Tag Archives: Viet Tan

Obama’s Vietnam “Legacy” Trip: A Reality Check

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By Greg Rushford

 Monday, May 23, Washington, D.C. —Air Force One touched down yesterday evening in Hanoi. The White House and influential Washington think-tank scholars are spinning President Barack Obama’s three-day Vietnam visit as a “legacy” moment, validating the president’s “pivot” to Asia. Expect much warm talk of how America is forging ever-closer economic- and security ties with a modernizing Vietnam. Expect the usual heartwarming television images of happy people —including peasants toiling in lush rice fields, wearing their iconic conical hats.

Don’t expect any admissions from Vietnamese Communist leaders of the suffering they continue to inflict upon some of their country’s best citizens. As former prisoner of conscience Cu Huy Ha Vu rightly notes, today’s Vietnam is “a kleptocracy.” Intrepid pro-democracy advocates stand in the way.

Courageous men like Dang Xuan Dieu, Ho Duc Hoa, and Tran Vu Anh Binh, three of Vietnam’s 100-plus current political prisoners. They languish behind bars, while some Washington insiders have averted their eyes.

Some of those insiders are Southeast Asian analysts who work inside the gleaming $100 million headquarters of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, just a few minutes from the White House — and who have undisclosed sidelines as business consultants. They know that to speak forthrightly on Vietnam’s shameful human rights record would threaten their easy access to senior communist officials. Their corporate benefactors who depend upon that political access to win lucrative business contracts in Vietnam could lose the big bucks.

Moreover, Vietnam’s ambassador to the United States has a team of $30,000-a-month Washington lobbyists on his payroll. Their assignment is basically not to let awkward questions about political prisoners interfere with enhanced U.S.-Vietnamese commercial- and security ties, especially the sale of lethal weapons to fend off Chinese maritime intimidation.

One wonders what Dieu, Hoa, and Binh, locked away in their cells, would have to say — if they were free to speak.

Dieu, a devout Catholic citizen journalist, has been imprisoned since 2011. He committed the “crime” of exercising free speech. Dieu has been living “in hell” — beaten, humiliated, and treated like a “slave” for refusing to wear a uniform with the word “criminal” — his brother has told Radio Free Asia. Hoa, also a blogger whose crime was his free speech, has been incarcerated since 2011. Binh, a songwriter, lost his liberty in 2012. His crime was writing music that offended the Communist Party. While Binh’s term is scheduled to end next year, Dieu and Hoa could languish behind bars until 2024.

All three men are associated with the Viet Tan, a U.S.-based political party that is highly effective in using the social media to advocate democratic freedoms of speech and assembly. The Viet Tan reaches a wide audience, both inside Vietnam and in the Vietnamese diaspora. For its skilled high-tech advocacy, the Hanoi’s feared Ministry of Public Security brands Viet Tan as a “terrorist” organization.

Binh, Hoa and Dieu were amongst a group of 17 political prisoners who have been represented by Stanford law professor Allen Weiner, a former high-powered U.S. State Department official. Weiner won a United Nations panel determination that his clients — all either Viet Tan members, supporters or friends — had been unjustly imprisoned. While 14 of Weiner’s clients have been released, that’s unfortunately not quite a happy ending. “Some of those who have been released, however, continue to suffer severe harassment and intimidation at the hands of the Vietnamese security services,” Weiner reports. “They continue to pay a heavy price.”

 That’s the sort of glaring injustice that no credible analyst of today’s Vietnam would want to downplay. Meet CSIS Asia analyst Murray Hiebert — a man who doesn’t deny that Vietnam has human rights issues, yet is careful never to use clear language that would anger senior Vietnamese officials.

Nine months ago, I brought Allen Weiner’s brave clients to Hiebert’s attention, asking if perhaps this would be an opportunity to highlight the injustice by holding a public forum. The CSIS analyst brushed off the inquiry — at the time I had not realized that CSIS has never held such an event. He also declined to say whether he agreed with Hanoi’s characterization of the Viet Tan as a “terrorist” organization.

(The White House and State Department are better informed than CSIS. Not only do they respect the Viet Tan for its peaceable advocacy, but Obama’s national security officials have maintained close ties with the Viet Tan leadership. Radio Free Asia reported that on May 17 representatives of the Viet Tan, along with other respected Vietnamese pro-democracy advocates including Boat People SOS and Vietnam for Progress, were briefed on Obama’s upcoming Vietnam trip in the White House on May 17.)

A few weeks ago, Hiebert once again did not respond to a request to be interviewed on the imprisoned Viet Tan supporters. I then tried to register for a May 17 press briefing that Hiebert and two other CSIS scholars held on the Obama visit. I had hoped to ask about Binh, Hoa and Dieu. But CSIS spokesman Andrew Schwartz — who also had not responded to a recent e-mail inquiry — denied me admission, asserting that the event was “oversubscribed.”

While the briefing room was indeed rather crowded, even full, according to people who were present, Schwartz found room for Vietnam Television. VTV is a Hanoi-controlled media tool that the Communist Party finds useful for spreading the party line. These days, VTV’s best “scoop” has been in warning Vietnamese independent journalists — and specifically the Viet Tan — to stay away from linking corrupt communist officials to a Taiwanese steel mill that somehow obtained environmental clearance to discharge toxic wastes into the sea, which has resulted in a massive fish kill.

(At the May 17 CSIS briefing, a Television Vietnam correspondent asked if the next American president would continue Obama’s “pivot” to Asia — which at least drew laughter. It is perhaps also worth noting that while “journalists” from Vietnam Television are welcome to peddle their propaganda in the United States, authorities in Hanoi continue to jam Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese language service. And while the BBC is free to broadcast its English-language programs in Vietnam, the BBC’s celebrated Vietnamese Language Service frequently has run into problems.)

As it turns out, CSIS has a history of making life uncomfortable for guests at the think tank’s public events who might pose awkward questions. On May 24, 2015, former political prisoner Ha Vu angered the Vietnamese ambassador to the U.S., Pham Quang Vinh, by asking how Vietnam justified persecuting its political prisoners. Vinh, visibly upset, retorted that Vietnam has no political prisoners — which was pretty rich, considering that at that moment, the ambassador was busy trying to avoid making eye contact with one of Vietnam’s most famous political prisoners.

Moreover, CSIS analyst Hiebert, who chaired the panel, did not challenge the ambassador’s absurd claim. (The CSIS event discussed a study on U.S.-Vietnamese relations that Hiebert had co-authored; that study had not disclosed that the Vietnamese government had secretly financed it, Hiebert subsequently admitted to me.

And last July, Hiebert went to extraordinary lengths to accommodate Vietnamese security officials when Communist Party Secretary General Nguyen Phu Trong spoke at CSIS. Hiebert summoned a guard, escorting Dr. Binh Nguyen, a prominent Vietnamese-American physician, from the premises. Hiebert apologized to Binh, who had been invited, but said that the communist security officials insisted that she be ejected (for details see: How Hanoi Buys Influence in Washington, D.C., www.rushfordreport.com).

Turns out that there are other reasons to doubt Hiebert’s independence. While his official CSIS bio does not disclose it, Hiebert is also a senior advisor to a prominent business consultancy, the Bower Group Asia.

Conflicted interests

Hiebert’s boss at CSIS, Ernie Bower, runs the Bower Group Asia. “Our clients include the world’s best global enterprises,” the BGA website proclaims. “We understand the nexus between politics and economics.” Bower has more than 60 employees in his Washington, D.C. headquarters and in 21 Asian countries (including Vietnam). Another CSIS analyst, Chris Johnson, is a BGA managing director for China. Like Hiebert, Johnson does not disclose his business affiliations on his CSIS website.

Bower, who formerly chaired the CSIS Southeast Studies chair, responded angrily last year when I asked him which was his real day job: CSIS or his business consultancy. He said he was “saddened” that I had suggested he appeared to have conflicts of interest. But perhaps aware that others might also wonder, Bower now identifies himself on the CSIS website as a “non-resident” advisor. The chair remains vacant. CSIS spokesman Schwartz and John Hamre, the think tank’s CEO and one of Washington’s most acclaimed fundraisers, have not responded to persistent inquiries to explain the apparent conflicts.

Here’s how the conflict works:

At CSIS Hiebert has advocated the TPP trade deal. The Bower Group is actively seeking TPP business.

Hiebert has strongly contended that the U.S. lethal arms embargo on Vietnam has outlived its usefulness, and should be lifted. Lockheed, which wants to sell Hanoi its P-3 Orion and C-130 Hercules surveillance planes, has a seat on Hiebert’s CSIS board. So does Boeing, which has been peddling its P-8 Poseidon military surveillance aircraft in Hanoi. Imagine how the giant defense contractors would feel if the money they dole out to CSIS would be used to shine a spotlight on issues involving corruption and human-rights abuses in Vietnam.

Coca-Cola, a Bower Group client, got into Laos a few years ago, thanks to Ernie Bower’s understanding of “the nexus” between business and politics. Coke also has a seat on the CSIS Southeast Asia board.

Chevron, another major CSIS benefactor, also has a representative on CSIS’s Southeast Asia board. Hiebert authored a November 2014 column for the Wall Street Journal defending Chevron in bitter litigation the oil giant had in Indonesia. In his column, Hiebert identified himself only as a CSIS analyst. Then Ernie Bower got busy on the Bower Group’s Facebook page, touting the Journal piece: “BGA’s Murray Hiebert provides much-needed analysis of the court case against Chevron in Indonesia” in the Wall Street Journal. [Full disclosure: I have been an occasional contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s Asian edition for more than two decades.]

In recent months, Hiebert has been quoted widely by major news outlets including CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, Forbes, Politico, the Financial Times, the Washington Times, and the Voice of America — always only identified as a CSIS analyst. Readers would not know that Hiebert also works for a business consultancy. They would not know that corporations that fund Hiebert’s CSIS programs have serious financial interests at stake. One wire-service report that quoted Hiebert about Vietnam’s new top leadership was picked up by the New York Times in April. This gave Ernie Bower another opportunity to twitter to his clients about how “BGA Senior Advisor Murray Hiebert” had made the pages of the Times.

And earlier today, CNN quoted Hiebert’s approving views of enhanced U.S. weapons sales to Vietnam, identifying him only as a CSIS scholar. Viewers were not aware that this “scholar” is funded at CSIS by major U.S. defense contractors, and has taken money from the Vietnamese government for co-authoring a study that called for the lifting of the U.S. weapons embargo to that country. Nor would viewers know that Hiebert also works for the Bower Group, which also touts its interest in facilitating arms deals.

A little digging illustrates how Bower mixes his CSIS affiliations with business. In 2014, for example, Bower opened some important doors in Washington to a Manila wheeler-dealer named Antonio “Tony Boy” Cojuangco. Tony Boy also sits on CSIS’s Southeast Asia board. Bower brought him to town as the head of an “eminent persons” group — such flattery can go a long way in certain Asian circles.

CSIS arranged appointments for the Filipino eminences in the White House, the Export-Import Bank, on Capitol Hill and of course at CSIS headquarters, where they had a scheduled appointment with the think tank’s president, John Hamre. That was during the day. That night, the Bower Group hosted a lavish dinner for Tony Boy and his associates at the posh Jefferson Hotel. Bower, Hiebert, Chris Johnson, and other CSIS/Bower Group operatives were present. To judge from photos I’ve seen, it was a good night all around, lubricated by bottles of Pomerol. (Hamre has not responded to repeated requests to comment. On the CSIS website, the CSIS head asserts that some unnamed journalists who have questioned CSIS ethical practices have ignored evidence to the contrary that he has provided.)

Agents of Influence

Speaking of influence peddling, if one looks closely, the Washington lobbyists on that $30,000-a-month retainer from Vietnamese Ambassador Vinh unwittingly illustrate how the official spin surrounding the Obama visit to Vietnam doesn’t tell the whole story.

The most recent foreign agent’s disclosure form that the Podesta Group has filed with the U.S. Department of Justice lists some of what the firm did to earn its $180,000 for the last six months of 2015. One is left wondering exactly what the lobbyists did to earn their keep.

The lobbyists disclosed only seven meetings, mostly with congressional aides. The only elected representative who met with Podesta representatives was Matt Salmon, an Arizona Republican who is retiring from Congress at the end of this year.

Rep. Salmon had already met with Vietnamese Amb. Vinh earlier in the year and had been to Vietnam in May. The congressman already had supported an enhanced U.S.-Vietnam trade relationship.

Do the math: $180,000 for seven meetings. That’s about $25,000 a meeting, throwing in about 50 e-mails and five phone calls that the Podesta lobbying form mentions. David Adams, the Podesta lobbyist who has been working to facilitate the Obama visit to Vietnam this week, is a former close aide to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state. Asked what he had really done to each the money, Adams declined to comment.

This week, when the television screens show images of happy Vietnamese peasants with their conical hats, toiling in their rice paddies, think of David Adams. The average Vietnamese citizen would have to work 13 years to earn enough money to pay for just one $25,000 Podesta Group meeting with congressional aides.

From the days of French colonialism to the present Communist kleptocracy, the Vietnamese central government has always stolen from its poorest people.

Amb. Vinh’s lobbyist Adams proudly styles himself as a part-time “gentleman farmer” in Virginia’s wine country. Wonder what those Vietnamese peasants would say, if they knew that their stooped labor is helping subsidize such a lifestyle?

 

 

 

 

 

How Hanoi Buys Influence in Washington, D.C.

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 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Hanoi this Thursday for a two-day visit. Expect much talk of how the United States and Vietnam have been developing closer security and economic ties — and how Vietnam’s praiseworthy “progress” in improving its human-rights record is making this possible. Hopefully, Vietnam’s feared Ministry of Public Security will be on better behavior this week than back in May. Then, Kerry’s top human-rights advisor, Tom Malinowski, held what he characterized as “productive” meetings in Hanoi with senior Vietnamese officials. On May 11, two days after Malinowski’s visit, thugs wielding metal pipes bloodied a courageous Vietnamese political dissident named Anh Chi. Malinowski deplored the incident, while still insisting that Vietnam has been making commendable “progress” on human rights.

Kerry’s Aug. 6-8 trip comes on the heels of a successful visit to Washington last month by Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the Communist Party. Trong had a “productive” meeting with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office on July 7, after which the two leaders issued a joint “vision” statement that said each country recognized the importance of protecting human rights. The next day, Trong made a major speech at an influential U.S. think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (better known by its acronym, CSIS). “Protecting and promoting human rights is the main objective of our development,” Trong declared. “We want to ensure, promote and protect the rights of all people in Vietnam.”

Well, maybe not all. Once again, a familiar pattern emerged: Shortly before Trong’s speech before a CSIS audience of mainly well-connected Washington insiders, there was another ugly incident behind the scenes. The incident illustrates what’s really going on when American and Vietnamese officials praise Vietnam’s “demonstrable” human-rights progress. Moreover, the CSIS embarrassment offers a glimpse into how the Communist Party has been quietly buying influence to advance its foreign policy agenda in Washington — a sophisticated lobby campaign that appears to be working. Hanoi, it appears, has learned that in Washington, money talks.

But that’s getting ahead of this story, which begins with Trong’s July 8 historic speech — the first-ever such appearance for a senior Communist Party leader — at CSIS’ gleaming modern headquarters a few blocks from the White House. As the secretary general was preparing to speak about his deep interest in protecting human rights, Vietnamese security officials were quietly demonstrating otherwise, even on American soil. It seems that Hanoi’s intelligence operatives had a file on one of the invited CSIS guests — like Anh Chi, another enemy of the state.

Persona Non Grata

When Dr. Binh T. Nguyen, a prominent Vietnamese-born physician (and an American citizen) showed up to hear the secretary general’s speech, she was informed that she was persona non grata.

Binh, an invited guest, cleared CSIS security at the entrance, as she had on several previous occasions. But when she went upstairs to join the audience, a CSIS senior fellow was waiting. Murray Hiebert, accompanied by a CSIS security guard, insisted that Binh leave the premises. An obviously uncomfortable Hiebert explained that he was so sorry, but the communist security operatives simply would not permit Binh to hear Trong’s speech. The apologetic Hiebert told Dr. Binh that he had tried his best to reason with the Vietnamese security officials, but to no avail. They were not interested in negotiating, and were adamant that Binh would not be allowed to hear Trong’s speech, Hiebert related.

Hiebert apologized sincerely to Binh, admitting that it was wrong for CSIS to have given into the pressure. Ejecting her had ruined the event for him, Hiebert told the doctor. I spoke with Binh twice, for nearly an hour, going over the facts carefully, in great detail. Subsequently I was able to substantiate that the doctor’s account was the same as how Hiebert explained the incident to one of his colleagues at CSIS, Benjamin Contreras, the program director for CSIS’ Southeast Studies section.

Dr. Binh told me that Hiebert was characteristically polite. Still, it was intimidating that he had a guard with him to make sure she left the premises, the doctor added. Binh said she does not seek publicity, and looked forward to being invited to future CSIS events. She asked not to be quoted directly in this article.

The Canadian-born Hiebert, 66, is a soft-spoken former journalist with the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Wall Street Journal. He is perhaps the last person one would expect would get caught up in a dubious human-rights episode. In 1999, Hiebert, then the Review’s Kuala Lumpur bureau chief, was jailed for writing an article that raised disturbing questions about the integrity of Malaysian courts. Even though his report was accurate, Hiebert was convicted of “scandalizing” the judiciary, and spent a month in a Malaysian jail.

At CSIS, Hiebert has spoken out against human rights practices in Thailand and Malaysia. Hiebert notes that he approved several recent blogs written for CSIS by respected Vietnam watchers that have been critical of Vietnamese human-rights practices, including curbs on the media. But at the same time, Hiebert seems to have become careful not to cause too much offense to authorities in Hanoi. He co-authored a 2014 study, for example, that treated Vietnam’s human-rights practices rather gently, while not being entirely forthcoming about the fact that the Vietnamese government had paid for it (more on that later in this article).

CSIS Gives Its Side of the Story

Hiebert declined to be interviewed, but he did answer some (but far from all) questions that were submitted in writing — until a CSIS public-relations spokesman sent me an e-mail saying that he had advised Hiebert to cut off the communications.

Hiebert’s written responses did not directly dispute Dr. Binh’s account about what happened. But he attempted to minimize the incident, not mentioning the main human-rights point: how he had been pressured by the Vietnamese security officials to escort Binh from the building, and that did so, knowing that it was wrong for CSIS to give into such pressure.

The CSIS spokesman, H. Andrew Schwartz, first claimed that “Murray’s side of the story is quite different from what you have recounted.” But Schwartz had no further response after being informed that Dr. Binh’s account was, word-for-word, the same as Hiebert had related to his CSIS colleague, Benjamin Contreras. (Schwartz was formerly a spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known for its hard-nosed dealings with inquiring reporters. Before that, Schwartz was a producer for Fox News.)

While acknowledging that Dr. Binh had indeed been an invited guest, Hiebert seemed to brush off the incident as a sort-of bureaucratic snafu. “No one makes decisions about who attends events at CSIS but CSIS,” Hiebert wrote. “Dr. Binh was not on the initial RSVP list…CSIS made a mistake by allowing her to RSVP late to the event when the registration process had already been closed.” But Binh should have been allowed to attend, Hiebert agreed.

Enemies of the State

A public-record search shows why the Communist Party would have a file on Binh. She is chief of the thoracic radiology section at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and has received awards for her professional accomplishments. Being affiliated with one of the most respected medical institutions in the world, of course, wouldn’t send up any red flags in Hanoi. But what Binh does away from the office definitely would.

On her private time, Binh has worked on human rights issues in Asia with high-profile organizations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. She has testified before the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, among other respected panels. She serves on the Virginia Asian Advisory Board, which advises the governor “on ways to improve economic and cultural links between the Commonwealth and Asian nations, with a focus on the areas of commerce and trade.”

And on July 1, Binh joined several other respected human-rights champions who were invited to the White House. There, Binh and her colleagues gave advice to the National Security Council on how President Obama might want to handle human rights when Secretary General Trong came to the Oval Office on July 7.

Also, during the Obama-Trong White House meeting, Binh may well have been photographed by communist officials across Pennsylvania Avenue in Lafayette Park, where she joined several hundred Vietnamese-Americans who peaceably protested Vietnam’s lack of democracy.

Vietnam’s ambassador to the United States, Pham Quang Vinh, did not respond to an e-mail asking if he would care to join Hiebert by apologizing to Dr. Binh. It didn’t take much digging to understand why.

On May 24, Amb. Vinh had appeared on a CSIS panel moderated by Hiebert. Vinh was visibly upset when he was questioned by a former political prisoner, Cu Huy Ha Vu. Ha Vu made a short statement criticizing Vietnam’s human rights record, asking when Vietnam would stop its practice of incarcerating citizens whose only crimes were to criticize the Communist Party. The angry diplomat retorted that Vietnam has no political prisoners — avoiding eye contact with Vu. (Asserting that Vietnam has no political prisoners is like claiming that there is no cheese in Paris.)

Vu told me that he was not invited to the July 8 CSIS event with General Secretary Trong. Hiebert declined to explain, but it’s easy to surmise that the Communist Party chief had made it clear he would brook no awkward questions.

Vu is no ordinary political prisoner. He is one of Vietnam’s most prominent pro-democracy advocates today — especially because of his family’s elite revolutionary background. Vu’s father, the poet Cu Huy Can, was close to Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War, and served in Vietnam’s first national assembly. The well-educated Vu also earned his doctorate in law from the University of Paris.

Vu became an enemy of the state when he started challenging senior Communist Party officials for their lack of accountability. He even filed lawsuits against Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on several occasions in 2009 and 2010, charging Dung with complicity in abuses of the environment, and for banning Vietnamese citizens from pressing complaints against the national government. Vu was imprisoned after being convicted in a 2011 show trial. His “crimes” included criticizing the Communist Party in interviews with the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

Vu was released from prison last year, and exiled to the United States, where he continues to advocate peaceably for the Communist Party to enact democratic reforms. While he was not on the invitation list to hear Secretary General Trong proclaim his deep interest in protecting human rights at CSIS’s July 8 event, Vu has been welcomed at the White House.

On July 1, Vu joined Dr. Binh and several other pro-democracy advocates who were invited to brief the National Security Council ahead of Trong’s visit. Imagine what Vietnamese intelligence officers thought, if they spotted press accounts of that White House meeting.

Also present in the White House that day were two U.S.-based leaders of the Viet Tan, Angelina Huynh and Hoang Tu Duy. Viet Tan — shorthand for the Vietnam Reform Party — is particularly feared in Hanoi because of its skills in using social media to reach its followers inside Vietnam. The organization is also known for its peaceable advocacy of democracy for Vietnam. The Communist Party considers the Viet Tan to be a “terrorist” organization. The Vietnamese government has admitted that it has imprisoned citizen journalist/bloggers for the “crime” of being associated with the group.

A Lobby Plan Comes Together

While the U.S. government respects the Viet Tan’s legitimacy, Hiebert ducked the issue. Asked repeatedly whether he agreed with Hanoi that the Viet Tan is a terrorist group, Hiebert did not respond. That’s about when CSIS spokesman Andrew Schwartz cut off the communications, asserting that “Hiebert has answered all of your questions.”

Why would a respected CSIS political analyst avoid direct questions concerning Vietnam’s human rights record? The suspicion arises that it has something to do with money.

Hanoi has been paying $30,000-a-month to the Podesta Group, a high-powered lobby firm with close ties to major U.S. political figures. David Adams, who has been working on Vietnam’s behalf for the Podesta Group, was Hillary Clinton’s chief of legislative affairs when she served as President Obama’s first secretary of state.

Adams would be valuable to Hanoi because he has an insider’s knowledge to sell: he knows firsthand how U.S. officials at the State Department and the Pentagon tend to think about Vietnamese issues.

For instance, when Adams was with Clinton on Foggy Bottom, David Shear was the U.S. ambassador to Hanoi. Shear is now an assistant secretary of Defense, where he is helping shape U.S. military policies regarding Asia — including the issue of how to respond to Vietnam’s request for U.S. sales of lethal weapons that Hanoi wants to help fend off Chinese intimidation in the South China Sea. (Shear, when he was the U.S. ambassador, routinely assured Vietnamese-American audiences that before Vietnam would be allowed to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, Hanoi must make “demonstrable progress” on human rights. He never explained what that might mean.

The Podesta Group and Amb. Vinh declined comment on the Vietnamese foreign policy agenda they have been advancing. But it doesn’t take much digging to discover the three top priorities: Hanoi wants the U.S. arms embargo lifted. The Vietnamese also want to convince Obama and Congress that they have indeed been making enough “demonstrable progress” on human rights to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. And they have been lobbying for Obama to visit Vietnam, hopefully by the end of 2015.

Is it a coincidence that Hanoi’s agenda is generally shared by CSIS? The Podesta Group’s website boasts of its ability to help controversial clients boost their credibility. “We recruit allies from left-and right-leaning think tanks…to validate our clients’ messages and build an echo chamber of support,” Podesta boasts. It’s far from an unusual practice in today’s Washington lobbying scene.

Hiebert insists that he is unaware that the Podesta Group has been lobbying for the Vietnamese government. But Hiebert knew enough to invite someone from the Podesta Group to hear Trong speak on July 8; he says that CSIS does not disclose its invitation list.

(Hidden) Money Talks

Nor is CSIS completely transparent about where it gets its financing. CSIS is one of 150-plus think tanks around the world that are rated by an impressive non-profit named Transpacific on their willingness to disclose — or not — where they get their money. The well-regarded Transparify, based in Tibilisi, Georgia, is part of the Open Society Foundations that were founded by George Soros. In 2014, Transparify gave CSIS poor marks, awarding it One Star, near the opaque bottom of a Five-Star transparency scale. This year, CSIS earned Three Stars from Transparify — neither fully opaque nor transparent, but at least moving in the right direction.

The CSIS website now lists donors on a general range. It discloses that the Vietnamese government gave CSIS somewhere between $50,000 and $500,000 in 2014. But the site does not disclose what the money was intended for.

Hiebert co-authored a major 2014 CSIS study of U.S.-Vietnamese relations: “A New Era in U.S.-Vietnam Relations. So who might have paid for that?

Readers couldn’t tell from the study’s acknowledgments. “We would like to acknowledge the thoughtful and generous support and counsel received from the Embassy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, and the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City.” But who, exactly, paid for it?

Hiebert — after being asked twice — confessed that the Vietnamese government paid for the study. He said that there was no U.S. government funding for that study.

CSIS spokesman Andrew Schwartz insisted that it is “mean-spirited” to suggest that anyone who read the acknowledgment would not have known that it was “clearly” the Vietnamese who paid for A New Era. “[I]f you decide to write that CSIS didn’t acknowledge the support of the government of Vietnam, you will be in error,” Schwartz declared. CSIS always discloses the sources of funding for its studies, the CSIS media analyst declared.

Mostly always, might be more apt. A recent CSIS study focusing on human rights in countries like Russia, Venezuela and Ethiopia was forthright about where the money came from: “This report is made possible by the generous support of the Oak Foundation” it discloses. And still another CSIS study on U.S.-Japan relations discloses that the money came from Japan’s Sasakawa Peace Foundation. The contrast with the misleading acknowledgment to Hiebert’s New Era study is about as clear as it gets.

In that study Hiebert criticizes U.S. congressional human-rights champions for being an ineffectual name-and-shame crowd. He further criticized many Vietnamese-American pro-democracy advocates for being out of touch with realities in today’s Vietnam.

But when it came to Vietnam’s human-rights record, Hiebert seemed to pull his punches. There is no mention of Hanoi’s non-compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Vietnam is a signatory to. There is no mention of the provisions of Vietnam’s penal code that criminalize free speech and assembly — and criticizing the Communist Party. Instead, the study basically acknowledges the obvious: that human rights is the most difficult issue between the U.S. and Vietnamese governments. Instead of suggesting that Vietnam could help improve its credibility by modernizing its offensive penal code, Hiebert merely recommended more meetings between the U.S. government and Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security.

Hiebert vehemently denied that he softened his tone because of who paid for that study.

Meanwhile, Hanoi’s lobby agenda seems to be working. The U.S. government and Congress are leaning toward allowing Vietnam to purchase the lethal arms it seeks. There is little talk in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal about Vietnam’s first making “demonstrable progress” on the core human-rights issues involving the freedoms of speech, assembly, religion — and the offending provisions of the penal code that mock the international rights covenants that Hanoi has signed. (The precise details of the TPP deal, which has not been finalized, remain classified.)

President Obama has said he would like to accept Secretary General Trong’s invitation to visit Vietnam, although the president has not yet set a date. Hiebert pointed out in our exchange of e-mails that he has recommended that when Obama does fly to Vietnam, he speak forcefully on human rights.

A skeptic might observe that this is what Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowski, Secretary John Kerry, and so many other U.S. officials have done — so many times, over so many years, to such little avail.

An Inconvenient Man

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Vietnam attracted an impressive $8 billion in foreign direct investments last year, according to a report that was released on Sept. 17 by the UN’s Conference on Trade and Development. Indeed, the UNCTAD report revealed that overseas investors saw Vietnam as a more attractive investment opportunity than all of its ten Southeast Asian neighbors, save only Malaysia (also $8 billion), Singapore ($22.7 billion, and Thailand ($10 billion). And the beneficial results of FDI flows into Vietnam in the past decade show. When I first visited Vietnam in 2000, it was still very much a backward, impoverished country, and looked like the classic Marxist-Leninist economic basket case that it had become. But on my most recent visit last Sept., Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) sparkled. And when I spent several days driving around the Mekong Delta, the signs of rising prosperity were visible everywhere, most notably on the faces of ordinary Vietnamese people going about their work peaceably on those ubiquitous motorbikes. Even its strongest critics must acknowledge the economic progress that Vietnam’s (communist) leadership has made in in the last decade, as it has moved away from a Soviet-style command economy.

Overseas investors, notably the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam, rightly can claim a large share of the credit for Vietnam’s emerging modernization. AmCham members have always maintained that when they encourage Vietnam to honor the sanctity of commercial contracts, they are encouraging the country along the road to the rule of law, which will encourage political liberalization as well. After all, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Covenant, to which Vietnam is a signatory, is also a contractual obligation between the government and its citizens. The problem is: the authorities in Vietnam pay the covenant little respect. Despite the visible signs of economic growth that that I saw one year ago, September, 2008 also marks the beginning of a new crackdown on Vietnamese citizens whose “crimes” are basically that they believe they ought to enjoy the freedoms of speech, association, and assembly that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is supposed to protect. So far, more than twenty of these brave people have heard the midnight knock on the door in the past year. And this is the point where the story directly touches — and becomes awkward for — the American Chamber of Commerce.

On June 13, a prominent Vietnamese lawyer named Le Cong Dinh — an active AmCham member in Ho Chi Minh City and a respected advocate for the rule of law both on commercial- and human rights fronts — was arrested and tossed into jail, where he remains locked away. Dinh was the managing partner of DC Law, a prominent law firm in Ho Chi Minh City with a client roster that includes major foreign investors in Vietnam. Now, he has been disbarred from the practice of law. (In classic communist fashion, Dinh has been disbarred before the official “investigation” has been completed, and before there has been a “show” trial.) Dinh’s “crime” is basically that he engaged in peaceful exercise of the freedoms that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires the Vietnamese government to honor. Specifically, Dinh ran afoul of Article 88 of the Vietnamese penal code, which criminalizes “propaganda” against the state — as defined by the Politburo. In the eyes of the Politburo, Article 88 and similar statutes trump the international human rights covenants. As for the eyes of the American business community in Vietnam, well, they are looking away. The American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam has turned its back on Le Cong Dinh, who has become an inconvenient man.

The story illustrates the difficult situation that foreign investors face as they try to do business in dicey Third World countries where the rule of law is fragile. And for the American Chamber in Vietnam, it’s hopes to maintain a low public profile on important rule of law issues, even when AmCham’s own best-and-brightest members are involved, are fraught with risks. Perhaps encouraged to believe that it can safely violate its citizens’ freedoms of speech without serious objections from the business community, the authorities in Hanoi have recently squared the circle. Now, Hanoi is also threatening the freedoms associated with commercial speech — including academic research on important economic issues, if that research might run counter to the communist party line. So by its silence on the injustices that are being perpetrated upon Le Cong Dinh and other pro-democracy advocates, the U.S. business community has helped encourage forces that are now threatening its own direct interests. Moreover, AmCham has to worry about the signal that it has sent to human rights advocates on Capitol Hill.

Here’s why:

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By deliberately averting their eyes, even when the abuses of fundamental notions of due process hit one of their own, AmCham’s leaders have given the authorities in Hanoi reason to believe that their crackdown enjoys the tacit support of the American business community. At the same time, by refusing to point out the contradiction between Vietnam’s draconian Article 88 and the country’s obligations to adhere to the international legal norms that define civilized societies, AmCham has also sent a signal to trade skeptics on Capitol Hill. Critics like California’s Sen. Barbara Boxer would deny Vietnam its duty-free trade privileges with the U.S. pursuant to the Generalized System of Preferences, on grounds that despite Vietnam’s undeniable progress on the economic front, the country’s human rights record remains dismal. By its silence, AmCham has handed the congressional human rights advocates clear evidence to support their accusations that when it comes to human rights, the business community will put profits before principles.

On Oct. 1, 2008, one month into the current Vietnamese crackdown, Sen. Boxer framed the issue succinctly. “Like many of my Senate colleagues, I had hoped that strengthening our relationship with Vietnam on the trade and economic front and supporting Vietnam’s integration into the international community would dramatically improve Vietnam’s human rights record,” she declared upon introducing legislation that would strip Vietnam of its GSP privileges. “But that has not turned out to be the case.”

Now, with the arrest of AmCham member Le Cong Dinh and other peaceable democracy advocates, the senator has more ammunition to press her legislation.

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The American Bar Association has spoken out about the obvious abuses of due process involving Dinh and other pro-democracy advocates who have been caught up in the current crackdown. So has the American ambassador in Hanoi, Michael Michalak, who has pointed out that Dinh and the others have been arrested for “activities that, in many places in the world, are regarded as normal, usual discussions aimed at strengthening rule of law in Vietnam.” Human Rights Watch and other respected advocacy organizations have also been eloquent in saying that Article 88 and similar laws of Marxist-Leninist origin ought to be piled in history’s communist dustbin. But not the American Chamber of Commerce — the one voice that would be heard loud-and-clear in Hanoi.

“AmCham certainly supports a more transparent legal system and better rule-of-law in Vietnam,” Adam Sitkoff, AmCham’s Hanoi-based executive director, told me in what turned out to be a testy exchange of e-mails. “However, we don’t have any statement or public opinion on the Le Cong Dinh [case].” When I asked if upon further reflection, he thought that it might better help convey AmCham’s seriousness of purpose issues by speaking out when it sees injustices, Sitkoff shot back: “I appreciate that you are trying to put words in my mouth.”

Said Virginia Foote , a prominent member of AmCham’s board of governors who is widely respected both in Hanoi in Washington, D.C. for her efforts to foster closer commercial ties between the two countries, in a Sept. 1 e-mail: “I don’t know enough about this case to comment — I have been in US for several weeks now.”

Dinh’s law firm, DC Law, lists Foote’s investment firm, Vietnam Partners, as a client. Asked if she was concerned that one of her own lawyers had been caught up in Hanoi’s crackdown, Foote replied: “I don’t know if he has ever been a lawyer for Vietnam Partners — we use a different firm normally — and I don’t know what you refer to.” AmCham, Foote said, “has commented many times on instances where the Board or members disagree” with either the U.S. government or Vietnam’s.

Foote played a leading role in the creation of the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement and then Vietnam’s WTO accession. She was awarded Vietnam’s Medal of Friendship in July, 2007 by President Nguyen Minh Triet.

While AmCham members aren’t exactly falling all over themselves to acknowledge it, there is little doubt that before he became an inconvenient man to the U.S. business community, Dinh was one of AmCham’s most visible personifications of Vietnam’s progress along the road to law.

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Until June 13, when the security police picked him up and accused him of being an enemy of the state, Le Cong Dinh, 41, was considered one of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’s shining success stories. Dinh’s resume sparkled: Graduate of Saigon University, then Hanoi Law School. Fulbright scholar at Tulane University, where he received a Master of Laws degree in 2000. International trade lawyer at a powerhouse American law firm, White & Case, where in 2003 he defended the Vietnamese Association of Seafood Exporters in the anti-dumping case brought by the US catfish lobby against Vietnam. Co-founder in 2005 and managing partner of D.C. Law, with headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City. Married to a former Miss Vietnam who is known for her brains as well as her beauty, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Khanh, since 1998.

Dinh was a man with connections, most of which centered on promoting the development of the rule of law in a still-communist country where political power is concentrated in the communist party and a Politburo. As vice-president of the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association from 2005 – 2008, Dinh spearheaded efforts to develop commercial legal reforms in his native country. DC Law’s impressive client list includes Yahoo, Intel, Toshiba, Hyatt International, and Toyota, as well as Vietnam Partners, Ginny Foote’s investment banking boutique. Dinh was also an active AmCham member. He frequently attended Am Cham networking receptions in Ho Chi Minh City, and also AmCham events aimed at developing a deeper appreciation of the rule of law in Vietnam.

Dinh also was not shy in pointing out that the emerging rule of law in Vietnam extends beyond just the sanctity of commercial contracts. He defended several well-known pro-democracy advocates. He became an outspoken critic of the top authorities in Hanoi, including the president. Dinh also tapped into politically potent nationalist anti-Chinese sentiment (the resentments stem from 1,000 years of Chinese domination of Vietnam), by accusing the government of offering too many concessions to Beijing to mine bauxite in the central highlands.

Dinh, who is skilled at using the Internet to spread his pro-democracy message widely, also became friendly with organizations outside Vietnam like Viet Tan (for Vietnam Reform Party) that are also skilled in modern communications. Viet Tan began in 1982 as an underground movement that broadcast short-wave radio programs into Vietnam, according to news reports. The organization has offices in California, and also Paris and Australia, and also claims members inside Vietnam. The reform party’s basic political message is a peaceable one: that Vietnam should become a liberal democracy. (Despite Viet Tan’s advocacy of democracy and rejection of violence, Hanoi regards it as a “terrorist” organization.) Along with such pro-democracy advocates, Dinh became involved in efforts to draft a more modern model constitution for his country — one that guaranteed the freedoms of expression and assembly. That’s what got Le Cong Dinh into trouble.

On June 1 — just twelve days before he was arrested — Dinh was elected secretary of the Democratic Party of Vietnam, which advocates “national unity based upon the principle of freedom, democracy and equality.” In Vietnam, that’s considered a criminal offense.

A Vietnamese pro-democracy advocate confirms that Dinh attended a seminar on non-violent struggle that the Viet Tan organized in Thailand in March. When he was arrested the next month, the Vietnamese authorities found in Dinh’s home a text in Vietnamese of a booklet entitled “From Dictatorship to Democracy, that had been translated and distributed inside Vietnam by Viet Tan. The Kafkaesque Article 88 was made for such “crimes.”

Presently, Dinh’s connections basically extend to his jailers and whatever “freedoms” they permit him in the confines of his cell in some undisclosed location. He could get 20 years, or he could be exiled. Meanwhile, Dinh — who made an (unconvincing) “confession” that he had violated Article 88 that the Vietnamese authorities broadcast on YouTube — must be wondering how he will ever put his life back together.

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Last month, another Vietnamese dissident was arrested, her crime being that she wore a T-shirt with a politically incorrect slogan that protested the Chinese bauxite mining project, and the Chinese in general.

If such low-tech speech like simple slogans on T-shirts frighten the authorities in Hanoi, imagine how they fear modern communications that bring news and information to the Vietnamese people that the communist party considers politically incorrect. There are the Internet’s news channels, newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, BBC’s Vietnamese Radio Service, the Voice of America, Vietnam’s active blogosphere, Twitter, cell-phones, text messaging, and so forth. Dinh, like most of the other pro-democracy advocates who have been arrested, is said to be very skilled at using the Internet to spread powerful ideas.

During Vietnam’s long struggle for independence, it was the communists who successfully controlled the message and the spread of ideas. During the civil war with the south that ended with the communist victory in 1975, Ho Chi Minh’s forces were freedom fighters. They were nationalists who first fought the French imperialists, then the Japanese during World War II, and after that the French again, and then the Americans, until they prevailed. But these days, dissident organizations like Viet Tan, with their skill at using the tools of using modern communications, control the message — and now it’s the communists who look backward. On Sept. 14, for example, Viet Tan organized a “virtual rally” over the Internet, focusing on their objections to Chinese bauxite mining in the Central Highlands and China’s influence in Vietnam. If one’s aim is to overthrow the communists in Hanoi and open up the country politically as well as economically, the most powerful “weapons” are no longer guns. The communists have the guns, but they no longer have powerful political ideas.

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I asked the Vietnamese minister of justice, Ha Hung Cuong, and Vietnam’s ambassador to the United States, Le Cong Phung, if they would allow me to interview Le Cong Dinh to hear his side of the story. I asked if they would help me get in touch with Dinh’s Vietnamese lawyer. They wouldn’t. I also asked whether they agreed that it is reasonable to make it a crime for a group of Vietnamese citizens to band together to take the political position that the sooner that Vietnamese people are allowed to select their own leaders, the better. They wouldn’t answer that question, either.

An intrepid lawyer in Hanoi named Le Quoc Quan was not so reticent. Former lawyer, as it turns out. Quan, a respected democracy advocate, was arrested on March 3, 2007 after he returned from a stint in Washington, D.C. with the National Endowment for Democracy. He was released several months later after an international outcry that included Americans like former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and Sen. John McCain.

Like his friend Le Cong Dinh, Quan was disbarred while in jail, before an official investigation had been completed. “The police handed the disbarment decision to me while I was in the cell, “ Quan relates. “I did not have opportunities to consult with my lawyers but I found that it did not comply with the law. Then I borrowed the pen of the police to write my complaint. I was not taken to court for trial, my complaints are pending without answer.”

When I told Quan that I was wondering how the Vietnamese authorities would deal with Gandhi, if he were Vietnamese and living in the country these days. His reply was as touching as it was brave: “Kakaka…it is interesting and sound ‘naïve’ thinking,” Quan replied. “I like Gandhi and his struggle style very much and last year I organized an English class in Thai Ha Church. I brought a document in English talking about ‘Gandhi.’ I requested my students to translate into Vietnamese. The police later threatened me and all my class members. They are so afraid to learn something about non-violent struggle for democracy and justice.” There could be no “Gandhi in Vietnam these days,” Quan concluded.

I asked Quan if he had received any support from the American business community when he was arrested and disbarred. His indirect reply turned the question back on Dinh’s case. “Dinh is my friend. I supported him totally and would like anyone to help him. I think the voice from Business community can be a good help as Vietnam is trying to do more and more business with the world.”

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As for the American business community, AmCham and its foreign investors now face another assault on free speech – and this time, that speech threatens to affect financial bottom lines directly, as it explicitly links economic- with political rights.

On July 24, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung signed a directive called “Decision 97” that ought to have sent alarm bells off in AmCham offices. The directive bans scholars and researchers from public discussion of various subjects that might cause discomfort to the communist party. As Associated Press reporter Ben Stocking has reported, the decree “limits scientific and technical research to 317 approved topics and prohibits groups from publishing research on policies of the communist party and the government.”

The restrictions even included macroeconomic research — obviously aimed at banning public discussions and analyses of Hanoi’s (inept) policies that have contributed to worrisome inflation. Last week, a Hanoi-based independent think tank, the Institute of Development Studies, decided it had no other choice except to shut down because of Decision 97, according to Stocking’s AP report. When it was set up two years ago, IDS attracted international attention because its membership roster included some of Vietnam’s most prominent intellectuals, some with close communist party ties. As Le Cong Dinh learned the hard way, the intellectuals have now experienced the limits of free speech and thought. “With this new decision, we can hardly operate,” economist and IDS vice president Pham Chi Lan declared. It would be very difficult for us to raise our voice as an institution. That’s why we decided to close.”

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There is a certain dark irony that the crackdown on free speech that first caught up pro-democracy advocates like AmCham member Dinh has now expanded to threaten free speech on economic issues like Vietnam’s rising inflation — economic issues that greatly concern AmCham and other foreign investors in the country.

“International trade is one of the chief instruments by which you bring along the rule of law,” explains leading Columbia University economic theorist Jagdish Bhagwati. The professor quickly adds that “the rule of law is also essential in extending human rights and economic development, alongside.”

There is a new Vietnam War going on, this one over ideas. The U.S. business community, sooner or later, will have to decide which side it is really on — and where, in the long run, its own enlightened self-interest lies.