That cash has gone to folks like former Republican U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts, as well as R&R Partners, the firm famous for the “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” campaign. And a hunk of South Sudan’s money went to lobbying giant Podesta Group, led by high-profile Democratic Party fundraiser Tony Podesta.

Podesta’s brother, John Podesta, is Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, and also led President Obama’s transition team and served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. Among the Podesta operatives who worked on the South Sudan account: former high-level officials of Bill Clinton’s Defense Department and Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

It’s all perfectly legal—or almost all of it, anyway. There are questions about whether everyone who flakked for South Sudan complied with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires foreign governments and other foreign actors to detail how they’re attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy and laws.

Beyond that, though, a variety of critics contend that South Sudan’s relationships with U.S. power brokers are just the latest distasteful symptom of how Washington really functions. As the Center for Public Integrity has previously reported, countries with the worst human rights records have increasingly sought help from Washington lobbyists and PR professionals. In fact, South Sudan was a relatively small player among a boatload of troubled nations that together inked more than $168 million worth of U.S. lobbying and PR contracts from 2010 to 2015.

Regardless of human rights abuses, if you have the cash, it’s likely there’s a firm happy to smooth the rough edges and represent your interests in the hallways of the State Department or corridors of Capitol Hill. For the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless or even the tortured or families of the dead, scoring meetings with lawmakers or airing grievances in the nation’s capital is a far more daunting assignment.

Divisions split around ethnicities, pitting the Nuer groups, like those loyal to Machar, against Dinkas, like Kiir and his forces. In an August 2015 peace agreement, both sides agreed to a unified government and end to warfare, but promises were repeatedly broken. Most recently, in April, Vice President Machar made a much-delayed return to the capital of Juba, a provision of the peace deal, but he has been living in a makeshift camp with armed soldiers and a supply of weapons. Kiir and Machar met to discuss further implementation of the peace agreement last month, but the situation remains volatile. 

Against that backdrop, Washington has struggled to figure just what to do in regard to the situation in South Sudan.

The U.S. has spent $1.6 billion since the war began in December 2013 on humanitarian aid for the South Sudanese. In 2014, President Barack Obama and the Treasury Department authorized modest, targeted sanctions to freeze assets and halt travel of two low-level military commanders from either side of the conflict. In July 2015, the U.N. Security Council approved the addition of six individuals to its sanctions list in order to freeze assets and ban travel. The United States then added two of the six individuals to its sanctions list.

But various advocacy groups and some in Congress believe that far more forceful U.S. action is required, especially against Kiir and the sitting government; they have repeatedly cited tougher sanctions and an arms embargo as potential tools to address the conflict in South Sudan.

Such sanctions, if strictly enforced, could create leverage over warring parties and halt the efforts of military commanders who are “perpetuating the conflict,” said Ian Schwab, director of advocacy and impact strategy for the Enough Project. The nonprofit conducts field research and makes policy recommendations on global issues relating to genocide and mass atrocities.

In a recent op-ed, U.S. Reps. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., and Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., acknowledge that an arms embargo would be belated but they encourage it as a way to “blunt the fighting in the medium term and put warring parties on notice that they cannot continue ignoring the peace agreement.”

U.S. Rep. Thomas Rooney, R-Fla., sponsored legislation on South Sudan last July to bring attention to the conflict and support actions like an arms embargo or expanded sanctions on warring parties. The legislation hasn’t moved since it was referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations in August 2015.

At an appropriations hearing in February, Rooney asked Secretary of State John Kerry about U.S. plans with the international community to impose such an arms embargo and tougher sanctions on “individuals who’ve committed violations of international humanitarian and human rights law” in South Sudan.

“I don’t think South Sudan has a better friend than the United States,” Kerry responded, adding that if the nation’s leaders continue to fail on delivering its commitments in the peace agreement, “the international community is absolutely prepared” for individual sanctions.

Close to home

For Mayom Bol Achuk, it’s all a little more personal.

He recently held an outdated gold iPhone 3 as he recounted the details of his life — bearing witness to a long-ago civil war in his home country, spending a decade in a refugee camp as a Sudanese “Lost Boy” and later being chosen for resettlement in the United States, where he attended college and graduate school.

His friends have joked with him about the old phone, he says, but he won’t give it up — because it holds photographic proof of violent atrocities he witnessed in Sudan and helped save his life after he returned there.

That was in the summer of 2012, when Achuk went back to South Sudan to work for a USAID-funded agricultural program, in part to confront the memories of his past that haunted him “I feel like the only way to get rid of these bad memories,” he said, “is to go back home and get reconnected with my people and the land.”

Spin doctors

That South Sudan government press release, circulated last July, came from a firm called R&R Partners, a Las Vegas-based marketing and lobbying agency with 330 employees and offices in nine cities, including Washington. The firm is best known for coining that promotional phrase, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

The firm is led by Billy Vassiliadis, a longtime friend and PR consultant for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. His profile on the R&R website begins with a quote from The New York Times: “Every dream needs a merchant, every myth a mythmaker. In Las Vegas, that job falls to Billy Vassiliadis.” The website profile goes on to say that Vassiliadis has been “swaying opinions, shaping public policy and persuading the hard to persuade … for more than 30 years.”

Vassiliadis said he was not personally involved in the South Sudan contract, but in addition to helping South Sudan, his firm has also worked for the Indonesian government, Sri Lanka, Boeing and Busch Gardens. The firm’s website mentions that R&R has worked in West Central Africa, but doesn’t mention South Sudan by name.

R&R nevertheless agreed to “develop a plan to heighten the visibility and positive image of the Government of the Republic of South Sudan in the United States,” a Center for Public Integrity review of the firm’s contract with South Sudan indicates.

R&R’s pro-South Sudan public outreach plan included communicating with nonprofits and U.S. government officials. The firm’s consultants contacted dozens of members of Congress, congressional staff, State Department officials, think tanks and nonprofits to discuss the issues of sanctions and the peace process, disclosures show.

“Sanctions only serve to weaken peace efforts and demoralize ambitions of the elected government,” reads a press release that R&R Partners prepared for South Sudan.

The poverty-stricken nation paid R&R Partners $900,000. That’s more than any other public relations firm South Sudan employed for communications designed to boost its image, secure financial aid and investment and discourage punitive measures by the U.S. government. The contract, which began in January 2015, ended at the close of 2015, though documents show that South Sudan still owes R&R another $900,000 payment.

R&R also set up a now-defunct social media campaign around the slogan “Stand up South Sudan,” on Twitter, describing the account as “a voice for the people and the Republic of South Sudan … focused on achieving peace and prosperity.”

Firm founder and chairman J.C. Watts Jr. is a former star quarterback at the University of Oklahoma who was considered an up-and-coming star in Republican political circles during his eight years representing Oklahoma’s 4th District in Congress, from 1995 to 2003.

The Watts Partners website does not mention South Sudan. And the firm submitted required disclosures to the Justice Department only after the Center for Public Integrity inquired about the relationship. Filings showed that Watts Partners met with lawmakers, State Department officials and nonprofits to discuss sanctions and U.S.-South Sudan relations.

Steve Pruitt, a senior partner at Watts Partners who worked with South Sudan, said the goal of the contract was “to help the government develop and increase communications with U.S. policymakers” concerning humanitarian aid and peace talks.

The contract was successful, he said, because in the end, parties signed the August peace agreement. And as for concerns over human rights violations, Pruitt said he was unaware of the government’s and opposition’s involvement in such acts.

“I have no direct knowledge on the part of either party as to what kind of atrocities, if you will, were being perpetrated,” he said. “I really can’t speak to that. I think our whole objective was to use our knowledge of the U.S. system and resources to help bring peace, and I think that’s what we focused on.”

The list goes on. KRL International began working on behalf of South Sudan in February 2014 to provide “a communications and advocacy program in support of efforts to consolidate peace, reconciliation and the development of priorities,” according to the contract.

The company describes itself online as a boutique consulting firm that tries to “bridge the divide between the United States and the world’s emerging markets.” Headed by longtime international consultant K. Riva Levinson, other KRL International clients include the government of Liberia, for which the firm writes that it has “sustained an aggressive advocacy effort” on its website.

Working on the South Sudan account was Eric Chinje, a Cameroonian national, who formerly worked for the World Bank. The contract cost South Sudan $600,000 and ended in May 2015.

KRL International was first introduced to its client in November 2013 before the outbreak of war, when South Sudan invited the firm to its country, KRL’s managing director Chris Beatty said in an email. The firm “returned to the country in February 2014, at the height of the conflict, to support mediating efforts to consolidate peace and reconciliation” Beatty continued. He did not respond to questions about human rights concerns in South Sudan.

The super-connected Podesta Group also worked for South Sudan, collecting $480,000 for its representation from March 2014 to December 2015, disclosures show. In regard to its global work, the firm’s website says it “knows where to go, who to talk to and what makes them listen.” One of the services offered by its global group is “reputation management.”

The company provided research, communicated with the press and lawmakers and counseled South Sudan on strengthening its ties to the U.S., the contract shows. In its outreach, the firm contacted dozens of members of Congress, State Department officials, nonprofits and newspapers, meeting with several in person to discuss U.S.-South Sudan relations.

Firm leader Tony Podesta, one of the Democratic party’s more active fundraisers over the years, has through March 31 helped Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign raise nearly a quarter-million dollars, federal records show.

The Clinton campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Shortly after South Sudan gained independence, then-secretary Clinton welcomed the new government, saying, “We will work with you, we will stand with you, we will support you.” But her tenure as secretary ended in early 2013, 10 months before factional fighting broke out.

Podesta Group employees working on the account included a number of former high-ranking government advisers and Washington insiders.

Seeking help in DC

But South Sudan’s lobbying is far from an isolated phenomenon. Egypt turned to Glover Park Group for help after cutbacks to military aid in late 2013 that came about because of the Obama administration’s disappointment in the slow progress toward democratization and fair elections. Last year with the help of Podesta Group, Azerbaijan successfully turned its image around from human rights abuser to friend of the United States.

Countries with the worst human rights records have increasingly sought Washington lobbyists and PR professionals since 2010, the Center for Public Integrity reported in December.

More than $168 million worth of contracts for lobbying was expended on behalf of troubled nations from 2010 to 2015. Russia and Saudi Arabia far outspent most countries on representation with more than $40 million each worth of contracts during that period. Firms like Ketchum, Qorvis/MSLGroup, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and Squire Patton Boggs topped the list of those taking work from the governments with the worst human rights records. Other countries that spent millions to try to influence public opinion and policy included Egypt, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Iraq and Azerbaijan.

Toby Moffett, a former congressman and current lobbyist for Mayer Brown, has years of experience representing foreign nations on Capitol Hill. For nations that are still developing or face problems like human rights violations, navigating Washington can be difficult, he said.

“The more of a developing country that you are, the more difficult it is to cut through the noise,” he said of D.C.

At his firm, Moffett asserted, clients must pass a tough screening process that examines how work would be paid for and whether there’s been progress made on any problems. However, “there’s firms that’ll do virtually anything,” he said.

And taking on the worst offenders might be worth it for some.

“I think the really bad guys have to pay a premium,” Moffett said.

Aid workers targeted

Even on Capitol Hill, where seemingly every moneyed special interest is vigorously represented, there have been moments of exasperation.

At a December hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, experts from USAID and the State Department, after some hesitation, confirmed that South Sudanese government forces, as well as the opposition, had intentionally targeted aid workers in violence.

“You ought to be embarrassed,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told representatives there from the South Sudanese Embassy.

Corker asked how a nation could accept more than $1 billion in aid from the United States while targeting aid workers. He then held up a press release, saying, “I would be embarrassed to send out the kind of press release that you sent out prior to this hearing.”

The press release had been sent to nearly 20 staff members on Capitol Hill and in the State Department just before the hearing. It praised President Kiir as a “hero” and blamed humanitarian challenges on a “lack of funds.” It also asked the U.S. and others to “redouble its efforts” to support South Sudan.

A Capitol Hill staffer who shared the press release with the Center for Public Integrity said there was no indication that a PR or lobbying firm was involved in the writing or distribution of the document.

But filings that the Center for Public Integrity requested from the Department of Justice reveal its creators in an email: “The Podesta Group provides representation to the government of the Republic of South Sudan.”

Patrick Madden of WAMU-FM 88.5, a Washington, D.C.-based National Public Radio affiliate, contributed to this report.

Versions of this story appear on Vice News and WAMU-FM 88.5. Listen to WAMU's radio report here.