A cozy local bookstore nestled just east of downtown Atlanta hosted best selling author Casey Michel for a book talk on his newest release.
Author of “American Kleptocracy”, and most recently, “Foreign Agents”, Casey Michel warned the audience at his Atlanta book talk that corruption starts where we least might expect it – right under our nose, here in America.
His book, “Foreign Agents”, gives insight on how the foreign lobbying industry in America has been getting out of hand for the past several decades. Michel tells the readers that it is not an unusual occurrence for lobbyists, which can be disguised most of the time, to come up to you and make you an offer that can be hard to resist.
Michel started the night off at the Eagle Eye Bookshop by drawing from his personal experience, informing readers how he almost got caught in the middle of a large scandal involving Azerbaijan.
He read a passage from “Foreign Agents” detailing how a woman in an Azerbaijani House in Texas made him an offer for an all-expenses-paid trip to Azerbaijan, telling him that he could write however much he wants.
What he found out at the end of that offer, though, was the caveat he was waiting for. The only condition – the contents of his writings must be praising Azerbaijan.
But you don’t have to have a special license or work in the government for 20 years to uncover the truth. Or, rather, to know what is going on under your own nose.
“Anyone who has a computer can go on the Department of Justice website and look through this database,” Michel said. “You can look at what any firm is doing, how much money they’re making, so on and so forth.”
That’s what Michel decided to do when he first started, and what further prompted him to write his first book, “American Kleptocracy”.
“If you find a topic absolutely fascinating and it’s providing all of these revelations that you think other people should know about, you should be the person taking the lead on that,” Casey said.
“Whatever the topic is, it’s waiting for your voice to analyze, to write about, to publicize, and then talk to other people about at book talks like this. Maybe no one else realizes that the topic is as important as it is.”
Michel’s investigative work did not come without great pushback, though, as he told the audience.
“If you’re not making someone else upset in terms of your investigative work, then that’s not necessarily investigative journalism,” Michel said. “At the end of the day, investigative journalism is finding information, finding networks and finding payments that other people don’t want to see brought out into light.”
Peter Steffensen, an attorney from Dallas, Texas, flew to Atlanta to support his close friend and colleague. His background in law allowed him to see into just how much information people are actually unaware of, highlighting why he believes Michel’s work is important.
“One of the most important things to learn about [is] how our government functions and how some people have more access to their elected government officials than others,” Steffensen said. “To go so deep into these topics and make them accessible for so many people is really a public service to us all.”
The night concluded with a meet and greet along with a book signing of the audience’s own copies of “Foreign Agents”, which can be bought in most bookstores as well as listened to in audiobook format.
