McCarthyism

Backlash to Warren’s think-tank attack: 'McCarthyism’ from the left

By Patrick Temple-West

All it took was an hour of damaging Twitter comments and press attention, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren had claimed another prize.

News broke at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday that the liberal Massachusetts firebrand was blasting Brookings Institution scholar Robert Litan because a mutual-fund company paid for his research criticizing an Obama administration proposal to regulate the industry. By 9:30 a.m., Litan — an economist and former adviser to President Bill Clinton — was out.

That,despite indications from Brookings’ senior management just the night before that it would all blow over.

“I had no indication until the end that I would be asked to leave,” Litan told POLITICO on Wednesday. “I’d be reprimanded.”

The events show Warren’s snowballing power to use her celebrity and her sway over social media as she battles to keep Wall Street influence out of Washington. The Litan episode follows her successful attempt to torpedo the nomination of banker Antonio Weiss for a Treasury position requiring Senate confirmation earlier this year. And it comes as Warren’s allies are pushing back against any potential nominees to the Securities and Exchange Commissionn with corporate ties.

Litan’s departure is already prompting backlash among some economists and rival think tankers, who say Warren’s crusade and Brookings’ response could have a chilling effect on research.

“This is McCarthyism of the left," said Hal Singer, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and co-author of the research Warren criticized. “What Warren is doing is suppressing scholars [who] speak independently through her threats.”

A spokesman for Brookings declined to comment Wednesday for this story.

According to Litan, who was an unpaid, nonresident fellow at Brookings, the drama started when Warren started asking questions about his July testimony before a Senate panel criticizing the Labor Department’s proposal to make investment advisers act in their clients’ financial best interest. The plan — hated by the financial industry and beloved by the left — has been at the center of a furious lobbying battle as the Labor Department moves to implement it.

In a footnote to his written testimony, Litan noted that his research on the issue was funded by Capital Group, a large mutual fund company based in Los Angeles. He also noted that he was a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings.

It turned out that Brookings had a relatively new policy banning nonresident scholars from using their affiliation with the think tank in conjunction with congressional testimony when they're discussing their independent consulting work. Litan said that he discovered, also in July, that he had unwittingly violated the policy and apologized to Brookings officials. Nothing happened.

But then Warren started asking him questions about how much he had been paid to produce the report. In August, he disclosed that Capital Group paid his firm $85,000.

Several weeks of silence followed. Then, on Monday, he heard from Warren’s staff, he said. They told him they were sending a letter to Brookings President Strobe Talbott complaining about what they perceived as a conflict of interest.

On Monday afternoon, Litan called top officials at Brookings to advise them of the letter and apologize again for what seemed to him like a minor incident. Litan said the think tank’s leadership told him Monday night it would all blow over. Again, in another conversation early Tuesday morning, Litan was given the impression his affiliation with Brookings was safe.

That was before Warren’s broadside went public. The media and Twitter swept it up immediately.

“If @BrookingsInst has integrity will loudly fire ‘scholar’ Robert Litan today, declare new policies,” said David Cay Johnston, a liberal-leaning writer and lecturer, in a Twitter post.

Pressure mounted on Brookings through the morning. In a second conversation at about 9:30 a.m., “there was clearly a change in tone,” Litan said. “The only thing that changed in the next day was when the articles came out. It was clear they were very uncomfortable with what happened.”

“I made it easy for them. I resigned,” Litan said.

“To me this is a minor technical infraction,” he said. “I got the death penalty for it.”

Tuesday, Brookings put out a statement distancing itself from Litan.

“His study on which his testimony was based was not connected with Brookings in any way,” spokesman David Nassar said. “When he used his Brookings affiliation for congressional testimony, he violated a policy that prohibits nonresidents from using their affiliation with Brookings for that purpose.”

But the fallout is continuing as Litan’s defenders come forward.

The view that Warren went too far “is shared by a lot of people,” said Everett Ehrlich, who served in the Clinton administration as undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs. “For researchers and people who write policy papers, it really looks like [Brookings] caved in the face of bullying.”

Warren's office answered the criticisms.

“Big oil companies shouldn’t be able to peddle phony research on climate change, and the financial industry shouldn’t be able to support phony economics hiding behind a think tank. People expect think tanks to be independent in the research they produce, and the fact that more and more of their work is funded by wealthy corporate interests — often in secret — further tilts the playing field for those with money and power,” said Lacey Rose, a Warren spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, Singer has added a new hashtag to his tweets about the incident: #McCarthyismOfTheLeft.