by Bill Browder
The Magnitsky Act was gathering so much momentum that it appeared it might be unstoppable. From the day that Kyle Scott at the State Department stonewalled me, I knew that the administration was dead set against this, but now they were in a tough spot. If they openly opposed the law, it would look as if they were siding with the Russians. However, if they publicly supported it, it would threaten Obama’s “reset” with Russia.
They needed to come up with some other solution.
On July 20, 2011, the State Department showed its cards. They sent a memo to the Senate entitled “Administration Comments on S.1039 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law.” Though not meant to be made public, within a day it was leaked.
I got a copy and nervously skimmed the document. It was the height of Washington hypocrisy. The State Department’s main argument was that the sanctions proposed by the Magnitsky Act already existed under executive powers, so why bother passing a new law?
In an effort to be clever, it threw the senators a bone. It said that the other main reason the Senate shouldn’t support the law was that the people who killed Magnitsky had already been banned from entering the United States. Therefore, the law was unnecessary.
I wasn’t sure whether this was a positive development. I called Kyle Parker to see what he thought.
“We don’t understand it either, Bill. Cardin had me call the Department to see who was on the visa sanctions list, and they wouldn’t tell me.”
“Did they at least tell you how many people were on it?”
“Nope. They wouldn’t tell me that either.”
“What about asset freezes?”
“They were pretty clear on that one. They don’t support asset freezes.”
“So what’s Cardin’s reaction?”
“It’s pretty straightforward. We’re not going along with this and he’ll continue to push for the law.”
On August 8, 2011, Cardin publicly rejected the administration’s position and reconfirmed his commitment to passing the Magnitsky Act in a strongly worded Washington Post op-ed entitled “Accountability for Sergei Magnitsky’s Killers.” This was an important signal of his resolve, since Obama and Cardin were in the same party. He was publicly throwing down the gauntlet to the president.
When the administration read Cardin’s op-ed, it seemed to become even more agitated. The White House was so afraid of offending the Russians and derailing the “reset” that it contacted Cardin and the other cosponsors and suggested that the bill should apply globally, not just to Russia.
The senators loved that idea. What started out as a bill about Sergei had morphed into a historic piece of global human rights legislation.
After this, Cardin concentrated on bringing the bill before a full vote in the Senate. To do that, one last hurdle had to be cleared: the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. All bills have to be passed by a Senate committee before they can come to a vote in the full Senate, and since the Magnitsky Act involved visa bans, it had to go through the Foreign Relations Committee. Since the bill had so much support generally, and there was no Senate opposition, this seemed like a simple formality.
Cardin requested that the committee chair, Senator John Kerry, add it to the agenda for the committee’s next business meeting on September 9. For some reason, Kerry refused. Cardin made the same request for the October 12 meeting, but once again Kerry didn’t bring it to the table. It wasn’t clear what Kerry’s problem was, but there seemed to be one.
Meanwhile, we received some macabre information from Moscow. Sergei’s mother, Natalia, had finally been granted access to information from Sergei’s autopsy report. Among the documents she was allowed to copy were six color photos taken of Sergei’s body shortly after he died. While they were not a surprise, they showed deep bruising along his legs and hands, as well as deep cuts in his wrists—the same injuries that Natalia had seen when she went to view her son’s body in the morgue. She was also able to copy a protocol, signed by the head of Matrosskaya Tishina, authorizing the use of rubber batons on Sergei by riot guards on the night of November 16.
What we knew—that Sergei had died violently at the hands of the state—was now undeniable and backed up by documentary evidence.
After seeing these photos and documents, Natalia filed a new complaint requesting that the Russian authorities open a murder investigation. Like everything else we tried to do in Russia, it was denied.
When I spoke with her on the phone, the only consolation I could offer her was that we were getting close to some form of justice in the United States. I promised that I was doing everything I could, and although prohibiting travel and freezing accounts in America were hardly commensurate punishments for what these people had done to Sergei, it was better than total impunity, which is what we had so far.
On November 29, 2011, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened its next business meeting. When the agenda went up on the committee’s website that day, I clicked on the link hoping to see Sergei’s name. I scrolled down. The first item was “A resolution calling for the protection of the Mekong River Basin.”
I scrolled a little further and saw its next order of business: “A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate regarding Tunisia’s peaceful Jasmine Revolution.”
I scrolled to the bottom. There was no Magnitsky.
I called Kyle immediately. “What the hell’s going on? I don’t see the bill.”
“I don’t know, we’re trying to figure that out ourselves.”
I began to suspect that some ugly horse-trading was going on behind the scenes. Kerry seemed to be stonewalling.
Since this problem appeared to be with Kerry specifically, I figured that if I could get a meeting with him, then the power of Sergei’s story might sway him the way it had McCain and McGovern.
I called Juleanna. She’d been batting a thousand when it came to getting meetings for me with senators—but when she tried Kerry, she struck out. The best she could do was get me an audience with his adviser on Russian issues, a Senate staffer named Jason Bruder.
I flew to Washington and the day after I arrived, Juleanna and I went to the Dirksen Senate Office Building to meet Bruder outside the Foreign Relations Committee room. Bruder, a thirtysomething man of average height with a close-cropped goatee, led us into the room, a cavernous chamber with a U-shaped arrangement of tables and desks. Finding no good place for us to sit comfortably, we each dragged a chair from the audience area and arranged them in a little circle in the middle of the floor.
After thanking Bruder for taking the time to meet, I began to tell Sergei’s story. Three sentences in, Bruder cut me off. “Yes, yes. I know everything about this case. I’m very upset by what happened. He and his family deserve justice.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“Listen, I’ve given this a lot of thought. The senator and I would really like to help with the Magnitsky case.”
“That’s great. Will Senator Kerry support the bill and push it through committee?”
Bruder leaned back, his chair creaking. “Well, I really don’t think the Magnitsky Act is the right approach to dealing with these problems, Mr. Browder.”
Here we go again, I thought, thinking back to Kyle Scott and all the other nervous careerists in the US government. “What do you mean it’s not the ‘right approach’?”
He then repeated the same tired State Department script nearly word for word. I tried to argue with him, but he wouldn’t listen.
Finally Bruder said, “Listen, Bill, this case is important to us. I’d like to get Senator Kerry to bring up Magnitsky directly with the Russian ambassador the next time they meet.”
Bring it up with the Russian ambassador? Was he fucking kidding? Sergei’s name had been on the front page of every major newspaper in the world! The Russian president and his senior ministers had spent countless hours trying to minimize the fallout from the Magnitsky case, and Bruder thought that a quiet conversation with the ambassador might help?
I l
eft the meeting cursing under my breath.
It turned out that Kerry’s opposition to the Magnitsky Act had nothing to do with whether he thought it was good or bad policy. The rumor in Washington was that John Kerry was blocking the bill for one simple reason: he wanted to be secretary of state after Hillary Clinton resigned. According to the story making the rounds, one of the conditions for his getting the job was to make sure that the Magnitsky Act never saw the light of day at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
For the next few months nothing happened with the Magnitsky Act. But then, in the spring of 2012, we were handed an unexpected gift. After nearly twenty years of negotiating, in August of that year Russia was finally going to be admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The moment Russia became a WTO member, every other member could trade with Russia on the same terms, without tariffs or other costs. Only one country would be excluded: the United States, thanks to something called the Jackson-Vanik amendment.
This thirty-seven-year-old piece of legislation, put in place in the mid-1970s, imposed trade sanctions on the Soviet Union to punish it for not allowing Soviet Jews to emigrate. At first, the Soviets dug in their heels, but after several years they realized that the costs of the sanctions were simply too great, and eventually 1.5 million Jews were allowed to leave the country.
Thirty-seven years later the Soviet Union no longer existed, and Russian Jews could freely emigrate, but Jackson-Vanik was still on the books. If it remained, then it would effectively prevent American businesses such as Boeing, Caterpillar, Ford, and American beef exporters from enjoying the same trade benefits with Russia as every other WTO member in the world.
As far as the US business community was concerned, Jackson-Vanik had to go, and the Obama administration fully supported this idea. If the president could have repealed Jackson-Vanik by himself, he would have. But in order to get the law off the books, he needed an act of Congress.
I was in Washington working with Juleanna on our campaign during the week that the administration began its campaign to repeal Jackson-Vanik. After a morning of meetings, Juleanna and I were breaking for lunch at the snack bar in a basement hallway of the Hart Office Building. As I sat at a flimsy aluminum table and ate my salad, Juleanna tapped me on the arm and pointed discreetly down the hall. There, walking with a small group of aides, was Senator Joe Lieberman, one of the most high-profile cosponsors of the Magnitsky Act.
She whispered, “Bill, there’s Lieberman. I think you should talk to him about this whole Jackson-Vanik situation.”
“What, now? He’s just walking down the hall. How am I going to have a proper conversation with him?”
While I’ve learned to be assertive when necessary, to this day I’m still uncomfortable with foisting myself on unsuspecting strangers, especially those who are constantly bombarded by the public.
But Juleanna ignored my obvious discomfort, stood, and practically pulled me out of my seat. “Come on, Bill. Let’s go talk to him.” Side by side, we crossed the hallway and headed toward Senator Lieberman.
As soon as we got within earshot of Lieberman, Juleanna held out her hand and said, “Sorry to interrupt you, Senator, but I was wondering if I could introduce you to Bill Browder, the man behind the Magnitsky Act.”
Lieberman and his aides stopped. Senators have hundreds of things on their minds, and it sometimes takes them a few seconds to figure out who belongs to what. When the phrase Magnitsky Act clicked for him, his face brightened. “Ah, Mr. Browder.” He turned to me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for the important work you’ve been doing.”
I was flattered that he had any idea who I was. “I wouldn’t have been able to achieve anything without your support,” I said truthfully. “There’s a problem, though. I’m sure you know that the administration is pushing for the repeal of Jackson-Vanik.”
“Yes, we’re hearing that.”
“I think it’s unconscionable that while the administration is repealing one of the most important pieces of human rights legislation ever, they’re blocking Magnitsky.”
He took a moment, then said sincerely, “You’re absolutely right. We need to do something about this.”
“What can be done?”
“I’ll tell you what. We’ll tell the administration that we’ll block Jackson-Vanik repeal unless they stop blocking Magnitsky. I’m sure John, Ben, and Roger1 would join me on this.”
“That would be powerful. Thank you.”
“No, Bill. Thank you for everything you’ve done.” Lieberman then turned to his aides, told one of them to remind him to get on this letter, and walked off, leaving Juleanna and me standing there, the bustle of the hallway buzzing all around us.
After a few seconds I turned to her. “Did that really just happen?”
“It sure did. That’s how things get done in Washington, Bill. Congratulations.”
True to his word, a few days later, Lieberman and the other original cosponsors of the Magnitsky Act sent a letter to Montana senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Just as Foreign Relations had to clear the way for passage of the Magnitsky Act, the Finance Committee had to okay the repeal of Jackson-Vanik. The letter said, “In the absence of the passage of the Magnitsky legislation, we will strongly oppose the lifting of Jackson-Vanik.” Given the way the Senate operates, this letter was as good as a veto.
Senator Baucus was keen to get Jackson-Vanik repealed. Many of his constituents in Montana were cattle farmers and beef exporters. They wanted to sell their steaks and hamburgers to Russia—the world’s sixth-largest importer of US beef—without fear of being at a disadvantage.
This meant that the only way to repeal Jackson-Vanik was also to pass Magnitsky, and after some deliberation the Senate decided to combine the two bills into one. First the bill would be brought up at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to pass Magnitsky, then it would go before the Finance Committee to repeal Jackson-Vanik, and then, at long last, it would go before the full Senate for a vote.
A famous expression goes, “The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they sleep at night.” Our human rights campaign made strange bedfellows with Montana beef farmers, Russian human rights activists, and Boeing airplane salesmen, but by working together it appeared as if we had the strength to overpower any remaining resistance to getting the law passed.
With the prospect of Jackson-Vanik being blocked, Kerry took his foot off the brakes. He called for a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 26, 2012, with the sole purpose of approving the Magnitsky Act. I flew to Washington specifically to be there. The meeting was open to the public and scheduled to start at 2:15 p.m., and I arrived at the Capitol forty-five minutes early to get a good seat. But as I approached security, I was surprised to see more than three hundred people lined up, waiting to get in. Journalists, activists, student volunteers, staffers, Russian embassy officials—you name it, they were all there.
I got in the back of the line and a few minutes later heard someone shouting my name. I recognized a senior from Columbia University who’d volunteered on our campaign. He had one of his friends hold his spot while he came back to me and said, “Mr. Browder, please come up to the front with me.”
He pulled me aside and we started walking past everybody, but then one of the Capitol policemen stopped us and said, “Hey, fella, what do you think you’re doing?”
I felt slightly embarrassed and didn’t say anything, but the student said enthusiastically, “Officer, this is the man who’s responsible for the Magnitsky Act. He needs to be at the front of the line.”
“I don’t care what he’s done.” The officer pointed at me. “Back of the line.”
“But—”
“Back of the line!”
I told the student it was okay and walked to my old spot, noticing along the way a Russian embassy official I knew by sight. Judging by the smirk on his face, he enjoyed watching me get slapped down.
When I finally got to the hallway outside the committee room, I found a giant scrum of people. The room could hold only around sixty, and I realized if I didn’t get in at the beginning, then I wasn’t going to get in at all. The door was opened at 2:15 sharp by a short, stocky woman with brown hair and a booming, authoritative voice. She called for members of the press. A full third of the people surged forward, and I tried to get swept up with them. But this formidable woman, who took her job very seriously, stopped me when it was my turn and said, “Where’re your credentials?”
“Uh . . . I don’t have any. But I’ve been deeply involved in the Magnitsky Act and it’s important that I be in there.”
She shook her head as if to say, Nice try, pal, and pointed back at the crowd.
What could I do? For the second time that day I slunk away feeling like the total outsider that I was. I stepped behind a velvet rope as the senators and their aides suddenly appeared. The crowd parted for them and cameras flashed from every corner. One of the last senators to arrive was Ben Cardin, who didn’t notice me.
But his senior aide, Fred Turner, did.
As they approached the door, I saw Fred stop to say something to the brown-haired gatekeeper. He pointed in my direction, and the woman came over and said, “Mr. Browder, I’m very sorry. We have a space for you. Please follow me.”
She led me into the packed chamber, the most ornate of all the Senate committee rooms, and showed me to the last empty chair.
Senator Kerry entered through a side door and called the meeting to order. His body language made it clear that this was the last place he wanted to be. He began the meeting with a strange speech about how America is not a perfect country, and that the people in that room should be “very mindful of the need for the United States not to always be pointing fingers and lecturing and to be somewhat introspective as we think about these things.”