Cigarette makers have not been the only beneficiary of such tactics.

In 2009, health insurers contributed $86.2 million to the chamber to fight President Obama’s health care proposal. The chamber began a sprawling ad campaign criticizing the legislation, though the insurers’ financial backing only came to light the next year.

Complications have arisen in the chamber’s new approach.

Its bylaws say the board “shall determine the eligibility and appropriateness of all proposals to be considered and acted upon.” But under Mr. Donohue, the chamber’s board swelled to more than 100 seats, meaning, in practicality, many decisions are subordinated to committees or affiliated groups.

Chamber officials said no board vote took place before the organization sought to discourage foreign governments from passing antismoking laws.

“We were not aware of these lobbying efforts, and we oppose efforts to promote tobacco use,” said Brooke Thurston, a spokeswoman for Steward Health Care of Boston, a hospital group on the chamber board.

Two insurance giants on the chamber’s board, Anthem and the Health Care Service Corporation, have said little about the chamber’s tobacco industry ties.

“In the long run, they may find it distasteful and against their quoted values for the chamber to be doing what it is doing abroad on tobacco, but they’ll hold their nose,” said Wendell Potter, an outspoken former communications executive for Cigna, another insurer. “They do it because they know the chamber can be very helpful to them at some point down the road.”

Blair Latoff Holmes, the chamber’s spokeswoman, said in an email that “the premise that the chamber has mounted a ‘campaign’ to oppose efforts to discourage smoking simply isn’t true.”