Two of the shortcomings I mentioned about the new database that the Justice Department’s Foreign Agent Registration Unit recently put online are that not every form is available (especially the Short Forms that individual foreign agents must file), and that you can’t link to search results.

Both would be useful in providing the information that Nicole Belle asks for at the Crooks and Liars site — what exactly did former Tennessee senator and possible presidential candidate Fred Thompson do when he was a lobbyist for Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin & Kahn in the early 1990s (from Oct. 10, 1991 to Sept. 17, 1993, according to the unlinkable search result from the FARA database). A quick perusal of the firm’s supplementals show that, on Dec. 11, 1991, Thompson called John Sununu, then chief to staff to President George H.W. Bush, about the Haiti embargo. The firm’s client was Jean Bertrand Aristide, who’d been deposed a few months before. See page 30 of this form for the info on Thompson. Not exactly damning stuff, but it would still be worth going through the rest of the forms (not all of which, of course, are available online…).