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National Endowment for Democracy (NED):
Officially
created on November 6, 1982, the NED was established by statute as
a non-profit organization, yet its financing is approved by
Congress and included in the chapter of the Department of State
budget destined for the U.S. Agency for International
Development-USAID. In order to maintain the illusion that it is a
private organization, the NED also receives very small donations
from three associations, which are also indirectly financed by
federal contracts: the Smith Richardson Foundation, the John M.
Olin Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. The
majority of the historic figures linked to clandestine CIA actions
have at some time been members of the Board of Directors or the
Administrative Council of the NED, including Otto Reich, John
Negroponte, Henry Cisneros and Elliot Abrams. The present Chairman
of the NED Board of Directors is Vin Weber, founder of the
ultraconservative organization Empower America, and campaign
fundraiser for George W. Bush in 2000. NED’s president is Carl
Gershman, an ex-Trotskyist gone awry, and once a member of the
Social Democrats, USA who later joined the growing club of
neo-conservative and Reagan-Bush “hawks”.
NED offers
small grants to foreign "non-governmental organizations (NGOs)"
that act in line with U.S. foreign policy. Many of these NGO's are
also funded by USAID, which has a lot more money, but because of
USAID's lack of transparency, we cannot discern exactly which of
these NGOs also receive USAID funding and how much they receive.
It is clear
from reading these grant proposals and Quarterly Reports that the
main objectives of this funding is to remove the
democratically-elected Venezuelan government. Indeed, many
of these grants appear to have been given with the aim of
producing a "parallel government" that could replace the present
government in the case of its collapse.
As a result of
the exposure by publication of some these grants on this website,
some of the NGOs listed below are no longer active. Their
covers have been blown. The following is a list of NGOs in
Venezuela that have received or continue to receive funding from
NED:
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