A SHOCKING BRIEF HISTORY OF THE N.E.D. in 20 tweet-sized paragraphs
2025-02-05 10:55
Last Updated At：10:57
'SHOCKING AND ILLEGAL'
1) There was an outcry against the shocking and illegal overseas activities of the CIA overseas in the second half of the 1970s. Investigatory commissions wagged disapproving fingers, and wholesale reform was promised.
2) But instead of halting the black ops, the US held a series of meetings in the early 1980s which concluded that they should continue them under a nicer-sounding name. Thus the National Endowment for Democracy was born on November 18, 1983, in Washington DC.
3) The US public and the wider world were told that the NED was designed to "support democratic institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts". This was misleading: the organization was and is funded by the US government.
FIRST STOP, MANILA
4) An early NED target was the Philippines. When socialist groups were becoming popular and troublesome in the mid-1980s, NED used classic CIA techniques to steer funds to private organizations and media to artificially change political outcomes.
5) At the time, journalists were allowed to print that NED was a CIA scam. The famous Allen Weinstein quote ("A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA") actually came from a 1991 interview, after about eight years of NED political interference ops.
6) The NED got larger and busier. Intelligence historian William Blum reported: "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."
7) The CIA-style illegality was often shocking. For example, the NED handed US$250,000 to an anti-Castro Miami group which in turn financed a Cuban terrorist named Luis Posada Carriles who was involved in groups which bombed hotels in Havana and blew up an aircraft.
THE LONG GAME IN CHINA
8) In 1994, the NED started setting up and/ or funding "pro-democracy" organizations in Hong Kong, designed to poison the minds of the local populace against mainland China, due to resume sovereignty over the city just three years later.
9) Also in 1994, the NED decided to make use of another old CIA front group, the American Institute for Free Labor Development. This was a nice-sounding unit that could be used to subvert genuine trade unions.
10) The NED started sending large sums of money regularly to a new group, the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions. But the city already had a Federation of Trade Unions. The media was told that the old trade union organization was "political" and must be labelled "pro-Beijing".
11) But the opposite was true. The old trade union group focused on workers' rights and collective bargaining, while the US allied one, according to NED paperwork, was financed to act as "a rallying point for the pro-democracy movement".
ENTER THE UYGHURS
12) NED worked worldwide. "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," wrote William Blum.
13) From at least 2004, NED began a program of handing millions of dollars to Uyghur insurgents, despite them being classified as terrorists. These Uyghurs committed a series of violent terrorist attacks in China between 2009 and 2014 which randomly killed scores of innocent people.
14) When China acted against the terrorists to re-train them for integration with society, NED-financed "Uyghur rights groups" (actually based in Washington DC or elsewhere in the west) accused the Chinese of building "concentration camps" for "millions" of innocents.
15) The NED's political interference ops continued worldwide. From 2013, NED and USAID provided tens of millions of dollars to the opposition in Bolivia to try to install a US-friendly puppet leader.
HONG KONG OP LAUNCHED
16) In 2018, Hong Kong obeyed a G-7 recommendation to introduce an extradition amendment. US agents used this as their official "flashpoint" to launch a disinformation campaign to paint it as a Beijing initiative to snatch dissidents to be "disappeared" over the border.
17) The result was a violent insurgency in Hong Kong that lasted more than five months in 2019, with billions of dollars' worth of damage to government buildings, the public transport network, and universities.
NEWS BLACKOUT
18) The NED conducted a massive political interference op in Moldova in 2024, which was reported in the media as "Russian meddling". The exact same thing happened in Georgia and Romania—and were similarly mis-characterised.
19) Bizarrely, the western mainstream media now runs an almost complete news blackout on NED ops worldwide, and almost all funding histories on the NED website have been removed from public access.
20) The January 2025 shuttering of the USAID website has given people around the world hope that the US might stop overseas political interference ops. But some of us point out that that was exactly what they said in the late 1970s—where this story started.
'SHOCKING AND ILLEGAL'
1) There was an outcry against the shocking and illegal overseas activities of the CIA overseas in the second half of the 1970s. Investigatory commissions wagged disapproving fingers, and wholesale reform was promised.
2) But instead of halting the black ops, the US held a series of meetings in the early 1980s which concluded that they should continue them under a nicer-sounding name. Thus the National Endowment for Democracy was born on November 18, 1983, in Washington DC.
3) The US public and the wider world were told that the NED was designed to "support democratic institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts". This was misleading: the organization was and is funded by the US government.
FIRST STOP, MANILA
4) An early NED target was the Philippines. When socialist groups were becoming popular and troublesome in the mid-1980s, NED used classic CIA techniques to steer funds to private organizations and media to artificially change political outcomes.
5) At the time, journalists were allowed to print that NED was a CIA scam. The famous Allen Weinstein quote ("A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA") actually came from a 1991 interview, after about eight years of NED political interference ops.
6) The NED got larger and busier. Intelligence historian William Blum reported: "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."
7) The CIA-style illegality was often shocking. For example, the NED handed US$250,000 to an anti-Castro Miami group which in turn financed a Cuban terrorist named Luis Posada Carriles who was involved in groups which bombed hotels in Havana and blew up an aircraft.
THE LONG GAME IN CHINA
8) In 1994, the NED started setting up and/ or funding "pro-democracy" organizations in Hong Kong, designed to poison the minds of the local populace against mainland China, due to resume sovereignty over the city just three years later.
9) Also in 1994, the NED decided to make use of another old CIA front group, the American Institute for Free Labor Development. This was a nice-sounding unit that could be used to subvert genuine trade unions.
10) The NED started sending large sums of money regularly to a new group, the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions. But the city already had a Federation of Trade Unions. The media was told that the old trade union organization was "political" and must be labelled "pro-Beijing".
11) But the opposite was true. The old trade union group focused on workers' rights and collective bargaining, while the US allied one, according to NED paperwork, was financed to act as "a rallying point for the pro-democracy movement".
ENTER THE UYGHURS
12) NED worked worldwide. "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," wrote William Blum.
13) From at least 2004, NED began a program of handing millions of dollars to Uyghur insurgents, despite them being classified as terrorists. These Uyghurs committed a series of violent terrorist attacks in China between 2009 and 2014 which randomly killed scores of innocent people.
14) When China acted against the terrorists to re-train them for integration with society, NED-financed "Uyghur rights groups" (actually based in Washington DC or elsewhere in the west) accused the Chinese of building "concentration camps" for "millions" of innocents.
15) The NED's political interference ops continued worldwide. From 2013, NED and USAID provided tens of millions of dollars to the opposition in Bolivia to try to install a US-friendly puppet leader.
HONG KONG OP LAUNCHED
16) In 2018, Hong Kong obeyed a G-7 recommendation to introduce an extradition amendment. US agents used this as their official "flashpoint" to launch a disinformation campaign to paint it as a Beijing initiative to snatch dissidents to be "disappeared" over the border.
17) The result was a violent insurgency in Hong Kong that lasted more than five months in 2019, with billions of dollars' worth of damage to government buildings, the public transport network, and universities.
NEWS BLACKOUT
18) The NED conducted a massive political interference op in Moldova in 2024, which was reported in the media as "Russian meddling". The exact same thing happened in Georgia and Romania—and were similarly mis-characterised.
19) Bizarrely, the western mainstream media now runs an almost complete news blackout on NED ops worldwide, and almost all funding histories on the NED website have been removed from public access.
20) The January 2025 shuttering of the USAID website has given people around the world hope that the US might stop overseas political interference ops. But some of us point out that that was exactly what they said in the late 1970s—where this story started.
The author is delusional.
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