Meanwhile, the U.S. government appears nearly as divided as the Ukrainian people. While neocon holdovers in the State Department, particularly Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, helped instigate the crisis, President Obama has seen his collaboration with Putin to tamp down crises in Syria and Iran put at risk. That cooperation was already under attack from influential neocons at the Washington Post and other media outlets.
Then, last December, Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to help Ukraine achieve "its European aspirations, we have invested more than $5 billion." She said the U.S. goal was to take "Ukraine into the future that it deserves," meaning out of the Russian orbit and into a Western one.
On Jan. 28, Nuland spoke by phone to U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt about how to manipulate Ukraine's tensions and who to elevate into the country's leadership. According to the conversation, which was intercepted and made public, Nuland ruled out one opposition figure, Vitali Klitschko, a popular former boxer, because he lacked experience.
Nuland also favored the UN as mediator instead of the European Union, at which point in the conversation she exclaimed, "f*ck the E.U." to which Pyatt responded, "Oh, exactly -- [See Consortiumnews.com's "Neocons and the Ukraine Coup."]
Yet, the larger question for Americans may be whether NED and its slush fund have helped create not only shadow political structures in countries around the world but whether one now exists in the United States. Though NED has always justified its budget by focusing on what it will do in other countries, it spends much of its money in Washington D.C., funding NGOs that pay salaries of political operatives who, in turn, write American op-eds often from a neocon, interventionist perspective.
Indeed, it would be hard to comprehend why the American neocon power structure didn't capsize after the disastrous Iraq War without factoring in the financial ballast provided by NED and other neocon funding sources. That steady flow of NED funding, topping $100 million, gave the neocon movement the staying power that other foreign policy viewpoints lacked.
Cold War Relic
NED was founded in 1983 at the initiative of Cold War hardliners in the Reagan administration, including then-CIA Director William J. Casey. Essentially, NED took over what had been the domain of the CIA, i.e., funneling money to support foreign political movements that would take the U.S. side against the Soviet Union.
Though the Reagan administration's defenders insist that this "democracy" project didn't "report" to Casey, documents that have been declassified from the Reagan years show Casey as a principal instigator of this operation, which also sought to harness funding from right-wing billionaires and foundations to augment these activities.
In one note to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese, Casey endorsed plans "for the appointment of a small Working Group to refine the proposal and make recommendations to the President on the merit of creating an Institute, Council or National Endowment in support of free institutions throughout the world."
Casey's note, written on CIA stationery, added, "Obviously we here should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor do we wish to appear to be a sponsor or advocate. ... We would be pleased to make suggestions on the composition of the Working Group and Commission."
To organize this effort, Casey dispatched one of the CIA's top propaganda specialists, Walter Raymond Jr., to the National Security Council. Putting Raymond at the NSC insulated the CIA from accusations that it institutionally was using the new structure to subvert foreign governments -- while also helping fund American opinion leaders who would influence U.S. policy debates, a violation of the CIA's charter. Instead, that responsibility was shifted to NED, which began doing precisely what Casey had envisioned.
Many of the documents on this "public diplomacy" operation, which also encompassed "psychological operations," remain classified for national security reasons to this day, more than three decades later. But the scattered documents that have been released by archivists at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, reveal a whirlwind of activity, with Raymond in the middle of a global network.
Who Is Walt Raymond?
Reagan's White House was so nervous that the press corps might zero in on Raymond's CIA propaganda background that it prepared guidance in case anyone should ask, according to a document recently released by the Reagan library. If a reporter questioned White House claims that "there is no CIA involvement in the Public Diplomacy Program" -- by asking, "isn't Walt Raymond, a CIA employee, involved heavily?" -- the scripted answer was to acknowledge that Raymond had worked for the CIA but no longer.
"It is true that in the formative stages of the effort, Walt Raymond contributed many useful ideas. It is ironic that he was one of those who was most insistent that there be no CIA involvement in this program in any way."
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