign lobbying rules by advocating for Doha interests to White House officials during a 2017 diplomatic dispute while advising Qatar on how to shape U.S. policy. The DOJ recently dropped its probe into Allen without an explanation of why it chose not to pursue charges.

The prestige of think tanks like Brookings and the Atlantic Council derives from their coveted independence and technical expertise, which spurs lawmakers to court their advice and philanthropic donors to pay them handsome sums. At least, that’s what we’re told. Think tanks have become so embedded in the political process, often writing legislation for congressional offices, that they might as well be considered a fifth estate of government.

Originally serving as boutique policy shops, the nonprofit research sector now takes in billions of tax-exempt dollars from both multinational corporations and, increasingly, foreign governments, much of which remains undisclosed. In recent years, Big Tech companies have flooded a smattering of think tanks with cash, especially once the firms began to face regulatory scrutiny.

Foreign funders have increased their footprint in D.C. as well. In a 2020 study from the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative, Freeman found that think tanks accepted at least $174 million from foreign state entities, and the number is almost certainly higher because of a lack of transparency. Many of the top foreign spenders are OPEC+ governments—Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Russia—that clearly conflict with U.S. interests on key issues like energy policy. In addition, the repressive crackdowns by these governments would seem to contradict the stated goals of many think tanks like Brookings, which nominally take a hard line in support of human rights.

For large corporations, white papers from a pseudo-academic outfit offer a certain cachet that can be more valuable than lobbying. And foreign regimes, especially those with sullied fortunes, can bypass legal restrictions on direct lobbying and use think tanks for reputation laundering. In both cases, a lack of disclosure can hoodwink lawmakers into thinking they are getting independent analysis.

The dark money flowing into think tanks creates a crisis of expertise that further undermines trust in government and threatens the basic rule of law. Domestic lobbyists have to register their activities, and foreign actors are bound by an even stricter set of laws and restrictions, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.

The Brookings bombshell last year galvanized a group of lawmakers in Congress to push for mandated disclosures from policy shops on foreign funding. The outcry over the Kempe op-ed could build momentum in the new Congress. Among the most prominent voices are Democratic Reps. Katie Porter (D-CA) and Jared Golden (D-ME), joined by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI). Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has also been a longtime critic of opaque funding at think tanks.

Both the Think Tank Transparency Act and the Fighting Foreign Influence Act are expected to be reintroduced this Congress. They would force nonprofits to disclose high-dollar donations from overseas to a public registry. Other reforms would also close loopholes in Truth in Testimony rules, so that think tank experts called upon to speak at congressional hearings can’t sidestep the limited transparency obligations already in place.

The legislators are part of a broader anti-kleptocracy coalition that has emerged in Congress. They seek to impose stricter rules on an array of American institutions, from banks to real estate to nonprofits, that all too willingly accept illicit funds from overseas. As shown by the Pandora Papers in 2021, onshore tax havens such as South Dakota and coastal real estate have become a vehicle for global oligarchs to evade sanctions and taxes, and maintain financial secrecy. While oligarchs use properties for direct money laundering, they often turn to nonprofits such as art museums, medical schools, and think tanks to burnish their image and buy influence in the U.S.

To be sure, Republicans have been more keen to crack down on foreign funding at think tanks than they have been on instituting transparency rules for U.S.-based corporations. And of course, right-wing donors have their own think tank networks—primarily the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute—which still wield enormous power in GOP politics.

Still, passing even basic transparency reforms for foreign funding at think tanks would be an important rebuttal to the libertarian wing of the GOP, which for decades has worked to protect the financial secrecy of corporations from the prying eye of the taxman or government intrusion. It would be a key admission by conservatives that the international flow of capital is not an unmitigated good and requires some regulation.