First of all, I'd like to congratulate Ken Silverstein on his revelatory article in Harper's and subsequent book. Thanks for letting me add my two cents. I remember seeing Ken in Washington shortly after his piece came out and wondering how he spent months in a city as small as DC disguised as a bearded lobbyist for Turkmenistan. Quite a feat of investigative reporting.

There was some brouhaha following Ken's piece about whether it was proper journalistic ethics for him to go undercover and knowingly mislead his fellow lobbyists. But I don't think Ken had any choice--to get a great story about Washington lobbyists, Ken had to become one of them. That's because lobbyists working in America have to disclose very little about what they're actually up to and American lobbyists working abroad don't have to disclose anything.

So, for example, when Bob Dole represents the government of Montenegro in Washington, he must disclose periodically who he's meeting with and vaguely what it's concerning. But the information on these disclosure forms, which few in the public can find or navigate, tells us very little about what's actually going on. Only by going inside these conversations--as Ken did--or by reconstructing them, can we uncover the intricacies of influence peddling. That's very difficult for even the best of journalists or watchdogs to regularly do.

Moreover, if McCain campaign manager/lobbyist Rick Davis goes and works for the government of Montenegro in Montenegro (I use this example because it's the subject of a recent piece of mine in The Nation, "McCain's Kremlin Ties"), he doesn't have to tell us citizens (US citizens) anything about his activities. We don't know concretely how much he was paid, who paid him, how long he worked for and what exactly he was doing. It doesn't make much sense; if you're a prominent American lobbyist shouldn't the work you do abroad be considered as important as the work you're doing at home, especially if it impacts US foreign policy?

I'm glad Ken's book is coming out now, because the intersection of American lobbyists and foreign governments is a huge cesspool, ripe for exposure. And as some of these frontier countries attract more Western investment and exposure, they'll be able to pay big bucks to sweep their worst abuses under the table, making a pretty penny for the worst actors in our political system. Everybody wins--or loses--depending on how you look at it.

"A lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it or not, represent real Americans," Hillary Clinton said during the Democratic primary. Maybe so, but a lot of lobbyists also represents places like Turkmenistan and companies like Exxon Mobil. It's a greedy, often dishonorable profession. Politicians should stop pretending otherwise, and journalists should start paying more attention. Things will only change when exposé's like Ken's move from the exception to the norm.