Influence of Think Tanks on U.S. Foreign Policy Formulation

Real Audio of Briefing

MODERATOR: (In progress) in the formulation of foreign policy. And we're delighted to have with us two experts from think tanks of somewhat opposite points of view, but mainstream American. Helle Dale is the Deputy Director at the Heritage Foundation and she focuses on foreign policy studies and international studies. And we have Robert Boorstin, who is the senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. They're going to speak -- give a short introduction to the topic and then we'll have a good solid question and answer time.

I know that foreign policy formulation is something that is of great interest to all of you from your last set of questions. I warned them that they have to keep on their toes; that you have an interesting group of journalists in front of us. Okay, thank you.

MS. DALE: I thank you very much for asking me to speak here today. My husband asked me what I was going to talk about and I said, well, it's something I could talk about in my sleep. Maybe I actually do because this is my life -- how do think tanks influence foreign policy.

I have been with the Heritage Foundation for four years coming up this summer, as one of the principal directors responsible for our foreign policy department which has about 35 people, researchers and research assistants when everybody's home. But of course that almost never happens since we are directed to work the world. The Heritage Foundation itself has about 200 people employed there. It is located in two buildings on Capitol Hill, within a five minute walk of the Senate Office Building. And I very much would welcome any of you to come over and spend some time with us, see the institution and meet the people who work every day to have an impact on American foreign and defense policy in my department.

Just by way of a little bit more background, the Heritage Foundation is funded exclusively by private donations. We take no government funding. The government can't pay us to do anything. We gladly offer them all the advice we can and try to persistently offer them advice, but we don't lobby the government and we do not -- like the Rand Corporation -- produce studies at the bequest of the government. The annual operating budget is $38 million. So as you can see, this is a fairly wealthy institution. It has been around for about 30 years and is the largest think tank in Washington with sort of a conservative leaning. I think the only one in terms of numbers that's bigger is Brookings, which has more of a leaning towards center left policies -- that's where that's sort of located on the political spectrum.

You may have heard of some other major think tanks on the conservative side: American Enterprise Institute is very well known, there is the Hudson Institute, there is the Manhattan Institute, Cato is a fairly large think tank -- 100 people -- very, what we call libertarian, which means sort of very "hands off" in terms of government that doesn't believe in much foreign involvement. Believes in very free trade, though, in allowing citizens to go out and do their own thing with minimal government interference.

Now, the Heritage Foundation, in terms of where it sort of stands on foreign policy as a set of principles belongs in sort of strong defense. We're always in favor of strong defense budgets, strong international alliances -- I mean military alliances and involvement in international trade organizations to lower trade barriers. Free trade is a big issue for the Heritage Foundation. And areas that we move in less comfortably: international institutions, human rights issues. We believe, obviously, in human rights but conservatives are always a little uncertain in this territory, since that has largely been sort of dominated by more liberal groups. And United Nations, for instance, is one organization that you won't find too many fans of. We're usually advocating somehow reforming it in one way or another.

How do we go about influencing foreign policy? Well, it differs a bit from how you influence domestic policy, which is probably the main focus of most American think tanks for good reasons, you know. This is where we all live. The people have issues of health care, social services, education, all those things that make up the fabric of a normal person's life.

On foreign policy you have to be engaged in some kind of trade in the world to be really interested or maybe have members who serve in the armed forces for it to become a personal issue. So whereas domestic policy can often direct their persuasive power at constituency here at home in an area that's about to experience job loss, for instance. Or where we think, as in New Orleans, that tax incentives might be able to help the people who want to rebuild the city, so you can go to a domestic constituency who will then contact their congressman and talk to them about your ideas, or we can talk to congressmen directly, which we do all the time. We're right there on the Hill ready to talk to them and give them our ideas.

In foreign policy, the main bodies that really influence it, obviously, the State Department, the Defense Department, the National Security Council and I would say the -- in Congress the foreign relations committees in the House and in the Senate and the armed services committees as well, the intelligence committees. It's a much smaller universe of people, but it can also be a universe that's harder to penetrate. Congress is peopled by a lot of staff. They often look for advice and the Heritage Foundation has over the last 30 years established a solid track record of research, reliable research substantiated with data. It's not just somebody's opinion but these are 20-page papers or books that cite data you can go back and check yourself. So this staff is often looking for either ideas or resources in terms of information or maybe just somebody to talk to and bounce some ideas off of very quickly or Congress is looking for people to testify in their hearings. We're likely to find quite a bit of that going on in the coming weeks with the port security question and the company from the United Arab Emirates that has become so controversial. We can see congressional hearings coming out as far as the eye can see.

But if you want to get directly to the people who make decisions in the State Department or the Defense Department or the National Security Council, you can't -- there are far fewer of them so they're also harder to talk to because a lot of people want to talk to them. You can't just send them your papers because they're incredibly busy people. In Washington there is an expression that trying to gain information when you move into the government is like drinking from a fire hose. There is just too much of it to absorb. So what do you do? You try, obviously within your own circle, in your department, but also if you have time outside, to locate some individuals whom you trust to talk to, whom you know can get you the right information, whose judgment you find sound or whom you know if you get a disagreement from it will help you. Personal contact is really a big part of what we do.

So we try, when we can, to invite them to come and meet with us and share their ideas. We give them our cards. We say, we hope you'll call on us. Can we call on you when we have a new idea that we'd like to bring to your attention. And that is -- I say that personal level, which I have, you know, we all have a universe of people which is limited. We can't know everybody equally well. And that's whether you're a journalist and you have your sources or whether you're in government and you know which journalist you can trust or which think tank you can trust. Establishing that level of contact is probably the best key to how you get your ideas through in the departments that hold the key to American foreign policy.

At the Heritage Foundation we have a saying, "people are politics." The personal connection is essential. This is not just -- this doesn't just come about simply because you happen to meet somebody and take them out for a drink and get to know them. It also comes about because the system, which I'm sure you have noticed in Washington which is that when one Administration goes out of power, the whole top layer, all the political appointees get replaced by a new Administration. This is true actually whether -- primarily it's true if it's a change between parties. If it's between the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration, there was a whole layer of Democrats, some of whom now work with my colleague here, who will seek jobs in the think tank community in Washington, where they can continue much of the work they've been doing and keep fresh on top of the subjects they've been dealing with. And they come with a level of experience from inside the government that is extraordinarily valuable.

When it's, you know, from the previous -- George Bush's father when he went out of office and Bill Clinton came in, a flood of refugees from these departments came to the think tanks and some of them are still spending time there. So it's a two-way street. There's nothing particularly strange about this -- ominous. It's a way that creates a very fertile and well informed discussion in Washington that goes on on the edges of the government of the important issues of the day, where you have people with real insight into how the government works, as well as people from the academic world, people from the world of journalism, sometimes people from Commerce who can share ideas and experiences and it's a very rich environment that I hope you'll be able to get some more insight into while you're here.

So the personal interaction happens both sort of on a social and political level and also just in terms of the jobs that people have. Washington is ultimately not a very big town. When you've been here for a while you realize how many people you run into over and over. Where did you see them: at a meeting on the Council of Foreign Relations or the Carnegie Endowment for Peace or at a meeting such as this. And that is in a very large part of how the generation of ideas comes about.

And of course we're also *welcome the direction* with foreign policy, foreign governments and their officials. They sometimes make the rounds between the embassies. They may come in at a lower level in an embassy -- you make friends with them and have drinks or whatever, a couple of years later they might come back as the first secretary or the ambassador. And at some point you might find that you actually know the foreign minister of another country rather well, because you had played beer pong with them or you have had mutual experiences way back when -- ten years ago when they were first not very glamorous but just somebody that you liked to hang out with. And that obviously is also a very interesting part of the job and a way to get our ideas projected to other governments as well.

So the media -- the media are incredibly important for what we do. We spend a lot of our time and a lot of our resources talking to the media, promoting analysts papers or ideas to the media, getting interviews. It's one of the most visible ways you can get your opinions out. If the BBC World Service calls you, you can talk to the rest of the world -- the CNN World Service -- CNN International, I should say. Even, you know,  Al Jazeera, they call us. We talk to just about everybody who wants to hear what we have to say. And sometimes it certainly is an uphill battle when you're up against people who overwhelmingly do not agree with you and may not, in your view, have the right information yet. There's value in dialogue I firmly believe and I hope that benefits them on the other side as well as it benefits because that's for sure.

I will stop here and leave the podium for Mr. Boorstin.

MR. BOORSTIN: Good afternoon and thank you, Mel Goodman, for having me here today. I appreciate the opportunity to be with all of you.

I want to talk to you about a couple of things today. First, I want to tell you about our organization because we do not have the illustrious history of Heritage or some of the other conservative think thanks here in town. We're quite young in comparison. Then I'll talk for just a moment about progressives or democrats or liberals or whatever you want to call our side and national security and foreign policy issues and the difficulties we have in that area and then about how we, as a think tank, try to get our viewpoint across.

So first about the center, the center was founded about two and a half years ago. We were founded as a counterbalance to the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise, Cato and so forth. There were a bunch of people, who I would describe as rich and angry liberals, who decided to give a great deal of money in order to put us together. Two and a half years later here we are. I was employee number eight in July 2003; we now have about 110 people on our payroll. We operate in about $16 million this year, which is a little less than half of what Heritage has. But if you take the whole arena of think tanks on the right versus think tanks on the center and the left, they outrank us in the dollars about 10 to 1, I would say. So as always, progressive democrats are trying to do more with less. Not always successfully, I might add.

There were many attempts to start such a think tank on the center left in the past. And I would say that they all failed for a number of reasons and that we have emerged somewhat successful, not because of our brilliance but because we've gotten a few things right.

The first thing that we did right was we hired the right person to run us, John Podesta, who was President Clinton's last chief of staff. I say he's the right person because he's respected on the left and the right of our party and of the progressive movement and very few people are willing to cross him. So therefore, he can hold the community together, in a way.

Second, there was a huge vacuum on our side, on the progressive side and I think that's very important. Prior to our appearance, there were these other attempts. But most think tanks on the left and in the center were issues-specific: they talked about arms control; they talked about environment; they talked about just one thing and that was very limiting. And we have tried not to do that.

The third reason I would say that we have been somewhat successful is because we have purposely stayed out of party politics. Now, previous think tanks who have tried to cover the waterfront have gotten attached to candidates for president, and when that candidate has gone up, they've gone up. But when that candidate has flamed out, they more or less have disappeared and lost their funding. They've also gotten involved in the ideological fight within the party. Should the party being leaning left? Should it be leaning right? We stay out of that.

We stay out of it for two reasons: one, because we think it will destroy our think tank; and two, because by tax law, we're not allowed to be involved. It's a very arcane system of laws that govern nonprofit organizations here and we can talk about that at some length if you care to. But suffice it to say that if you're going to get people to give you money and get a tax deduction for it, you have to remain nonpartisan. It's very complex, I'm sorry.

So we cover issues across the board. We cover economic, domestic, national security. And what makes us different, I think, from other think tanks here in town, from the Carnegie or from Brookings or from the Center for Strategic and International Studies is that we are unabashedly political. We actually are trying to get change done in a very concrete way. And one of the ways we do that is by trying to be brief and trying to be short in what we produce. We want to produce things that people will actually read, a congressman for example. So we'll opt for a five-page report as opposed to a 400-page book. Now I have nothing against think tanks that employ people to write 400-page books. They're very important in laying the groundwork for what eventually we do and for what eventually the government does, but that's not the business that we're in.

So second, progressives and national security and the problem that we face. Well, national security as those of you who have been here a while know, is not a Democrat or a progressive's natural strong area for argument. We do okay on certain issues on foreign policy, that is to say the softer issues: issues like energy independence, issues like trade and so forth. But when it comes to what people in the business call "hard national security interests" -- guns, terror, the military, homeland security -- Democrats consistently run 30, 40 points behind Republicans and have for a long time. That's changed slightly because of the Bush Administration but they still retain an advantage.

Now why is there this conservative domination, because this is very important to what we do and what all people on the center and the left do who discuss foreign policy and national security, why? The first is that there's a record of 40 years at work here. If you take the following series of events, you realize that the position that we're in did not happen by accident: our position on Vietnam; votes against defense budgets; helicopters in Iran that President Carter sent, going down in the desert; Republicans presiding over the end of the Cold War; the president I worked for who had a somewhat tenuous relationship with the military. You take all those kinds of things over 40 years, and where you end up is, rather logically, in a place where Democrats and progressives and liberals don't really stand on their strongest feet.

And of course, what President Bush has done since 9/11 has strengthened the Republicans hand in many ways. I think frankly that they've played the issues of terror and so forth quite brilliantly in terms of their presentation to the public. In terms of actually what they've done, I have grave disagreements across the board.

A second reason why we have trouble is that we always have splits within the progressive and democratic movement. Those of you who come from countries where you have social democratic and labor parties know what I'm talking about. It just seems to be endemic to the left. I don't know why it is exactly and if someone can answer it, I would be very happy to take that answer onboard. (Laughter.)

Iraq is a perfect example. On one side we have Representative Murtha of Pennsylvania, whose name you know, who came out and said we should be out of Iraq immediately. On the other side, we have Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who the President is quoting as a supporter, so within our one party we have people on opposite extremes of where we should be.

The third reason I think that we've had such trouble is that we've always lacked concrete alternatives. People expect Democrats and progressives and liberals to be really good at complaining and whining and moaning about what's wrong, but they've come not to expect us to actually offer solutions. And that has been critical to the development of our think tank and I hope will become part and parcel and what every think tank on the center and the left does in the future.

So what are our goals and how do we try to influence foreign policy and national security? I would say -- and I'm not going to talk about our tactics. I mean, we do the typical things that think tanks in the United States do: we hold events, we put out reports, we send people to testify in front of Congress, we book people on radio and TV. We have something different I think from other think tanks, and that is that we put out a daily newsletter on the internet called "The Progress Report," which more or less gives a center-left slant on the day's news. If anybody's interested you can find it on our website and the materials in your folders that we gave you. And we do other things as well, for example, I just came from a meeting where we had about 25 members -- new members of the Egyptian Foreign Service visit us in order to talk about various issues.

But we have four objectives really in all of these tactical things that we do. First, we want to offer a cogent critique of the conservative position and that's very important. When I say cogent, I mean not just an attack that comes out of nowhere, an *ad homonym* political attack, but actually something that makes sense to people. Second, we want to present concrete progressive solutions and that I've said to you already why we do that. Third, we want to directly influence policy. That's not easily done but that's something that we definitely try to do. And lastly, we want to shape media coverage both at home and overseas.

So what I thought I'd do is very briefly illustrate with three things that we've put out, how we try to do this. So first, I'll show you our national security strategy which we released last June. Under American law, the President is required to produce one of these things every year. It's supposed to go to the Congress so that Congress can allocate money for defense and for foreign policy based on an actual strategy that the Executive branch has. Now, they've done one of these -- the Bush Administration has done one in September of 2002. And those of you who know that document, know that that's really where they set down preemption as central to their doctrine.

Well, we believe that their doctrine doesn't work and that it has been shown in Iraq and elsewhere to fail and, therefore, we wanted to fill the void on the other side. So we produced what we call "integrated power." I could go on at length about what it says, but suffice it to say that it puts forward a different kind of strategy that says we have to go beyond military power to use economic power, diplomatic power, our intelligence services and so forth in order to achieve our goals. And we give concrete suggestions in this report in six areas, from homeland security to energy security to nonproliferation.

Our goal was to start a conversation. To say to people, hey, progressives are thinking in big terms about what we should be doing on national security and we did that, I think. Your colleague, Martin Walker, formerly of the Guardian and now of UPI, wrote after we put this out that the next Democratic presidential candidate has no more excuses. Already made foreign and security policy for the United States that combines idealism about the kind of future that can be built, with some hard-nosed realism about risks and limits has been prepared in advance. It read something like a press release that we would have put out in trying to press forward what we believed was valuable about this. So we've taken this to the Senate. We've taken it to the House. We've talked to media about it. And Larry Korb and I, he's one of our senior fellows, took this to Europe. We went to Germany. We went to Belgium. We went to France and we went to England to discuss it with diplomats and think tanks there to show them there is another viewpoint in the United States.

A second document that we put out is our plan for Iraq, called "Strategic Redeployment," which should also be in your folders. We did this because there was no consensus on Iraq on the Democratic side. We had a long series of meetings with all the people that I call the "formers," that is, the people who were formerly the National Security Advisor or formerly the Deputy Secretary of State, these people who were all once extremely important in government decisions. So we called them all together and we said, okay, what do we do? And they all agreed that everything was going wrong in Iraq, but they could not agree on what to do. And so after this went on for a couple of months, I finally said to our people, all right, let's just down a plan. And we did. And we figured out where the troops should be redeployed to and what we should do on the reconstruction front and the political front and on the diplomatic front. And we put it in this very short report.

Now, not everybody likes this report and what we suggested to do. We suggest, for example, that all the troops come out by the end of the year 2007. But it has become a focal point for discussion and, again, that's an important part of what we do as a think tank. We've done extensive briefings on Capitol Hill, a number of senators and congressmen have talked about it, a couple others have actually written pieces of it into legislation. We knew we were making some progress with it when on the Tonight Show, Howard Dean, the Chairman of the Democratic Party actually talked about our report. We've also taken it to many overseas media outlets who have asked for our opinions on Iraq, to Al Jazeera, to Australian TV, to South African media and so forth and so on.

Finally, the third product I'll show you is our quadrennial defense review. We call it "Restoring American Military Power." And then we put that out two weeks before the Pentagon put out its QDR. We did it because we consider this to be a very important moment in how you shape American forces and what do you pay for. And in it we outline a very specific program, down to where we would make budget cuts, down to which weapons system we say we should get rid of and additions, for example, to manpower -- another 86,000 people in our Army, because we think it's necessary to present that kind of concrete proposal. So that's we've done. That's how we hope to affect people, affect the government and affect people on the Democratic side and the progressive side as they look for solutions. And I'll stop there.

MODERATOR: We'll take questions now. Please, identify yourself.

QUESTION: Thank you. Chris Wenicke, Sueddeutsche Zeitung.  I'd like to follow-up on the presentation of, let's say, the think tank in opposition. Could you describe a little bit more what kind of people you hire, because I guess you need people who -- in contrast to regular scientists or political scientists -- write differently? Well, more like chaps like us (inaudible) but that has advantages and disadvantages. And secondly, could you go a little bit deeper into the, I guess, the rather frustrating situation that you have the feeling you produce a lot of ideas but nobody listens, at least nobody in the government listens. I mean, do you -- you do -- a think tank in opposition, so what a lot of other think tanks try to do to influence the current Administration is not your business.

MR. BOORSTIN: Well, that's all very correct. I don't know what more to go beyond that and say the kinds of people that we hire are people who have government experience, either with the Clinton Administration, because most of the people on the Democratic side who are of an age to want to do this kind of thing and make just a little bit of money -- because that's all we pay people -- came from the Clinton Administration or they came from Capitol Hill. We also have a few people who came from nongovernmental organizations to us.

I do try to get people to write in a different way than they would. I'm a journalist by training myself. And so I consider myself something of a managing editor, who looks out at the horizon of all the issues out there and says, okay, these are the three issues we should concentrate on and then tries to get people to write about them. And if they write too long about them, or they make arguments that I don't think are particularly convincing, well, we'll come together as a team first and critique what they've written and then I'll actually go on the computer and use that lovely strikeover function where you can tell what's been eliminated and what's been added. So that's the first part.

As to frustration, well, yes, it is a frustrating position to be in. On the other hand, someone has to make noise, someone has to say that the emperor has no clothes and someone has to show what the alternative is. We like to think that we're being constructive because we put those concrete alternatives on the table. And we hope that when there is a change in party, either in the White House or in the Legislative branch, that some of the things that we've developed over time will actually take root.

If you look, for example, at the policy put forward -- I believe it was by Heritage -- to privatize Social Security or a piece of Social Security. That was something that had been around for many, many years and disregarded by many administrations. But the time became ripe and suddenly that think tank's idea rose to the top and became part and parcel of what an administration wanted to do.

Is that right, is it with (inaudible)?

MS. DALE: If I could just add one thing, I know this wasn't directed to me, but it's not completely without its consulations being in opposition. It can be a lot of fun, actually. We were in opposition, obviously, for eight years during the Clinton Administration and we had a freedom to criticize, which can be rather liberating when the party to whom you are closer, I should say, we are also non-partisan, but conservative. The parties to whom you're closer are in power, if you criticize, at least you have to do it constructively and come up with constructive alternatives in just about everything you do. So it's not quite *partisan free willing*. And also Congress is always there. There is always a Republican and a Democratic side of Congress and that -- there are always people to talk to, always people to whom you present your ideas who can put them forward in a legislative agenda or in the public debate. And we certainly at Heritage have spent a lot of time working on that, working on how to create ties with republicans or sort of more right-wing Democrats in Congress to, as an insurance policy for the day when the White House is not there to listen anymore.

QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Sonia Schott, Radio Valera, Venezuela. I would like to know could you please elaborate more on when it goes on foreign policy. How do you collect different information to elaborate your policies? And it is only depends on local agencies, local officials or do you have any contact with foreign sources? Thank you.

MS. DALE: Yeah. I'd be happy to talk a bit about that. The sources we use are, in part, obviously here in Washington, if we're looking at an economic issue, we'll go to the Treasury Department maybe. We might go to the World Bank. We might go to the IMF. We might go to the embassies and ask them for the data from their countries. We might contact some of the many, many think tanks around the world with whom we have a network of connections in, well, every part of the world, really, in which we cultivate. We have a whole department that's concerned with cultivating those connections, so we can actually go to a local group and ask them for information locally from their agencies, from their journalists, from whatever good sources are out there. We try to reach across a wide spectrum of official and unofficial data in the reports we do. We can even go to the United Nations or the Agency for Disarmament or -- I mean, there is a whole -- it is -- we're not simply focused on the data that we're given by the U.S. Government. That would be a mistake. We're independent of the government, so we try to draw from as many credible and well-established sources as we can. The internet makes this a lot easier, obviously, than it used to be.

MR. BOORSTIN: Now I agree with all that. The only thing that I would add is that we really try to focus on what the media in that country has written. And in fact, we compile a digest of that from time to time.

QUESTION: Local media?

MR. BOORSTIN: Yes, exactly. So we --

QUESTION: You're (inaudible) the media?

MR. BOORSTIN: The local media in Venezuela, for example. So what you would be writing and what your newspaper would be publishing. So if the United States is doing something, like during Abu Ghraib, during the controversy over that, we published compilations of editorials from around the world about what we had done here because we thought that was providing a service to Americans to know what people were saying about us.

QUESTION: And first, I want to be on the record to thank the Foreign Press Center for this briefing and I want to thank (inaudible) and (inaudible) and other who are not here. And I want to suggest a topic for next one like this on measuring security, how the national security decision is formulated in the United States in the government. I think it's very informative to have this kind of briefing that does not produce only news coverage.

On the question, my name is Mounzer Sleiman. I'm with Al Mustaqbal Arabi. In the Arab world, I want to take what Mr. Boorstin said about taking the media coverage. But the issue of Arab-Israeli conflict and the formulation of U.S. policy, vis-à-vis, the Arab-Israeli conflict or shaping the Middle East policy of any administration, it seems you're not relying on the local media for this information, not talking about you personally. I'm saying there's a mystery there that the foreign policy of the United States toward the Middle East is only shaped by one section or one sector.

Now they -- blame it on the neocon and it seems that the think tanks, various think tanks of United States, they don't show a different kind of take on the U.S.-Middle East policy. I mean, it seems to me that there is so much resemblance and there is kind of dominance of one think tanks, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, that it's a mystery also to the people in the Arab world how they consider it as a lobby, although it's a think tank. You know, lobbying should be resisted as a foreign agent and associated with the AIPAC. So how these kinds of things can be explained, that there is one sector or one special interest group have predominance and control of U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East?

MR. BOORSTIN: Well, there's an easy question to answer. (Laughter.) I should say, quite frankly, that one area we don't do a lot of work in is the Middle East peace process and the reason we don't is because there are about four think tanks in the city already, which specialize just in that very conflict. People who served in the government on both sides and so forth. And we are always looking for where is a place that we can offer something original and something different. And we have special knowledge. And we have, you know, one Arabist and we have a person from the National Security Council who is deeply involved in the -- President Clinton's summit with Arafat. But it's not something which we focus a lot of attention on.

Now we have actually argued in our daily newsletter and elsewhere and printed a number of opinion pieces that say, frankly, that the United States in order to improve its image all over the Muslim majority world needs to take certain steps that this really isn't about values, as the President says. You know, he's constantly saying they reject our values. We actually think it's about our policies. And one of those policies is the perception, real or imagined, of a U.S. bias toward Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Now I don't want to get involved in a long discussion about whether or not we lean one way or we lean another. But I will say that we have tried to publish material that calls for evenhandedness in that. Now when we do call for evenhandedness, I must tell you, we are attacked roundly by a number of groups and it's quite an experience because the minute you wade into that area, you're wading into a grand swamp. But as I said, it's not an area where we spent a lot of our energy and our time because there are other think tanks which focus exclusively on that question.

MS. DALE: Yes. I think maybe I would disagree a little bit with the premise of your question, with all due respect. If you look at what the Administration is accused of in terms of sympathizing with a certain group or having an attachment or being influenced by, you'll find that Saudi Arabia comes up as often as Israel. This is -- you know, a question where, depending on what the issue of the day is, that you'll find the people in power in Washington attacked for one reason or another. I was a journalist myself. I ran the editorial page of the Washington Times, a conservative paper. And having had firsthand experience of having editorial board meetings with Israeli groups, with Palestinian groups, with human rights groups, I can certainly say that there is no issue in the entire world that was so difficult to deal with and with whom people would get so exercised about your point of view, even if you were genuinely trying to give them the benefit of an open mind and of wanting to listen and wanting to understand.

So I think in Washington, I'm sure the President -- the Administration and Congress find themselves in the same position. And I don't think it's actually true that across the spectrum here there is complete agreement on what we should be doing in relation to the Middle East peace process or the Middle East in general, which is in my view much larger than that one single issue. There is a spectrum of opinion. Right now President Bush has obviously been a strong supporter of Israel. His father was widely -- I won't say despised, but certainly distrusted in Israel because it was thought that his policies were too punitive towards the Israeli Government. President Bush, here the current President has been the first President to advocate the Palestinian state. He is not getting a huge amount of credit for that, but I think they are trying to be engaged and I think he genuinely wants the Palestinian people to have a stable political entity -- a state of Israel. So I'm a little bit not quite where you are on this question.

QUESTION: I just want to bring to your attention that the debate in Israel about issues is more lively than the debate about differences here. And so it's one-sided here, while in Israel itself, you could find a variety of opinion expressed. And I can see that the think tanks in -- that they are shaping foreign policy in general. They are almost silent in this debate in providing a variety of options for the policy of United States versus the real debate that is occurring in Israel itself.

MS. DALE: Yes. I have quite a good one for you. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Heritage started arguing that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was actually no longer in effect since one of the signatories, that is the Soviet Union, no longer existed. And there's a strong belief at the Heritage Foundation that missile defense is going to be very important, not just for the United States, but for international stability in the future.

Ten years ago, one of our analysts started -- over 10 years ago started writing papers to this effect. Those papers found their way to the attention of President Bush's foreign policy team. When he was candidate Bush running in 2000, it became part of his foreign policy proposal that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty should be abandoned and that after that we should then pursue a policy of creating missile defense, which we could share with allies in other countries. That became U.S. policy.

And in his first year in office, the United States abrogated the treaty with the Russians who had been the main -- follow-on* state to the Soviet Union. And despite numerous cries of disaster in the air that this was going to create, in fact, it didn't create any particular disasters, instead we have moved forward with research in this field. And I think actually as we're looking at a world with increasing levels of proliferation. I'm looking at Iran right now, North Korea, other countries who are interested in nuclear weapons, missile defense offers a completely different set of protections, which can be either local in an area, like the Middle East or Europe or the United States or the Far East or which can be global, depending on where you station your missile defenses. So that one is specifically Heritage-driven.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MR. BOORSTIN: I can't say that, oh, we have plenty of things in the bucket. And just look in the report, you'll see many, many, many things that most people will say, "Oh, really," even on our side. But what we try to do as a think tank is suggest things that we think are the right policy first and then perhaps worry about the politics. But let me give you three examples of places where I think we've made a small difference anyway. The first is in the increase of the size of the army. We have been advocating for that for more than two and half years on the democratic side, which is quite unusual. Most people would imagine that people on the progressive and democratic liberal side would not advocate for that. We were the first think tank on our side to actually come out and say, "add 86,000 people to the army." Now since then, senators have taken it up. CSIS did a study that was paid for by the Pentagon, in which they said ultimately we should increase it by 30,000. So people have come up with different numbers. But we've been in the center of framing that issue and making it acceptable to be a Democrat or a progressive and say, okay, let's increase the army.

A second issue where I think we've provided support to the Republican side was the nuclear bunker buster, which is this bomb that they've been trying to develop that supposedly penetrates deep into the earth in order to attack a place, an enemy headquarters or whatever. We have been after this issue for a long time. We -- on our -- in our advocacy role, in addition to our think tank role, we have an advocacy arm and in there we sponsored a letter-writing campaign to Congress and we offered support to the congressman from Ohio, a Republican Congressman from Ohio who eventually succeeded in killing the funding for the bunker buster in the current budget. We believe that it was not only destabilizing, but that it was hypocritical for the United States to be developing new nuclear weapons while saying to the rest of the world, let's have nonproliferation, nobody get a nuclear weapon.

A third area where we've also made a difference in advocacy is in Darfur. This has been very dear to our hearts for years now. We helped support a group that actually was started by college students, which is now called the genocide intervention fund and under our tutelage and with our help, they collected $600,000 to go to the African Union to support its efforts in Darfur. We have attempted to raise the profile of the issue. We did a campaign to criticize the media for the amount of coverage that they were giving to Darfur in comparison to wonderful stories like the Michael Jackson trial and the runaway bride, you will recall the runaway bride story. So in a variety of areas, we hope that we've, you know, made a difference actually in raising issues.

QUESTION: Thank you. Philippe Gelie, Le Figaro. The previous briefer told us that there are 1,500 think tanks in the U.S. and 300 in Washington. And my question would be where are they? Where were they in the events of the war in Iraq to explain what would be the consequences of going to war in Iraq? Where are they now to studying that in the Muslim world? Where were they last year to anticipate the French rejection of the EU treaty and study the impact of a crisis in Europe on the transatlantic relation? I mean, are the think tank during their job?

MS. DALE: Okay. Where are they? Well, they are quite easy to -- it's quite easy to find where they are because they all have websites. I can perhaps speak only for the one where I work. But in terms of the war in Iraq, we published our own blueprint for Iraq, at least six months before we actually went to war there. Iraq was an issue of a gigantic interest to the think tank world in Washington before the war happened and has been ever since. You are more than welcome to look at Heritage.org and see the level of events, of papers, of activities that go on relating to that.

I would say in our defense on the European constitution, Heritage has always been rather skeptical of whether this document would ever pass and we are on record for that. But I think the fact that the French decided to vote down a document that they had initiated themselves, came to rather a surprise to just about everybody, certainly, here in Washington, but I think throughout Europe as well. However, we have had -- we follow these things closely. We talk to European diplomats about them. We talk to Middle Eastern diplomats about contacts with the Muslim world, which we very much encourage. So I would say that we are engaged absolutely on a daily basis in the issues you mentioned.

Next week on Monday, we're having a group of women legislators from Afghanistan come to spend time with us for briefings on coalition building, on media relations, on how to do politics if you are new to the game. We've done the same with groups from Iraq. I mean, there is a huge level of engagement on our side and I think that is true for most of the think tanks in Washington. It's sometimes just a question of going to them, going to their websites to finding information or you can look for their names in the press. Do a search in The Washington Post on the two think tanks here and you'll see how many times we get quoted on -- for positions on those issues.

MR. BOORSTIN: Look, I just basically disagree with the premise, which is that we weren't there. I mean, we hadn't been founded very long, but we were out every day on the buildup to the Iraq war, criticizing what was going on, questioning exactly what they thought they were going to accomplish, asking where was the plan, where was the strategy. And we published two strategies of our own in the three months after the invasion, seeing what was happening, watching what was happening. Now were there some people in our think tank and on the center and in the left who believed that it was the right thing to do? Yes, there were because there were some of us who actually believed that the folks in the White House had the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. I, for one, did not believe that they would have ever invaded, if they hadn't had that kind of intelligence. Well, I guess that just proves me stupid, along with quite a number of other people in the United States who would think to themselves, well, there's no way the President is going to stand up and the Secretary of -- well, at that point, it's the National Security Advisor -- is going to stand up and say, we're in danger of a mushroom cloud, unless they have pretty solid evidence about something that's going on inside Iraq.

So were we always exactly in the right place, no. But were we critical throughout? Yes, we were critical throughout and we did have a very lively debate in our think tank and across other think tanks about that. We have not done work on the European constitution, simply.

QUESTION:  Aya Batrawy, Kuwait News Agency. I have a question about members of the think tanks meeting with maybe groups that the U.S. Government doesn't officially meet with, such as Hamas or insurgent groups in Iraq, I don't know about security or Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. I mean, do members of think tanks actually go there and meet with these people with messages from the White House unofficially and then come back and talk to the President or the State Department or officials there or is that not really the role of think tanks?

MS. DALE: Well, the particular groups you mentioned are not likely to be the ones that we would have a lot of contact with, I would think. I would be very surprised if our researchers did. However, you were asking really where the think tanks function as a back channel for the Administration. I would say that is not our job, that is not -- we are not part of the government. Sometimes we can be useful, though, in facilitating meetings that might not otherwise take place between various government officials who are opposition groups or whatever. I mean, we can serve as a meeting place, an unofficial meeting place and do that happily. I do not think that we sort of see ourselves as an arm of the government that can be used for backchannel work.

QUESTION: Dubravka Savic, Vecernje NOVOSTI. I'm interested, how do you create your own positions on foreign policy issues on different topics in different parts of the world? And also, what are the main obstacles you have in influencing foreign policy outside and inside the think tanks?

MR. BOORSTIN: Well, how do we come up with our opinions is a very good question. It depends on the subject. I have to say that. Sometimes we'll do it as a team. We'll come together and we'll discuss among the people in our think tank what exactly we think our opinion should be, for example, about the Dubais Ports deal. I mean, we’ll have a good argument and then we'll come out with an opinion. Sometimes we will go to an expert who knows the field a lot better than anybody in-house, in our place knows, and we'll ask them to write a paper and then we'll publish the paper under our imprint. That doesn't mean necessarily that everyone in our think tank agrees with the position, but it does mean that we think it's a viewpoint worth publishing and worth people, you know, worth people's attention.

We're involved right now in an attempt to understand from a progressive viewpoint U.S.-Chinese relations. And so every month I bring together a group of sinologists from all over the country to discuss a different topic. And hopefully, over the course of a year, we will develop something of an interesting policy paper, based on all of those discussions and all of the input.

When we finish writing that paper, we'll send it out to four or five or more experts -- some Chinese, some American. And we'll say, "What do you think of this?" Now if they edit it and they say something that we don't think is right, well, we won't adopt that. But at times, they give us very good edits. We've done this on a number of things -- our Iraq reports, our Quadrennial Defense Review. Almost everything we do, we put out for comment among experts before we publish it. But saying that we actually have a position on a certain issue is difficult to say because each one is very different.

In terms of obstacles, that's not one I should really talk about because the obstacle for us is basically that we're not in control of any branch of the government.

MS. DALE: I'd say that we go through a somewhat similar process when we develop a new policy position. Sometimes this is exclusively within the foreign policy department. The Dubais Ports deal is an example of it -- took us a good deal of one morning to reach agreement among ourselves and where we should be. Other issues, much bigger ones, involve the whole institution. Immigration, for instance, is a perpetually difficult subject I think for both parties, actually.

On our side, there are people who believe strongly in immigration as a way to enhance the American workforce, as a way to build new citizens, others who think that we have quite enough and that our borders are desperately unsecure and that we need to do something drastic about it. It took us almost -- I'd say, it took us six months to have a real debate on -- internal debate on the President's immigration proposals and that was just between the different parts of the Heritage Foundation.

We brought in experts from outside, had working groups, had -- wrote papers that were discussed back and forth and finally arrived at, at least a public position, which we have now published a series of papers on and we are getting increasingly engaged in that debate, but it took quite a while before that sort of was not a completely electric subject anymore. And these things come up every so often and they can be tough to deal with. Sometimes if it's an issue specific or a country-specific issue, what to do about Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or what -- how to view the latest negotiations for North Korea. We rely strongly on the advice of the expert we have, the country expert we have in that area for recommendations. And then we ultimately refer all of it back to the founding principles of the foundation.

This is -- Heritage Foundation is in favor of smaller government, of limited federal spending, of strong family structures, of free trade, individual opportunity. Ultimately, every position should be able to refer back to one of those principles that are fairly common principles, founding principles in the American conservative movement. And if something runs completely against it, we will really stop and think again. And then it's a real challenge, but it's a big organization to try to have an institutional position because we're individuals and we don't always agree on everything -- far from it. And yet, it is an institution that's devoted to having a public position. So who has the biggest say? Often, it's the expert who has the greatest expertise in that area. If you are somebody whose job is to focus on Social Security, you're not going to have a huge voice in a debate on North Korea. You may still pipe up, but nobody's likely to listen as much as they will to the defense analysts, to the analysts in East Asia affairs and so we're moderated and we all write columns.

This is an increasingly common phenomenon -- blogs, columns, talk to the media. And they're, you know, trying to remind everybody to be on the same page or somewhere close to the same page, so that we are not stepping all over the each other. That is a challenge that still (inaudible) exactly how to go about that because we all believe in freedom of expression as well.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MS. DALE: In getting our positions? Oh, obstacles are there all the time. And as I said, the amount of information that flows to government officials in Washington is possibly the biggest of them. Influencing the atmosphere of debate is a great thing and you can change the public terms, you can shift the ground and you can do that through the media, you can do that through meetings. That's a good thing to do. It gets get you some of the way. But ultimately, to get to the people, get your point of view to the people who are actually at the end of the day making the decisions for us. That can be a real challenge and it can take a long time. It can take a really long time to get their attention. Sometimes you hit the right moment, when they need, desperately need a new idea or a new piece of advice or somebody to talk to. You can get lucky. Sometimes it takes a really long time. And then with 1,500 think tanks in the United States, 300 of them here all trying to flood the official Washington with information, you can imagine how tough that competition is. So it takes hard work and sometimes a bit of luck as well. And then, of course, having a (inaudible) as a government doesn't hurt. (Laughter.)

MODERATOR: One last question.

QUESTION: Hi. My name is Niu Zhen from China. I have a question about the nature of think tanks. Some think tank expert has said that the think tanks are losing their independence because of the pressure from government. You know, America has a very powerful President and Republican-dominated government. And as the first briefer has said about 93 percent of the think tanks have received fund from government. So you know, the U.S. Government is always not satisfied with your opinion or advice, such as Iraqi war policies. So how do you keep the balance, I mean, from the pressure of government and your individual independent review, yes? Okay. Thank you.

MR. BOORSTIN: I'm rather astonished at that figure. Ninety three percent of think tanks have taken government money? Is that what was said? I wouldn't think that that -- I would think that that figure is --

QUESTION: (Off-mike)

MR. BOORSTIN: Okay. Yeah. I mean, we're not allowed to -- I mean, it's part of our policy -- we do not take government money. We do not do studies for the government. If the government calls us up and says, you know, here's what we think you should do, we say, well, thank you very much and put the phone down.

The good thing is that we're beginning to have an impact in the government and as I said, we did this defense review and in it, we said we want to get rid of this class of submarines that the Navy wants to build. And we got a two-and-half-page letter back from the Rear Admiral in the Navy in charge of submarine production, giving us point by point why we were wrong. So I actually think that that's a statement of progress on our part, that they're even paying attention to us. But we'll never, be it a Democrat or a Republican or an independent in office, be a contractor for the government or do that kind of work. And right now we criticize plenty of Democrats who are in positions of power. And we kind of take a perverse pride in that, in fact, because our job is not to parrot the party line.

Our job is to put forward a policy and then say if a Democrat has it wrong or a Republican has it wrong or a Republican has it right to credit that person with being right. I mean, we have said nothing but nice things about -- for example, Senator Lugar and Senator Hagel for some of the things that they have done on arms control in Iraq and so forth.

MS. DALE: I'd like just to reiterate that -- a statement in a sense. The Heritage Foundation does not take any money at all from the government. All our funds come either from our endowment, which is quite substantial or it comes from private foundations who give us money. It can be the Coors Foundation, the Scaife Foundation.

There are a whole host of big family foundations in the United States that give you money for research. And then in our case, we have a donor base of 275,000 individual Americans who become members of the Heritage Foundation by sending a donation. Because it's a nonprofit, that donation is tax deductible. So they can give you anything from $50 to 5 million, depending on how wealthy they are. But these are people who really believe in the work we do and the ideas we have and who often come and visit and want to get involved in it. That gives you a phenomenal strength and independence from the government, if the government were to say we really hate that position you have, we're going to lean on some of your donors and tell them, you know, don't do business with these people. They would say, "fine, we have lots more." We are not a single issue institution.

And just to -- another -- one final thought on sort of the bipartisan and nonpartisan nature really of what we do. Some ideas that we have worked on for a long time actually come to fruition under Democratic presidents. And I'd say the most -- domestic policy, the greatest success story we've had has been welfare reform, which was enacted by President Clinton, but had been a Heritage cause for about 15 years before that finally made it all the way to the governments in the mid-1990s. So you know, we're not tied to any party and sometimes even the party you least suspect picks up what you've been saying. (Laughter.)

MODERATOR: On behalf of the Foreign Press Center, thank you very much.