Power Game

by Hedrick Smith

  The story of how AIPAC reversed its fortunes in the mid-1980s is not only an insight into this one lobby, but a revealing case study of how all lobbying has changed in the new Washington power game. AIPAC’s evolution is a microcosm of a larger phenomenon. Its leaders were sharp enough to respond to the dispersal of power triggered by the political earthquake of 1974, breaking up the old power structure. The new lobbying game patterned itself after the new politics of Congress and the new breed; the old inside game of lobbying was upstaged by the new outside game of lobbying. Intensive private lobbying was often less potent than extensive mass lobbying.

  Shrewd lobbyists understood that they could no longer focus on a few committee barons to push their issues, but they had to chase virtually every member of the House and Senate, certainly every member of key committees. Lobby groups could no longer bank on some pricey Washington superlawyer to make their pitch in private; they had to generate grass-roots movements to pressure scores of legislators. That meant turning increasingly to the techniques of political campaigns and campaign organizers, pollsters and direct mail specialists to tap and manipulate public opinion.

  By now, it is a cliché that lobbies have more power than two decades ago, but not everyone understands why. The fragmented power game, fostered by the 1974 power earthquake, played into the hands of lobbies. It not only helped AIPAC block President Reagan on Arab arms deals, but the more open power game enabled the bank lobby to resist a tax law backed by the president and leaders of both houses of Congress, by stimulating such a popular groundswell that congressional members turned against their political leaders. Those episodes reflect the new politics and the new lobbying game.

  For the fact is that lobbies have increasingly filled a vacuum left by the loose structure of political parties. The parties used to provide the most essential organization, money, and endorsement that politicians needed. Parties and their leaders weighed the competing demands of interest groups, sorted out priorities, struck compromises and then provided what politicians call “cover” for the votes of individual Congress members: taking the political heat for unpopular votes and delivering bad news to groups that were not satisfied. Oddly, national political parties now contribute larger sums of money than ever to political campaigns, but overall they have not recovered their old power.

  For survival, members of Congress rely primarily on personal organizations and their ties with well-organized constituencies—which they are loath to antagonize. That means incumbents, relying heavily on special interest groups for political support and campaign funds, are dependent on these groups and more susceptible to their pressures. Clever lobby groups understand the symbiotic relationship and exploit it, careful to hedge their political bets by spreading favors and support with far more officeholders than was necessary in the old power game.

  This sprawling new lobbying game has raised the price of playing. Campaigns targeted on one single legislative issue and costing in the millions are common. AIPAC’s budget, for example, shot up from $750,000 in 1978 to $6.1 million in 1987 just to cover pro-Israeli issues. Business and right-to-work groups spent $5 million in 1978 killing what organized labor called “labor law reform,” and the unions spent $2.5 million to try to win better organizing rights. The insurance industry spent $5 million in 1985 to protect billions of dollars in tax exemptions. Blue Cross-Blue Shield spent another $4 million just to protect its tax-exempt nonprofit status. The trucking industry spent $3 million in 1979 trying to stave off deregulation. Lobbying changed from an insiders’ game to an industry.

  AIPAC: Before and After

  The AIPAC case is a before-and-after story. The first episode begins on September 28, 1980, less than a year after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and six days after the border skirmishes between Iran and Iraq exploded into full-scale war. On that day, General David Jones, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew into Saudi Arabia. The outbreak of war at the head of the Persian Gulf had set off alarms in Washington and had given the royal house of Saud an extreme case of jitters.

  When Jones landed, he was grabbed by Prince Fahd bin Abdullah, director of operations for the Saudi Air Force, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, an American-trained Saudi Air Force major and son of the defense minister. “We want AWACS immediately,” they told him. “We want AWACS for twenty-four-hour surveillance of the gulf. We need it. We can’t protect the kingdom without it. Can you get it for us?”1

  AWACS, an Airborne Warning and Control System, the epitome of modern weaponry, is a large Boeing 707 with a dish radar on its fuselage, chock-full of high-tech electronics to monitor an entire battle region. It is a symbol of modern air might and sophistication. The Saudi monarchy wanted temporary loan of American AWACS planes with American crews as a signal to Ayatollah Khomeini’s warlike Iran that Saudi Arabia enjoyed American protection.

  For years, the U.S. Air Force had been encouraging the Saudis to buy AWACS, partly to provide rationale for American-built air bases in Saudi Arabia that American planes could use in a Middle East crisis. Jones, an AWACS zealot, sensed an opening; he immediately messaged Washington and pushed the Pentagon and Carter White House to send AWACS planes. Carter’s advisers, near the climax of the 1980 campaign, feared voter backlash. They balked, but Jones nursed Carter into agreement. Within two days, four American AWACS landed in Saudi Arabia on a “temporary training mission” that would operate around the clock 365 days a year. (They were still there seven years later when an Iraqi warplane hit the American frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf in May 1987.) In gratitude, the Saudi monarchy told Jones it was stepping up Saudi oil production.

  Very soon, the Saudi government asked the explosive question: Would the Carter administration conclude a whopping $8.4 billion arms sale—five AWACS planes plus seven huge KC-135 tankers, some F-15 jet fighters, and other equipment? That request was political dynamite: Israel feared a modern Saudi Air Force, and Congress had been promised in 1978 that the Saudis would not be allowed to buy AWACS. Even so, Defense Secretary Harold Brown informed the Saudis that Carter was “favorably disposed” to sell AWACS. After Reagan won the 1980 election, Carter urged him to carry out the deal, and Reagan entered the White House “believing we should do it,” according to Jim Baker, his Chief of Staff.2 Saudi expectations had been raised and the Air Force wanted to sell the AWACS planes, as General Jones told me, “to keep the production line open”—meaning that Boeing, AWACS’s maker, needed a big customer. The Saudis would share the plane’s heavy development costs.

  When formal announcement of the deal came on April 21, 1981, the Israelis and their allies in Congress erupted, bent on persuading Congress to prevent the AWACS sale. It became a pitched battle of powerful lobbies, a test of Israeli and Arab influence. Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who had previously written Reagan privately condemning the deal, now openly denounced it, in apocalyptic terms, as a threat to Israel.

  In Congress, the opposition got an early jump. By late June, Senator Bob Packwood, the Oregon Republican, had teamed up with Tom Dine, AIPAC’s Executive Director, to line up fifty-four senators and 224 House members to write President Reagan opposing the arms sale. In July, AIPAC declared its goal “to keep the package from ever being submitted” to Congress for a required vote of approval (majorities in both houses could block the deal). Indeed, fearing a political disaster that would derail the Reagan economic program, Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker got the White House to put off the AWACS vote from April to October. And when President Reagan sent formal notice to Congress on October 1, Baker warned the president that the outlook was bad. “We’ve got twelve votes, and that’s counting me,” Baker told Reagan, “and I don’t want to vote for it.”3

  But Reagan, riding the crest of his budget and tax victories, pressed ahead. In the House, the AWACS sale was voted down 301–11. Administration efforts focussed on the Senate. It was a classic inside-the-beltway battle.

  First, the old Iron Triangle went to work. Powerful corporations, some with links
to the Air Force and to Saudi arms sales, got behind the deal. The American Businessmen’s Group of Riyadh, including some top Fortune 500 companies such as Citibank, American Express, A&P, Merrill Lynch International, Mobil, Northrop, and Boeing, called on its members (heavy campaign contributors in 1980) to tell Congress “how important your business in Saudi Arabia is to your company.” The oil industry, huge grain companies and rice millers, and construction firms such as the Bechtel Corporation went after western and southwestern senators and congressmen. Omaha Banks and the Union Pacific Railroad put pressure on Democratic senators James Exon and Edward Zorinsky of Nebraska.

  The Israeli government hurt its own cause. While the Saudi leadership promulgated a Middle East peace plan and provided more oil, Prime Minister Begin clashed with the Reagan administration, first over Israel’s air raid against an Iraqi nuclear reactor and then over bombing missions that caused heavy civilian casualties around Beirut. In September, Begin infuriated the White House by lobbying personally on Capitol Hill against the AWACS deal, challenging the president on his home court. Fred Dutton, a former Kennedy White House official and a Saudi lobbyist, cleverly framed the choice: “Reagan or Begin.”

  The pro-Israeli coalition, a narrow majority of fifty-four, was wobbly. One by one, senators were stolen away; the coalition lacked strong popular underpinnings in many states. Utah’s Orrin Hatch used the assassination of Anwar Sadat to assert the need for helping other moderate Arab states. Other senators, especially freshmen Republicans, were cleverly peeled away by White House strategists Jim Baker and his deputy, Richard Darman. They crafted a letter offering Reagan’s assurances that AWACS planes would be used only by American and Saudi personnel—not by other Arabs; that AWACS intelligence could not be shared with any other nation unless Washington approved; and that AWACS would be protected against falling into hostile hands. For wavering senators, said Jim Baker, “the letter gave ’em a legitimate out, an excuse” to go along with the deal.

  Reagan personally talked with forty-four senators; quite a few succumbed, among them Iowa Republican Roger Jepsen. His loss was a hard blow to AIPAC because Jepsen had been in the core of original AWACS foes. Jepsen, racked by conflicting pressures, literally broke down crying as he told other Republicans that “highly classified” White House information and his desire not to hurt Reagan’s prestige had switched his vote. That broke loose others. Reagan ultimately prevailed 52–48, and the AWACS sale to Saudi Arabia went through.

  The underlying message to AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby was that its ties to many senators were too weak.

  And so begins the “after” half of the story: modernization and reshaping of AIPAC. As if there were some Newtonian law of politics, the AWACS triumph triggered a powerful reaction that came back to haunt Reagan four years later.

  AIPAC had suffered a severe jolt. It had nearly stopped the president, but ultimately it had failed. And failure galvanized it into a more national strategy, targeted at the grass roots. For years AIPAC had ridden on an outspoken, committed, activist constituency based mainly in the big cities of the Northeast and Midwest. That constituency had always given it commanding strength in the House. But AIPAC was now compelled to go after the more conservative Senate in new ways, in order to marshal unassailable majorities in Reagan’s second term.

  In 1985, for example, after President Reagan had personally promised modern arms to King Hussein as inducement to negotiate with Israel, AIPAC and its allies lined up seventy-four senators to cosponsor a resolution to block a $1.5 billion arms package to Jordan. The number of Senators was critical: a jump of twenty senators above the high point against AWACS in 1981. The White House could not peel off a few wavering senators and win. By early 1986, Reagan had to renege on his promise to Hussein; he withdrew the Jordanian arms package without a vote, demonstrating AIPAC’s power to deter presidential initiatives. “The best vote is a vote avoided,” Doug Bloomfield, AIPAC’s legislative director, commented to me. “If you can win and avoid a confrontation, everyone is better off. In a political community, you have to live for another day, so it doesn’t pay to rub anybody’s nose in defeat.”4

  Again in 1985, after the Saudis had submitted a new $3 billion arms request, President Reagan promised King Fahd more F-15 fighter aircraft. The congressional climate was so hostile that Reagan had to withdraw the offer; instead, the Saudis spent their billions on British jets. Gradually, the administration whittled down the Saudi shopping list, dropping M-1 tanks and Black Hawk helicopters, looking for a package that Congress—and AIPAC—would accept.

  Finally, on February 28, 1986, Secretary of State George Shultz called in Tom Dine, AIPAC’s executive director, to find out what the administration could get through Congress. Normally, in the Jewish community’s lobbying, AIPAC lobbies Congress, while the executive branch is handled by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Shultz’s meeting with Dine was a measure of AIPAC’s increased clout.

  Over the years, AIPAC had developed from a pro-Israel public affairs forum in the 1950s to a fifty-five-thousand-member lobby to which scores of senators and congressmen turn for authoritative guidance. AIPAC is an American lobby, not a registered foreign agent, but it has close ties with the Israeli government. Its political tally sheets and strategy reports wind up in the Israeli prime minister’s office, I was told. Some Israeli journalists jokingly refer to AIPAC as “our embassy.” And Tom Dine, a Kennedy Democrat with ten years of staff experience in Congress, is not above pulling a card from his wallet to show that he carries the Israeli prime minister’s twenty-four-hour phone number. Other American Jewish lobbyists, such as Dave Brody of B’nai B’rith and Hyman Bookbinder of the American Jewish Committee, have proclaimed their independence from AIPAC. But many Jewish political activists get their cues from AIPAC.

  In October 1985, for example, Senator Howard Metzenbaum, an Ohio Democrat and spokesman for a pro-Israel coalition, was negotiating with Majority Leader Robert Dole on terms of a legislative compromise postponing the Jordan arms sale. At times, Metzenbaum would shuttle down the hall to a Capitol hideaway to talk to Tom Dine. Republican Senate staffers intimately involved told me AIPAC was literally writing the resolution for Metzenbaum. AIPAC officials confirmed that Metzenbaum wanted their “sign-off” before striking a deal with Dole. Then, the AIPAC-approved bargain was circulated to other key senators.

  So in February 1986, Shultz was acknowledging AIPAC’s central role when he invited Dine to discuss the Saudi arms deal, which AIPAC was then vigorously opposing. For a couple of hours the two men sat by a roaring fire in Shultz’s spacious office on the seventh floor of the State Department.

  As Shultz talked, his own change of heart became clear to Dine. When Shultz had entered the administration in 1982, the Israelis feared he would be pro-Arab because he had been president of the Bechtel Corporation, a firm with big construction projects in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Shultz drafted a framework for Middle East peace in September 1982 that angered Prime Minister Begin because it called for Palestinian autonomy and West Bank affiliation with Jordan. But Shultz had become disillusioned with the Arabs after seeing Lebanon—under Syrian pressure—wriggle out of the Lebanon-Israel agreement that Shultz had mediated in May 1983. Since then, Shultz had worked to increase aid to Israel, and he had come to bank on the Israeli relationship—so much so that he told Dine he wanted to insulate American-Israeli relations from political ups and downs.

  But on that February afternoon, Shultz also wanted to protect American influence with moderate Arabs. He argued that the Saudi arms deal was necessary. He wanted to send a message that would “reverberate” in Tehran. Moreover, Shultz reasoned, President Reagan had been snubbed by Congress on the Jordanian arms package and badly needed some show of support to bolster his standing in the Middle East. Shultz proposed to sell the Saudis a modest $354 million package of Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, Harpoon naval missiles, and Stinger antiaircraft missiles. Although Dine told me that Shultz did
not offer any direct quid pro quo, a deal seemed implicit. Shultz said that if this package passed, there would not be any more important arms sales to the Saudis in 1986.5

  Dine was interested, but he cautioned Shultz that to get it through Congress, “You’re going to have to eliminate the Stingers.” They were an explosive item because of Israeli and American congressional fears that Saudi Stingers would get into the hands of Arab terrorists and be used against American airlines. Shultz did not heed the advice.

  Dine went off to consult important senators and Jewish leaders such as Bob Asher, the Chicago businessman who is AIPAC’s president, and Kenneth Bialkin, then president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. A senior AIPAC official told me that Shimon Peres, the Israeli Prime Minister, signaled through private channels that he did not oppose a modest Saudi arms package. This gave AIPAC a chance to have things both ways. Its opposition to the Saudi arms package was already on record; AIPAC could now afford to accommodate Shultz. On March 20, Dine called on Shultz. “I’ve got good news for you,” he said. “We won’t fight the Saudi missile deal.”

  But momentum against the deal had developed beyond AIPAC’s control. Prominent pro-Israel politicians such as Senator Alan Cranston and Representative Mel Levine, both California Democrats, kept Congress whipped up against the deal. The House trounced the missile package, and the Senate voted 73–22 against it. Both votes occurred while President Reagan was away in Tokyo. When Reagan came home, he vetoed the resolution of disapproval. It took his all-out effort to get his veto sustained in the Senate—but only after he dropped the eight hundred Stinger missiles. The final package was worth about $250 million, less than one tenth of the original Saudi request.