Talk:Monitor Deloitte/LibyaExcerpts
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Draft
[edit]This is a fused copy-paste narrative of various sources. Don't use it verbatim; but it might help check the narrative for key dates, events, or gaps
Background
[edit]In 1999, the United States agreed to the suspension of U.N. sanctions, but not its own, which it renewed in August, 2001. After 9/11, Qaddafi condemned the attacks, and called the Taliban “Godless promoters of political Islam,” pointing out that six years earlier he had issued a warrant for Osama bin Laden's arrest. Quadaffi began changing course when oil prices were low. The Libyan economy was close to collapse after more than a decade of sanctions brought on by his reckless actions, such as the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. After the U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Qaddafi settled his differences with Washington and abandoned his weapons of mass destruction programs. In August, 2003, the Libyan government pledged to deposit $2.7 billion in the Bank for International Settlements, in Switzerland, to compensate the families of those lost on Pan Am 103. Four months later, after secret negotiations with a British-led team, Libya agreed to renounce its W.M.D. program, and American sanctions were eased.
By late 2004, the United States had revoked the travel ban, established limited diplomatic relations, and lifted many remaining trade restrictions.While Libya normalized relations with the United States and other members of the international community, it began to chart a path towards economic reform and modernization.
In January 2005 at the World Economic Forum, Libyan officials announced initiatives to improve the efficiency of government, the climate for business and entrepreneurship, and the openness of the media.
The plans were informed by the advice of Western academics and experts including Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School who had met one of Muammar al-Qaddafi's sons at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2004, as well as Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning economist. Porter said that a few years before, the Qaddafis contacted him and asked him to help modernize the economy. Despite the Qaddafis’ offer, Porter’s involvement remained minimal until 2006-2007 when he oversaw an initial assessment of the situation.
“I don’t do much of the work myself, the consulting firms do that,” Porter said. Boston’s Monitor Group, which Porter co-founded, was one of the consulting firms involved in reviving the energy, trade, construction, and tourism industries. Meanwhile, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company has been working on the partial privatization of Libya’s Central Bank.
Porter, whose books include Competitive Strategy and The Competitive Advantage of Nations, was persuaded to take the job by Qaddafi's son, Saif al Islam. "More than five years ago [in 2002], I was visited by Omran Bukhres [now the head of the Libyan Economic Development Board] who said: "The Qaddafi family needs your help." It wasn't legal for Americans to go to Libya, so I met Seif in London. After several dinners I became convinced he was really committed to the reform process." "I have gotten to know Saif quite well" porter said in 2007. He was a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics, where he studied with some of the best professors. He's very much oriented toward making Libya a member of the modern world community." "He doesn't have an official position but it's clear he has influence and power - Saif is right in the heart of it all," said Rajeev Singh-Molares of the business consultancy the Monitor Group in London. He has advised Qaddafi for three years, working on a strategy for Libya's economic development." "He is eager for reform and understands the need for Libya to diversify its economy," Singh-Molares said. "In that sense he's a visionary leader. He wants to make Libya something special. But the capacity of Libya to keep up with his vision is limited at this point."
After first meeting Saif at several dinners in London, Porter traveled to Libya multiple times and met top government officials, including the elder Qaddafi. "I didn't take this on because this is a big economy," Porter said in an interview at Tripoli's glitzy Corinthia Hotel. "It was very symbolic. If this can be successful, then other countries will be able to change." Porter complained that reform ground to a halt in 2006 after Monitor recommended a big commitment to education and training and investment in energy, tourism, trade, and construction. A backlash against proposed layoffs of public-sector workers was partly to blame; a planned privatization of a public-sector bank called Sahara also failed when investors rejected the government's valuation.
Libya's reform changes were announced in an environment of skepticism that internal political pressures would cede to the attempted changes. As a way to reassure international investors Qaddafi invited foreign experts to Libya to consult including Porter, Yergin, Mark Fuller, the chief executive officer of the Monitor Group, and Lord Meghnad Desai, director of the London-based Center of Global Governance. Porter was not the only Harvard professor involved in the reform efforts, as he has helped bring other figures from the University to the country. University Distinguished Service Professor Joseph S. Nye paid Libya a visit at Porter’s urging. Nye traveled to Libya and met with Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadaffi to discuss opening the society to globalization. Other Western scholars participating in the discussion and advising include Malkin Professor of Public Policy Robert D. Putnam, as well as Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins University, Nye said. The involvement of the Harvard professors was an individual enterprise and effort, not on behalf of the institution, Porter said.
"The system is designed not to do anything. It is a broken decision-making process." Said porter. "You have a situation where no one knows who's in charge, so nobody's in charge," he said in 2007. "[Despite the fact we are talking] about a ruler and his son, in a sense, decision-making is widely distributed in this country. People [consider Libya] a dictatorship, but it really doesn't work that way. That is another reason for optimism." "Qaddafi's Green Book talks about self-reliance and a bottoms-up society. Instead, Libya has grown into a dependency economy. Most people have jobs given by the government. The typical Libyan is paid twice as much in subsidies as salary. Qaddafi made the decision to move in a different direction." "Qaddafi at some point decided the Libyan people could not live in a country isolated from the rest of the world. And opening up is more in line with his objectives and values." "The Gadhafi family has signaled very consistently to me that this reform will happen," Porter said. "They reached out to me five years ago and said, 'Would you help us create a different kind of market economy?' "
"The challenge is to introduce a market economy while avoiding the mistakes that have led to the dramatic inequalities," such as occurred in some Eastern European countries as they privatized after the Soviets' fall, Porter said. "At first, Saif was one of the few people who backed [reform]. There are getting to be more and more believers. Most people believe in the diagnosis. But cutting through all the obstacles in decision-making is the problem." "I didn't take this on because this is a big economy. It was very important, very symbolic. If this can be successful, then other countries will be able to change," Porter added. "One of the greatest challenges is not coming up with the right strategy but coming up with the process that allows you to do things. This is a test case of how to create action. We are learning a lot that we could use in other parts of the world—in the Middle East and in other countries with a history of socialist practices."
The New Dawn for Libya
[edit]Monitor pored over the Libyan economy and mapped out a strategy for the next decade or so, focusing on energy, tourism, trade, and construction. As Monitor delved into its study of the economy, the consultants came to a hard realization. "Nothing worked in Libya," says Rajeev Singh-Molares, a London-based senior partner at Monitor who leads the firm's Libyan team.
Though the country is the wealthiest in North Africa, with approximately 6 million people enjoying a per-capita income of about $6,000 per year, Libya scored poorly as a place to do business. Monitor ranked it 110th in the world in terms of business competitiveness, well below neighbors Algeria and Egypt. Outside of the oil and gas sector, Libya was unable to attract more than a tiny trickle of foreign investment due to its bureaucratic obstacles and skill shortages.
Qaddafi and his son needed more time to build consensus. Over 2007, they gradually replaced hard-liners in the government. On Feb. 22, Porter joined Saif in Tripoli for the kick off the next phase with a lecture called "The New Dawn for Libya: Delivering on the Promises." He spoke at the Corinthia Hotel—a joint Libyan/Maltese venture that had become the base for Western oil men and the site of the new U.S. Embassy. Porter was received by the Libyans with the fanfare associated with a head of state. He was joined at the launch ceremony at a Tripoli hotel by the younger Qaddafi, who arrived with a posse of edgy bodyguards. The event included the announcement the launch of a Libyan Economic Development Board designed to speed government decision-making and boost private enterprise. The Libyans and their Western advisers based their plan on the model that had worked well in Singapore. The LEDB's mandate was to clear away some of the obstacles to successful private businesses and diversify the Libyan economy away from the state-controlled energy sector, which accounted for about 60% of gross domestic product.
More than a dozen Monitor consultants worked in Libya, studying the economy and running a three-month leadership program intended to create a new pro-business elite. 250 Libyan businessmen and government workers underwent training to be "entrepreneurs of the future," Porter said referring to the participants in a kind of mini-MBA program. The people in the course "were real role models, starting businesses, contributing to society," said graduate Yazid el Shaari, an engineer at Canadian-Libyan joint venture Veba Oil Operations. But the talent shortage remained acute: consultants said that the same four or five names, most of them returnees from the West, came up whenever top jobs were being filled.
Along with trying to clear out red tape, they are also working on partial privatization of the banking system, which is now entirely state-controlled. Stakes in two private banks may be sold to foreign banks, with HSBC (HBC) mentioned in the list of candidates. They also started trying to rationalize Libya's Byzantine system of managing its oil wealth. The various funds that Qaddafi had set up over the years were consolidated into one unit called the Libyan Investment Co. Some of the $60 billion that Libya had saved away was invested in hedge funds and private equity in the U.S. and London.
Among the ideas generated was an expansion of tourism. "Libya is into the hundreds of thousands of tourists versus millions in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt," said Rajeev Singh-Molares, a director at the Cambridge, Mass.-based consulting firm Monitor Group, who helped write a report on Libya's economy in 2006.
Saif also promised to more than double compensation for state employees.
“We have to create a process of improving everything,” Porter said. “It won’t happen overnight. It will take years.” Porter added that the principles behind the Qaddafi philosophy were compatible with a competitive economy. “A country in a tense relationship with the U.S. has settled all the international disputes, has renounced weapons of mass destruction, and invited outside inspectors." "We must help these people, they are on the right track.” “Those of us involved are trying to be patient, take the long view,” Porter said.
Confidential strategy memo released
[edit]In 2009, the Libyan opposition has released a confidential memorandum produced by Monitor Group that outlined a campaign to improve Libya's image in the United States. The document, obtained by the opposition Libyan National Conference, described the targeting of key Americans, including siblings of top administration officials, to serve in effect as lobbyists for the Qaddafi regime, a campaign that included top academics and journalists to improve the image Qaddafi in the United States.
"Many of the visitors Monitor brought to Libya have individually briefed all levels of the United States government including specifically the president, vice president, heads of national security and intelligence as well as the secretary of state," the memo said. Libyan sources said the plan, obtained from opposition elements in Tripoli, was implemented and journalists from leading U.S. publications as well as academics were invited to Libya in 2008, Middle East Newsline reported. They said some of the subsequent stories, which reflected Tripoli's complaint over its relationship with the United States, were published in such newspapers as the New York Times and Washington Post.
In all, 12 people were flown to Libya from July 2006 through June 2007. They included former Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee chairman Richard Perle, historian Bernard Lewis, author Francis Fukayama as well as journalists Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria. "Each individual was recruited through Monitor's extensive international network," the memo said. "The Monitor team personally contacted individuals and encouraged them to visit Libya. To date only [American Policy Institute vice president] Danielle Pletka declined to visit Libya. All other individuals either agreed to a date or indicated their interest in collaborating as well as a potential visit in the future."
One of the Americans sent to Libya was identified as Nicholas Negroponte, brother of then-U.S. National Intelligence director John Negroponte and later deputy secretary of state. The memo said Nicholas, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, briefed his brother after returning from Libya. "Nicholas Negroponte briefed his brother and other senior officials in the White House upon his return from Libya," the memo said.
The memo was addressed to Abdullah Al Sanusi, termed "the client." Al Sanusu has been identified as a senior Libyan intelligence officer wanted in connection with the bombing of the French airline UTA in 1989. Monitor requested $3.5 million per year for both retainer and expenses.
"We will provide operational support for publication of positive articles on Libya in these publications," the July 2006 memo by Monitor said. "For example: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, International Herald Tribune, Financial Times, Weekly Standard, National Interest, Public Interest, Foreign Affairs etc. We will identify and encourage journalists, academics and contemporary thinkers who will have interest in publishing papers and articles on Libya." The memo said Libya sought Americans regarded as close to the then-Bush administration to visit Libya. The Libyans cited policy analyst Laurent Murawiec, former CIA director James Woolsey, human rights attorney Nina Shea, Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes and Ms. Pletka, who had been considered for a senior State Department position in 2004.
Hafed Al Ghwell, a Libyan opposition figure who lives in Washington, said he met some of those recruited by Monitor to visit Libya. He said many of the American visitors were struck by what he termed the ignorance of Gadhafi and his determination to buy influence in the United States. "All of them without exception thought Gadhafi was a lunatic," Al Ghwell said. "Gadhafi will continue to try to blackmail his way in Washington by saying he has not gotten anything worth much from the U.S. to damage the hopes that Iran and North Korea will follow the Libyan example. The Obama administration however needs to know that appeasing Gadhafi is a dangerous road to take."
LSE Libya Links
[edit]Reexamination after 2011 Libyan civil war
[edit]2005-2009
[edit](paraphrase) In 2003 and 2004 Libya normalized relations with the United States and other memebers of the international community and began to chart a path towards economic reform and modernization. In January 2005 at the World Economic Forum, Libyan officials announced initiatives to improve the efficiency of government, the climate for business and entrepreneurship, and the openness of the media. Qaddafi's son Seif was a central figure in promoting the reforms.
The plans were informed by the advice of Western academics and experts including Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School and Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning economist. The changes were announced in an environment of skepticism that internal political pressures would not cede to such reform. As a way to reassure international investors Qaddafi invited foreign experts to Libya to consult; they included Porter, Yergin, Mark Fuller, the chief executive officer of the consulting company the Monitor Group, and Lord Meghnad Desai, director of the London-based Center of Global Governance.
In recent years, U.S. diplomatic relations with Libya have thawed to tepid. In 1999, the United States agreed to the suspension of U.N. sanctions, but not its own, which it renewed in August, 2001. Then came 9/11. Qaddafi condemned the attacks, called the Taliban “Godless promoters of political Islam,” and pointed out that six years earlier he had issued a warrant for Osama bin Laden’s arrest. In 2004, two decades of American sanctions came to an end, after Libya had agreed to pay compensation for the victims of Lockerbie and renounced weapons of mass destruction. In August, 2003, the Libyan govern-ment pledged to deposit $2.7 billion in the Bank for International Settlements, in Switzerland, to compensate the families of those lost on Pan Am 103. Four months later, after secret negotiations with a British-led team, Libya agreed to renounce its W.M.D. program, and American sanctions were eased. By late 2004, the United States had revoked the travel ban, established limited diplomatic relations, and lifted many remaining trade restrictions.
"Entrepreneurs in Libya? Isn't this the pariah state where everything is run by so-called peoples's committees and until recently private property was severely restricted? The answer is that Qaddafi has wised up—at least partly. He began changing course a few years ago when oil prices were low. The Libyan economy was close to collapse after more than a decade of U.S. and U.N. sanctions brought on by his reckless actions, such as the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. After the U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Qaddafi settled his differences with Washington and abandoned his weapons of mass destruction programs.
Since then, foreign oil companies have been piling into Libya, and Tripoli has started to revitalize the economy. Much of the progress is due to an unusual partnership with Harvard Business School professor and competitiveness guru Michael E. Porter, who is advising the Libyans through Boston consultancy Monitor Group. For the past two years, more than a dozen Monitor consultants have been working in Libya, studying the economy and running a three-month leadership program intended to create a new pro-business elite. So far, 150 Libyans have graduated. The people in the course "were real role models, starting businesses, contributing to society," says graduate Yazid el Shaari, an engineer at Canadian-Libyan joint venture Veba Oil Operations.
Porter was persuaded to take the job by Qaddafi's son, Saif al Islam. The former London School of Economics graduate student is a lean man who favors expensive European suits and Western-style economic reform. Since first meeting Saif at several dinners in London, Porter has traveled to Libya three times and met top government officials, including the elder Qaddafi. "I didn't take this on because this is a big economy," Porter said in an interview at Tripoli's glitzy Corinthia Hotel. "It was very symbolic. If this can be successful, then other countries will be able to change."
Porter complains that reform ground to a halt last year after Monitor recommended a big commitment to education and training and investment in energy, tourism, trade, and construction. One reason: a backlash against proposed layoffs of public-sector workers. A planned privatization of a public-sector bank called Sahara also failed when investors rejected the government's valuation.
Qaddafi and his son needed more time to build consensus. Over the past year, they have gradually replaced hard-liners in the government. On Feb. 22, Porter joined Saif in Tripoli to announce the launch of a Libyan Economic Development Board designed to speed government decision-making and boost private enterprise. Saif also promised to more than double compensation for state employees, whose salaries have been frozen at low levels for years. (A typical engineer, for example, makes about $400 a month.) And while he wants to shrink the state sector by some 20%—or 180,000 workers—those who leave will be given three years' salary, plus loans of $23,000 to start businesses. "We need to change from a state economy to an open economy," Saif told reporters, "but without it being out of control." "
In February of 2007, consultants for the reform movement participated in a conference organized by Seif.
“We have to create a process of improving everything,” Prof. Michael Porter of Harvard, an expert on competitiveness who has helped plan economic reform efforts here, said carefully at the conference. “It won’t happen overnight. It will take years.”
Professor Porter added that the principles behind the Qaddafi philosophy were compatible with a competitive economy.
"Libya is into the hundreds of thousands of tourists versus millions in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt," said Rajeev Singh-Molares, a director at the Cambridge, Mass.-based consulting firm Monitor Group, who helped write a report on Libya's economy in 2006.
"He doesn't have an official position but it's clear he has influence and power - Saif is right in the heart of it all," said Rajeev Singh-Molares of the business consultancy the Monitor Group in London. He has advised Qaddafi for three years, working on a strategy for Libya's economic development. Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School, also talks with Qaddafi.
"He is eager for reform and understands the need for Libya to diversify its economy," Singh-Molares of the Monitor Group said. "In that sense he's a visionary leader. He wants to make Libya something special. But the capacity of Libya to keep up with his vision is limited at this point."
"You have a situation where no one knows who's in charge, so nobody's in charge," said Michael Porter, a competitiveness expert at the Harvard School of Business who is part of a team of U.S. consultants called in to help draw up the reform plans with the Libyan government.
"The Gadhafi family has signaled very consistently to me that this reform will happen," Porter said. "They reached out to me five years ago and said, 'Would you help us create a different kind of market economy?' "
As a first step, a Libyan Economic Development Board was created in February to help new startups, and 250 Libyan businessmen and government workers underwent training to be "entrepreneurs of the future," Porter said.
"The challenge is to introduce a market economy while avoiding the mistakes that have led to the dramatic inequalities," such as occurred in some Eastern European countries as they privatized after the Soviets' fall, Porter said.
Since meeting one of Muammar al-Qaddafi's sons at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2004, Porter and a group of Western consultants have become deeply engaged in overhauling the Mediterranean petro-state.
Qaddafi's son, Seif al Islam (Sword of Islam), is making a career of trying to reform what is by many measures one of the world's most backward economies. Now, thanks to his relationship with Porter and Monitor Group, a consulting firm with which Porter is affiliated, a roadmap for restructuring is emerging.
Monitor has pored over the Libyan economy and mapped out a strategy for the next decade or so, focusing on energy, tourism, trade, and construction. Now the more difficult work begins—making real changes that free up the private sector and improve the business environment.
Porter, whose books include Competitive Strategy and The Competitive Advantage of Nations, plans to be in Tripoli on Feb. 22 to kick off this next phase with a lecture called "The New Dawn for Libya: Delivering on the Promises." He will speak at the ultramodern Corinthia Hotel—a joint Libyan/Maltese venture that has become the base for Western oil men and the site of the new U.S. Embassy.
The Libyans and their Western advisers are launching a Libyan Economic Development Board, based on the model that has worked well in Singapore. The LEDB's mandate is to clear away some of the obstacles to successful private businesses and thus diversify the Libyan economy away from the state-controlled energy sector, which accounts for about 60% of gross domestic product—an even higher proportion of the economy than in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Libya produced about 2.23 million barrels per day of oil and gas equivalent in 2006, according to Edinburgh consultants Wood Mackenzie. The country's location near Western Europe also enhances its status as a significant energy player.
In fact, as Monitor delved into its study of the economy, the consultants came to a hard realization. "Nothing worked in Libya," says Rajeev Singh-Molares, a London-based senior partner at Monitor who leads the firm's Libyan team.
Indeed, though the country is the wealthiest in North Africa—with its 6 million or so people enjoying a per-capita income of about $6,000 per year—Libya scores poorly as a place to do business. Monitor ranks it 110th in the world in terms of its business competitiveness, well below neighbors Algeria and Egypt. Outside of the oil and gas sector, Libya is unable to attract more than a tiny trickle of foreign investment due to its bureaucratic obstacles and skill shortages. Multiple Fronts
To turn things around, the reformers are working on several fronts. Along with trying to clear out red tape, they are also working on partial privatization of the banking system, which is now entirely state-controlled. Stakes in two private banks may be sold to foreign banks, with HSBC (HBC) mentioned in the list of candidates.
They are also trying to rationalize Libya's Byzantine system of managing its oil wealth. The various funds that Qaddafi has set up over the years are to be consolidated into one unit called the Libyan Investment Co. Some of the $60 billion or so that Libya now has stashed away may be invested in hedge funds and private equity in the U.S. and London.
Furthermore, a big effort is going into polishing the Libyans' skills for dealing with business and the outside world. Some 250 "emerging leaders," from cabinet ministers on down, have been enrolled in a kind of mini-MBA program. The human factor
Qaddafi came in from the cold in 2003 and 2004, resolving Lockerbie and other cases and turning over his fledgling nuclear weapons program to the U.S. and Britain. But the talent shortage remains acute: Consultants say that the same four or five names, most of them returnees from the West, come up whenever top jobs are being filled. Michael Porter is giving the cause a lift, but Libyan and Western reformers still have a long road ahead of them.
Qaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, has been pushing hard to bring the long-isolated country into the world economy. He has even brought in Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter and the Monitor Group, a consulting firm that Porter co-founded, to help figure out ways to spur Libya's private sector. On Feb. 22, Porter and the younger Qaddafi launched a Libyan Economic Development Board intended to diversify the economy away from oil by promoting private business and entrepreneurship (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/20/07, "Harvard Guru to Help Libya").
It's a most unusual partnership. For about three years, Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter and Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, have been working together to revive the Libyan economy. Monitor Group, a consulting firm with which Porter is affiliated, has helped the Libyans devise an economic strategy based on tourism, construction, and energy. Monitor is also advising the Libyans on how to set up the Libyan Economic Development Board to spearhead the reform process and clear away the many bureaucratic hurdles to entrepreneurship.
Porter was in Tripoli on Feb. 22 for the board's inauguration. He was received by the Libyans with the fanfare associated with a head of state. He was joined at the launch ceremony at a Tripoli hotel by the younger Qaddafi, who arrived with a posse of edgy bodyguards.
More than five years ago, I was visited by Omran Bukhres [now the head of the Libyan Economic Development Board] who said: "The Qaddafi family needs your help." It wasn't legal for Americans to go to Libya, so I met Seif in London. After several dinners I became convinced he was really committed to the reform process.
The system is designed not to do anything. It is a broken decision-making process. At first, Saif was one of the few people who backed [reform]. There are getting to be more and more believers. Most people believe in the diagnosis. But cutting through all the obstacles in decision-making is the problem.
Qaddafi at some point decided the Libyan people could not live in a country isolated from the rest of the world. And opening up is more in line with his objectives and values.
Qaddafi's Green Book talks about self-reliance and a bottoms-up society. Instead, Libya has grown into a dependency economy. Most people have jobs given by the government. The typical Libyan is paid twice as much in subsidies as salary. Qaddafi made the decision to move in a different direction.
I have gotten to know Saif quite well. He was a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics, where he studied with some of the best professors. He's very much oriented toward making Libya a member of the modern world community.
I didn't take this on because this is a big economy. It was very important, very symbolic. If this can be successful, then other countries will be able to change.
One of the greatest challenges is not coming up with the right strategy but coming up with the process that allows you to do things. This is a test case of how to create action. We are learning a lot that we could use in other parts of the world—in the Middle East and in other countries with a history of socialist practices.
[Despite the fact we are talking] about a ruler and his son, in a sense, decision-making is widely distributed in this country. People [consider Libya] a dictatorship, but it really doesn't work that way. That is another reason for optimism.
In Libya, Michael Porter is becoming a household name.
Porter, the Lawrence University professor at the Harvard Business School, just returned from Libya where he is the chief consultant on economic reforms.
Porter said that five years ago, the Qaddafis—Libya’s ruling family—contacted him and asked him to help modernize the economy.
Despite the Qaddafis’ offer, Porter’s involvement remained minimal until a year and a half ago when he oversaw an initial assessment of the situation.
“I don’t do much of the work myself, the consulting firms do that,” Porter said.
Porter said that since Libya is a country that “pretty much needs universal reform,” several consulting firms have tackled the different issues affecting the stagnating Libyan economy.
Boston’s Monitor Group, which Porter co-founded, is one of the consulting firms involved in reviving the energy, trade, construction, and tourism industries.
Meanwhile, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company has been working on the partial privatization of Libya’s Central Bank.
“Those of us involved are trying to be patient, take the long view,” Porter said.
With the help of international organizations, consulting firms, and scholars, Libya is planning economic and governmental reform.
Many obstacles—in the form of red tape—still exist to entrepreneurs in Libya, according to an article in BusinessWeek. The article also said that the reformers hope to encourage foreign investment.
“A country in a tense relationship with the U.S. has settled all the international disputes, has renounced weapons of mass destruction, and invited outside inspectors,” Porter said. “We must help these people, they are on the right track.”
And Porter is not the only Harvard professor involved in the reform efforts, as he has helped bring other figures from the University to the country.
University Distinguished Service Professor Joseph S. Nye paid Libya a visit at Porter’s urging. Nye traveled to Libya two weeks ago and met with Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadaffi to discuss opening the society to globalization.
“It is encouraging that he seems to have changed his approach,” Nye said. “He was very opposed to Al-Quaeda and he was very strong in his condemnation and that is good news.”
Other Western scholars participating in the discussion and advising include Malkin Professor of Public Policy Robert D. Putnam, as well as Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins University, Nye said.
The involvement of the Harvard professors has been an individual enterprise and effort, not on behalf of the institution, Porter said.
The Libyan opposition has released a confidential memorandum that described a campaign that included top academics and journalists to improve the image of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in the United States.
Among those said to have been recruited for the campaign was the brother of then U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.
A memorandum by the Monitor Group, a consultant based in Cambridge, Mass., outlined a campaign to improve Libya's image in the United States. The document, obtained by the opposition Libyan National Conference, described the targeting of key Americans, including siblings of top administration officials, to serve in effect as lobbyists for the Gadhafi regime.
"Many of the visitors Monitor brought to Libya have individually briefed all levels of the United States government including specifically the president, vice president, heads of national security and intelligence as well as the secretary of state," the memo said.
Libyan sources said the plan, obtained from opposition elements in Tripoli, was implemented and journalists from leading U.S. publications as well as academics were invited to Libya in 2008, Middle East Newsline reported. They said some of the subsequent stories, which reflected Tripoli's complaint over its relationship with the United States, were published in such newspapers as the New York Times and Washington Post.
In all, 12 people were flown to Libya from July 2006 through June 2007. They included former Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee chairman Richard Perle, historian Bernard Lewis, author Francis Fukayama as well as journalists Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria.
"Each individual was recruited through Monitor's extensive international network," the memo said. "The Monitor team personally contacted individuals and encouraged them to visit Libya. To date only [American Policy Institute vice president] Danielle Pletka declined to visit Libya. All other individuals either agreed to a date or indicated their interest in collaborating as well as a potential visit in the future."
One of the Americans sent to Libya was identified as Nicholas Negroponte, brother of then-U.S. National Intelligence director John Negroponte and later deputy secretary of state. The memo said Nicholas, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, briefed his brother after returning from Libya.
"Nicholas Negroponte briefed his brother and other senior officials in the White House upon his return from Libya," the memo said.
The memo was addressed to Abdullah Al Sanusi, termed "the client." Al Sanusu has been identified as a senior Libyan intelligence officer wanted in connection with the bombing of the French airline UTA in 1989. Monitor requested $3.5 million per year for both retainer and expenses.
"We will provide operational support for publication of positive articles on Libya in these publications," a July 2006 memo by Monitor said. "For example: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, International Herald Tribune, Financial Times, Weekly Standard, National Interest, Public Interest, Foreign Affairs etc. We will identify and encourage journalists, academics and contemporary thinkers who will have interest in publishing papers and articles on Libya."
The memo said Libya sought Americans regarded as close to the then-Bush administration to visit Libya. The Libyans cited policy analyst Laurent Murawiec, former CIA director James Woolsey, human rights attorney Nina Shea, Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes and Ms. Pletka, who had been considered for a senior State Department position in 2004.
Hafed Al Ghwell, a Libyan opposition figure who lives in Washington, said he met some of those recruited by Monitor to visit Libya. He said many of the American visitors were struck by what he termed the ignorance of Gadhafi and his determination to buy influence in the United States.
"All of them without exception thought Gadhafi was a lunatic," Al Ghwell said. "Gadhafi will continue to try to blackmail his way in Washington by saying he has not gotten anything worth much from the U.S. to damage the hopes that Iran and North Korea will follow the Libyan example. The Obama administration however needs to know that appeasing Gadhafi is a dangerous road to take."
2011
[edit]It reads like Libyan government propaganda, extolling the importance of Moammar Khadafy, his theories on democracy, and his “core ideas on individual freedom.’’
But the 22-page proposal for a book on Khadafy was written by Monitor Group, a Cambridge-based consultant firm founded by Harvard professors. The management consulting firm received $250,000 a month from the Libyan government from 2006 to 2008 for a wide range of services, including writing the book proposal, bringing prominent academics to Libya to meet Khadafy “to enhance international appreciation of Libya’’ and trying to generate positive news coverage of the country.
As the crisis in Libya deepens, Monitor’s role in Libya has come under increasing scrutiny.
“The really nefarious aspect of this is that it reinforced in Khadafy’s mind that he truly was an international intellectual world figure, and that his ideas of democracy were to be taken seriously,’’ said Dirk Vandewalle, associate professor at Dartmouth College and author of “A History of Modern Libya.’’ “It reinforced his reluctance to come to terms with the reality around him, which was that Libya is in many ways an inconsequential country and his ideas are half-baked.’’
Yesterday, Monitor Group acknowledged in a statement that its paid work included helping Khadafy’s son Saif with his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics.
The firm said that assistance and the book proposal were mistakes. But its statement stressed that the firm’s main effort was designed to help Khadafy’s dictatorship bring about change. Many of the firm’s internal memos had been revealed on a Libyan opposition group website in 2009.
The fallout over relations between high-profile academics and Libya has already taken a toll. Sir Howard Davies resigned yesterday as a director at the London School of Economics, which said it would start an inquiry into the school’s ties with the Khadafy family.
Professors sent to visit Khadafy included luminaries such as Joseph Nye, former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; Lord Anthony Giddens, former head of the London School of Economics; Francis Fukuyama political philosopher from Stanford University; and Benjamin Barber, who has written extensively about democracy.
Barber said much of Monitor’s work tried to bolster change.
“I’m sure Khadafy thought having intellectuals like Fukuyama and Joe Nye and Giddens and myself there was a way of proving to the world that he wasn’t stupid,’’ said Barber, adding that he accepted a fee for consulting work, which included looking at a draft constitution that Monitor was overseeing. “What he gained was some glamour from interaction with the West, but what we gained was protection for people who were pushing for reforms.’’
The activities of Monitor — a company with 1,500 employees and 29 offices around the world that boasts governments, nonprofits, and companies as clients — also raise questions about the line between academic research and advocacy.
“People who do these consultancy jobs don’t hesitate to mention Harvard and so forth, but is it really academic work?’’ said Ronald Bruce St John, author of academic books on Libya who served on the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Libyan Studies.
Monitor’s work in Libya began when Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor who is among the country’s top theorists on management strategies, received a call from Saif Khadafy around 2001, according to Porter. Saif, a Western-leaning doctoral student who US officials hoped would become the next leader of Libya, asked for his expertise to help change Libya’s battered, Soviet-style economy.
Porter met Saif and several Libyan ministers in London but said he could not help until Libya resolved the issues that had earned it international condemnation, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The terrorist attack killed all 259 passengers and crew and 11 villagers.
“I remember telling Saif, ‘We can’t do anything until you settle your dispute with the rest of the world,’ ’’ Porter recalled in a recent interview.
In the next few years, Libya offered compensation to the Lockerbie victims and gave up its nuclear weapons program, putting it on a path of normalized relations with the United States.
So in 2005, Porter agreed to be a senior adviser on a program to lay out a blueprint for reforms.
Porter brought in Monitor, a firm he had helped found, along with other associates including former Harvard professors Mark Fuller, who is now the firm’s chairman, and Joseph Fuller, who works at Monitor and also collaborates on research with some Harvard professors. (Porter says he is no longer directly involved in its management.)
Monitor sent about a dozen consultants to Tripoli to produce the strategy for economic reforms, which Porter unveiled in a speech in Tripoli in front of Libyan officials in 2007. He realized, however, that the reforms were going nowhere when a person who opposed them was appointed head of the group charged with implementing them. Porter quit a few months later.
Monitor continued its work with Libya. It asked for an “open budget’’ to pay for the trips of prominent people to Libya, and in some cases offered compensation for their time, according to internal memos published by the Libyan opposition group.
“As far as I could tell, Monitor wanted to introduce Khadafy to Western thought,’’ said Nye, who was paid a consulting fee, which he did not disclose, for two trips. He also said he commented on a chapter of Saif’s thesis for free.
Fukuyama did not return a call and e-mail requesting comment. Giddens could not be reached for comment.
Visitors included Nicholas Negroponte, the MIT professor who founded the university’s Media Lab and started the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child to match poor students worldwide with technology. Negroponte said in an e-mail that Monitor did not pay for his trip or give him a fee but he considered himself part of the program to introduce distinguished people to Libya.
“I was willingly and proudly part of the USA effort to raise the level of discussion between the two countries, as well as help the Libyan people with their primary education,’’ he wrote, adding that Khadafy kept him waiting in the desert for six hours for the talks.
In 2007, Monitor wrote a proposal seeking about $2 million in expenses and fees for the Khadafy book, according to the memos.
“The book will allow the reader to hear Khadafy elaborate in his own words, and in conversation with renowned international experts,’’ the proposal states. It said that Barber would “clarify several questions from previous conversations with Khadafy’’ while Giddens “will visit to deepen understanding of the merits and problems of direct democracy vs. representative democracy.’’
Barber, who is described in Monitor memos as a “subcontractor,’’ said he refused to work on the book, which was later abandoned by Monitor.
He said he was not ashamed of working on the Monitor project, because it was worth trying to bring change to Libya. “I wish it had succeeded, and maybe the events of the last few weeks might not have happened,’’ he said.
Statement by Monitor Group Concerning Libya March 24, 2011
Monitor Group is a global management consulting firm with a mission: to help shape a better future, with our clients, in a dynamic and complex world. For more than 25 years, we have served clients from the government, civic, and corporate sectors to address an array of complex and challenging issues.
We believe that our strength and success as a firm rests on the quality and integrity of our people—employees, partners, networks—and the high standards we set individually and collectively for excellent and ethical behavior, performance, and outcomes.
Much of the recent commentary on our work in Libya does not capture accurately who we are, what we do, and what drives us.
Given the terrible spectacle of Col. Gaddafi using force on his own people, it may be difficult to imagine that just a few years ago many saw a period of promise in Libya. Col. Gaddafi had renounced terror, forfeited nuclear and chemical weapons and programs, and declared himself ready to rejoin the community of nations. International policy at the time sought to seize an opportunity to re-engage a rogue nation for the benefit of global security and the people of Libya.
In that context, and especially between 2006 and 2008, when we did the bulk of our work, Libya needed expert assistance to build its democratic institutions and modernize its economy. After decades of isolation, Libya’s business, civic, government, and intellectual leaders also sought to deepen their understanding of ideas and practices in the rest of the world.
Monitor’s work in this period focused on economic development, the training of hundreds of high-potential leaders selected competitively from all sectors of Libyan society and industry, and the introduction of global thought leaders representing a diverse range of perspectives and expertise to enable processes of reform. These are areas where Monitor and its people have great experience and skills, and these are the outcomes we sought to achieve according to our high standards of ethics and excellence.
We regret that this period of promise was so short-lived. We also regret that during the course of our work we did make some errors in judgment, which we have acknowledged and have vowed not to repeat. We are aware that questions have been raised regarding activities that could conceivably be construed as “lobbying,” and therefore introduce questions of regulatory compliance. We take these questions very seriously. Earlier this month we launched a thorough investigation of this subject, led by an internal task force and supported by expert outside counsel, to investigate further and advise us concerning potential registration and reporting.
As we move aggressively to identify and address any issues, we remain fully committed to providing the outstanding services that our clients deserve and expect, and that our staff and partners consistently deliver.
In 2006 and 2007, a dozen Western intellectuals traveled to the North African desert for intimate conversations with the man who likes to call himself the Brother Leader. Muammar Qaddafi received his visitors in a carpeted Bedouin-style tent, where they sat on plastic chairs and sipped tea while discussing the dictator's thoughts on economics and politics.
The meetings were arranged by the Monitor Group, a Cambridge (Mass.) consulting firm co-founded in 1983 by Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School management expert. As Politico first reported on Feb. 21, the Qaddafi regime paid Monitor a fee of $3 million a year, plus expenses, to run what the firm called "a sustained, long-term program to enhance international understanding and appreciation of Libya." Monitor, which has 1,500 employees worldwide, organized roundtables and produced thick studies on stimulating business in the isolated oil state. It provided research for a PhD thesis Qaddafi's son Saif al-Islam submitted to the London School of Economics.
At one point, the firm proposed a mass-circulation book—for an additional price of $2.45 million—that according to a Monitor memo would "allow the reader to hear Qaddafi elaborate, in his own words and in conversation with renowned international experts, his core ideas on individual freedom, direct democracy vs. representative democracy, [and] the role of state and religion."
The book never materialized, but Monitor succeeded in generating plenty of positive press for Libya. In an interview with Businessweek in February 2007, Porter said Saif Qaddafi had helped arrange Monitor's engagement with Libya. "I have gotten to know Saif quite well," Porter said. "He was a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics, where he studied with some of the best professors. He's very much oriented toward making Libya a member of the modern world community."
Monitor brought Benjamin R. Barber, then a professor at the University of Maryland, to Libya for three visits. On Aug. 15, 2007, Barber published an opinion article in The Washington Post entitled "Qaddafi's Libya: An Ally for America?" Although "written off not long ago as an implacable despot," Qaddafi "is a complex and adaptive thinker," Barber asserted, "as well as an efficient, if laid-back autocrat." Joseph Nye, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, also met Qaddafi. In December 2007 he published an essay in The New Republic in which he described the ruler of Libya since 1969 as "an autocrat" and a past "sponsor of terrorism," but also a man of ideas, "actively seeking a new strategy" and interested in "direct democracy."
Now that Qaddafi has vowed to hunt down and kill every last dissident in Libya, Monitor's image-buffing campaign has received probing coverage in The Boston Globe and Mother Jones, and the firm has issued an online apologia. "Given the terrible spectacle of Colonel Qaddafi using force on his own people, it may be difficult to imagine that just a few years ago many saw a period of promise in Libya," the firm said on Mar. 24. "Colonel Qaddafi had renounced terror, forfeited nuclear and chemical weapons and programs, and declared himself ready to rejoin the community of nations."
An idea in the abstract may thrill its creator, but an idea that has been tested by reality—and survives intact—can change the world. That's why academics who descend from the ivory tower and subject their theories to the complications of modern life deserve applause. Provided, of course, that their motivations remain pure. Recent history suggests that's a tricky line to walk.
A generation of Ivy League economists was enjoying both professional esteem and financial industry paychecks until the Wall Street crisis of 2008 made them look pretty dumb, if not venal. The Academy Award-winning documentary Inside Job offered a bipartisan parade of these men—for example, at Harvard, Larry Summers, a Democrat who opposed more oversight of derivatives, also collected generous speaking fees from investment banks, while Frederic Mishkin, a George W. Bush appointee to the Federal Reserve who teaches at Columbia, was paid to co-author a 2006 report praising the Icelandic financial system, which subsequently collapsed.
The same could be said for the academics who journeyed to Libya. It's true that between 2006 and 2008, when Monitor said it did the bulk of its work, the country's trajectory seemed positive. The U.N. had lifted sanctions in 2003, and the U.S. had resumed full diplomatic relations in 2006. The families of victims of the Libyan-engineered Pan Am-Lockerbie bombing of 1988 were paid hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.
None of that excuses the use of august academic reputations and affiliations to promote the Qaddafis. Monitor partner Eamonn Kelly said in an e-mail to Bloomberg Businessweek that the firm regrets "our research in support" of Saif Qaddafi's doctoral thesis. "We also regret the proposal submitted to write a book under Colonel Qaddafi's name. Although this work was not completed, the very idea was a mistake." Kelly said he is leading an internal investigation that includes whether Monitor engaged in lobbying without having registered to represent Libya.
What Monitor did is no different from what K Street "public affairs" shops do every day of the week for dubious foreign governments. Still, the Libya episode leaves a distinctive odor, one that emanates from the corruption of academic reputation. Harry Lewis, a computer science professor at Harvard, doesn't like the smell. During a faculty meeting on Apr. 5, he asked the university's president, Drew Faust, "Shouldn't Harvard acknowledge embarrassment, and might you remind us that when we parlay our status as Harvard professors for personal profit, we can hurt both the university and all of its members?" Faust responded that she supports such expressions of concern but also endorses "the wide discretion of all of you in this room … to pursue the directions of academic inquiry you choose, and the outside activities and engagements you choose."
Harvard's Nye rejects suggestions that he, for one, ought to apologize for anything. Now a university distinguished service professor, the defense-policy expert explains in an interview that he visited Tripoli in hopes of nudging Qaddafi toward moderation and encouraging Libyan reformers. The New Republic essay was his idea, not Monitor's, he says, and he disclosed to the magazine that he had been hired by the consulting firm. Nye won't say what he was paid, citing a confidentiality clause. "I am confident that I did not cross any ethical red line," he adds. "I have never supported Qaddafi, and I'm on record supporting President Obama's actions to try to push him out."
Professors of Nye's rank do not have to schlep to Tripoli to collect a consultant's fee. He says he does about a half-dozen paid outside gigs a year, mostly for management-consulting firms and corporations. Beyond the extra money, it's got to be flattering to have a head of state—even an erratic tyrant—show curiosity about your work. Nye wrote that when he visited Qaddafi's tent, the dictator had five of the professor's books on hand, including Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. Qaddafi, he wrote, "seems to have become interested in soft power—the art of projecting influence through attraction rather than coercion." In due time, Qaddafi would demonstrate his abiding attachment to coercion.
Fascination with Nye's theories spilled over to the next generation of Qaddafis. Saif wrote about soft power in his PhD thesis, which was accepted by the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2008. In his acknowledgments, the younger Qaddafi thanked Nye for his advice, according to an online copy of the dissertation.
Nye says he read and commented on only one chapter, something he says he routinely does for those who write about his theories. The LSE said in March it is investigating whether Saif plagiarized parts of his thesis—a controversy Nye says he knows nothing about. In 2009, after awarding Saif his doctorate in philosophy, the LSE accepted a pledge for a £1.5 million ($2.5 million) donation from a charity run by the Qaddafi son, as well as another £1.5 million as part of a contract to train future Libyan leaders. Howard Davies resigned last month as director of the LSE, admitting that the arrangements with Libya had hurt the school's reputation.
Porter canceled an interview with Businessweek, citing class-preparation duties. Barber, now a distinguished senior fellow at Demos, a New York think tank, did not respond to requests for comment.
At least one Monitor superstar confesses to chagrin about Libya. Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, spent several hours with the colonel in January 2007. "My hosts were willing to pay my standard consulting fee, and to be honest, I was curious," Putnam wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Feb. 26. Accompanied by his wife, Rosemary, Putnam spoke with Qaddafi about "how the development of civil society might be applied to democratic reform in Libya." Still, Putnam couldn't tell: "Was this a serious conversation or an elaborate farce?"
"I came away thinking—hoping—that I had managed to sway Colonel Qaddafi in some small way, but my wife was skeptical," Putnam says. Two months later, he was invited back to Tripoli. "But by then," he wrote, "I had concluded that the whole exercise was a public-relations stunt, and I declined."
One lesson from the Monitor fiasco is that the scholar is wise who listens to his wife. Another is that, whatever its financial appeal, flattery for hire has no place on the CV of a serious academic.
Just a few years before becoming embroiled in fighting a rebellion, Moammar Gadhafi was spending millions of dollars a year to wage a secret PR campaign to burnish his global image as a statesman and a reformer, confidential documents show.
The mercurial leader hired The Monitor Group, a Boston-based consulting firm, to execute a public relations strategy that included paying think-tank analysts and former government officials to take a free trip to Libya for lectures, discussions and even personal meetings with Gadhafi starting in 2006.
According to a 2007 memo from Monitor to Gadhafi's intelligence chief, the campaign was to "enhance international understanding and appreciation of Libya... emphasize the emergence of the new Libya... (and) introduce (Moammar Gadhafi) as a thinker and intellectual."
The price: $3 million a year, plus expenses, for work that included consulting, briefings, analyses and a steady stream of high-profile visitors to Libya -- at least one a month.
The memos were posted online by the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition.
Eamonn Kelly, senior partner at Monitor Group, is heading an internal investigation at the company. He said the visitors program was only a small part of a wider campaign to help build civil society there.
The vast majority of the work, he says, was bringing leadership training and expertise to the country, aimed at "promoting reform, improving the economic prosperity of the country and the people, modernizing the government and helping to heal the very broken civic society."
"We were not working for Gadhafi, we were working for Libya," Kelly said.
After one year's work, a 2007 memo from Monitor (PDF) touted the results, including a dozen high-profile visitors, ranging from interviewer David Frost to eminent professors such as Francis Fukuyama, fellow at Stanford University. Monitor also took credit for positive media coverage and also highlighted a half-dozen positive articles written by some of the participants they sponsored.
For example, Benjamin Barber wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post entitled, "Gaddafi's Libya: An Ally for America?" and Andrew Moravcsik wrote a piece for Newsweek called, "A Rogue Reforms."
Although the firm had vowed to "provide operational support for publication of positive articles on Libya," there is no indication any of the pieces were written at Monitor's behest.
Instead, participants in the program who were reached by CNN say they believed they were being paid for the lectures they gave and the coaching they offered. They said they agreed to go because they were curious about Libya at a time when the regime had taken several positive steps toward the West and appeared to be open to change.
Barber points out that, starting in 2003, Libya "came out of the cold, thanks to Bush administration overtures: rejoined the West, made war on al Qaeda, started imprisoning al Qaeda warriors, paid (Lockerbie) reparations of $1.3 billion, and yielded their weapons of mass destruction."
Barber, an academic whose books on political theory include the best-seller "Jihad vs. McWorld," says he now wants to see Gadhafi driven out. But at the time, Barber tells CNN, "we thought -- and I think Monitor thought -- it was an opportunity to work at internal reform."
Another distinguished academic, Harvard's Joseph Nye, said he accepted the paid trip because "Gadhafi appeared to be changing his policy -- and introducing new ideas could further reform."
After he met with Gadhafi, Nye wrote an op-ed for The New Republic that contained both praise and criticism of the dictator.
Several other program participants, including Fukuyama and Harvard's Michael Porter, did not reply to inquiries.
Some of the visitors who met with Gadhafi later briefed American officials, according to Monitor's memo, including "senior officials in the White House" and "senior government officials" at the State Department and the Department of Defense.
The Monitor Group claimed that after they sponsored two trips to the country by former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, "he briefed Vice President Dick Cheney on his visits to Libya."
Cheney did not reply to an inquiry, but Perle told CNN he did not "brief" Cheney on Libya and that it was mistaken to suggest he had done any lobbying for Libya.
Still, the possibility that paid visitors later briefed government officials has Paul Blumberg at The Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group that has reported on the subject, saying the firm should have registered as lobbyists for a foreign country.
"They really wanted these intellectuals to be able to influence policy on Libya," says Blumberg, to talk to "people in the State Department and the Defense Department, and really convey the sense that Libya was this great new open place."
The Monitor Group has received an inquiry about their work from the Justice Department, according to Kelly.
Monitor also offered, in a letter to Gadhafi's intelligence chief, a 22-page proposal for a book about Gadhafi, to be produced for $2.9 million in fees and expenses. The book would cover Gadhafi's "ideas on democracy," the outline said, "so that the West gains a more accurate and balanced understanding of his actions and ideas."
The book project never reached fruition, and Monitor said in a statement the proposal was "a poor decision" that the firm seriously regrets.
But overall, said Kelly, Monitor stands by its main body of work. "We were working in a very different period, a period of promise, and we are heartbroken that that period clearly has ended."
Monitor wasn't the only U.S. firm that Gadhafi's regime engaged. In 2008, as Monitor's work was coming to a close, Libya retained a more traditional lobbying firm, The Livingston Group, led by former U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston, R-Louisiana.
The firm lobbied State Department officials and members of Congress for Libya in 2008 and 2009, introducing Libya's U.S. ambassador to dozens of members of Congress. Libya initially paid the firm $200,000 a month, but after a year, the billings had dwindled to just $30,000 a month.
Livingston declined an interview with CNN, but he told CNN affiliate WVUE that he ended the contract shortly after Gadhafi gave a hero's welcome to Lockerbie conspirator Abdelbeset al Megrahi upon his release from prison in Scotland. "That was just a bridge too far, and we had to fire the client," he said.
And before Livingston and Monitor, starting in 2004, Gadhafi's government engaged lobbyist Randa Fahmy Hudome during its effort to get Libya accepted in the international community and taken off the State Department's list of nations who sponsor terrorism. Libya paid her firm more than $3 million over the course of three years, she said.
"It certainly was not about money," Hudome said. "It was about national security principles at the time."
Revelations about a campaign launched by a consultancy firm in Massachusetts to improve the public image of Muammar Gaddafi around the world have highlighted the ethical problems that arise when the distinction between lobbying and academia becomes blurred.
The Monitor Group, a 1,500-strong firm of consultants with 29 worldwide offices, apologised for mistakes it had made in the course of a PR campaign it ran on behalf of the Libyan leader between 2006 and 2008. The campaign, believed to be worth about $3m, focused on paying for top academic figures to travel to Tripoli for personal conversations with Gaddafi.
They included the Stanford University scholar Francis Fukuyama, Harvard's Joseph Nye and Robert Putnam, and Benjamin Barber, formerly of Rutgers University. Professor Philip Bobbitt of Columbia University in New York was approached by Monitor to visit Tripoli in July 2006, but the trip never came off. "I think the Libyans wanted somebody much more famous than I am," Bobbitt said. "I think Monitor proposed me and the Libyans replied, 'What about [New York Times columnist] Thomas Friedman?' So that was the end of that."
As a result, Bobbitt never went to Tripoli and was paid nothing by Monitor. But he says he was willing to go on the principle that he would speak to practically any group that would engage with his ideas. "The big moral point is, I would usually talk to anybody. I talked to Communists before the fall of the Berlin Wall, to jihadists, anyone so long as they don't throw anything at me. The bottom line is, academics should never be discouraged from talking to anybody, however odious the regime."
What made the Monitor Group project ethically problematic was that individual academics were paid for their time and expenses with money directly from the Libyan government. It is not known how much money was given to each academic, but the $3m budget submitted to the Libyan regime by Monitor included $450,000 for a "visitor programme" that would cover "honoraria for visitors … travel cost of visits to Libya including special arrangements, debrief costs and follow-up costs".
One of the academics, Benjamin Barber, was listed as a "subcontractor" on a proposed book about the ideas of Gaddafi and was named as one item under a subsection of the budget worth $800,000. Barber has admitted visiting Tripoli on Monitor money, though he told the Boston Globe that he had refused to work on the book which was later abandoned.
The Monitor Group has admitted that it made "serious mistakes"in its handling of the Libyan contract. But it has also sought to justify the overall thrust of the campaign, saying that "we undertook these efforts in good conscience within the then climate of optimism for the country's future".
Following in the steps of Fox ax-woman Judith Miller (of the weapons-of-mass-destruction-in-Iraq lie and the outing-of-Valerie-Plame fame) and right-wing BBC 2 TV host Gavin Esler—both of whom have attacked me and others who went to Libya four years ago to talk with Muammar Qaddafi and to write about the new relationship emerging following Libya’s yielding of its WMD program—Jon Wiener has joined the hunt on our integrity. Unlike others who have refused comment, I have responded to reporters wanting to know more about Monitor and what we were doing in Libya. And when he called, I talked to Wiener at length. As a consequence, he focused exclusively on me, content to say that others who had gone to Libya had not answered his call for information and could be safely ignored.
The most important point I made repeatedly in my conversation with Wiener is one he managed to ignore completely: it is not who pays you that is important but whether they are paying you to do what you do, or you are doing what they want you to do because they are paying you.
What I wrote in the Washington Post, and what others wrote following their Qaddafi meetings years ago, was initiated by us and not by Monitor (the consultancy under whose aegis we were sent to Libya). These articles reflected our own view of the US relationship with Libya—a relationship that was in the news and in play. I believed an improvement in the relationship of the kind the our government was promoting was a good thing for us and for peaceful change in Libya. From my conversation with Qaddafi, I thought he genuinely was seeking an improvement in relations and that, anxious to please, he might be willing to permit positive changes. I wrote this not on order from Monitor or to gild Qaddafi’s wilted lily but because that is what I believed; and because what I do is to write about my work, my engagements and my beliefs.
Wiener pays scant attention to my work with Saif Qaddafi and his Foundation, which grew out of my visits with Qaddafi Sr. The Foundation created a spirit of reform that had a genuine impact in the country. In the words of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “For much of the last decade, Qadhafi’s son Saif was the public face of human rights reform in Libya and the Qadhafi Foundation was the country’s only address for complaints about torture, arbitrary detention, and disappearances. The Foundation issued its first human rights report in 2009, cataloging abuses and calling for reforms, and a second report released in December 2010 regretted ‘a dangerous regression’ in civil society and called for the authorities to lift their ‘stranglehold’ on the media. In the interim, Saif assisted Human Rights Watch in conducting a groundbreaking press conference which launched a report in Tripoli in December 2009.”
Whatever Saif’s role as a reformer, I have no doubt that Muarmmar Qaddafi remained a ruthless dictator during the period of engagement with the United States, but I also have no doubt that engagement by the Bush administration, by Tony Blair and by scholars like Tony Giddens and me ameliorated the consequences of his rule and created conditions conducive to gradualist reform. Calling him a brute tyrant in print didn’t seem a very useful way to cultivate change and prompt concessions to reform and to the US relationship. The eventual release of the medical hostages (nurses) and the Lockerbie settlement, along with extensive intelligence cooperation against Al Qaeda and an improvement in the human rights situation in Libya as attested to by Human Rights Watch and the Carnegie Endowment, all seem to me to have vindicated the belief that good could come from bringing Libya out from the cold where it had languished as a rogue, terrorist state. I fully appreciate that my views in the Post article and in other articles are subject to criticism. I also accept that it is legitimate to argue, as some have, that we were naïve in our views to think that change from within was possible—though I would dispute that claim.
But Wiener’s charge is different, though all too typical of the current charged and polemical environment. His charge is one of bad faith—that because we were paid by a firm paid by Libya, we were shills for Libya and that we took the money to burnish Qaddafi’s repuation. But as I always have, I wrote what I believed and regarded as right, just as I worked on reform in Libya with Saif’s Foundation because I believe peaceful change from within was more likely to produce democracy over time than invasion (Iraq) or violent internal revolution (Algeria, Iran). This too is subject to honest disagreement, though current circumstances suggest there will be no easy road through Cairo to peace and democracy in Tripoli.
Moreover, it seems to me that smug critics who pile on to indict scholars working for change in autocratic societies as naïve or complicit or worse are themselves lazy in their inquiries and two-faced in their criticisms. The idea that those paid by consultancies or corporations or oil companies precisely to do work in places like Libya (or Saudi Arabia or China) to exploit oil and other development resources are somehow doing capitalist business as usual—no problem. Meanwhile, academics who work in those countries trying to understand them, and change them, and who write about what they are doing, are mere pawns of those who pay them; that indeed, they should not be paid and indeed probably shouldn’t be there at all—such charges constitute rank hypocrisy.
Defending himself, Wiener said to me that people expect more of academics like the ones in the very diverse group that went to Libya under Monitor’s aegis three or four years ago because they respect our work and honor our integrity. Perhaps then our integrity should be acknowledged in weighing the charge that we are sell-outs. Perhaps then respect should be evidenced by recognizing—given our history of autonomy and commitment to democratic change—that we were not in Libya for the money or to play propagandists to the regime but to try to understand a rapidly changing part of the world and reinforce trends that we believed were good for the interests of the United States and the Libyan people.
To be sure today, with twenty-twenty hindsight, one can see that those attempts at reconciliation and peaceful change failed to stave off today’s uprising, and have been overtaken up by a revolutionary history whose outcome we cannot predict and which may or may not be an improvement over what was happening from 2005 through 2010. I plead guilty to not foreseeing the remarkable turn in the Middle East and North Africa that has taken place in recent weeks. But I reject completely the idea that we must now rewrite the history of what came before through the lens of current events and condemn anyone who worked then for reconciliation with Libya and change within it, even if that necessitated talking with the autocrat himself.
And if the lens through which we look at who is paying whom for what is to be the bad character of the regimes doing the funding, rather than the good character of those receiving the funding, as Wiener wants to insist, then I hope the scores of academics and institutions from Harvard and Georgetown to Cambridge and Edinburgh that have taken hundreds of millions of dollars directly from Saudis like Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to establish academic centers focused on Islam and Wahhabism will now bear the kind of scrutiny that Monitor, the London School of Economics and related scholars have borne. And that centers at Durham and St. Andrews that have taken money from Iran receive Wiener’s scorn as well. For if we were shills paid to take the Monitor company line, what exactly are those who profit from Saudi oil money and Iranian big bucks—bucks going from the same sources to Wahhabist madrasses in Pakistan and maybe Al Qaeda too?
Don’t get me wrong. I admire and endorse the schools working to enhance understanding of Islam and train students from Islamic societies, and do not fault them for taking funds from people for whose motives might be quite different from their own (like burnishing the Saudi regime’s or Iran’s reputation). But critics like Wiener and those who forced the resignation of LSE director Howard Davies last week clearly do not. Or should not.
In fact Jon Wiener and Judith Miller share a logic that should make them comfortable with right-wing “Islam-is-terror-itself” scare-monger David Horowitz, and they should join him in unloading on all these powerful institutions that seem so nonchalant about where their money comes from. And if his subject is really tainted money which can never be redeemed by how it is spent, or the integrity of those spending it, he might also turn his attention to those myriad modern foundations established by the likes of J.P Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
For there is hardly a classical foundation today doing good works that is not the beneficiary of blood money drawn from capitalist exploitation, violent union busting and foreign colonial appropriation of resources. To me, that in no way invalidates their good works or suggests they are in the business of burnishing the reputations of their capitalist forebears (though that’s what they inevitably do simply by virtue of where their money comes from and the brands they carry in their titles). After all, Phillip Morris didn’t support the arts for love of art, but the arts groups who benefited were not creating culture in order to sell cigarettes. Or were they? Perhaps Wiener think ABT works for the tobacco lobby.
Again, where money comes from and whether who pays determines what gets done is a very large and valid question. Bernard Shaw wrote Major Barbara to try to persuade us that the Salvation Army need not be ashamed of combating alcoholism with funds donated by breweries. I like Shaw, but when I think about Judy Miller who is paid by Fox, which is owned by Murdoch, whose partner is none other than that same Prince Alwaleed who funds so many academic centers, I have to wonder—following Wiener’s logic—whether Harvard is a Fox affiliate.
In other words, asking where the money comes from is a legitimate question. But self-righteous answers offered by arm-chair quarterbacks second-guessing what scholars working for democratic reform were doing four years ago in trying to make a real world difference are something else altogether. They suggest to me bad faith prompted by a tabloid appetite for blood.
Benjamin R. Barber is a distinguished senior fellow at Demos and Walt Whitman Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University. His books include Strong Democracy, Jihad vs. McWorld and Consumed.