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This is fresh air. I'm Dave Davies.

The Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election alerted many Americans to the vulnerability of our democratic institutions to tampering by forces from abroad.

Our guest today, investigative reporter Casey Michelle,

argues in a new book that the threat is far greater than we realize.

Most of it he says comes from American citizens willing to promote the interests of brutal

undemocratic and anti-American regimes for a price.

American lobbying for foreign governments in the US isn't new, he says,

he cites examples from the 19th century,

and from the 1930s, when an American public relations

guru made a fortune whitewashing the record of Nazi Germany.

But he argues it's far more extensive now,

and some of the players are surprising.

They include not just professional lobbyists, law firms, and publicists, but former U.S. government officials and

members of Congress from both parties, as well as universities and think tanks who accept

eye-popping sums from foreign governments. There have been laws for years

requiring registration and disclosure of these efforts, but Michelle says they've

been mostly ineffective. Casey Michelle is director of the Combating Cleptocracy Program with the Human Rights

Foundation. He's the author of a previous book titled American Cleptocracy. His writing has appeared

...