the choice. But some critics already fear that Mr. Westendorp will prove too lightweight and end up as a cipher in American hands. 29

Further evidence of Washingtons love affair with elections

There have also been the occasions where the United States, while (perhaps) not interfering in the election process, was, however, involved in overthrowing a democratically-elected government, such as in Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, the Congo

1960, Ecuador 1961, Bolivia 1964, Greece 1967 and Fiji 1987.

In other countries, US interventions resulted in free, or any, elections being done away with completely for large stretches of time, as in Iran, South Korea, Guatemala, Brazil, Congo, Indonesia, Chile and Greece.

CHAPTER 19 : Trojan Horse: The National Endowment for Democracy

How many Americans could identify the National Endowment for Democracy? It is an organization which often does exactly the opposite of what its name implies. The NED was set up in the early 1980s under President Reagan in the wake of all the negative revelations about the CIA in the second half of the 1970s. The latter was a remarkable period. Spurred by Watergate, the Church Committee of the Senate, the Pike Committee of the House and the Rockefeller Commission, created by the president, were all busy investigating the CIA. Seemingly every other day there was a new headline about the discovery of some awful thing, even criminal conduct, the CIA had been mixed up in for years. The Agency was getting an exceedingly bad name, and it was causing the powers-that-be much embarrassment.

Something had to be done. What was done was not to stop doing these awful things. Of course not. What was done was to shift many of these awful things to a new organization, with a nice sounding name-the National Endowment for Democracy. The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities.

It was a masterpiece. Of politics, of public relations and of cynicism.

Thus it was that in 1983, the National Endowment for Democracy was set up to support democratic institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts . Notice the nongovernmental -part of the image, part of the myth. In actuality, virtually every penny of its funding comes from the federal govern-ment, as is clearly indicated in the financial statement in each issue of its annual report. NED likes to refer to itself as an NGO (non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility

abroad that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a GO.

Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, was quite candid when he said in 1991: A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA. 1 In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.

The Endowment has four principal initial recipients of funds: the International Republican Institute; the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; an affiliate of the AFL-CIO (such as the American Center for International Labor Solidarity); and an affiliate of the Chamber of Commerce (such as the Center for International Private Enterprise). These institutions then disburse funds to other institutions in the US and all over the world, which then often disburse funds to yet other organizations.

In a multitude of ways, NED meddles in the internal affairs of foreign countries by supplying funds, technical know-how, training, educational materials, computers, fax machines, copiers, automobiles and so on, to selected political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, other media, etc. NED programs generally impart the basic philosophy that working people and other citizens are best served under a system of free enterprise, class cooperation, collective bargaining, minimal government intervention in the economy and opposition to socialism in any shape or form. A free-market economy is equated with democracy, reform and growth, and the merits of foreign investment are emphasized.

From 1994 to 1996, NED awarded 15 grants, totaling more than $2,500,000, to the

American Institute for Free Labor Development, an organization used by the CIA for decades to subvert progressive labor unions.2 AIFLDs work within Third World unions typically involved a considerable educational effort very similar to the basic NED philosophy described above. The description of one of the 1996 NED grants to AIFLD includes as one its objectives: build union-management cooperation. 3 Like many things that NED says, this sounds innocuous, if not positive, but these in fact are ideological code words meaning keep the labor agitation down...dont rock the status-quo boat. The relationship between NED and AIFLD very well captures the CIA origins of NED.4

The Endowment has funded centrist and rightist labor organiza-tions to help them oppose those unions which were too militantly pro-worker. This has taken place in France, Portugal and Spain amongst many other places. In France, during the 1983-84 period, NED supported a trade union-like organization for professors and students to counter left-wing organizations of professors. To this end it funded a series of seminars and the publication of posters, books and pamphlets such as Subversion and the Theology of Revolution and Neutralism or Liberty. 5 ( Neutralism here refers to being unaligned

in the Cold War.)

NED describes one of its 1997-98 programs thus: To identify barriers to private sector development at the local and federal levels in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and to

push for legislative change...[and] to develop strategies for private sector growth. 6 Critics of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic have been supported by NED grants for years. 7

In short, NEDs programs are in sync with the basic needs and objectives of the New World Orders economic globalization, just as the programs have for years been on the same wavelength as US foreign policy.

Because of a controversy in 1984-when NED funds were used to aid a Panamanian presidential candidate backed by Manuel Noriega and the CIA-Congress enacted a law prohibiting the use of NED funds to finance the campaigns of candidates for public office. But the ways to circumvent the spirit of such a prohibition are not difficult to come up with; as with American elections, theres hard money and theres soft money.

As described in the Elections and Interventions chapters, NED successfully manipulated elections in Nicaragua in 1990 and Mongolia in 1996 and helped to overthrow democratically elected governments in Bulgaria in 1990 and Albania in 1991 and 1992. In Haiti in the late 1990s, NED was busy working on behalf of right-wing groups who were united in their opposition to former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his progressive ideology.8 NED has made its weight felt in the electoralpolitical process in numerous other countries.

NED would have the world believe that its only teaching the ABCs of democracy and elections to people who dont know them, but in all five countries named above there had already been free and fair elections held. The problem, from NEDs point of view, is that the elections had been won by political parties not on NEDs favorites list.

The Endowment maintains that its engaged in opposition build ing and encouraging pluralism . We support people who otherwise do not have a voice in their political system, said Louisa Coan, a NED program officer.9 But NED hasnt provided aid to foster progressive or leftist opposition in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua or Eastern Europe-or, for that matter, in the United States-even though these groups are hard pressed for funds and to make themselves heard. Cuban dissident groups and media are heavily supported however.

NEDs reports carry on endlessly about democracy , but at best its a modest measure of mechanical electoral democracy they have in mind, not economic democracy; nothing that aims to threaten the powers-that-be or the way-things-are, unless of course its in a place like Cuba.

The Endowment played an important role in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, funding key components of Oliver Norths shadowy Project Democracy network, which privatized US foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs and engaged in other equally charming activities. At one point in 1987, a White House spokesman stated that those at NED run Project Democracy . 10 This was an exaggeration; it would have been