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Remember the FBI raid on the lobby firm for the Saudis last week? Newsweek's Hosenball and Isikoff have the back story:
Could the FBI raid on Qorvis, and the FBI raid on AIPAC, be related, as part of a larger investigation of compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act?Federal prosecutors are seeking to determine whether the Saudi Embassy’s PR firm, Qorvis Communications, made false statements to the Justice Department and violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)—a 1938 law requiring full disclosure of foreign-sponsored propaganda in the United States, according to sources familiar with grand-jury subpoenas issued in the case.
The probe into the 2002 radio ad campaign supposedly paid for by an obscure group called the Alliance for Peace and Justice, explains last week’s startling raid by the FBI on the downtown Washington offices of Qorvis, a well-connected PR group that began representing the Saudis in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
The FBI raid of Qorvis came just two weeks after another equally sensitive bureau raid on the D.C. offices of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in what has been described as part of an espionage investigation of a Pentagon official associated with the group. Some Jewish leaders have privately expressed concerns that the raid may also uncover sufficient ties between AIPAC and the Israeli government to force the committee to file under FARA as an agent of Israel. One former AIPAC official, who asked not to be identified, told NEWSWEEK that such a move would be “the death knell” of the group, given that it has always touted itself as an “American organization” representing “American interests.”
One theory circulating widely among Middle East watchers in Washington is that last week’s FBI raid on Qorvis was conducted in part because of the Justice Department’s interest in showing “balance” in the wake of the AIPAC raid. Bryan Sierra, a department spokesman, today called such speculation “absurd.”
The Saudi probe, overseen by veteran prosecutor Laura Ingersoll in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, is being watched closely at the highest levels of the Justice Department because of its potential diplomatic and political consequences. Criminal charges against Qorvis over the ad campaign would be embarrassing for the Saudi Embassy—whose most visible spokesman, Adel al-Jubeir, personally oversees the PR account—as well as the Bush White House, which has vigorously portrayed Crown Prince Abdullah’s government as a stalwart ally in the war on terror.