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***Magda Hassan*** · 25-07-2009, 05:30 AM

[B][size=12] The Technique of a Coup d'État[/SIZE][/B]

by John Laughland
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In recent years, a number of "revolutions" have broken out all over the world.
1. Georgia
In November 2003, the president of Georgia Edward Shevardnadze was overthrown following demonstrations, marches and allegations that the parliamentary elections had been rigged.
2. Ukraine
In November 2004, the "Orange Revolution" of demonstrations started in Ukraine as the same allegations were made, that elections had been rigged.
The result was that country was ripped away from its previous geopolitical role as a bridge between East and West, and put it on the path to becoming a fully-fledged member of NATO and the EU. Considering that Kievan Rus is the first Russian state, and that Ukraine has now been turned against Russia, this is a historic achievement. But then, as George Bush said, "You are either with us or against us." Although Ukraine had sent troops to Iraq, it was evidently considered too friendly to Moscow.
3. Lebanon
Shortly after the US and the UN declared that Syrian troops had to be removed from Lebanon, and following the assassination of Rafik Hariri, demonstrations in Beirut were presented as "the Cedar Revolution." An enormous counter-demonstration by Hezbollah, which is the largest political party in Syria, was effectively ignored while the TV replayed endlessly the image of the anti-Syrian crowd. In one particularly egregious case of Orwellian double-think, the BBC explained to its viewers that "Hezbollah, the biggest political party in Lebanon, is so far the only dissenting voice which wants the Syrians to stay." How can the majority be "a dissenting voice"?
4. Kyrgyzstan
After the "revolutions" in Georgia and Ukraine, many predicted that the same wave of "revolutions" would extend to the former Soviet states of Central Asia. So it was to be. Commentators seemed divided on what colour to label the uprising in Bishkek – was it a "lemon" revolution or a "tulip" revolution? They could not make up their minds. But on one thing, everyone was in agreement: revolutions are cool, even when they are violent. The Kyrgyz president, Askar Akayev, was overthrown on 24th March 2005 and protesters stormed and ransacked the presidential palace.
5. Uzbekistan
When armed rebels seized government buildings, sprung prisoners from gaol and took hostages on the night of 12th–13th May in the Uzbek city of Andijan (located in the Ferghana Valley, where the unrest had also started in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan) the police and army surrounded the rebels and a long standoff ensued. Negotiations were undertaken with the rebels, who kept increasing their demands. When government forces started to move on the rebels, the resulting fighting killed some 160 people including over 30 members of the police and army. Yet the Western media immediately misrepresented this violent confrontation, claiming that government forces had opened fire on unarmed protesters – "the people."
This constantly repeated myth of popular rebellion against a dictatorial government is popular on both the Left and the Right of the political spectrum. Previously, the myth of revolution was obviously the preserve of the Left. But when the violent putsch occurred in Kygyrzstan, The Times enthused about how the scenes in Bishkek reminded him of Eisenstein films about the Bolshevik revolution, The Daily Telegraph extolled the "power to the people," and the Financial Times used a well-known Maoist metaphor when it praised Kyrgyzstan’s "long march to freedom."
One of the key elements behind this myth is obviously that "the people" are behind the events, and that they are spontaneous. In fact, of course, they are often very highly organised operations, often deliberately staged for the media, and usually funded and controlled by transnational networks of so-called non-governmental organisations which are in turn instruments of Western power.
1. The literature on coups d’état
The survival of the myth of spontaneous popular revolution is depressing in view of the ample literature on the coup d’état, and on the main factors and tactics by which to bring one about.
It was, of course, Lenin who developed the organisational structure for overthrowing a regime which we now know as a political party. He differed from Marx in that he did not think that historical change was the result of ineluctable anonymous forces, but that it had to be worked for.

But it was probably Curzio Malaparte’s Technique of a Coup d’état which first gave very famous expression to these ideas. Published in 1931, this book presents regime change as just that – a technique. Malaparte explicitly took issue with those who thought that regime change happened on its own. In fact, he starts the book by recounting a discussion between diplomats in Warsaw in the summer of 1920: Poland had been invaded by Trostky’s Red Army (Poland having itself invaded the Soviet Union, capturing Kiev in April 1920) and the Bolsheviks were at the gates of Warsaw. The debate was between the British minister in Warsaw, Sir Horace Rumbold, and the Papal nuncio, Monsignor Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti – the man who was elected Pope as Pius XI two years later. The Englishman said that the internal political situation in Poland was so chaotic that a revolution was inevitable, and that the diplomatic corps therefore should flee the capital and go to Posen (Poznán). The Papal Nuncio disagreed, insisting that a revolution was just as possible in a civilised country like England, Holland or Switzerland as in a country in a state of anarchy. Naturally the Englishman was outraged at the idea that a revolution could ever break out in England. "Oh never!" he exclaimed – and was proved wrong because no revolution did break out in Poland, according to Malaparte because the revolutionary forces were simply not well organised enough.
This anecdote allows Malaparte to discuss the differences between Lenin and Trotsky, two practitioners of the coup d’état/revolution. Malaparte shows that the future Pope was right and that it was wrong to say that pre-conditions were necessary for a revolution to occur. For Malaparte, as for Trotsky, regime change could be promoted in any country, including the stable democracies of Western Europe, providing that there was a sufficiently determined body of men determined to achieve it.
2. Manufacturing consent
This brings us onto a second body of literature, concerning the manipulation of the media. Malaparte himself does not discuss this aspect but it is (a) of huge importance and (b) clearly a subset of the technique of a coup d’état in the way regime change is practised today. So important, indeed, is the control of the media during regime change that one of the main characteristics of these revolutions is the creation of a virtual reality. Control of this reality is itself an instrument of power, which is why in classic coups in a banana republic the first thing that the revolutionaries seize is the radio station.
People experience a strong psychological reluctance to accept that political events today are deliberately manipulated. This reluctance is itself a product of the ideology of the information age, which flatters people’s vanity and encourages them to believe that they have access to huge amounts of information. In fact, the apparent multifarious nature of modern media information hides an extreme paucity of original sources, rather as a street of restaurants on a Greek waterfront can hide the reality of a single kitchen at the back. News reports of major events very often come from a single source, usually a wire agency, and even authoritative news outlets like the BBC simply recycle information which they have received from these agencies, presenting it as their own. BBC correspondents are often sitting in their hotel rooms when they send despatches, very often simply reading back to the studio in London information they have been given by their colleagues back home off the wire. A second factor which explains the reluctance to believe in media manipulation is connected with the feeling of omniscience which the mass media age likes to flatter: to rubbish news reports as manipulated is to tell people that they are gullible, and this is not a pleasant message to receive.
There are many elements to media manipulation. One of the most important is political iconography. This is a very important instrument for promoting the legitimacy of regimes which have seized power through revolution. One only need think of such iconic events as the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789, the storming of the Winter Palace during the October revolution in 1917, or Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922, to see that events can be elevated into almost eternal sources of legitimacy.
However, the importance of political imagery goes far beyond the invention of a simple emblem for each revolution. It involves a far deeper control of the media, and generally this control needs to be exercised over a long period of time, not just at the moment of regime change itself. It is essential indeed, for the official party line to be repeated ad nauseam. A feature of today’s mass media culture which many dissidents lazily and wrongly denounce as "totalitarian" is precisely that dissenting views may be expressed and published, but this is precisely because, being mere drops in the ocean, they are never a threat to the tide of propaganda.
2a. Willi Münzenberg
One of the modern masters of such media control was the German Communist from whom Joseph Goebbels learned his trade, Willi Münzenberg. Münzenberg was not only the inventor of spin, he was also the first person who perfected the art of creating a network of opinion-forming journalists who propagated views which were germane to the needs of the Communist Party in Germany and to the Soviet Union. He also made a huge fortune in the process, since he amassed a considerable media empire from which he creamed off the profits.
Münzenberg was intimately involved with the Communist project from the very beginning. He belonged to Lenin’s circle in Zurich, and in 1917 accompanied the future leader of the Bolshevik revolution to the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, from whence Lenin was transported in a sealed train, and with the help of the German imperial authorities, to the Finland Station in St. Petersburg. Lenin then called on Münzenberg to combat the appalling publicity generated in 1921 when 25 million peasants in the Volga region started to suffer from the famine which swept across the newly created Soviet state. Münzenberg, who had by then returned to Berlin, where he was later elected to the Reichstag as a Communist deputy, was charged with setting up a bogus workers’ charity, the Foreign Committee for the Organisation of Worker Relief for the Hungry in Soviet Russia, whose purpose was to pretend to the world that humanitarian relief was coming from sources other than Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration. Lenin feared not only that Hoover would use his humanitarian aid project to send spies into the USSR (which he did) but also, perhaps even more importantly, that the world’s first Communist state would be fatally damaged by the negative publicity of seeing capitalist America come to its aid within a few years of the revolution.
After having cut his teeth on "selling" the death of millions of people at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Münzenberg turned his attention to more general propaganda activities. He amassed a large media empire, known as "the Münzenberg trust," which owned two mass circulation dailies in Germany, a mass circulation weekly, and which had interests in scores of other publications around the world. His greatest coups were to mobilise world opinion against America over the Sacco-Vanzetti trial (that of two anarchist Italian immigrants who were sentenced to death for murder in Massachusetts in 1921) and to counteract the Nazis’ claim in 1933 that the Reichstag fire was the result of a Communist conspiracy. The Nazis, it will be remembered, used the fire to justify mass arrests and executions against Communists, even though it now appears that the fire genuinely was started on his own by the man arrested in the building at the time, the lone arsonist Martinus van der Lubbe. Münzenberg actually managed to convince large sections of public opinion of the equal but opposite untruth to that peddled by the Nazis, namely that the Nazis had started the fire themselves in order to have a pretext for removing their main enemies.

The key relevance of Münzenberg for our own day is this: he understood the key importance of influencing opinion-formers. He targeted especially intellectuals, taking the view that intellectuals were especially easy to influence because they were so vain. His contacts included many of the great literary figures of the 1930s, a large number of whom were encouraged by him to support the Republicans in the Spanish civil war and to make that into a cause-célèbre of Communist anti-fascism. Münzenberg’s tactics are of primary importance to the manipulation of opinion in today’s New World Order. More then ever before, so-called "experts" constantly pop up on our TV screens to explain what is happening, and they are always vehicles for the official party line. They are controlled in various ways, usually by money or by flattery.
2b. Psychology and the manipulation of opinion
There is a second body of literature, which makes a slightly different point from the specific technique which Münzenberg perfected. This concerns the way in which people can be made to react in certain collective ways by psychological stimuli. Perhaps the first major theoretician of this was Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, whose book Propaganda in 1928 said that it was entirely natural and right for governments to organise public opinion for political purposes. The opening chapter of his book has the revealing title – "Organising chaos" – and Bernays writes,

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised opinions and habits of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. [my italics]
(The text continues: "We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.")

Bernays says that, very often, the members of this invisible government do not even know who the other members are. Propaganda, he says, is the only way to prevent public opinion descending into dissonant chaos. Bernays continued to work on this theme after the war, editing "Engineering consent" in 1955, a title to which Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky alluded when they published their seminal Manufacturing Consent in 1988. The connection with Freud is important because, as we shall see later, psychology is an extremely important tool in influencing public opinion. Two of the contributors to "Engineering consent" make the point that every leader must play on basic human emotions in order to manipulate public opinion. For instance, Doris E. Fleischmann and Howard Walden Cutler write,

Self-preservation, ambition, pride, hunger, love of family and children, patriotism, imitativeness, the desire to be a leader, love of play – these and other drives are the psychological raw materials which every leader must take into account in his endeavour to win the public to his point of view … To maintain their self-assurance, most people need to feel certain that whatever they believe about anything is true.

This was what Willi Münzenberg understood – the basic human urge for people to believe what they want to believe. Thomas Mann alluded to it when he attributed the rise of Hitler to the collective desire of the German people for "a fairy tale" over the ugly truths of reality.
Other books worth mentioning in this regard concern not so much modern electronic propaganda but the more general psychology of crowds. The classics in this regard are Gustave Le Bon’s work The Psychology of Crowds (1895), Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power (Masse und Macht) (1980); and Serge Tchakhotine’s Le viol des foules par la propagande politique (1939). All these books draw heavily on psychology and anthropology. There is also the magnificent oeuvre of one of my favourite writers, the anthropologist René Girard, whose writings on the logic of imitation (mimesis), and on collective acts of violence, are excellent tools for understanding why it is that public opinion is so easily motivated to support war and other forms of political violence.
2c. The technique of opinion-forming

After the war, many of the techniques perfected by the Communist Münzenberg were adopted by the Americans, as has been magnificently documented by Frances Stonor Saunders’ excellent work, Who Paid the Piper?, published in America under the title The Cultural Cold War.
In minute detail, Stonor Saunders explains how, as the Cold War started, the Americans and the British started up a massive covert operation to fund anti-communist intellectuals. The key point is that much of their attention and activity was directed at left-wingers, in many cases Trotskyites who had abandoned their support for the Soviet Union only in 1939, when Stalin signed his non-aggression pact with Hitler, and in many cases people who had previously worked for Münzenberg. Many of the figures who were at this juncture between Communism and the CIA at the beginning of the cold war were future neo-conservatives luminaries, especially Irving Kristol, James Burnham, Sidney Hook and Lionel Trilling.
The left-wing and even Trotskyite origins of neo-conservatism are well-known – even if I still continue to be astonished by new details I discover, such as that Lionel and Diana Trilling were married by a rabbi for whom Felix Dzherzhinsky – the founder of the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka (forerunner of the KGB), and the Communist equivalent of Heinrich Himmler – represented a heroic paragon. These left-wing origins are particularly relevant to the covert operations discussed by Stonor Saunders, because the CIA’s goal was precisely to influence left-wing opponents of Communism, i.e. Trotskyites. The CIA’s view was simply that right-wing anti-communists did not need to be influenced, much less paid. Stonor Saunders quotes Michael Warner when she writes,

For the CIA, the strategy of promoting the Non-Communist Left was to become "the theoretical foundation of the Agency’s political operations against Communism over the next two decades."

This strategy was outlined in Arthur Schlesinger’s The Vital Center (1949), a book which represents one of the cornerstones of what was later to become the neo-conservative movement. Stonor Saunders writes,

The purpose of supporting leftist groups was not to destroy or even dominate, but rather to maintain a discreet proximity to and monitor the thinking of such groups; to provide them with a mouthpiece so that they could blow off steam; and, in extremis, to exercise a final veto over their actions, if they ever got too "radical."

Many and varied were the ways in which this left-wing influence was felt. The USA was determined to fashion for itself a progressive image, in contrast to the "reactionary" Soviet Union. In other words, it wanted to do precisely what the Soviets were doing. In music, for instance, Nicholas Nabokov (the cousin of the author of Lolita) was one of the Congress’ main agents. In 1954, the CIA funded a music festival in Rome in which Stalin’s "authoritarian" love of composers like Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky was "countered" by unorthodox modern music inspired by Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system.

For Nabokov, there was a clear political message to be imparted by promoting music which announced itself as doing away with natural hierarchies …

Support for other progressives came when Jackson Pollock, himself a former Communist, was also promoted by the CIA. His daubs were supposed to represent the American ideology of "freedom" over the authoritarianism of socialist realist painting. (This alliance with Communists pre-dates the Cold War: the Mexican Communist muralist, Diego Rivera, was supported by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, but their collaboration ended abruptly when Rivera refused to remove a portrait of Lenin from a crowd scene painted on the walls of the Rockefeller Center in 1933.)
This cross-over between culture and politics was explicitly promoted by a CIA body which went under an Orwellian name, the Psychological Strategy Board. In 1956, it covertly promoted a European tour by the Metropolitan Opera, the political purpose of which was to encourage multiculturalism. Junkie Fleischmann, the organiser, said,

We, in the United States, are a melting-pot and, by being so, we have demonstrated that peoples can get along together irrespective of race, colour or creed. Using the "melting-pot" or some such catch phrase for a theme we might be able to use the Met as an example of how Europeans can get along together in the United States and that, therefore, some sort of European Federation is entirely practicable.

This, by the way, is exactly the same argument employed by, among other people, Ben Wattenberg, whose book The First Universal Nation argues that America has a special right to world hegemony because she embodies all the nations and races of the planet. The same view has also been expressed by Newt Gingrich and other neo-cons.
Other themes promoted include some which are at the forefront of neo-conservative thinking today. First among these is the eminently liberal belief in moral and political universalism. Today, this is at the very heart of George W. Bush’s own foreign policy philosophy: he has stated on numerous occasions that political values are the same all over the world, and he has used this assumption to justify US military intervention in favour of "democracy." Back in the early 1950s, the director of the PSB (the Psychological Strategy Board was quickly referred to only by its initials, no doubt in order to hide its real name), Raymond Allen, had already arrived at this conclusion.

The principles and ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are for export and … are the heritage of men everywhere. We should appeal to the fundamental urges of all men which I believe are the same for the farmer in Kansas as for the farmer in Punjab.

To be sure, it would be wrong to attribute the spread of ideas only to covert manipulation. They have their force in large-scale cultural currents, whose causes are multiple. But there is no doubt that the dominance of such ideas can be substantially facilitated by covert operations, especially since people in mass-information societies are curiously suggestible. Not only do they believe what they have read in the papers, they also think they have arrived at these conclusions themselves. The trick of manipulating public opinion, therefore, lies precisely in that which Bernays theorised, Münzenberg initiated, and which the CIA raised to a high art. According to CIA agent Donald Jameson,

As far as the attitudes that the Agency wanted to inspire through these activities are concerned, clearly what they would like to have been able to produce were people who, of their own reasoning and conviction, were persuaded that everything the United States government did was right.

To put it another way, what the CIA and other US agencies were doing during this period was to adopt the strategy which we associate with the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, who argued that "cultural hegemony" was essential for socialist revolution.
2d. Disinformation
Finally, there is a huge body of literature on the technique of disinformation. I have already referred to the important fact, originally formulated by Tchakotine (Chakotin), that the role of journalists and the media is key in ensuring that propaganda is constant: "Propaganda cannot take time off," he writes, thereby formulating one of the key rules of modern disinformation, which is that the required message must be repeated very frequently indeed if it is to pass. Above all, Tchakotine (Chakotin) says that propaganda campaigns must be centrally directed and highly organised, something which has become the norm in the age of modern political "spin": British Labour Members of Parliament, for instance, are not allowed to speak to the media without first asking permission from the Director of Communications in 10, Downing Street.
Sefton Delmer was both a practician and theoretician of such "black propaganda." Delmer created a bogus radio station which broadcasted from Britain to Germany during the Second World War, and which created the myth that there were "good" patriotic Germans who opposed Hitler. The fiction was sustained that the station was actually an underground German one, and was put on frequencies close to those of official stations. Such black propaganda has now become part of the US government’s armoury of ‘spin’: the New York Times revealed that the US government makes news reports favourable to its policies which are then carried on normal channels and presented as if they were the broadcast company’s own reports.
There are many other such authors, some of whom I have discussed in my column, All News is Lies. But perhaps the most relevant to today’s discussion is Roger Mucchielli’s book, Subversion, published in French in 1971, which shows how disinformation had moved from being an auxiliary tactic in war to a principal one. The strategy had developed so far, he said, that the goal was now to conquer a state without even attacking physically, especially through the use of agents of influence inside it. This is essentially what Robert Kaplan proposed and discussed in his essay for The Atlantic Monthly in July/August 2003, "Supremacy by Stealth." One of the most sinister theoreticians of the New World Order and the American empire, Robert Kaplan, explicitly advocates the use of immoral and illegal power to promote US control of the whole world. His essay deals with the use of covert operations, military power, dirty tricks, black propaganda, hidden influence and control, opinion-forming and other things like political assassination, all subject to his overall call for "a pagan ethic," as the means to ensuring American domination.
The other key point about Mucchielli is that he was one of the first theoreticians of the use of bogus non-governmental organisations – or "front organisations" as they used to be known – for effecting internal political change in another state. Like Malaparte and Trotsky, Mucchielli also understood that it was not "objective" circumstances which determined the success or failure of a revolution, but instead the perception created of those circumstances by disinformation. He also understood that historical revolutions, which invariably presented themselves as the product of mass movements, were in fact the work of a tiny number of highly organised conspirators. In fact, again like Trotsky, Mucchielli emphasised that the silent majority must be rigorously excluded from the mechanics of political change, precisely because coups d’état are the work of the few and not the many.
Public opinion was the "forum" in which subversion was practised, and Mucchielli showed the different ways in which the mass media could be used to create a collective psychosis. Psychological factors were extremely important in this regard, he said, especially in the pursuit of important strategies such as the demoralisation of a society. The enemy must be made to lose confidence in the rightness of his own cause, while all effort must be made to convince him that his adversary is invincible.
2e. The role of the military
One final historical point before we move onto a discussion of the present: the role of the military in conducting covert operations and influencing political change. This is something which some contemporary analysts are happy to admit is deployed today: Robert Kaplan writes approvingly of how the American military is and should be used to "promote democracy." Kaplan says deliciously that a phone call from a US general is often a better way of promoting political change in a third country than a phone call from the local US ambassador. And he approvingly quotes an Army Special Operations officer saying, "Whoever the President of Kenya is, the same group of guys run their special forces and the President's bodyguards. We've trained them. That translates into diplomatic leverage."

The historical background to this has recently been discussed by a Swiss academic, Daniele Glaser, in his book, Nato’s Secret Army. His account begins with the admission made on 3rd August 1990 by Giulio Andreotti, the then Italian Prime Minister, that a secret army had existed in his country since the end of the Second World War, known as "Gladio"; that it had been created by the CIA and MI6; and that it was coordinated by the unorthodox warfare section of NATO.
He thereby confirmed one of the most long-running rumours in post-war Italy. Many people, including investigating magistrates, had long suspected that Gladio was not only party of a network of secret armies created by the Americans across Western Europe to fight in the resistance to a putative Soviet occupation, but also that these networks had become involved in influencing the outcome of elections, even to the extent of forming sinister alliances with terrorist organisations. Italy was a particular target because the Communist Party was so strong there.
Originally, this secret army was constructed with the aim of providing for the eventuality of an invasion. But it seems that they soon moved to covert operations aimed at influencing the political process itself, in the absence of an invasion. There is ample evidence that the Americans did indeed interfere massively, especially in Italian elections, in order to prevent the PCI from ever winning power. Tens of billions of dollars were funded to the Italian Christian Democrats by the US for this very reason.
Glaser even argues that there is evidence that Gladio cells carried out terrorist attacks in order to blame Communists, and to frighten the population into demanding extra state powers to "protect" them from terrorism. Ganser quotes the man convicted of planting one of these bombs, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who duly explained the nature of the network of which he was a foot soldier. He said that it was part of a strategy "to destabilise in order to stabilise."

You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic which remains behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.

There is an obvious relevance to the conspiracy theories swirling around 9/11. Ganser presents a host of good evidence that this is indeed what Gladio did, and his arguments shed light on the intriguing possibility that there might also have been an alliance with extreme left-wing groups like the Red Brigades. After all, when Aldo Moro was kidnapped, shortly after which he was assassinated, he was physically on the way to the Italian parliament to present a programme for a coalition government between the Socialists and the Communists – precisely the thing the Americans were determined to prevent.
3. Today’s revolutionary tacticians
These historical works help us to understand what is going on today. My colleagues and I from the British Helsinki Human Rights Group have personally witnessed how the same techniques are used today.
The main tactics were perfected in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, many of the operatives of regime change under Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. have happily plied their trade in the former Soviet bloc under Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. For instance, General Manuel Noriega reports in his memoirs that the two CIA-State Department operatives who were sent to negotiate and then engineer his downfall from power in Panama in 1989 were called William Walker and Michael Kozak: William Walker resurfaced in Kosovo in January 1999 when, as head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, he oversaw the artificial creation of a bogus atrocity which proved to be the casus belli for the Kosovo war, while Michael Kozak became US ambassador to Belarus, where in 2001 he mounted "Operation White Stork" designed to overthrow the incumbent president, Alexander Lukashenko. During an exchange of letters to The Guardian in 2001, Kozak brazenly admitted that he was doing in Belarus exactly what he had been doing in Nicaragua and Panama, namely "promoting democracy."
There are essentially three branches to the modern technique of a coup d’état. They are non-governmental organisations, control of the media, and covert operatives. Their activities are effectively interchangeable so I will not deal with them separately.
3a. Serbia 2000
The overthrow of Slobodan Miloševic was obviously not the first time the West used covert influence to effect regime change. The overthrow of Sali Berisha in Albania in 1997 and of Vladimir Meciar in Slovakia in 1998 were heavily influenced by the West and, in the case of Berisha, an extremely violent uprising was presented as a spontaneous and welcome example of people power. I personally observed how the international community, and especially the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), fiddled its election observation results in order to ensure political change. However, the overthrow of Slobodan Miloševic in Belgrade on 5th October 2000 is important because he is such a well-known figure, and because the "revolution" which unseated him involved a very ostentatious use of "people power."
The background to the putsch against Miloševic has been brilliantly described by Tim Marshall, a reporter for Sky TV. His account is valuable because he writes approvingly of the events he describes; it is also interesting because this journalist boasts of his extensive contacts with the secret services, especially those of Britain and America.
At every turn, Marshall seems to know who the main intelligence players are. His account is thick with references to "an MI6 officer in Priština," "sources in Yugoslav military intelligence," "a CIA man who was helping to put together the coup," an "officer in US naval intelligence," and so on. He quotes secret surveillance reports from the Serbian secret police; he knows who the Ministry of Defence desk officer is in London who draws up the strategy for getting rid of Miloševic; he knows that the British Foreign Secretary’s telephone conversations are being listened to; he knows who are the Russian intelligence officers who accompany Yevgeni Primakov, the Russian prime minister, to Belgrade during the Nato bombing; he knows which rooms are bugged in the British embassy, and where the Yugoslav spies are who listen in to the diplomats’ conversations; he knows that a staffer on the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee is, in fact, an officer in US naval intelligence; he seems to know that secret service decisions are often taken with the very minimal ministerial approval; he describes how the CIA physically escorted the KLA delegation from Kosovo to Paris for the pre-war talks at Rambouillet, where Nato issued Yugoslavia with an ultimatum it knew it could only reject; and he refers to "a British journalist" acting as a go-between between London and Belgrade for hugely important high-level secret negotiations, as people sought to betray one another as Miloševic’s power collapsed. (My suspicion is that he may be talking about himself at this point.)
One of the themes which inadvertently runs through his book is that there is a thin dividing line between journalists and spooks. Early on in the book, Marshall refers casually to "the inevitable connections between officers, journalists and politicians," saying that people in all three categories "work in the same area." He then goes on jokingly to say that "a combination of ‘spooks’, ‘journo’s’ and ‘politicos’, added to ‘the people’" were what had caused the overthrow of Slobodan Miloševic. Marshall clings to the myth that "the people" were involved, but the rest of his book shows that in fact the overthrow of the Yugoslav president occurred only because of political strategies deliberately conceived in London and Washington to get rid of him.
Above all, Marshall makes it clear that, in 1998, the US State Department and intelligence agencies decided to use the Kosovo Liberation Army to get rid of Slobodan Miloševic. He quotes one source saying, "The US agenda was clear. When the time was right they were going to use the KLA to provide the solution to the political problem" – the "problem" being, as Marshall explains earlier, Miloševic’s continued political survival. This meant supporting the KLA’s terrorist secessionism, and later fighting a war against Yugoslavia on its side. Marshall quotes Mark Kirk, a US naval intelligence officer, saying that, "Eventually we opened up a huge operation against Miloševic, both secret and open." The secret part of the operation involved not only things like stuffing the various observer missions which were sent into Kosovo with officers from the British and American intelligence services, but also – crucially – giving military, technical, financial, logistical and political support to the KLA, which, as Marshall himself admits, "smuggled drugs, ran prostitution rackets and murdered civilians."
The strategy began in late 1998 when "a huge CIA mission (got) underway in Kosovo." President Miloševic had allowed the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission to enter Kosovo to monitor the situation in the province. This ad hoc group was immediately stuffed with British and American intelligence agents and special forces – men from the CIA, US naval intelligence, the British SAS and something called "14th intelligence," a body within the British army which operates side by side with the SAS "to provide what is known as ‘deep surveillance’." The immediate purpose of this operation was "Intelligence Preparation of Battlefield" – a modern version of what the Duke of Wellington used to do, riding up and down the battlefield to get the lie of the land before engaging the enemy. So as Marshall puts it, "Officially, the KDOM was run by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe … unofficially, the CIA ran (it) … The organisation was just packed with them … It was a CIA front." Many of the officers in fact worked for another CIA front, DynCorp, the Virginia-based company which employs mainly "members of US military elite units, or the CIA," as Marshall says. They used the KDOM, which later became the Kosovo Verification Mission, for espionage. Instead of doing the monitoring tasks assigned to them, officers would go off and use their global positioning devices to locate and identify targets which would be later bombed by Nato. Quite how the Yugoslavs could allow 2,000 highly trained secret service agents to roam around their territory is difficult to understand, especially since, as Marshall shows, they knew perfectly well what was going on.

The head of the Kosovo Verification Mission was William Walker, the man deputed to oust Manuel Noriega from power in Panama, and a former ambassador to El Salvador whose US-supported government ran death squads. Walker "discovered" the "massacre" at Racak in January 1999, the event which was used as a pretext for starting the process which led to the bombing which began on 24th March. There is much evidence to suggest that Racak was staged, and that the bodies found were in fact those of KLA fighters, not civilians as was alleged. What is certain is that Walker’s role was so key that the country road in Kosovo which leads to Racak has now been renamed after him. Marshall writes that the date for the war – spring 1999 – was not only decided in late December 1998, but also that the date was communicated to the KLA at the time. This means that when the "massacre" occurred and when Madeleine Albright declared, "Spring has come early," she was behaving rather like Joseph Goebbels who, on hearing the news of the Reichstag fire in 1933, is supposed to have remarked, "What, already?"
At any rate, when the KVM was withdrawn on the eve of the Nato bombing, Marshall says that the CIA officers in it gave all their satellite phones and GPS equipment to the KLA. "The KLA were being trained by the Americans, partially equipped by them, and virtually given territory," Marshall writes – even though he, like all other reporters, helped propagate the myth of systematic Serb atrocities committed against a totally passive Albanian civilian population.
The war went ahead, of course, and Yugoslavia was ferociously bombed. But Miloševic stayed in power. So London and Washington started what Marshall happily calls "political warfare" to remove him. This involved giving very large sums of money, as well as technical, logistical and strategic support, and including arms, to various "democratic opposition" groups and "non-governmental organisations" in Serbia. The Americans were by then operating principally through the International Republican Institute, which had opened offices in neighbouring Hungary for the purpose of getting rid of Slobodan Miloševic. "It was agreed" at one of their meetings, Marshall explains, "that the ideological arguments of pro-democracy, civil rights and a humanitarian approach would be far more forceful if accompanied, if necessary, by large bags full of money." These, and much else besides, were duly shipped into Serbia through the diplomatic bags – in many cases of apparently neutral countries like Sweden who, by not participating formally in the NATO war, were able to maintain full embassies in Belgrade. As Marshall helpfully adds, "Bags of money had been brought in for years." Indeed they had. As he earlier explains, "independent" media outlets like the Radio Station B92 (who is Marshall’s own publisher) were, in fact, very largely funded by the USA. Organisations controlled by George Soros also played a crucial role, as they were later to do, in 2003–4, in Georgia. The so-called "democrats" were, in reality, nothing but foreign agents – just as the Yugoslav government stolidly maintained at the time.

Marshall also explains something which is now a matter of public record that it was also the Americans who conceived the strategy of pushing forward one candidate, Vojislav Koštunica, to unite the opposition. Koštunica had the main advantage of being largely unknown by the general public. Marshall then describes how the strategy also involved a carefully planned coup d’état, which duly took place after the first round of the presidential elections. He shows in minute detail how the principal actors in what was presented on Western TV screens as a spontaneous uprising of "the people" were, in fact, a bunch of extremely violent and very heavily armed thugs under the command of the Mayor of the town of Cacak, Velimir Ilic. It was Ilic’s 22 kilometre-long convoy carrying "weapons, paratroopers and a team of kick boxers" to the federal parliament building in Belgrade. As Marshall admits, the events of 5th October 2000 "looked more like a coup d’état" than the people’s revolution of which the world’s media so naïvely gushed at the time.
3b. Georgia 2003
Many of the tactics perfected in Belgrade were used in Georgia in November 2003 to overthrow President Edward Shevardadze. The same allegations were made, and repeated ad nauseam, that the elections had been rigged. (In the Georgian case, they were parliamentary elections, in the Yugoslav case presidential.) Western media uncritically took up these allegations, which were made long before the actual voting took place. A propaganda war was unleashed against both presidents, in Shevardnadze’s case after a long period in which he had been lionised as a great reformer and democrat. Both "revolutions" occurred after a similar "storming of the parliament," broadcast live on TV. Both transfers of power were brokered by the Russian minister, Igor Ivanov, who flew to Belgrade and Tbilisi to engineer the exit from power of the incumbent president. Last but not least, the US ambassador was the same man in both cases: Richard Miles.
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif][size=12]The most visible similarity, however, came in the use of a student movement known as Otpor (Resistance) in Serbia and Kmara (It’s enough!) in Georgia. Both movements had the same symbol, a black-on-white stencil of a clenched fist. Otpor trained people from Kmara, and both were supported by the US. And both organisations were ostensibly structured along communist lines – combining the appearance of a diffuse...

***Magda Hassan*** · 25-07-2009, 05:54 AM

NED: National Endowment for Democracy
The networks of "democratic" interference
by Thierry Meyssan*
In his 2004 State of the Union speech, President Bush announced his intentions to double the budget for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). This organization was created by Ronald Reagan to extend the CIA’s secret activities by providing financial support and controlling trade unions, associations and political parties. The NED boasts about having directed and manipulated the Polish trade union Solidarnosc, the Charter 77 and many other groups. Under the direction of the State Department and associated with the Republican and Democratic parties, with the board of trustees and with trade unions, the NED has found many individual and institutional "boosters" all over the world, including in France.

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During his last State of the Union speech, on January 20th, 2004, President Bush announced that he would double the budget for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and that its «new tasks would focus on the promotion of free elections, free exchange, freedom of press and trade union freedom in the Middle East». For the White House, it is all about complementing its military actions in the region with an ever increasing interference with the domestic affairs of certain countries.
Early in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan stigmatized the Soviet Union as the «Empire of Evil» and conceived new ways to fight it. Then, an ambitious endeavor of destabilization through the mobilization of the "civil society" was added to the military and diplomatic "restraint". After the CIA’s secret activities were disclosed by a series of investigation commissions and condemned by the public opinion, the National Security Council decided to continue its work with less dirty methods and under another name. Above all, the new structure had to be protected from political alternation through a bi-partisan direction.
Officially created on November 6th, 1982, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has a legal status as a non-profit association. However, its budget is approved by Congress as part of the State Department’s appropriations for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In order to make it look like a private organization, the NED also receives donations from three associations that, at the same time, are indirectly financed by federal contracts: the Smith Richardson Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
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Most of the historic figures involved in the CIA’s covert actions have, at some point, been members of the NED’s Administrative Council or of its board of directors; among them Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros or Elliot Abrams. Currently, it is presided over by Vin Weber, former Republican congressman from the state of Minnesota, founder of the ultraconservative Empower America association and fundraiser for the presidential campaign of George W. Bush in the year 2000. Its executive director is Carl Geshman, a former Trotskyite that became the person responsible for the US Social Democrats and a member of the neo-conservative trend [1].
The NED is simply the continuation of the CIA’s covert actions through other means, and that is why the United Kingdom and Australia associate themselves to its activities from the top in virtue of the agreement that determines the relations between their military secret services.
The NED’s main principle is that "What is good for America is good for the world". The funds are consequently managed by an Administrative Council in which the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO trade union are represented. Each of them suggests actions that have to be accepted by two thirds of the membership.
After the money is earmarked, it goes through institutes controlled by any of the members. In practice, with this process the NED determines which are the countries that will become targets of its actions, where it will finance parties and social partners to overthrow governments and put people in power depending on "the interest of America" and not according to the interests of any of its members.
Although it was created to combat communism, it was precisely after the collapse of the Soviet Union that the NED started to enjoy better health. While it pretends to be engaged in the promotion of democracy, it actually subjugates countries where it reproduces the contradictory interests of the American ruling class.
From this point of view, the NED is probably the one responsible for the crisis of democracies around the world: it has not stopped falsifying institutional mechanisms and assimilating democracy into a "good administration" in the name of the peoples that it supplants.
Meanwhile, the use of institutes with different political trends hides from the public opinion the origin of the funds and the motives that determine their distribution. In numerous countries, the beneficiaries of this "aid" are manipulated without them noticing, even when the individuals who have negotiated the allocation of these funds are perfectly aware of the channels to which they integrate.
The NED’s four satellite institutes are:
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American Center for International Labor Solidarity - ACILS. Chaired by John J. Sweeney in his capacity as general secretary of the AFLC-CIO trade union.
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Center for International Private Enterprise - CIPE. Chaired by Thomas J. Donohue in his capacity as president of the US Chamber of Commerce, that is, as "boss of bosses" [2].
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International Republican Institute - IRI. Chaired by Senator John McCain, who lost the primary elections of 2000 to George W. Bush and who is currently the main supporter in Congress of the global war against terrorism.
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National Democratic Institute for International Affairs - NDI. Chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.
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The system of satellite institutes is inspired by what the United States did in Germany, as an occupation army, with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the Friedrich Naunmann Stiftung, the Hans Seidal Stiftung and the Heinrich Boell Stiftung, all used as financial transmitters in that country, instead of German institutes.
Following the same principle, the NED found correspondents in several allied states, NATO members or members of the former ANZUS, among them: the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (United Kingdom), the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Canada), the Fondation Jean Jaurès and the Fondation Robert Schuman (France), the International Liberal Center (Sweden) and the Alfred Mozer Foundation (Holland).
On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, the NED made an assessment of its actions that reveals that it currently finances and directs more than 6 000 social and political organizations all over the world. The NED affirms to have completely created the Solidarnosc trade union in Poland, the Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Otpor in Serbia. It also boasts of having set up Radio B29 and the Oslobodjenje newspaper in the former Yugoslavia as well as several new "independent" media outlets in the "freed" Iraq.
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The NED publishes the Journal of Democracy, which is distributed all over the world, and the Encuentro (Meeting) magazine, especially for Cuba, as well as collective books. It also organizes prestigious conferences with the intellectuals it sponsors (for example, historian François Furet and press boss Jean Daniel in France). Finally, the NED "forms" trade union and political leading figures all over the world, in all matters relating to the exercise of "democracy".
Officially, the NED’s budget rises to only 50 million dollars. However, vast co-funding is received and earmarked for organizing its operations. These external contributions, that rise to the tune of several hundred million dollars per year, come mainly from the State Department, the Department of the Treasury and, discreetly, from the CIA.

***Magda Hassan*** · 25-07-2009, 06:06 AM

National Endowment for Democracy

From SourceWatch

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Washington D.C-based non-profit funded by the U.S. national budget, boasts that it is "supporting freedom around the world."
Carl Gershman has been President since April 1984.
NED'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." 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]
According to the New York Times: "The National Endowment for Democracy is a quasi-governmental foundation created by the Reagan Administration in 1983 to channel millions of Federal dollars into anti-Communist 'private diplomacy.'" [2]
NED funding mostly flows through the four foundations listed below; these in turn are active in influencing "civil society" and electoral processes around the world, in a process sometimes referred to as "cloak and ballot" operations. While NED remains accountable to the U.S. Congress and has to publish its disbursements, this doesn't apply to the organizations that it in turn finances.
Other groups undertaking similar activities around the world based in other developed countries include: the Australian Centre for Democratic Institutions (CDI); the Westminster Foundation; the Canadian International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development (now known as Rights and Democracy) and the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy.
Another similar US group was also formed in 1984 called the Center for Democracy.
National Endowment for Democracy: People

Founding

NED was founded during the Ronald Reagan presidency in 1982, and shaped by an initial study undertaken by the American Political Foundation. [3]
NED was created with a view to creating a broad base of political support for the organization. NED received funds from the U.S. government and distributes funds to four other organizations - one created by the Republican Party, another by the Democratic Party, one created by the business community and one by the "labor" movement (N.B.: the names of these organizations have changed over time):

International Republican Institute (IRI)
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI)
Chamber of Commerce's Center for Private Enterprise (CIPE)
AFL-CIO's American Center for International Labor Solidarity

Although publicly funded, the activities of these four institutes are not reported to Congress. According to William Robinson, "NED employs a complex system of intermediaries in which operative aspects, control relationships, and funding trails are nearly impossible to follow and final recipients are difficult to identify."
In a March 2005 interview, former CIA officer Philip Agee discussed the thinking behind NED's establishment: (Dennis Bernstein, "Philip Agee, Former CIA agent speaks on Venezuela", Flashpoints, March 14, 2005)
During the late 1970s there was new thinking at the highest levels of the U.S. foreign policymakers, and they reconsidered whether these ugly murderous military dictatorships of the 1970s were really the best way to preserve U.S. interests in these countries – U.S. interests being defined traditionally as unfettered access to the primary products and raw materials, to the labor and to the markets of foreign countries. This new thinking led to the establishment in 1983 of the National Endowment for Democracy. They had chosen the German pattern in which the major political parties in Germany have foundations financed by the federal government. They did more or less the same thing with the establishment of the NED as a private foundation – there is really nothing private about it, and all its money comes from the Congress. But then there were the other core foundations – this was the fundamental mechanism for promotion of democracy around the world, but in actual fact, when they say the promotion of democracy, or civic education, or fortifying civil society, what they really mean is using those euphemisms to cover funding to certain political forces and not to others. In other words, to fortify the opposition of undesirable foreign governments as in the case of Venezuela, or to support a government that is favorable to US interests and avoid of coming to power of forces that are not seen as favorable to US interests. This will be the case since the early 1990s in Nicaragua because all those programs that were started in order to assure the defeat of Daniel Ortega in 1990 continued, and they continued to make sure that Sandinista Front was not reelected again after their defeat in 1990 – and that has been the case. These programs go on in various different countries and they require quite a bit of research. ... I am sure that one could find these programs in Mexico, Colombia, Peru probably, Brazil, and other countries outside the Latin American region.
Involvement in Foreign Political Processes

NED regularly provides funding to opposition candidates in elections in countries other than the USA. According to Allen Weinstein, one of the founders of NED, "A lot of what we [NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA" (Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, 2000, p. 180).
NED has principally supported candidates with strong ties to the military and who support the rights of U.S. corporations to invest in those countries with minimal restriction. The NED has not supported candidates who oppose investments by U.S. corporations or who promise restrictions on investment rights of U.S. corporations.
Tom Engelhardt notes that "we've seen "the Rose Revolution" in Georgia, "the Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, and now "the Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan, all heavily financed and backed by groups funded by or connected to the U.S. government and/or the Bush administration." He then quotes Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times, who writes:
"The whole arsenal of US foundations -- National Endowment for Democracy, International Republic Institute, International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), Eurasia Foundation, Internews, among others -- which fueled opposition movements in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, has also been deployed in Bishkek [Kyrgyzstan]... Practically everything that passes for civil society in Kyrgyzstan is financed by these US foundations, or by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). At least 170 non-governmental organizations charged with development or promotion of democracy have been created or sponsored by the Americans. The US State Department has operated its own independent printing house in Bishkek since 2002 -- which means printing at least 60 different titles, including a bunch of fiery opposition newspapers. USAID invested at least $2 million prior to the Kyrgyz elections -- quite something in a country where the average salary is $30 a month." [4]

National Endowment for Democracy: Grants By Country

Revolving Doorways

The close alignment of the NEDs activities with US foreign policy interests comes as no surprise, especially when you consider the revolving doorways between the US Government and the NED Board of Directors, some of the most notable of which include:
"...former US Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger (Nixon) and Madeleine Albright (Clinton), former US Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci (Reagan), former National Security Council Chair Zbigniew Brzezinski (Carter), former NATO Supreme Allied Command in Europe, General Wesley K. Clark (Clinton), and the current head of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz (George W. Bush). Another notable, Bill Brock, served as a US Senator, a US Trade Representative, and US Secretary of Labor, and then Chairman of the Board of NED." [5]
Fostering "Free Press"

In late 2004, Adam Wild Aba wrote, "The new intelligence law also directs the State Department to promote a free press and the development of 'professional journalists' in the Muslim world. It says free press is a must as part of the overall public diplomacy strategy for the Middle East, according to the State Department’s statement. Under the law, the National Endowment for Democracy shall fund a private-sector group to establish a free-media network to help participants share information concerning development of free media in 'societies in transition'." [6]
NED also supports the nonprofit organization Internews which encourages media worldwide to "promote democracy". In 2004, Internews had a budget of $27 million, 80 percent of which came from the U.S. government.
"Marguerite H. Sullivan is Director of the Center on International Media Assistance at the National Endowment for Democracy."

Covert embedded reporters

Several articles about the political process in Haiti, Iraq, and the Palestinian-occupied territories have appeared in The New York Times, NPR, and other mainstream US media. The impression is given that the articles are from bona fide journalists, but it transpires that several of them are paid by the NED or its affiliated organizations. The case of Regine Alexandre is particularly interesting. She wrote articles for the New York Times, AP, and commented on NPR. It transpires that she is on the NED payroll, and the NED confirmed this fact. However, when confronted with this information both the NYT and NPR failed to respond or take this seriously.
Source: Anthony Fenton and Dennis Bernstein, "AP reporter RéGINE is wearing two hats," Haiti Action.net, December 29, 2005.

Conducting polls

NED (or its satellite organizations) has been active in conducting election exit polls in Serbia, Ukraine, Venezuela. These results were used on occasion to cast doubt on the actual election results, and thus deligitimize the winner of the election, and thus create pressure for an election re-run. [7]
In December 2004, the NED-association organization International Republican Institute conducted a survey in Iraq to determine the popular intent to vote. It found that 75% of Iraqis would opt to vote, thus lending some legitimacy to the electoral exercise. However, IRI didn't poll the key cities where the insurgency is strong, i.e., Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul. [8] Such surveys lend legitimacy to so-called demonstration elections, and discredit those opposed to the elections.

Critiques and Support

On the right, NED has been criticized 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 his 2004 State of the Union Speech, Bush proposed doubling funding for NED 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]
In March 2006, a number of activists (including amongst many others Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Michael Parenti and David Harvey) launched a new US project called the International Endowment for Democracy which critiques the activities of the NED.
The Respect for Democracy Campaign is a project of the Alliance for Global Justice. [1]

Funding

NED receives an annual appropriation from the U.S. budget and, while a non-governmental organization, is subject to Congressional oversight. In the financial year to the end of September 2002 NED's budget was US$48.5 million. [12]
In December, 2005 PhD researcher Sreeram Chaulia noted that:
"...97 percent of NED’s funding comes from the US State Department (through USAID and before 1999, the USIA), the rest being allocations made by right-wing donors like the Bradley Foundation, the Whitehead Foundation and the Olin Foundation.(http://www.ned.org/publications/04annual/auditors04.pdf see)" [13]
Officers

Vin Weber Chairman
Thomas R. Donahue Vice-Chair
Julie Finley Treasurer
Matthew F. McHugh Secretary
Carl Gershman President

Directors of the Board 2006

Affiliated Contractors

While most of NED's funding is directed towards the four affiliated core foundations, these in turn hire a variety of "consulting" companies. In the past, these have included:

Albert Einstein Institution - involved in most Eastern European countries
Delphi International Group - involved in Nicaragua
Development Alternatives Inc. - involved in Venezuela
IFES - involved in Haiti, Pakistan, Afghanistan
Penn, Schoen and Berland - Specializes in surveys and "exit polls"; involved in most Eastern European countries and in Venezuela

Contact information

1025 F Street NW, Suite 800
Washington DC, 20004
Phone: (202) 378-9700
Fax: (202) 223-6042
Web: http://www.ned.org

SourceWatch resources

External links

Websites critiquing the NED

New website, International Endowment for Democracy, March, 2006.
In the Name of Democracy: Towards a Global Political Intervention Monitor, (Contributors include Professor William I. Robinson).
venezuelafoia.info

Radio Commentary

"Unholy Alliance? The AFL-CIO and the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela", Democracy Now!, July 26, 2005.
"U.S. Gvt. Channels Millions Through National Endowment for Democracy to Fund Anti-Lavalas Groups in Haiti", Democracy Now!, January 23, 2006.

Articles & commentary

David K. Shipler, "Missionaries for Democracy: US Aid for Global Pluralism", New York Times 1 June 1986.
Beth Sims, "Workers of the World Undermined: American Labor's role in U.S. foreign policy", Third World Traveller, 1992.
Barbara Conry “Loose Cannon: The National Endowment for Democracy”, Cato Institute, Policy Briefing No. 27, November 8, 1993, (accessed November 18, 2003).
John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge is Good for You, Common Courage Press, Monroe Maine,1995, page 166.
William Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention and Hegemony, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. For a quick summary
John M. Broder, "Political Meddling by Outsiders: Not New for U.S", New York Times, March 31, 1997.
James Ciment and Immanuel Ness, "NED and the Empire's New Clothes", Covert Action Quarterly, No.67, Spring-Summer: 65-68, 1999.
Bob Feldman, “The Nation's NED Connection-part 1”, QuestionsQuestions, circa 2001.
Bob Feldman, “The Nation's NED Connection—part 2”, QuestionsQuestions, circa 2001.
"Aiding Democracy around the World: The Challenges after September 11", SAIRR, 1 October 2002.
Harley Sorenson, NED's feel-good name belies its corrupt intent, SFGate.com, November 17, 2003.
David Lowe, “Idea to Reality: A Brief History of the National Endowment for Democracy”, accessed November 18, 2003.
Terry Allen, “Update by Author Terry Allen’, accessed November 18, 2003.
Eric T. Hale, "Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation of the National Endowment For Democracy, 1990-1999", Louisiana State University, PhD, 2003. (Pdf)
Hugo Chavez Accuses U.S. of Spending Over $1 Million To Help Oust Him, Democracy Now!, March 4, 2004.
Andrew Buncombe, "US revealed to be secretly funding opponents of Chavez", Independent (UK), March 13, 2004.
Ken Silverstein And Carol J. Williams, "Chavez Camp Accuses U.S. of Pushing for His Recall," Los Angeles Times, August 13, 2004.
Nadia Diuk, In Ukraine, Homegrown Freedom", Washington Post, December 4, 2004; Page A23. (Diuk is director, Europe and Eurasia, at the National Endowment for Democracy).
Lisa Ashkenaz Croke and Brian Dominick, "Controversial U.S. Groups Operate Behind Scenes on Iraq Vote," The New Standard, December 13, 2004.
Dennis Bernstein, "Philip Agee, Former CIA agent speaks on Venezuela", Flashpoints, March 14, 2005.
Philip Agee, "The Nature of CIA Intervention in Venezuela" (interview conducted by Jonah Gindin), VenezuelaAnalysis, March 22, 2005.
Allan Cordova, "Democracy in Central Asia ", Thesis, 2005.
Pepe Escobar, "The Tulip Revolution takes root," Asia Times, March 26, 2005.
Tom Engelhardt, "Drugs, Bases, and Jails: The Bush administration's Afghan Spring," Znet, April 05, 2005.
Interview with William Robinson by Jonah Gindin, The Battle for Global Civil Society, June 13, 2005.
Kim Scipes, "An Unholy Alliance: the AFL-CIO and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Venezuela," Znet, July 10, 2005.
Seymour M. Hersh, "Get Out the Vote: Did Washington try to manipulate Iraq’s election?", The New Yorker, July 25, 2005.
Tom Barry, "The New Crusade of the Democratic Globalists", RightWeb, August 3, 2005.
Pablo Bachelet, "Citizens group to get U.S. funds," Miami Herald, September 13, 2005.
Sreeram Chaulia, "Democratisation, Colour Revolutions and the Role of the NGOs: Catalysts or Saboteurs?," GlobalResearch.ca , December 25, 2005.
Augustine Titani Magolowondo, "Democratisation Aid as a Challenge for Development Co-operation: A Comparative Study of Overall Policies of Two Bilateral and Two Multilateral Development Agencies and How they are Implemented in Malawi", PhD Thesis, 2005.
Jonah Gindin, "Year of Living Democratically," ZNet Commentary, January 1, 2006.
Interview with Anthony Fenton: "U.S. Government Channels Millions Through National Endowment for Democracy to Fund Anti-Lavalas Groups in Haiti," Democracy Now!, January 23, 2006.
Kim Scipes, "Worker-to-Worker Solidarity Committee to AFL-CIO: Cut All Ties with NED," Znet, May 1, 2006.
Joan Roelofs, "The NED, NGOs and the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy: Why They Hate Our Kind Hearts, Too", Counterpunch, May 13, 2006.
U.S. Department of State, "The Role of NGOs in the Development of Democracy", Scoop, June 12, 2006.
Jehangir S. Pocha, "nonprofits under investigation in China", Boston Globe, June 15, 2006.
Ian James, "Chavez Government Probes U.S. Funding," Associated Press, August 26, 2006.
Hilary Keenan, "Aid without mercy: the paid pipers of civil society", 21st Century Socialism, September 15, 2006.
Michael Barker, "Regulating revolutions in Eastern Europe: Polyarchy and the National Endowment for Democracy (Part 3)", Zmag, 1 November 2006.
Chris Carlson, "Coup D'etat in Venezuela: Made in the USA", Zmag, 24 November 2006.
Mark R. Beissinger, "Promoting Democracy: Is Exporting Revolution a Constructive Strategy?", Dissent, Winter 2006.
Gerald Sussman, "The Myths of ‘Democracy Assistance’: U.S. Political Intervention in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe", Monthly Review, 2006. (revised, shortened version of “The Globalization of Politics: Spinning U.S.‘Democracy Assistance Programs’” in William Dinan & David; Miller,eds., Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate Spin and the War on Democracy (London: Pluto Press, 2006)
Mike Whitney, "Washington’s Game in Turkmenistan", Znet, December 27, 2006.
Paul Street, "What is a Democracy? The Empire and Inequality Report, no. 9", Znet, February 3, 2007.
Michael Barker, "A Force More Powerful: Promoting 'Democracy' through Civil Disobedience," ZNet, February 25, 2007.
Tom Barry, "The New Politics of Political Aid in Venezuela", Center for International Policy, July 24, 2007.
Michael Barker, "Hijacking Human Rights: A Critical Examination of Human Rights Watch’s Americas Branch and their Links to the ‘Democracy’ Establishment", Znet, August 3, 2007.
Hernando Calvo Ospina, "The CIA's Successors And Collaborators: US: overt and covert destabilisation", Le Monde diplomatique, August 10, 2007.
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, "From Scotland to Caracas — The Politics of Democracy Promotion", Atlantic Free Press, August 11, 2007.
Michael Barker, "Media Manipulation and the United Nations: UNESCO Severs Ties to Democracy Manipulators?, Center for Research on Globalization, March 24, 2008.
Michael Barker, "Media Manipulation and Human Rights: From Pinochet to Human Rights in China", Center for Research on Globalization, March 29, 2008.
Michael Barker, "Zimbabwe and the Power of Propaganda: Ousting a President via Civil Society", Center for Research on Globalization, April 16, 2008.
Jeremy Bigwood, "No Strings Attached? How U.S. funding of the world press corps may be buying influence", In These Times, June 4, 2008.
James Jordan, "Close the Mis-named National Endowment for Democracy", Political Affairs, June 19, 2008.
Clancy Chassay, "Seeds of further uprising amid the fear and intimidation", The Guardian, July 19, 2008.
Michael Barker, "Waging Democracy On China: Human Rights and an Endowment for Democracy", Swans, July 28, 2008.
Michael Barker, "Imperial Media Manipulators: The Center for International Media Assistance", Swans, October 6, 2008.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?tit..._Democracy

***Magda Hassan*** · 25-07-2009, 06:11 AM