Congressional Dish: CD186: National Endowment for Democracy (2025)

Dec 10, 2018

The National Endowment for Democracy is a private foundation -that receives millions of our tax dollars - that pays groups towork to change the governments of other countries. In this episode,hear highlights from a hearing during which the president of thiscreepy organization and the presidents of two organizations that itfunds - which are controlled entirely by members of the Republicanand Democratic parties - will give you some insight into what kindof work they are doing manipulating information and interfering inelections in other countries around the world.

Executive Producers: Anonymous, Garrick Smalley, Jerod Ewert &Brandon Lewis

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Main Hearing

Hearing: Democracy Promotion in a Challenging World, Senate ForeignAffairs Committee, June 14, 2018.

Full HearingTranscript
Watch on YouTube
Witnesses:
- Carl Gershman:National Endowment for Democracy:President
- Daniel Twining: International Republican Institute:President
- Kenneth Wollack:National Democratic Institute:President

Timestamps & Transcripts

15:35 Representative Edward Royce(CA): At home, we must maintain the decades-old bipartisanconsensus that democracy is a core element of U.S. foreign policy.That is why it’s important to have the National Endowment forDemocracy, the International Republican Institute, and the NationalDemocratic Institute here today, and that’s why it’s important thatCongress continues to adequately fund these institutions.

24:30 Representative Edward Royce(CA): I’m pleased to welcome our distinguished guests hereon the panel, including Mr. Carl Gershman, who has served aspresident of the National Endowment for Democracy since itsfounding in 1984. He’s a long-time friend of this committee. He’srespected worldwide for his work, especially in his efforts to helppeaceably end the Cold War and transition countries from behind theIron Curtain to democracy, and he’s done this throughnongovernmental action. Before his time at NED, he was the seniorcounselor to the United States representative to the UnitedNations, where he worked on international human rights issues.

25:21 Representative Edward Royce(CA): Mr. Daniel Twining is the president of theInternational Republican Institute, and previously he served as thecounselor and director of the Asia Program at the German MarshallFund of the United States. He also worked here in Congress. Heworked here as a foreign policy advisor to Senator JohnMcCain.

25:45 Representative Edward Royce(CA): And we have Mr. Kenneth Wollack. He is president ofthe National Democratic Institute, and he has co-edited the MiddleEast Policy Survey and written regularly on foreign affairs for theLos Angeles Times.

27:26Carl Gershman: I’d callyour attention, for example, to some recent events, among them theremarkable democratic transition in Gambia; the fall of the corruptZuma government in South Africa; the stunning victory of democracyin Malaysia, and the freeing of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim;the equally stunning triumph of democracy in Armenia; and thesuccessful local elections in Tunisia that are, in my view, adecisive step forward in the Arab world’s first democracy. Theseare just a few of the examples that I could give of recentdemocratic advances. There is Slovakia, interesting developments inEthiopia. Even in a country like Uzbekistan, we can see someglimmerings of some opening.

31:07 Carl Gershman: Other examplesinclude the support that NED has given in Ukraine to theAnti-Corruption Action Center that has tirelessly led the campaignfor the establishment of an independent anti-corruption court. AndI’m pleased to report that just last week the Ukrainian parliamentat long last approved legislation to create such a court.

37:25 Daniel Twining: In Europe, theKremlin is deploying a sophisticated information-warfare campaignto undermine democratic institutions, erode citizen trust indemocracy, and wedge apart the transatlantic alliance. This form ofwarfare is particularly insidious—this political warfare—because ituses core features of democracy against us—exploiting our freemedia, manipulating false information, undermining confidence inelectoral systems. IRI’s Beacon Project is engaged in a big line ofwork to leverage our relationships for European political partiesand civil-societies groups to track Russian misinformation,including in many local languages, and then to coordinate politicalresponses to that.

31:46Carl Gershman: The lastexample is the nonpartisan training conducted by four NGOs inTunisia of new candidates who participated in last month’s localelections. Of the 235 individuals who were trained, 112 won seats,and 25 were at the heads of their electoral lists.

41:46Kenneth Wollack:Authoritarian regimes are using digital tools to advance theirinterests, including electoral espionage and the dissemination ofdisinformation, to skew electoral outcomes, disrupt democraticdiscourse, discredit democratic institutions, and fuel ethnic andsocial divisions. NDI has responded by providing cybersecuritysupport; assisting efforts of civic, media, and political groups todetect, expose, and combat this information; and conducting newtypes of public-opinion research to identify populations that aremost susceptible to Russian disinformation and develop messagesthat can build resilience. In cooperation with IRI and NED, NDI ishelping to launch a new effort with democracy groups, civil-societyorganizations, civic-tech partners, political parties, and a globalnetwork of four million citizen election monitors to interact moreregularly with the technology companies.

44:23 Kenneth Wollack: Ukrainians canpoint to concrete achievements in recent years. These include theemergence of new political parties that have national reach and arefocused on citizens they represent rather than on oligarchs whowould finance them. Brought together by NDI in partnership with theEuropean Parliament, party factions in the Rada are overcoming deepfragmentation to agree on procedures that will make it easier tobuild consensus around reforms. In NDI programs alone, more than45,000 citizens have engaged directly in the national reformprocess and reaching more than 1.3 million citizens through themedia.

45:05 Kenneth Wollack: Another storyof democratic resilience is unfolding in Syria. In northern Syria,citizen groups are prioritizing community needs, and localadministrative councils are responding by providing criticalservices. Fifty NDI governance advisors are working each day in 34locations to advise citizen groups and administrative councils, andbringing them together to solve problems.

49:19 Carl Gershman: But you’ve gotto build a defense against it, and a lot of the groups that wehelped stop fake news Ukraine and other groups like that are beingable to identify fake information. We have a dialogue—a veryongoing dialogue—with the Internet companies to take down a lot ofincitement, a lot of fake news. We’re connecting our grantees withthe Internet companies. We have groups like Bellingcat, which is aninvestigative journalist group. They use open-source information.But they’ve identified the Russian general who provided the missilethat shot down the Malaysian airliner.

51:30KennethWollack: But this a daily fight on the ground.Representative Edward Royce (CA): A social mediafight? Wollack: Yes. To give you one example, theDemocratic Party of Serbia, two weeks before the local elections,the Russians—presumably the Russians—had hacked their Facebookpage, put horrible content on it. The hackers then contactedFacebook, told them to look at the site. Facebook immediately tookdown the Facebook page. Now, the party didn’t know who to contact.They had no contact with Facebook. They were able to contact us.Our office in SiliconValley managed to reach theFacebook executives. They immediately took it down.

54:04Representative Eliot Engel(NY): The budget proposal for fiscal year 2019 requested a$67 million for NED, which is a 60 percent cut from the amountwhich is $170 million that Congress has appropriated yearly sinceFY ’16.

54:59Carl Gershman: I mean,there are, obviously, two fundamental problems with the OMB budgetrequest for fiscal 2019: the amount and separating us from the fourinstitutes. And both of these are devastating. I don’t even want toget into now what we would have to cut. They’re devastating—utterlydevastating. It would virtually kill the whole program.

58:22Daniel Twining: But inMalaysia, IRI’s been working with the opposition there since 2002.Malaysia was essentially a one-party majoritarian state. The rulingparty had ruled since 1957. It had gerrymandered all the districts,given itself every advantage. But in this last election a monthago, the opposition won for the first time in 60-something years,and that was an example of playing the long game, right? We, theUnited States, supported a democratic opposition that is now incharge of this very strategic country right there on the frontlines of the South China Sea, right there on the front lines of theIslamic world’s intersection with the rest of Asia, and that’s goodfor America.

1:09:12 Representative Gregory Meeks(NY): And Mr. Gershman, I’m a former board member at NED,so I’ve seen firsthand the work that you and your dedication andthe bipartisan board of NED collectively working together to try tomake sure that we have a better world for all of us.

1:12:20 Kenneth Wollack: Ourengagement is not to spread falsehoods. It’s not to create fakenews. It’s not to try to disrupt the process. It’s not to try tospur conflict in countries. What we’re trying to do is promote theprinciples, values, processes, and institutions that are enshrinedin an intergovernmental organization. And our work is to try tohelp people engage in the political process.

1:16:34 Representative Dana Rohrabacher(CA):... did we or did we not involve ourselves heavily toundermine the democratically elected government of Yanukovych inUkraine? And what did it bring us? It brought us turmoil andconflict—that if we’d have waited and let that government beelected, because of its flaws unelected, we would not be in thissituation today where the world is more likely to go into conflictbecause of that. I don’t believe the Russians would’ve invadedUkraine had we not arrogantly involved ourselves to overthrow thatdemocratically elected government in Ukraine.

1:18:39 Representative Dana Rohrabacher(CA): So, I’ve had my say. I know I’m making everybody madat me, but I had to say it.

1:25:59Representative Brad Sherman(CA): And I want to turn our attention to Yerevan andArmenia. NED has allocated $1.3 million last year. Now we’ve seen areal move toward democracy. Are you going to do more, given thefluid situation there? Carl Gershman: Thank youvery much for that question, Mr. Sherman. Yes. The answer is yes.Our board, which meets later this week, is making Armenia what wecall a country eligible for contingency funds, which are funds setaside for new situations and, obviously, what’s happened in Armeniais very, very new. And we—I think there are several priorities thathave to be addressed. There are going to be quick elections thathave been called in Armenia, and those elections have to haveintegrity to them to give legitimacy to the current Pashinyangovernment. There is a parliament that oversees this, andgovernment officials are really new to the governing game. Thesystem has been controlled by a centralized authority for a numberof years and so a lot of training is going to have to be necessaryfor some of the new government officials. And then, finally,there’s going to be a big information war, the kind of issue raisedby Congressman Royce, and it is very essential in this period—andthis is what the groups that we help are doing—is to get peoplereliable and independent information so they don’t make thejudgments based upon the disinformation that is going to bepromoted by the forces that have just been removed from power.

1:49:40 Representative Karen Bass(CA): Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want towelcome my colleagues from NED and IRI and NDI. And I’m a member ofthe NED board, for my colleagues that are here on the committee,and I have to say the work that NED does around the world is reallytremendous.

2:07:52 Representative Ted Poe (TX):Globally, what do you personally see is the number-one entity thatis a threat to democracy worldwide? Is it China? Is it Russia? Isit North Korea? Is it ISIS? Is it Iran? Pick one. Pick the one youthink is the threat. Carl Gershman: China.Rep. Poe: China. Gershman: China.Rep. Poe: Mr. Twining. DanielTwining: China. Rep. Poe: Mr. Wollack.Kenneth Wollack: Russia. Rep.Poe: Russia. Russia and China.

2:35:00Carl GershmanAnd Ithink it should not be forgotten: NED was created as an independentinstitution so that even when you have problems, whatever theproblems are with the executive branch, our work continuesconsistently. And I think that was a brilliant idea, and it’s inthe National Endowment for Democracy Act adopted by the Congress byDante Fascell in 1983, and I think it was brilliant to give the NEDthat kind of independence so that we can go forward, regardless ofwhat the policies of the executive branch are at any particulartime.

2:47:46Carl Gershman: I takepride in the fact that when we make grants to groups abroad, I takepride that it’s with American taxpayer money. We try to protectthat money. We try to make sure that every single dollar is spentwell. But I take pride in the fact that that’s a demonstration ofthe support coming from the American people.

Sound Clip Sources

News Interview: The Rules-BasedInternational Order Created by the U.S. is Being Torn Apart by theU.S., CNN, June 10, 2018.

2:30 Sen. Diane Feinstein I mean wehave helped support this whole Democratic Atlantic community andmore or less forged it into a single entity. And I’ve been veryproud of that as an American.

Speech: Madeleine K. AlbrightGives Keynote Remarks at 2018 Albright Luncheon, NationalDemocratic Institute, YouTube, May 10, 2018.