Who Does NED Work For?

Boiling Frog
Bill Bergman

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is frequently described as a ‘private, not-for-profit foundation.’  At least, at its website, NED acknowledges funding from the US Congress.  In NED’s latest IRS Form 990 filing, over $135 million of their $136 million in revenue is identified as coming from government sources.


NED was founded in 1983.  It was founded not by private action, but by an Act of Congress.  Yet its authorizing legislation seems a bit ambiguous, stating in part that “Nothing in this title shall be construed to make the Endowment an agency or establishment of the United States government.”

At its website, NED couches its goals in noble terms:  “NED is dedicated to fostering the growth of a wide range of democratic institutions abroad, including political parties, trade unions, free markets and business organizations, as well as the many elements of a vibrant civil society that ensure human rights, an independent media, and the rule of law.”

Following heated debate in its early years, and charges that it was dominated by Republican interests, NED has worked to involve labor unions in its support, and tries to communicate a broader, encompassing set of stated goals.   At its website today, NED emphasizes that “From its beginning, NED has remained steadfastedly bipartisan.  Created jointly be Republicans and Democrats, NED is governed by a board balanced between both parties and enjoys Congressional support across the political spectrum.”

Whether or not a ‘steadfastedly bipartisan’ organization is necessarily independent or unbiased remains a good question, however, in light of the proved ability of both our major parties to be captured by special interest groups.

The current Chairman of the Board of NED is Richard Gephardt, formerly Majority as well as Minority Leader in the US Senate, and Senator from Missouri.  In 2005, after his final term in the Senate, Gephardt became a consultant and lobbyist.  One of his clients has been the Republic of Turkey.  Norm Coleman, formerly a Senator from Minnesota whose service included a role as Chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, is another board member.  The entire roster of board members for NED can be seen here.

NED has been open in its expression of concern about recent developments in Russia; for example, see its Eurasia overview here, and a listing of its grants for projects in Russia here.   Whether taxpayers should be funding these efforts, however noble they may appear, remains a matter of debate.   Noble-sounding goals can become a form of advertising for more intense, concentrated special interests.  And the energy-rich Central Asia region certainly has its share of attention from Americans who care primarily about their own wallets, and are happy to try to have taxpayer resources applied in ways that may make their own wallets fatter, at general expense.


# # # # Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

Regime Change in the Russian Federation? Why Washington Wants ‘Finito’ with Vladimir Putin

Global Research
F. William Engdahl

Washington clearly wants ‘finito’ with Russia’s Putin as in basta! or as they said in Egypt last spring, Kefaya--enough!.  Hillary Clinton and friends have apparently decided Russia’s prospective next president, Vladimir Putin, is a major obstacle to their plans. Few however understand why. Russia today, in tandem with China and to a significant degree Iran, form the spine, however shaky, of the only effective global axis of resistance to a world dominated by one sole superpower.

On December 8 several days after election results for Russia’s parliamentary elections were announced, showing a sharp drop in popularity for Prime Minister Putin’s United Russia party, Putin accused the United States and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fuelling the Russian opposition protesters and their election protests. Putin stated, “The (US) Secretary of State was quick to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust even before she received materials from the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the OSCE international election monitors-w.e.) observers.”[1] 

Putin went on to claim that Clinton’s premature comments were the necessary signal to the waiting opposition groups that the US Government would back their protests. Clinton’s comments, the seasoned Russian intelligence pro stated, became a “signal for our activists who began active work with the US Department of State.” [2]

Major western media chose either to downplay the Putin statement or to focus almost entirely on the claims of an emerging Russian opposition movement. A little research shows that, if anything, Putin was downplaying the degree of brazen US Government interference into the political processes of  his country. In this case the country is not Tunisia or Yemen or even Egypt. It is the world’s second nuclear superpower, even if it might still be an economic lesser power. Hillary is playing with thermonuclear fire.
Democracy or something else?

No mistake, Putin is not a world champion practitioner of what most consider democracy. His announcement some months back that he and current President Medvedev had agreed to switch jobs after Russia’s March 4 Presidential vote struck even many Russians as crass power politics and backroom deal-making. That being said, what Washington is doing to interfere with that regime change is more than brazen and interventionist. The same Obama Administration which just signed into law measures effectively ripping to shreds the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution for American citizens[3] is posing as world supreme judge of others’ adherence to what they define as democracy.

Let’s examine closely Putin’s charge of US interference in the election process. If we look, we find openly stated in their August 2011 Annual Report that a Washington-based NGO with the innocuous name, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is all over the place inside Russia. 

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is financing an International Press Center in Moscow where some 80 international NGOs can hold press briefings on whatever they choose. They fund numerous “youth advocacy” and leadership workshops to “help youth engage in political activism.” In fact, officially they spent more than $2,783,000 in 2010 on dozens of such programs across Russia. Spending for 2011 won’t be published until later in 2012. [4]