EIN: 52-1344831
National Endowment for Democracy
Washington, DC 20005
NED Funded Group helped conduct bogus Venezuela Exit Poll
U.S. Polling Firm Lands in Middle of Venezuela Referendum Dispute After Predicting Wrong Outcome
A U.S. firm's exit poll that said President Hugo Chavez would lose a recall referendum has landed in the center of a controversy following his resounding victory.
"Exit Poll Results Show Major Defeat for Chavez," the survey, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, asserted even as Sunday's voting was still on. But in fact, the opposite was true. Chavez ended up trouncing his enemies and capturing 59 percent of the vote.
...Critics of the exit poll have questioned how it was conducted because officials have said Penn, Schoen & Berland worked with a U.S.-funded Venezuela group that the Chavez government considers hostile.
Penn, Schoen & Berland had members of Sumate, a Venezuelan group that helped organize the recall initiative, do the fieldwork for the poll, election observers said.
...Sumate which has received a $53,400 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy, which in turn receives funds from the U.S. Congress did not use any of those funds to pay for the surveys.
National Endowment for Democracy Funded Venezuelan Coup Perpetrators
Someone should tell the NED that a coup is the opposite of democracy
In a stunning revelation the New York Times reported on April 24, 2002 that the US-government funded nonprofit agency called the National Endowment for Democracy - whose board chairman is former Republican Congressman/Super Lobbyist Vin Weber, had funneled more than $877,000 into Venezuela opposition groups in the weeks and months before the recently aborted coup attempt.
Specifically, the New York Times point to $154,000 given by the endowment to a Venezuelan labor union that led the opposition work stoppages and worked closely with Pedro Carmona Estanga, the businessman who led the coup.
The endowment also gave money to the US Republican and Democratic political parties for work in Venezuela (!) The International Republican Institute, apparently an arm of the US Republican party that has an office in Venezuela, recieved a grant of $339,998 for "political party building." On the day of the coup, this group that received money from the US government to promote democracy, hailed the takeover. The former president of the Institute has close ties to the Bush administration, and is now the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor! The Institute itself also embraced the coup.
The NED's senior endowment officer, Chris Sabatini, said it had hurriedly funnelled money to Venezuelan opposition groups in the past year as "Mr Chavez and his supporters restricted press freedoms and sought to suppress growing dissent against his leftist policies." Which is a completely ludicrous statement, given that the Venezuelan media led the campaign against Chavez!
Even the right wing Cato Institute knows about the Orwellian name of the NED - it is a specifically anti-democratic actor that, because of its "unofficial" status can escape the scrutiny that would regularly attach to governmental actions and funding.
Barbara Conry, an analyst at Cato, was quoted in the Times as saying, "You [have] the worst of both worlds...Everybody knew it [NED actions in the 1980s in Chile and Nicaragua] was directly funded by Washington. That didn't fool many people. But it wasn't really accountable."
See the grants from the NED's website
Back to the future
The National Endowment for Democracy is back and up to its old tricks again
We recently reported on how former Republican Congressman Vin Weber (MN), now a Washington, DC "Super Lobbyist", had recently been appointed to head the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy.
Now conservative movement watcher Bill Berkowitz has shed some light on the ideology, genesis, history and methods of the NED, and it's not a pretty sight.
Berkowitz writes that the NED was created to "do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades."
What has the NED done since its inception in 1983? According to a policy analyst at the Cato Institute - someone who should theoretically be friendly to Weber and the NED, it:
"...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."
More precisely, Berkowitz points out:
The NED...provides money, technical support, supplies, training programs, media know-how, public relations assistance and state-of-the-art equipment to select political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, and other media. It's aim is to destabilize progressive movements, particularly those with a socialist or democratic socialist bent.
Read the full report on WorkingForChange.
Vin Weber, simultaneously head of the private, government-funded charity called the National Endowment for Democracy and drug company lobbyist, lobbied drug-stock owning fellow Republican Pesidential advisor Karl Rove at the White House last month.
Vin Weber, an "outside lobbyist" with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), and Alan F. Holmer, the president of the same organization, met with Presidential advisor Karl Rove last month in his White House office. At the time Rove owned $240,000 worth of stock in two of the nation's largest drug companies.
What did they talk about? According to the Post: "issues of importance" to PhRMA members."
Rove at the time owned 1,410 shares of Johnson & Johnson Inc. and 2,249 shares of Pfizer Inc.
And just what does PhRMA want? "PhRMA representatives emphasized their view that any [drug benefit] program be managed by private health plans rather than the government, which would 'in effect put price controls on the pharmaceutical industry.'"
Read the full report in the Washington Post
March 27, 2001
Republican Superlobbyist Vin Weber named Chairman of private National Endowment for Democracy
Super-lobbyist and former Minnesota Republican Congressman Vin Weber has been named president of the National Endowment for Democracy, which describes itself as a "private, nonprofit, grant-making organization created in 1983 to strengthen democratic institutions around the world."
Read the press release at the NED web site
DemocracyNow.org
March 3, 2004
Hugo Chavez Accuses U.S. of Spending Over $1 Million To Help Oust Him
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/04/1554235
Newly publicized documents show how the National Endowment for Democracy has given over $1 million in projects related to an anti-Chavez referendum and opposition groups.
Bill Berkowitz
Media Transparency
February 26, 2004
Venezuela at the Crossroads
story.php?storyID=46
The National Endowment for Democracy channeling money to outfit organizing recall campaign against Venezuela's president
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
AntiWar.com
October 10, 2003
National Endowment for Democracy: Paying to Make Enemies of America
http://www.antiwar.com/paul/paul79.html
The misnamed National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is nothing more than a costly program that takes US taxpayer funds to promote favored politicians and political parties abroad. What the NED does in foreign countries, through its recipient organizations the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), would be rightly illegal in the United States.
Alan Bock
AntiWar.com
April 28, 2002
Financing Venezuelan Mischief
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/b043002.html
B.RAMAN
South Asia Analysis Group, India
April 12, 2000
THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY OF US
http://www.saag.org/papers2/paper115.html
...Since its inception, the NED and its affiliates have been mired in controversy in the US itself as well as abroad. Amongst its strongest supporters in the US is the Heritage Foundation of Washington DC, a conservative think tank, which played an active role in influencing the policies of the Reagan and Bush Administrations...
William Blum
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
December 31, 1999
Trojan Horse: The National Endowment for Democracy
http://members.aol.com/superogue/ned.htm
Barbary Conry
Cato Institute
December 31, 1992
LOOSE CANNON: THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY
http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-027es.html