DEMOCRACY UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000200740002-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 18, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: December 30, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200740002-6
NEW YORK TIMES
ARTICLE APPEAREn 30 December 1985
ON PAGE
Democracy Undermines Democracy
The new National Endowment for Democracy
is a useful agency that has strayed from its mission,
strtilrgthening free institutions in third-world coun-
tries. Could anyone who favored its creation in 1983
have expected that it would siphon off funds to an
,opposition group in France? Yet a grant of $,000
flowed to a right-wing student group. Another
9830,000 went to Force Ouvriare, a reputable anti-
Communist trade union. Both tried to conceal the
&,+w=when the story blowup in the French press.
This amounts to a double betrayal of the endow-
it '1t's purpose. France is a stable democracy with
a !,tcongly anti-Soviet Socialist Government; it is in-
suiting and gratuitous for American taxpayers to
subsidize an opposition group there. And all endow-
ment grants are supposed to be open, precisely to
avoid the embarrassing disclosures about funding
made covertly by the C.I.A. over the years.
Endowment officials contend the grants were
for nonpartisan purposes and were not meant to be
secret. They offer an explanation: Of the $31 million
originally voted by Congress, $13 million was chan-
neled through autonomous labor and business insti-
tutes. The money sent to France went through the
Free Trade Union Institute without adequate over-
sight by the endowment's board. Congress has now
eliminated the channeling, requiring the endow-
ment to supervise all grants directly and openly.
Carl Gershman, the chastened executive direc-
tor, cites the endowment's good wont -in funding,
democratic programs in Chile, Poland, Panama
and Guatemala. Nonetheless, it is remarkable that
the French press had to alert the endowment to the
dubious history of a major recipient with non-demo-
cratic origins, the Union Nationale Inter-Universi-
taire.
Imagine the outrage in America if President
Mitterrand's Government were found to be covertly
funding socialist opponents of the Reagen Adminis-
tration.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200740002-6