Three Senators Allege PAC That Opposed Them Is Foreign Agent

Three Democratic senators say an imported-car dealers’ group that spent almost $1 million against them in recent elections is really a foreign agent, and they want the Justice Department to investigate.

Leaders of the car group deny working for foreigners, and one said Friday that two of the senators asked for and accepted money from them.

Sens. Harry Reid and Richard H. Bryan, both of Nevada, Bob Graham of Florida and David L. Boren of Oklahoma signed a letter to the Justice Department alleging that the group, a political action committee, is a foreign agent working for Japanese auto manufacturers.

Boren, who has neither been opposed by nor accepted money from the group, signed the letter because his colleagues asked him to and because he is opposed to the role political action committees in general are playing in American politics, a spokesman said.

Tom Nemet, chairman of the Auto Dealers and Drivers Free Trade PAC, a political action committee that last year spent nearly $2.6 million on House and Senate elections, and Frank Glacken, the PAC’s executive director, said in a telephone interview from their office in New York that Reid, Bryan and Graham are trying to get even because the group spent large amounts of money against them.

They said the organization’s funding comes entirely from American citizens.

About 83% of the group’s expenditures went to help Republican candidates, Federal Election Commission figures show. But the PAC also gave $5,000 to Graham and $3,000 to Reid, the FEC records show. Spokesmen said the two had no plans to return the money.

Under federal law, individuals or firms representing foreign governments, people or companies have to register with the Justice Department as foreign agents and report what activities they have carried out for their clients.

Although foreign agents could still give money to political campaigns as individual American citizens, the law does not permit them to make such contributions in their role as foreign agents.