April 25, 2002

New York Times

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."