By guest host Linda Douglass:

No matter how bad the international reputation of a dictatorship, there’s a Washington lobbying firm willing to take up the cause, says Harper’s Ken Silverstein.

Silverstein went undercover for his article this month and found that more than one organization was willing to whitewash Turkmenistan’s record of abuse and raise its profile in the U.S.

For the right price, a firm could organize junkets for Congress members and journalists, or call on a think tank or two for a well-placed op-ed.

This hour On Point: the underbelly of Washington’s lobbyists for hire.

Guests:

Ken Silverstein, Washington Editor for Harper’s Magazine and author of this month’s article “Their Men in Washington: Undercover with D.C.’s lobbyists for hire”

Thomas Mann, Senior Fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution and co-author of “The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track”

Alex Shorenstein, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University