LATIMES.COM/OPINION WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2019A
OP-ED
prepared for a sophisticated counterat-
tack. He asked me about how to write
press releases and the difference between
on the record and off: Communications- When I shifted topics to corruption
and the rule of law, he put his hands up in
the universal gesture of, “What can I do?”
I went to Ukraine only a handful of
times. Vice President Joe Biden went on
dozens of occasions. He was passionate
about Ukraine fighting corruption so it
could become a modern functioning
democracy and a member of a free and
democratic Europe. Along with other
world leaders and institutions including
the International Monetary Fund, he
made it clear that the U.S. could withhold
aid to Ukraine unless its leadership
sacked an ineffective top prosecutor for
not being tough enough on corruption.
Was it helpful that the vice president’s
son had been on the board of a company
that was investigated for corruption? No.
But Biden was campaigning against cor-
ruption wherever the Ukrainians could
find it, even if it hurt his son. Biden was
acting as an official emissary of transpar-
ent U.S. foreign policy that reflected U.S.
national interests. He wasn’t putting
American power before its support for
democracy or making aid contingent on
Ukraine’s willingness to be our malign er-
rand boy, ferreting out information on a
political opponent.
The rough transcript of the Trump-Ze-
lensky phone call represents a setback to
decades of American support for democ-
racy around the world. One of the tenets of
Putinism is to knock the U.S. off its “city
upon a hill” pedestal, to cynically suggest
that the United States and the West are as
corrupt as, well, Russia. Trump’s call is
heartbreaking because it goes some dis-
tance toward verifying that.
Richard Stengel, a former editor of
Time magazine, served in the State
Department from 2013 to 2016. His latest
book, “Information Wars: How We Lost
the Global Battle Against Disinformation
and What We Can Do About It,” will be
published next week.T
he reason President
Trump’s July 25 call
with Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky is so pro-
foundly dispiriting — apart
from its potential violation of federal cam-
paign law — is that it runs counter to the
United States’ clear national interest:
fighting corruption in Ukraine and ensur-
ing the nation’s future as an independent
liberal democracy.
When Trump withholds aid to a foreign
country while asking its leader for what
appears to be a personal political favor, he
becomes an advocate of corruption, not its
enemy. The president’s phone call has pro-
vided evidence for Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s longtime contention that
Americans are hypocrites, that we preach
the rule of law but abandon it when it’s not
in our interest.
I first went to Ukraine in the fall of 2014
for the Obama administration State De-
partment. It was six months after Putin
invaded and annexed Crimea, the south-
ernmost part of Ukraine, and sent troops
into eastern Ukraine as well. The U.S. had
just started a sanctions regime against
Russia for these violations of Ukrainian
sovereignty. I was undersecretary of State
for public diplomacy and we had noticed a
disturbing uptick of Russian disinforma-
tion about Ukraine on Twitter and other
social media platforms.
Russia’s aggression followed months of
massive protests in Kiev over its presi-
dent, Viktor Yanukovych, canceling a
trade alliance with the European Union.
The demonstrators’ “soft revolution” suc-
ceeded in ousting Yanukovych, who fled to
Russia and into the arms of his patron,
Putin. Yanukovych left behind records
that showed he’d moved billions in state
money into offshore accounts and busi-
nesses.
The U.S. wanted to keep Ukraine lean-
ing west toward freedom; Putin’s goal was
to undermine the Ukrainian revolution
and stoke divisions and disunity. Russia’s
military takeover in Crimea and eastern
Ukraine was not meant to conquer the for-
mer Soviet republic but to create a “frozen
conflict,” to render Ukraine a failed state,
and to move it back into Russia’s orbit.
I had two assignments from the Na-
tional Security Council: Help Ukraine’s in-
formation minister and its interim prime
minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, combat the
tsunami of Russian disinformation that
was dividing Ukrainians, and urge them to
address the rampant corruption that still
existed in the Kiev government. The
Ukrainians were besieged by Russian
trolls accusing pro-democracy activists of
being Nazis financed and controlled by
the United States. At the same time, the
post-revolution government was filled
with Yanukovych cronies.
Our then-ambassador to Ukraine,
Geoffrey Pyatt, was as outspoken about
fighting corruption as he was about Rus-
sia’s false narratives. If Ukraine, posi-
tioned on Europe’s eastern flank, could
not succeed as an independent democ-
racy, Pyatt thought, it put the whole post-
war experiment in jeopardy. And if our re-
sponse to Russia’s invasions was too weak
it would empower the Russian claim that,
as Pyatt put it, “you can’t put your chips
with the West and America. That they will
only disappoint you.”
The fragility of Ukrainian institutions
was brought home to me in my first meet-
ing with the 2014 government’s acting in-
formation minister. He was well aware of
the flood of Russian disinformation, in-
cluding a barrage of propaganda as-
serting that annexing Crimea was simply
returning the region to where it rightfully
belonged. But when we talked about how
to combat the Russian lies, he was far fromThe Zelensky call played into Putin’s hands
By Richard Stengel
We have been fighting
corruption in Ukraine.
Trump’s ‘perfect’ phone
call hurt the effort.
F
ollowing the brutal killingof
Saudi dissident and Washington
Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi at
Saudi Arabia’s Consulate in Istan-
bul, Turkey, one year ago, the Saudi
government became something of a toxic
commodity in American politics. Several
high-profile lobbying and public relations
firms dropped the Saudis as a client. Think
tanks, including the Brookings Institution,
severed ties with the Saudi government. Busi-
nesses pulled out of a major conference in
Riyadh shortly after Khashoggi’s death.
As the U.S. intelligence community and the
United Nations were determining that Saudi
Arabia was culpable in the killing, members of
Congress demanded accountability. Demo-
crats led the charge on a series of bills that
would have halted U.S. arms sales to the king-
dom and ended U.S. support for the Saudi-led
coalition’s disastrous war in Yemen. Republi-
cans were outraged too. Sen. Lindsey Graham
(R-S.C.), who claimed on “Fox & Friends” to
have once been Saudi Arabia’s “biggest de-
fender on the floor of the United States Sen-
ate,” announced shortly after Khashoggi’s
death that Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler,
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, “has
got to go.” The crown prince denies a role in
Khashoggi’s death; the U.N. sees credible evi-
dence warranting further investigation.
Despite the backlash directed at the king-
dom, the Saudis haven’t faced serious conse-
quences for the slaying of Khashoggi or its
slaughter of civilians in Yemen. That is thanks
in large part to one man — President Trump.
He has loudly and emphatically defended
Saudi Arabia at every opportunity. According
to a July House Oversight Committee report,
he recently considered giving Riyadh nuclear
technology without appropriate safeguards
to prevent nuclear proliferation, in part at the
behest of the chair of his inaugural committee,
Thomas J. Barrack Jr. He has also tweeted at
least a fleeting willingness to go to war with
Iran on Saudi Arabia’s behalf following the at-
tacks on Saudi oil fields, something the
American public overwhelmingly doesn’t sup-
port.
Trump’s principal argument for siding
with the Saudis has to do with the alleged
economic benefits of U.S. arms sales to the
kingdom. It all began during his May 2017 trip
to Saudi Arabia, when he touted a purported
$110-billion arms deal that would mean “jobs,
jobs, jobs” for Americans.
The deal itself, according to the Washing-
ton Post “Fact Checker,” was considerably
smaller than the administration claimed, with
much of it composed of sales already ap-
proved under the Obama administration or
speculative offers that would happen years
from now, if ever. And a report from our or-
ganization, the Center for International Pol-
icy, found the president’s claims of U.S. jobs
tied to Saudi arms deals were greatly exag-
gerated — 10 to 20 times the actual number.
The facts, however, have not prevented
Trump from vetoing a series of congressional
measures aimed at ending U.S. military sup-
port and arms sales to the region.
While Trump appears to be the command-
er in chief of Saudi Arabia’s public relations ef-
forts in the U.S., he’s far from alone. Even with
several firms abandoning the influence mach-
ine the Saudi’s had assembled before
Khashoggi’s killing, the Saudi lobby is still
represented in the U.S. by more than 20 “K
Street” firms, according to the Justice Depart-
ment. This includes influential operators
such as Squire Patton Boggs and Brownstein
Hyatt Farber Schreck — whom the Saudis
paid over $1 million on Oct. 4, 2018, just two
days after Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi
Consulate — and the McKeon Group, whose
namesake, former Rep. Howard “Buck”
McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), was once the
chairman of the House Armed Services Com-
mittee.
Saudi Arabia has also dramatically in-
creased funding to many of the lobbying and
public relations firms that stayed with them
post-Khashoggi. In fact, one firm — Qorvis
Communications, the Saudis’ longtime pub-
lic relations gurus in America — received
nearly $18 million from the kingdom in just the
first three months after Khashoggi’s death,
more than most countries spend on all of their
lobbying activities for an entire year. Washing-
ton lobbyists acting as agents of Saudi Arabia
have also continued to give lavishly to House
and Senate campaigns, in some cases on the
same day they met with members of Congress
or their staffs to discuss the kingdom.
All of this has served a critical function for
the Saudi regime: maintaining enough sup-
port in Congress to ensure Trump’s vetoes ar-
en’t overridden, which keeps the U.S. govern-
ment from punishing the Saudis for Khashog-
gi’s death.
Trump’s protection of Saudi Arabia is at
best a temporary shield. Veterans, peace and
human rights groups, and other interest
groups have been pushing Congress to block
U.S. military support for the kingdom by in-
voking provisions of the War Powers Resolu-
tion and making amendments to the National
Defense Authorization Act. Human rights or-
ganizations also have pushed beneficiaries of
Mohammed bin Salman’s private charity —
among them the New York Public Library and
the United Nations — to abandon their con-
nection to the foundation, which the crown
prince uses as a propaganda platform.
Yet, one year after Khashoggi’s killing, and
4½ years into the brutal Saudi-led interven-
tion in Yemen, Congress and the president
have yet to hold Saudi Arabia accountable.
That cannot be allowed to stand. On the anni-
versary of Khashoggi’s murder, we owe it to
him to stand up to the Saudi lobby and the
president, and once and for all punish the
Saudi government for what it has done.Ben Freemanis director of the Foreign
Influence Transparency Initiative at the
Center for International Policy. William D.
Hartungruns the center’s Arms and
Security Project.How Trump
has protected
Saudi Arabia
By Ben Freeman
and William D. HartungI
don’t know anyone whois not
frustrated, saddened and appalled
by our homelessness crisis.
The tent cities, the garbage-
strewn sidewalks, the plein-air bicy-
cle chop shops — they’re all signs of a
great social apocalypse.
We have failed on such a massive scale.
Because of that, I simply cannot hold
it against people who live in cars or vans.
For many homeowners in neighbor-
hoods such as Venice, vehicle dwellers are
a scourge. For a homeless man named
Gary Gallerie, they presented a business
opportunity.
Some years ago, Gallerie, a former
beer truck driver and World Series of
Poker dealer, decided to buy cheap vans
and rent them to people who were home-
less or unable to afford apartments.
The idea came to him after the van of
some friends was impounded.
He bought their van at auction, and
made them a deal: If they paid him a
small monthly amount for 22 months,
they could have the van back. After 17
months, though, they found an apart-
ment. “I made out like a champ,” Gallerie,
70, told me late Friday afternoon as we sat
on the Venice boardwalk. “I got the rent
for 17 months, and I got the van. I said,
‘Wow, what a good way to get people off
the street, I’ll just rent ’em vans.’ ”
The van lord of Venice was in business.
He took out an $8,500 credit card loan
and started buying old vans, mostly from
private parties.
His fleet numbers 13. Nine are parked
in Venice in the funky residential neigh-
borhood between Pacific Avenue and
Abbot Kinney Boulevard. Monthly rents
range from $150 a month to $300.
Most of his vans have little stickers on
the back windows: “Van Life Is Not a
Crime.”
“I’ve identified all mine,” he told me. “I
don’t care if the neighbors know which
ones are my vans. My vans are clean vans.
They are not the ones that have all the
garbage around them.”
In fact, the stickers were how I tracked
him down after reading about his busi-
ness in the Santa Monica Daily Press.
On Friday, I rode my bike around
Venice, looking for his stickers. I found
one of his renters, who called Gallerie for
me. Gallerie was hanging out on the
boardwalk, so I biked over and met up
with him.
He was remarkably open with me
about his business. He’s been living hap-
pily in vehicles for 15 years, although it’s
been hell on his love life.
“Once a woman finds out I live in my
van,” he said, “it’s over. Absolutely over.”
He keeps a low profile, sweeps the
streets, and tries not to annoy the resi-
dents.
He prefers single renters; couples, he
said, fight too much. Tenants come to him
from Craigslist, or by word of mouth. He
has a five-person waiting list right now, he
said, and he will evict renters who bother
the neighbors or fail to keep the area
around the van clean.
“One guy was hanging his clothes to
dry in the trees next to the van. After two
warnings, I said, ‘You do it again, you’re
out.’” (His renters do not have traditional
tenants’ rights; they sign no contracts.)
Gallerie keeps the ignition keys and
gives tenants door keys only. Cars can be
considered abandoned if they stay in the
same spot for more than 72 hours, so he
moves the vans every three or four days to
accommodate the law. In Venice, street
cleaning is on Mondays and Tuesdays, so
he moves each van to avoid tickets.
They all have current registrations
and insurance.
There’s just one problem: The busi-
ness is not legal.::
If you rent something out for human
habitation, it has to meet some basic
requirements. Gallerie’s vans don’t have
toilets or running water. He takes out the
passenger seats and installs new queen-
size mattresses, and that’s about it for
amenities.
“You can’t rent out something for
humans to sleep in if it doesn’t have ac-
cess to sanitation. I don’t believe a five-
gallon bucket meets the criteria,” said
Emily Uyeda Kantrim, director of Safe
Parking L.A., which helps arrange
overnight parking for about 125 vehicles a
night in eight different lots spread out
around the city. Vehicles are allowed to
park from 8:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.
By some estimates, more than a quar-
ter of the homeless in Los Angeles County
— about 15,700 people — are living in cars,
vans, campers and recreational vehicles,
even though it’s illegal to live and sleep in
a vehicle on most Los Angeles streets.
There are some exceptions; these are
called “green streets.” Safe Parking L.A.
has a link on its website to the city’s green
streets. Also, she said, the City Council
may consider experimenting with per-
mits that would allow people to live in
vehicles. But any program like that would
have to be created in tandem with some
kind of case management, or next-step
planning, with the goal of getting the
homeless into housing eventually.
None of Gallerie’s vans are on greenstreets, but it’s difficult to prove someone
is sleeping in a van, and frankly, police
have better things to do than roust them.
Itried to interview some of Gallerie’s
tenants, but most were reluctant to give
me their names or were uncomfortable
telling me their stories.
One, Mason Jones, 26, told me he’d
found Gallerie’s van business on
Craigslist and decided he could save
money while pursuing a music career. He
buys meals at Whole Foods and showers
at his gym. “If you told me three years ago
I’d be living in a van, I would have said you
are crazy,” Jones said. “Honest to God, it’s
a pretty pleasurable experience.”
Another tenant, who gave only her
first name, Lynn, told me that she’d been
living under a tarp when she met Gallerie.
“Gary saved me,” she said. “I prayed to
God, that’s how I found him.”::In Venice, residents have been waging
a quiet war against Gallerie’s vans.
Sometimes, they leave nasty notes on
windshields. One person has taken to
blacking out the word “not” on Gallerie’s
van stickers, so they read “Van Life Is a
Crime.” Someone — perhaps the same
culprit — has been slapping “Trump
2020” stickers on the vans.
Gallerie is unfazed. “The bottom line is
I’ve gotten 13 people off the street,” he
said. “How many other people have got-
ten just one person off the street?”
I asked Kantrim whether she agreed.
“What Gary is doing is one of the few
ways that people move from the street
into a vehicle,” she said. “Then, the big
question is, will they be able to move from
the vehicle back into housing? If the city is
going to figure out street permitting, they
should partner with someone like Gary.
We need all types of things working here.”
We do. The van lord’s solution is not
optimal; there is something inevitable
about it, though@AbcarianLATOne man’s illegal strategy for
combatting homelessness
GARY GALLERIEwith one of the 13 vans he owns. Gallerie parks the vehi-
cles in the Venice area and rents them to people to live in, not to drive.Al SeibLos Angeles Times