"Allen Weinstein, a member of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) working group known as the Democracy Group, which first proposed the formation of a quasi-governmental group to channel U.S. political aid, served as NED's acting president during its first year. Talking about the role of NED, Weinstein told the Washington Post in 1991 that "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
https://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/national_endowment_for_democracy/
"To substitute for secret CIA financing of political and cultural organizations (which had been prohibited by Congress after revelations that the CIA was funding domestic academic and cultural organizations), neoconservatives and their labor partners advocated that Reagan establish a quasi-governmental organization to redirect USIA and USAID funds."
"Not only did NED give neoconservatives a government-funded institute over which they exercised effective control, but it also facilitated close links with the U.S. government-funded international operations of the AFL-CIO, while building new ties with business. NED supported the creation of a series of neoconservative-led front groups that sought bipartisan and U.S. public support for an interventionist policy in Central America, which was part of the larger rollback and containment policy advocated by groups such as the Committee on the Present Danger and the Coalition for Peace through Strength. One of the most prominent of these NED-financed front groups was the Project for Democracy in Central America (PRODEMCA), whose objectives merged the hard (military) and soft (political aid/public diplomacy) sides of the neoconservative agenda in Central America. On the one hand, it received clandestine support from the unofficial "Project Democracy" of the National Security Council, operated by Oliver North and supervised by Elliott Abrams. On the other hand, it received USAID funding through NED for public diplomacy efforts."
"According to NED's website, the largest single 2002 NED grant in Latin America went to ACILS. NED gave this USAID-supported branch of the AFL-CIO $775,000 "to implement a program to reinforce the capacity of labor unions to promote economic and political reform and build alliance with civil society at community and national levels." ACILS did the same in Venezuela, where it worked with anti-Chávez worker groups that formed an alliance with business, civil society, and political parties that engineered the attempted coup in April 2002. The same year, ACILS received $116,000 to "support the Venezuelan trade movement, represented by the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, in developing a program to extend organization, training, and representation to the informal sector."
""An even more dubious initiative," wrote Barbara Conry for a 1993 Cato Institute report, "was NED's involvement in Costa Rica. Not only is Costa Rica a well-established democracy—former president George Bush visited the country in 1989 to celebrate 100 years of democracy there—it is the only stable democracy in Central America. But Costa Rican president Oscar Arias had opposed Ronald Reagan's policy in Central America, especially his support of the Nicaraguan Contras. Arias received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to dampen conflicts in the region, but he incurred the wrath of right-wing NED activists. So from 1986 to 1988 NED gave money to Arias's political opposition, which was also strongly supported by Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. As Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-NY) commented: 'They may technically have been within the law, but I felt this clearly violated the spirit. … The whole purpose of NED is to facilitate the emergence of democracy where it doesn't exist and preserve it where it does exist. In Costa Rica, neither of these [conditions] applies."
