THE NATION's NED Connection--part 1
by bob feldman

"Bill vanden Heuvel suggested that the Freedom Award be given to General
Powell for the new role of the military in these efforts. Leo Cherne
referred Mr. vanden Heuvel's suggestions to the Special Events Committee
for consideration. He expressed his hesitancy at this point to address
issues of the war itself, beyond the expression of applause for the
military's humanitarian work..."

--from the International Rescue Committee [IRC] Board's May 22, 1991
Meeting Minutes

"...The National Endowment for Democracy [NED] was set up to `support
democratic institutions throughout the world through private,
nongovernmental efforts.'...

"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.' In effect, the CIA has been
laundering money through NED.

"...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...

"...Cuban dissident groups and media are heavily supported...Between
1990 and 1997, the Endowment donated a quarter-million dollars of
taxpayers' money to the Cuban-American National Fund, the ultra-fanatic
anti-Castro Miami group...

"The NED, like the CIA before it, calls what it does supporting
democracy. The governments and movements whom the NED targets call it
destabilization." (ROGUE STATE by William Blum in 2000)

The editor of THE NATION, Katrina vanden Heuvel, is also a member of the
board of directors of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute
[FERI]. Her father, International Rescue Committee [IRC] Board Member
William vanden Heuvel, has, in recent years been both the co-chairperson
of the FERI board and FERI's president.

Sitting between NATION Editor Vanden Heuvel and IRC Board Member Vanden
Heuvel on the FERI board recently has been the Texaco director that Bill
Clinton appointed to be the National Endowment for Democracy [NED]
Chairman in the 1990s: NYU President Emeritus John Brademas. FERI
Director Brademas held his position as NED Chairman between 1993 and
2001; and on January 18, 2001, FERI Board Member Brademas was presented
with the NED's "Democracy Service Medal" in recognition for his years of
service on the NED board of directors.

Prior to serving as NYU's president between 1981 and 1992, FERI board
member Brademas was a Congressional representative from South Bend,
Indiana for 22 years. According to CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, in October 1976
the former NED Chairman "acknowledged that he had accepted about $5,000
in campaign funds in 1970, 1972 and 1974 from Park Tong Sun, the
Washington party fixture under federal investigation for
influence-peddling" in the "Koreagate Affair." As NYU's president, FERI
Board Member Brademas also was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank
of New York and a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York
Stock Exchange, Scholastic Inc., Loew's Corp., RCA/NBC and Texaco.

While a member of the Texaco board of directors before Texaco was
acquired by Chevron in 2001, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's colleague on
the FERI board sat on both the "Audit Committee" and the "Public
Responsibility Committee" of Texaco's corporate board. Other members of
these Texaco board committees included then-Capital cities/ABC board
chairman Thomas Murphy and a retired chairman of the Pentagon's Joint
Chiefs of Staff, William Crowe. A long-time colleague of FERI Board
Co-Chair William vanden Heuvel on the IRC board--the now-deceased former
CIA Director William Casey--used to also sit on the Capital Cities/ABC
board. FERI Board Member Brademas also was the chairman of the Texaco
Foundation during the 1990s.

In July 1999 a subsidiary of Texaco, Saudi Arabian Texaco Inc., was
given a $506 million award by the United Nations "for damage sustained
in Middle East oil fields" during the early 1990s. The $506 million
that was given to Texaco's subsidiary came from a "UN Compensation
Committe" account--which was funded by seizing 30 percent of Iraqi oil
sales revenues, instead of allowing the Iraqi government to use all of
its oil sales revenues to decrease the human suffering in Iraq that U.S.
economic sanctions and U.S. militarism have produced there since 1991.
But according to its web site, in Iraq the NED which FERI Board Member
Brademas used to chair "supports institutions--both abroad and inside
the country--which promote concepts and programs of liberal democracy."
A $40,000 grant, for instance, was given by the NED in 2001 to the
"American Society for Kurds," which "trained journalists in the rights,
duties and role of journalists in democratic societies, and helped in
the formation of a working group of independent journalists."

In 2001, the NED also has been providing money to groups in Belgrade.
Radio-Television B-92, for instance, was given a $100,000 grant by the
NED; and a $228,000 grant from the NED was given to the Otpon
(Resistance] Movement. Around $760,000 in grants were also given in
2001 by the NED to groups like the "Center for a Free Cuba," the "Cuban
Committee for Human Rights," the "Cuban-American Military Council," the
"Information Bureau on Human Rights in Cuba" and "Cuba Net." "Cuba
Net," for instance, was given a $35,000 grant from the NED "to support
independent journalists inside of Cuba."

end of part 1

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