Foreign Agents Registration Act - Prominent Cases

Prominent Cases

There have been several dozen criminal prosecutions and civil cases under the Act. Among the most prominent are:

• United States v. Peace Information Center (1951) which claimed that the peace organization led by Pan-Africanist W. E. B. Du Bois was spreading propaganda as an agent of foreign governments. The trial judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence.
• United States v. John Joseph Frank (D.D.C. 1959) where Frank's lack of registration as an agent of the Dominican Republic was aggravated by the fact that the defendant had been notified by letter of his burden to register.
• United States v. Park Tong-Sun (D.D.C. 1977) involved South Korea and was ended by a plea bargain.
• Attorney General v. Irish Northern Aid Committee (1981) in which the government sought to compel the committee and already registered under FARA, to register more specifically as an agent of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The committee, based in Belfast, Ireland which collected money from American supporters, denied a relationship with the IRA and claimed selective prosecution was based on the Attorney General's hostility towards their beliefs. While failing to do so in 1972, in May 1981, the U.S. Department of Justice won a court case forcing the committee to register with the IRA as its foreign principal, but the committee was allowed to include a written disclaimer against the court ruling.
• Attorney General v. The Irish People, Inc. (1986) in which the court found that the Irish Northern Aid Committee’s publication The Irish People also must register under the Act and with the IRA as its foreign principle.
• United States v. McGoff: 831 F.2d 1071 (D.C. Cir. 1987) shortened the statute of limitations for agents who refuse to register, contrary to the express language in Section 8(e) of the Act.
• "Cuban Five" (1998-2000) five Cuban intelligence officers were convicted of acting as an agents of a foreign government under FARA, as well as various conspiracy charges after entering the United States to spy on the U.S. Southern Command and various Cuban-American groups thought to be committing terrorist acts in Cuba.
• United States v. Samir A. Vincent (2005) included a charge of conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government in the "oil-for-food" scandal helping Saddam Hussein's government. Samir was fined $300,000 and sentenced to probation.
• Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, a Pakistani from Kashmir, was arrested in 2011 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for lobbying secretly for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. He later pled guilty to tax evasion and making false statements.