(Updated below - Update II - Update III)

In response to the post I wrote on Friday concerning the lobbying efforts of Barbour, Griffiths & Rogers to push Prime Minister Maliki out of power -- a post which generated this statement from ABC News -- I received, on Friday night, the following e-mail from BGR's Senior Advisor (and former Counselor to Secretary Rice), Philip Zelikow:

Re: Your blog about me

Noticed your [Salon] blog on my role re Allawi, based on the CNN story.

CNN has amended their story to note, correctly, that I've had no contact with Allawi, directly or indirectly, since leaving government. I have had nothing to do with the lobbying efforts being conducted on his behalf.

I've cc'd one of the CNN reporters who has been working the story. They are sorry that they did not amend their story earlier to include this information, which they had since the story first started breaking (and it was news to me too).

You took a pretty hard swing, based on a false assumption. And a lot of people read it.

Happy to take my lumps, but better if it's for things I've actually done.

Philip Zelikow

Over the course of further e-mail exchanges I had with him over the weekend, Zelikow claimed, among other things, that: he has "no equity relationship with BGR"; that he merely "advise[s] BGR from time to time on specific matters, but not this one"; and that he "learned of BGR's relationship with Allawi from reporters calling [him] about it yesterday [Thursday]." He also said:

I am not formally consulting with the administration about Iraq policy. I talk about Iraq issues with a number of Republicans and Democrats in an effort to help both sides find a common way forward, and therefore preferred not to take sides in public testimony. I'm not doing paid work on Iraq for anyone in the government.

I have no concrete reason to disbelieve Zelikow's emphatic claim that his own lobbying firm did not tell him about its having been hired by Allawi nor about its efforts to undermine Prime Minister Maliki. One would reasonably expect that a small lobbying firm which employs a former top-level Bush State Department official would include him in such a project. And it seems quite coincidental that right as that firm's lobbying effort to push Maliki out of office lurches into full swing, up pops its Senior Advisor (and one of only 20 BGR lobbyists), Phil Zelikow, on ABC News to serve as one of two "expert sources" -- along with Michael O'Hanlon -- to feed the "Maliki-is-on-his-way-out" storyline.

Nonetheless, to the extent that Zelikow -- as he claims -- was unaware of his firm's work on behalf of Allawi to achieve this result, then he obviously could not have disclosed that to ABC News. And if his denial is true, then my specific criticism of Zelikow on Friday for his failure to disclose a fact of which he now claims to have been unaware -- though grounded in numerous publicly available facts when I voiced it -- was unwarranted. Nonetheless, ABC's conclusion that Zelikow's contribution to its Maliki story was "sullied" by his undisclosed connection to BGR is still true, and examining Zelikow's claims here raises several important points worth considering.

Initially, Zelikow's depiction of his relationship with this lobbying firm as sporadic and ad hoc -- that he merely "advise[s] BGR from time to time on specific matters, but not this one" and is nothing more than an "outside advisor" -- is directly at odds with several facts. The original (and still unchanged) CNN story reported that "the lobbying firm boasts the services of . . . Philip Zelikow, former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."

Moreover, BGR's own website -- on which I relied -- lists what it calls its "Team": a rather small group of just 20 lobbyists, almost all of whom are former Bush officials or high-level GOP operatives. Zelikow is one of that small group. He is identified as the firm's "Senior Advisor" whose "expertise" is "International" matters and who has "exclusive consulting responsibilities with BGR." When I called BGR on Friday several times in an attempt to speak with Zelikow, I was repeatedly told that all requests to speak with him had to go through BGR's press office, which never returned any calls.

All of that seems rather inconsistent with Zelikow's depiction of his relationship with BGR as some sort of sporadic, casual, "outside" ad hoc interaction. Zelikow himself seems to recognize that his own description of his relationship with BGR is at odds with how he is held out, as he said in an e-mail: "BGR is happy to list me as an adviser to the firm. As you can imagine. But I'm an outside consultant."

Zelikow's claims about his current working relationship with the Bush administration on Iraq policy were equally vague and difficult to pin down. Zelikow originally denied emphatically that he is working at all with the administration: " I am not formally consulting with the administration about Iraq policy," he wrote.

But when I emphasized that Congressman Snyder said that Zelikow suggested the opposite -- both on the record at a Congressional hearing in explaining why Zelikow cancelled his public testimony ("the administration had approached him about being a consultant with the administration and work on Iraq war policy") and in a subsequent interview with me on Friday -- Zelikow then said (emphasis added):

I told Congressman Snyder, correctly, that I was working the issue on the inside with people on both sides, and thus did not want to testify publicly. The State Department continues to hold security clearances for me.

BGR still refuses to speak with me or answer questions about its work for Allawi or Zelikow's involvement, if any, in its Iraq lobbying. But it is only fair to air Zelikow's denials and allow everyone to make up their own minds about what they believe. I want to emphasize again the important point here -- even if one believes Zelikow's denial, and personally I'm willing to, it does not change the fact that ABC's use of this BGR lobbyist in its story was "sullied" by his various undisclosed relationships, and this is the critical point, one that goes beyond Zelikow.

Lobbyists like Zelikow are people who exploit their government service to make large amounts of money in order to use their contacts inside government to influence public policy on behalf of those who can afford to pay those fees. To the extent it is done legally, so be it.

But lobbyists like this should not simultaneously hold themselves out as objective experts on political matters, nor be held out that way by news organizations, precisely because their undisclosed lobbying work creates all sorts of obvious potential conflicts which undermine the credibility and reliability of what they are saying. If people like Zelikow want to accept money to use their influence to shape government policy, then they ought not expect simultaneously to be respected as a disinterested expert (and news organizations should not use paid lobbyists to opine on political matters).

In this specific case, it is highly suspicious and disturbing for a BGR lobbyist like Zelikow to be opining on ABC News as an "expert" about Iraq in exactly the way that serves the BGR client's agenda without disclosure of his relationship to BGR. If Zelikow was unaware of this Allawi contract, then it means he did nothing wrong by failing to disclose that, but that does not change the fact that, by virtue of his status as a lobbyist, he is simply not a credible source of objective expertise. Just as ABC News said, its story was "sullied" by its inclusion of BGR's Zelikow.

Moreover, there is clearly a coordinated effort by much of official Washington to essentially stage a coup in Iraq by trying to oust Maliki. The first sign was the coordinated emergence of news reports of significant tensions between Maliki and Official Washington's savior, Gen. Petraeus. Soon thereafter, President Bush, in a news conference, issued swaggering, tough guy threats to Maliki due to Maliki's increasingly friendly posture with Iran.

That signaled the start of official Washington's imperial campaign to replace the Iraqi leader. Awad Allawi found his way onto Fred Hiatt's Editorial Page to proclaim the problems in Iraq to be Maliki's fault. Carl Levin then meets with Allawi during his very probing two-day trip to Iraq, returns to Washington, and dutifully demands that Maliki be replaced. The next day, Hillary Clinton follows suit. Seemingly overnight, conventional bipartisan wisdom in the Beltway empire is that it is time to oust the Iraqi Prime Minister and replace him with someone more to our liking (whether that means less friendly to the Iranians or less hostile to our new friends the Sunni insurgents or simply more hospitable to our dictates).

As always, everyone in official Washington plays their roles in order to carry this out. And people like O'Hanlon and Zelikow claim the role of authoritative, objective "experts" -- the voices of dispassionate authority who speak about these matters while floating above it all.

Yet they are no such thing (Greg Djerejian has the latest comprehensive case proving how absurd it is to consider Mike O'Hanlon an objective expert on anything). In Zelikow's case, he earns presumably substantial compensation from a lobbying firm being paid to help oust Maliki, and he simultaneously is -- to use his words -- "working the issue on the inside," facts which were undisclosed to the ABC News viewer. And oddly, while Zelikow claimed that this work "on the inside" meant it was inappropriate for him to testify publicly about Iraq before Rep. Snyder's Committee, it certainly did not impede him from going on ABC News and speaking quite publicly in order to feed the "Maliki-is-weakening" narrative.

It is so striking, and really rather repulsive, to watch Beltway operatives try to stage a coup in Iraq and enrich themselves while doing so. And so much of our Washington establishment is on board with this fun new imperial project, lounging around issuing decrees that would make Roman rulers proud: "Hey, we did the right thing; it's just that terrible Maliki who is preventing the beautiful flowers that we planted from growing. Time for him to go."

Obviously, whoever is paying $50,000 per month to BGR realizes that Iraqi "sovereignty" is an illusion and power in Iraq is determined not by Baghdad but by the Beltway. And we don't even really pretend otherwise any more, hence the decrees from Levin and Clinton that Maliki must be replaced. It seems as though, four years after invading the country to depose Saddam Hussein, the Washington Establishment has once again adopted a policy of "regime change" with regard to Iraq. At least this time we won't have to invade their country in order to achieve it. So much for purple fingers and our magnanimous quest to bring democracy to a freedom-starved world. What are we going to say now about our "justification" for invading?

With all the facts assembled here, including the ones Zelikow himself requested be included, everyone can decide for themselves whether Zelikow should have been held out by ABC News as an expert to opine on these matters. But regardless of one's views on that specific issue, this whole spectacle of privatized coup efforts, with the aid of much of official Washington, is, in numerous ways, very instructive as to how our seedy Beltway functions.

UPDATE: Prime Minister Maliki said today: "There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin. They should come to their senses." Also:

Al-Maliki also criticized some U.S. military actions.

"Concerning American raids on Shula (a northern Shiite neighborhood) and Sadr City (the Shiite slum enclave in east Baghdad). There were big mistakes committed in these operations. The terrorist himself should be targeted not his family.

"When they want to detain one person, they should not kill 10 others. These are mistakes which we have to deal with. We will not allow the detaining of innocent people. Only the criminals should be detained," the angry al-Maliki declared.

Two nights ago the U.S. military raided the Shula neighborhood and said it killed eight "terrorists" who had attacked an American patrol from rooftops. Some Iraqis reported many civilians were killed and wounded.

A year ago, our Evil Enemy were Sunni insurgents and the Beacon of Good was Prime Minister Maliki. Nothing is more fluid than those terms, of course, as this formula has now reversed itself almost completely. Maliki is now openly criticizing Beltway leaders and some of our military efforts against Shiite neighborhoods. He seems to have forgotten his place.

UPDATE II: Laura Rozen, who personally knows and likes Phil Zelikow, defends him from charges that he was actively deceitful here (on the ground that he did not know about the Allawi contract), but says he should have "preempt[ed] the perception of a possible conflict of interest" and "the best thing would have been to make sure the media knew about his BGR work."

* * * * *

The book event for A Tragic Legacy hosted by the Cato Institute -- where I spoke about the book, followed by critical commentary from pro-Bush lawyer Lee Casey and then a Q-and-A session with the audience -- is being broadcast on C-SPAN 2 this morning (I am not sure of the time). It is being re-broadcast tomorrow morning (Monday) at 6:30 a.m. and next Saturday, September 1, at 4:30 p.m. It can also be viewed here on Cato's site.

UPDATE III: Today's Editorial from the LA Times notes that Dianne Feinstein has also demanded Maliki's ouster and argues:

What does sovereignty mean? In the case of Iraq, Washington can't seem to decide. . . .Last week, President Bush and four key senators tied themselves in knots trying to figure out how to dump a failing ally while displaying respect for the Iraqi right to self-determination.

Of course, the United States could engineer Maliki's ouster, even without resorting to a crude coup. It need only withhold aid until the teetering government in Baghdad collapses. . . .

The Editorial argues against this course on the ground that what comes next might be worse. But one wonders whether that even matters at this point. The real goal -- the only goal -- seems to be to find a way to stay and keep the war going -- "there's a new government; we need more time to work with it; things are improving now" -- all to ensure that our presence and control in Iraq endures.