Is he still a member, or has he left? It looks like he is still there, but wondering if this is another case of someone working under Bush that had no idea how bad it would get.
http://www.ned.org/about/board_bios/clark.htmlThis is an old article on NED.
Sept/Oct 2001
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/oct01berkowitz.htm(snip)
Over the years the NED has been especially active in Central America, the Philippines, Eastern Europe, and in its support of the Cuban exile community. It describes itself as a “private, nonprofit, grant-making organization created in 1983 to strengthen democratic institutions around the world.” This description doesn’t do the organization justice. In reality, throughout the 1980s the NED helped turn Central America into low-intensity killing-fields.
(snip)
The organization’s Board of Directors is a collection of high- powered inside-the-beltway longtime foreign policy “experts.” In February, six new members were elected to the board: Frank Carlucci, current chairperson of the Carlyle Group, a banking firm, and former Secretary of Defense and National Security Advisor in the Reagan administration; General Wesley K. Clark (U.S. Army Ret.), currently associated with the Stephens Group, a venture capital outfit, and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Commander in Chief; Julia Finley, a Republican Party activist working on NATO expansion issues; Francis Fukuyama, political scientist and author, most notably, of The End of History; Richard C. Holbrooke, outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; and Weber.
(snip)
Not every conservative has such a glowing assessment of the organization. In 1993, Barbara Conry, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, noted that the NED “has a history of corruption and financial mismanagement, is superfluous at best and often destructive. Through the endowment, the American taxpayer has paid for special-interest groups to harass the duly elected governments of friendly countries, interfere in foreign elections, and foster the corruption of democratic movements.”
(snip)
An active partner of the Reagan administration during the 1980s, the NED worked to destabilize and crush the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. As might be expected, the organization got caught up in the maelstrom surrounding the Iran- Contra affair. According to Blum, the NED funded “key components of
Oliver North’s shadowy ‘Project Democracy’ network, which privatized U.S. foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs and engaged in other equally charming activities.
(snip)
With Vin Weber as chair of the Board, and several of Ronald Reagan’s key Central America operatives, including Otto Reich, John Negroponte, and the scurrilous Elliot Abrams appointed to posts within the Bush administration, expect the NED to once again emerge as a foreign policy player. As Bush fashions a harder line toward Cuba, the NED is almost certain to become a lifeline to the Cuban exile community. In the past is prologue department, look for the fingerprints of the National Endowment for Democracy all over this November’s Nicaraguan presidential election.
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