COLUMN ONE : Japanese ‘Agents of Influence’ : Tokyo is spending millions to lobby the U.S. on trade. The effort outrages some; but others wonder if Japan is getting its money’s worth.

Congressional hearings on trade legislation inevitably attract overflow audiences. With so much at stake, the lobbyists start lining up for seats as early as 6:30 a.m. for 10 o’clock sessions. “You have to get up this early if you want to get in at all,” one resigned lobbyist says.

But these days, much of the well-heeled audience is not there on behalf of U.S. corporations or organized labor, as once was the case. As often as not, their clients are likely to be Japanese.

Over the past several years, Japanese agencies and corporations have assembled a massive operation aimed at gathering intelligence about U.S. trade policy-making operations, to lobby the Administration and Congress and to influence American think tanks and other opinion makers.

Pat Choate, a vice president of TRW and an outspoken critic of Japanese lobbying, estimates that the Japanese spent a staggering $100 million to $150 million last year--equal to the economy of the Caribbean nation of Grenada--to hire Washington lawyers and public relations advisers. Most of them are well-connected politically; some are even former U.S. trade officials.

Choate, who is preparing a book entitled “Agents of Influence,” describes the Japanese representatives as everything from “door-openers, advisers, consultants and lobbyists to influence-peddlers. No one questions their (the Japanese) right to representation, but this goes beyond representation. They have penetrated the policy elite. We’re losing control of our destiny.”

Even critics such as Choate concede that the activities of the Japanese and their lobbyists are perfectly legal. Under the American system, both U.S. and foreign interests are entitled to be heard.

But Michael Barker, a Democratic economist, says Americans should be concerned about the sheer intensity and pervasiveness of the Japanese intelligence-gathering and lobbying operations, regardless of whether they violate U.S. law.

“What they are doing would be illegal in every other country,” he asserted. “Even if it isn’t illegal here, there ought to be a certain amount of social opprobrium to it.”

Critics such as Barker say lobbyists for Japanese firms have earned their enormous paychecks. They point most frequently to the softening by Congress in 1988 of sanctions on Toshiba Corp. that lawmakers were considering for Toshiba’s sale of militarily sensitive technology to the Soviet Union.

Others find the Toshiba case less clear-cut. Toshiba’s position prevailed in 1988, they argue, only because the many U.S. companies that do business with Toshiba also lobbied.

More generally, some analysts believe the Japanese have little to show for their frantic lobbying.

“It’s hard to imagine anyone spending that much money and getting nothing,” conceded Ed Lincoln, a Brookings Institution analyst who once served as an executive of the Japan Economic Institute, a Japanese financed think tank. “But by and large, they are not receiving very much. You might almost say they’re being ripped off for all the money they are laying out.”

Effective or not, the Japanese presence in Washington is awesome by any standard:

--The lineup of Japanese lobbyists reads like a Who-Was-Who of Washington insiders. The Japanese, Choate said, are seeking to establish “money relationships with as many influential people as possible.”

Three former U.S. trade representatives are in the Japanese lineup: the firm of Democrat Robert S. Strauss for Fujitsu Ltd., the Japanese electronics maker; Republican William E. Brock III, Clayton K. Yeutter’s predecessor, for Toyota, and Republican William D. Eberle’s firm for Nissan.

Among others whose firms have or recently have had Japanese clients are Stuart E. Eizenstat, domestic adviser to President Jimmy Carter; William N. Walker, deputy trade representative during the Gerald R. Ford Administration; Lionel Olmer, former undersecretary of commerce for trade during the Ronald Reagan years; Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., son of the late House Majority Leader Hale Boggs (D-La.); Elliot L. Richardson, who has held several Cabinet jobs in GOP administrations, and former House Budget Committee Chairman James R. Jones (D-Okla.), head of the American Stock Exchange.

--The Japanese lobbyists are highly skilled. Many agencies tell stories of senior officials who returned from meetings of top policy-makers to find their telephones jingling with calls from Japanese who had already learned the outcome.

The situation got so bad during the Reagan years that only the very top layers of officials were allowed to attend some sessions. But still, the leaks persisted. “It really is scary,” said one former policy-maker.

--Japanese lobbying is pervasive. Congress is on the receiving end, and so is virtually every Executive Branch agency that deals with issues of interest to the Japanese. Justice Department records show 90 U.S. law firms and public relations agencies that represent Japanese interests--far more than for any other country.

During the debate over how severely to punish Toshiba, for example, the company spent millions of dollars to influence lawmakers and Administration officials. Its representatives swarmed over Capitol Hill to warn against imposing strong sanctions.

--Lobbying firms for the Japanese do more than lobby. Many of them routinely make campaign contributions to presidential candidates and to members of Congress. Although the contributions are not massive, they sometimes total as much as $1,000, large enough to be noticed by the candidates or their campaign staffs.

For the Japanese who hire them, the lobbyists appear to offer important information and access.

Lobbyist James H. Lake got heavily involved in U.S.-Japanese trade issues in the mid-1980s when his longtime friend, Yeutter, was the U.S. trade representative under President Reagan.

A former campaign aide to Reagan, Lake served on the three-man transition team that helped Yeutter assemble his new staff in 1985. Over the subsequent years, he frequently held small dinners at his Virginia farm, where Yeutter could talk informally with senior Japanese trade officials. And he occasionally served as a “back channel” who could convey confidential messages between Yeutter and the Japanese.

What bothers some who are familiar with Lake’s dealings is that, except during the few weeks that he served on Yeutter’s transition team, much of this occurred while he was under contract as a registered agent for Japanese interests. Justice Department records show that between late 1986 and early 1989, Lake’s firm received $657,237.17 from Japanese corporations and trade groups.

Increasing Uneasiness

Concern about Lake’s role during Yeutter’s tenure as U.S. trade representative exemplifies the increasing uneasiness in Washington about the growing Japanese presence--and, some contend, influence.

Lake, who had little experience in the trade field before he was retained by the Japanese, finds nothing pernicious in arrangements between Japanese interests and Americans such as himself. He readily concedes that the Japanese hired him mainly because of his longtime friendship with Yeutter, but he denies seeking or receiving any special favors.

“All I ever said (to Yeutter) was, ‘Listen to me,’ ” he said. “Clayton Yeutter is not susceptible to making decisions for friends. He’s . . . able to make decisions on the basis of what’s right and wrong.”

Yeutter, now agriculture secretary, agrees. “This whole issue is very much overblown,” he said. “Policy-makers are paid to evaluate the various arguments on each side in terms of what is viewed to be the national interest, not special interests. A lot of times, over-lobbying tends to backfire. People get irritated if one side or the other pushes too hard.”

Influencing Officials

Critics wonder about the effect that the prospect of eventually landing a job with the Japanese might have on a U.S. official who has decided to leave the government but is still negotiating with the Japanese.

“If you know you’re going to be paid $300,000 to represent somebody later, you’re not going to be very tough on him,” Barker said.

“A lot of people don’t consider themselves bought, but they are,” added a U.S. official who asked not to be identified.

For all the money and effort that the Japanese expend, however, the evidence about their impact is mixed.

In most cases, the Japanese could meet on their own with the same government officials who are brought together with them by their lobbyists. “We really do run an open government here,” one U.S. official said.

Some of the most senior U.S. decision makers do not even see the lobbyists for the Japanese. And many of the visits that lobbyists arrange turn out to be courtesy calls--important in Japan’s own culture, but more of a nuisance to the Americans.

Harald B. Malmgren, who served as a senior trade official in the Richard M. Nixon and Ford administrations, points out that trade policy-making is so fragmented that it would be almost impossible for the Japanese to co-opt the entire process.

Doubts on Wise Use

And despite the legendary skill of the Japanese in ferreting out intelligence, even their critics doubt that they use their information wisely.

“They think they’re getting access, and they are getting access,” said Alan William Wolff, a deputy U.S. trade representative for the Carter Administration who has made a point of representing U.S. firms in recent years. “But my feeling is that they have been unable to use it, by and large. The home team still has an advantage.”

Indeed, in many cases, the Japanese hire several competing firms to provide them with essentially the same kind of information--say, to monitor and assess the U.S. mood about Japanese investment. Some analysts believe that practice reflects insecurity about what is going on in the United States.

“The Japanese are always somewhat anxious about whether their information about Washington is right,” said a knowledgeable U.S. trade official with broad experience in the area. “By hiring more than one firm, they can double-check what they get.”

Americans who have sat in on strategy sessions with the Japanese say that, largely because of the wide cultural differences between the two societies, they show a striking lack of sophistication about how America really works.

“The whole rough-and-tumble process of having opposing interest groups slug it out is totally alien to their culture and to their value system,” one of them said.

The Japanese are not the only ones to hire ex-officials to represent them. Motorola has lured a former senior U.S. trade official, a former U.S. International Trade Commission member and one of the U.S. trade representative’s negotiators who crafted the U.S.-Japanese accord on trade. The son of Motorola Chairman Robert W. Galvin is now an assistant secretary of commerce.

And among foreign interests, the European Community is just as well-connected here as the Japanese, and so are several individual countries, such as Great Britain, West Germany, Canada and France. U.S. policy-makers argue that Israel has been far more influential in shaping U.S. policy and legislation than any other foreign country.

“There’s no European country that doesn’t have big bucks laid out in Washington, too,” Malmgren noted. “But they usually do it through their U.S. subsidiaries, where it’s less visible, so there isn’t the same kind of public reaction.”

Virtually all of the big firms that lobby for the Japanese also do work for other countries. Most, including Lake’s, do the bulk of their business representing U.S. firms.

Susan W. Liebeler, former chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission, questions whether lobbying for a Japanese company is necessarily “any less in the national interest” than lobbying for a domestic company. In the case of industries such as steel, she says, the import restraints that U.S. firms have sought often cost consumers billions of dollars and enable the firms to escape pressure to modernize.

On this much, all sides agree: Americans have no one to blame but themselves for whatever inroads the Japanese have made.

“The way Americans rationalize what they do is to say: ‘Everybody has a right to have a point of view heard,’ ” Wolff said. “It’s the nature of our society. They play us against ourselves. You can’t hire a former Japanese official to do the same things in Japan.”

Barker, the critic of the Japanese presence, agrees. “It’s not awful that the Japanese do this--it’s awful that we let them,” he said.

Some members of Congress would not be so willing to let them. “If ‘our’ negotiators become ‘their’ negotiators,” said Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), “foreign markets will remain closed and trade friction will escalate, to the detriment of our country.”

The Senate Finance Committee is planning to hold hearings on the issue in early spring. House Democrats recently asked White House counsel C. Boyden Gray to undertake a conflict-of-interest inquiry over charges that some Administration economists were listed on an “advisory committee”--actually only a mailing list--of two Japanese ministries.

Congress enacted ethics legislation last year that tightens current regulations slightly by prohibiting former senior- and mid-level officials either from representing the interest of a foreign country or from lobbying in connection with a continuing trade negotiation for a year after they leave government.

But the restriction applies only to work done for foreign governments, not corporations. And it does nothing to dampen lobbying by well-connected politicos who were not in government.

Even among those who are worried about the growing Japanese presence here, there is wide disagreement over how much farther to go.

Choate contends what is needed is “simplicity--a lifetime prohibition against lobbying by anyone who has been in government service.”

But Wolff points out that the American government is designed to limit senior officials to brief terms. “If you tell people they can’t practice trade law when they leave government,” he said, “you won’t be able to recruit the best people.”