National Endowment for Democracy
The National Endowment for Democracy – a Washington D.C-based non-profit funded by the USA national budget – boasts that it is “supporting freedom around the world”.
The group’s website describes its mission as being “guided by the belief that freedom is a universal human aspiration that can be realized through the development of democratic institutions, procedures, and values”.
The NED, which is publicly funded, “makes hundreds of grants each year to support pro-democracy groups in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East”. [1]
Founding of the NED
The NED was first funded by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 and shaped by an initial study undertaken by the American Political Foundation. [2]
NED was created with a view to creating a broad base of political support for the organisation. NED received funds from the US government and distributes funds to four other organisations – one each created by the Republican and Democrat parties, one created by the business community and one by the labour movement.
The four affiliated organisations are Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the Free Trade Union Institute.
Funding of foreign political parties
The NED regularly provides funding to opposition candidates in elections in countries other than the USA. According to left-wing critics, the NED only supports candidates with strong ties to the military and who support the rights of US corporations to invest in those countries. They claim that the NED does not support candidates who oppose investments by US corporations or who promise restrictions on investment rights of US corporations.
John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote that before the 1990 elections in Nicaragua “President Bush sent $9 million in NED, including a $4 million contribution to the campaign of opposition presidential candidate Violeta Chamorro”. Chamorro won. [Stauber and Rampton]
In the 1990 elections in Haiti, the NED supported Marc Bazin providing a big fraction of his total US-supported campaign funds of $36 million. Despite this funding, he only obtained 12% of the vote. Marc Bazin had earlier been a World Bank official. He was seen by most Haitians as a "front man for military and business interests", and had been prime minister during military rule, for the presidential election. [3]
In February of 2004, the NED spread political instability through financial and technical support of Anti-Aristide groups such as the Democratic Platform and the International Republican Institute, "the international arm of the Republican Party." The Democratic Platform denied supporting the armed resistance that killed scores of people and created many refugees but organized many disruptive rallies that forced Aristide to scramble in order to maintain order.[4] Combined with a freeze on aid to Haiti, silence from the administration of George Walker Bush and preparations for housing "15,000 Haitian boat people after they are interdicted on their way to Florida," the will of the United States appears to be regime change in Haiti.[5]
During 2001/2002, the NED gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to US and Venezuelan groups who organised protests and a coup d'etat against the elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. The coup happened on 11 April 2002. According to Wayne Madsen, a former intelligence officer with the US navy, US military attaches such as Lieutenant Colonel James Rogers had been in touch with members of the Venezuelan military to examine the possibility of a coup, while Roger Rondon claimed that both James Rogers and another US military officer, Ronald MacCammon, had been at the Fuerte Tiuna military headquarters with the coup leaders during the night of April 11-12. [6]
NED also funded political groups in the democracies of Western Europe in the 1980s. Its funding of French political groups such as the right-wing National Inter-University Union (associated with violent groups), was revealed by the French newspaper Libération.
During the 1990s, NED invested some money, at least about $9,000,000 [7], in Eastern Europe to support its vision of economics and the shock therapy program, leading to unemployment rates of about 20-40% in Eastern European countries.
Other criticisms
The NED has been criticised from groups on both the left and the right.
In 2003 Project Censored’s ranked the political rehabilitation of Otto Reich, Elliott Abrams and John Negroponte under George W Bush as No 11 in the years most under-reported stories. Terry Allen, from the Chicago-based In These Times, wrote in commentary accompanying the listing of the story that “using the same conduit Reagan used to fund the contras, the National Endowment for Democracy, the George W. Bush administration had funnelled money to Venezuelan 0pposition”. [8]
On the right the NED has been criticised by the Cato Institute which issued a briefing which states "NED, which also has a history of corruption and financial mismanagement, is superfluous at best and often destructive. Through the endowment, the American taxpayer has paid for special-interest groups to harass the duly elected governments of friendly countries, interfere in foreign elections, and foster the corruption of democratic movements." [9]
On its website NED notes the criticism but responds that “over the years mainstream conservative activists have been among the most outspoken advocates on behalf of the Endowment. Endorsements of NED have been offered by the leadership of such stalwart conservative organizations as the Heritage Foundation and Empower America, and favorable editorials have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times and National Review”. [10]
In the 1/20/04 State of the Union Speech of George Walker Bush, he proposed that funding for the National Endowment for Democracy be doubled and called for a greater focus on "its new work on the development of free elections, and free markets, free press, and free labor unions in the Middle East. And above all, we will finish the historic work of democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, so those nations can light the way for others, and help transform a troubled part of the world." [11]
Funding
The NED receives an annual appropriation from the U.S. budget and while a non-governmental organisation is subject to congressional oversight. In the financial year to the end of September 2002 NED had a budget of US$48.5 million. [12]
Personnel
Officers
Chairman: The Honorable Vin Weber is managing partner of Clark & Weinstock's Washington office. According to his profile “Weber provides strategic advice to institutions interested in issues before, and governmental processes of, the legislative and executive branches of the federal government”. [13]
Vice-Chair: Mr. Thomas R. Donahue, Senior Fellow Work in America Institute, which is described as a “non-profit organization dedicated to improving U.S. productivity and the quality of working life”. Donohue was Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO from 1979 to 1995. [14]
Treasurer: Mrs. Julie Finley, Founder, Board Member United States Committee on NATO and, according to the NED website, since 1997 “has served as co-chair of the Republican National Committee's major fundraising arm, Team 100”. [15]
Secretary: Mr. Matthew F. McHugh, according to the NED website “is currently the counselor to the president of the World Bank, a post he has held since 1993. Previously, Mr. McHugh has served as vice president and secretary to the Corporation at Cornell University”.
President: Carl Gershman, has been President of NED since April 1984. [16]
Directors of the Board includes Frank Charles Carlucci III of The Carlyle Group, General Wesley Kanne Clark, of venture capital company the Stephens Group, Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and Dr. Francis Fukuyama, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University.
Contacts
National Endowment for Democracy
1101 Fifteenth Street, NW, Suite 700
Washington DC, 20005
Phone: 202 293-9072
Fax 202/223-6042
Web: http://www.ned.org/
External Links
- “National Endowment for Democracy”, accessed November 18, 2003.
- David Lowe, “Idea to Reality: A Brief History of the National Endowment for Democracy”, accessed November 18, 2003.
- John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge is Good for You, Common Courage Press, Monroe Maine,1995, page 166.
- Terry Allen, “Update by Author Terry Allen’, accessed November 18, 2003.
- Barbara Conry “Loose Cannon: The National Endowment for Democracy”, Cato Institute, Policy Briefing No. 27, November 8, 1993, (accessed November 18, 2003.
- David Lowe, “Idea to Reality: A Brief History of the National Endowment for Democracy”, accessed November 18, 2003.
- National Endowment for Democracy, 2002 Independent Auditors Report, November 27, 2002, accessed November 18, 2003.
- All biographies of NED officers, directors and staff accessible from http://www.ned.org/about/who.html. Biographices are more extensive than the extracts above.
- Bob Feldman, “The Nation's NED Connection-part 1”, QuestionsQuestions, circa 2001.
- Bob Feldman, “The Nation's NED Connection—part 2”, QuestionsQuestions, circa 2001.
News Items
- Harley Sorenson, NED's feel-good name belies its corrupt intent, SFGate.com, November 17, 2003.