Arabs' dollars buying 'stiffled silence' at Washington' think tanks

"... Michele Dunne served for nearly two decades as a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs at the State Department, including stints in Cairo and Jerusalem, and on the White House National Security Council. In 2011, she was a natural choice to become the founding director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, named after the former prime minister of Lebanon, who was assassinated in 2005.The center was created with a generous donation from Bahaa Hariri, his eldest son, and with the support of the rest of the Hariri family, (Saudi money & directives!) 

But by the summer of 2013, when Egypt’s military forcibly removed the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, Ms. Dunne soon realized there were limits to her independence. After she signed a petition and testified before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee urging the United States to suspend military aid to Egypt, calling Mr. Morsi’s ouster a “military coup,” Bahaa Hariri called the Atlantic Council to complain, executives with direct knowledge of the events said.Ms. Dunne declined to comment on the matter. But four months after the call, Ms. Dunne left the Atlantic Council..."