Choate, Pat. Agents of Influence. New York: Simon & Schuster (Touchstone Edition), 1991. 307 pages.

Pat Choate is a Texas farm boy who earned a Ph.D. in economics and went on to become a talking head on economic and trade policy. His interest in declining American competitiveness, and awareness of DC hardball politics, soon evolved into a critique of Japan's lobbying practices. He knew that Japan had the best competitor intelligence, the deepest pockets, and the perseverance to get anything they wanted from U.S. business in general, and from Washington in particular. But he didn't know that even before the book came out, Japan would put the screws on TRW, Inc. (where he worked as an analyst) and get him fired.

Lee Iacocca said that the first part of this book "made me mad; the last part made me scared." The first part describes the revolving door between U.S. officialdom and lobbying on the Japanese payroll. An appendix (pages 216-257) lists over 200 registered foreign agents who are former officials, along with the firms that employ them and the foreign clients they represent. (NameBase counts 60 names from this book who are also found on the membership roster of the Council on Foreign Relations, for what it's worth.) But what's scary is the sophisticated and pervasive influence- buying, propagandizing, politicking and lobbying by Japanese companies and officials. It makes Pearl Harbor look like a bathtub.
ISBN 0-671-74339-2

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