Last Friday the Atlantic Council, the Washington think tank chaired by Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, released a list of its foreign donors. The move came in response to a demand by 25 Republican senators ahead of a Senate vote on Hagel’s confirmation. In a letter addressed to Hagel, the Council’s president and CEO, Frederick Kempe, a former columnist at the Wall Street Journal, included the donor names as well as some details on the think tank’s ethics policies.

Kempe’s list included roughly 100 corporations and 15 governments—among them Bahrain, Jordan, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and Kazakhstan. “The Council maintains clear policies to ensure its ethical and legal operation as [an organization]…which values its credibility and integrity as a generator of creative ideas,” Kempe wrote. “All agreements with donors stipulate that the Council retains intellectual independence and control over any content.”

In his letter, Kempe said the Atlantic Council policy was to consistently and clearly disclose donations from foreign governments. But many of the names released Friday don’t appear on the Council’s list of donors at its website. Likewise, some foreign donors listed on the website, such as the governments of South Korea and Belgium, don’t appear in the letter. Neither the letter nor the website state how much money countries and corporations had given. (As a nonprofit organization, the Council doesn’t have to divulge details about where it gets its cash.)

The immediate Republican response was somewhat less than enthusiastic.The Hill spoke to an unnamed GOP senate staffer who complained that Kempe’s letter did not identify individual contributors, which Republicans had specifically requested. "We have no idea if funds came through individuals from foreign nations that could create conflicts of interest," the staffer told the newspaper. "He doesn’t have a right to keep such potential conflicts hidden."

On Sunday, James Joyner, the Council’s managing editor, took to the think tank’s website to publish a blog post entitled “The Atlantic Council, Foreign Funding, and Intellectual Independence.” “Like all organizations of its kind, the Atlantic Council has to fund its work by cultivating donors,” he wrote. “But we've always placed the integrity of our work above the preferences of our funders. Indeed, under the leadership of Hagel and Kempe, we've recognized the potential for these relationships to confer an appearance of conflict and therefore outlined detailed policies for review of foreign government funding and intellectual independence.” Hagel receives no salary from the Council; Kempe takes in about $420,000 per year, according to the group’s last tax filing.