CIA’s ‘NED’ Succeeds in Ukraine Where Democracy “Failed”

March 3, 2014 in CIA, Fascism, Ukraine

By JC

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Imagine my surprise (not) when a friend brought to my attention the above public Facebook post from Intelligent Discontent’s Polish Wolf after our dustup in the comments of Lizard’s post “Cold War Proxy Conflicts Worsening”. I blurred out his name and photo so as to maintain his anonymity.

First off, let’s dispense with the easy stuff. I’m not sure if PW is referring to my being a ‘faux “anti-imperialist”‘ or a ‘faux… liberal’ (he might want to get some tutoring from his high school english teacher buddy on how to construct sentences clearly). Most assuredly I am an anti-imperialist. And I have never claimed, and do not claim, to be a liberal. God forbid I be lumped in with the milk toast politicians that pass as liberal democrats these days.

Maybe he’s insinuating there is no such thing as a liberal that is “anti-imperialist.” I don’t believe that all liberals have descended into neoliberalism, so I’d have to disagree with him on that point, that one could not be both a liberal and an anti-imperialist.

But I need to clarify a few things for those who would pass off a cursory look at the recent history of Ukrainian elections or economics for any indication of whether or not the CIA is involved in fomenting the instability that resulted in a coup, or if this coup is justified. There is much in-depth coverage outside of the mainstream press (and mouthpieces for neocon and neoliberal foreign policy stances).

Much more after the jump… with a “straight face.”

If you want to understand what is happening in Ukraine, the mainstream media is not the place to start. First off, one needs to understand that NED (the National Endowment for Democracy), has been active in Ukraine for many years.

What is NED? Good question. It is the public propaganda arm of the CIA, and also a covert psy-op outfit. ConsortiumNews has a great writeup on their history “A Shadow Foreign Policy”, and operations in Ukriane. Suffice it to say, the CIA (through NED to give it “plausible deniability”) financed and directed many of the outfits that were protesting and destabilizing Ukraine:

“NED is one reason why there is so much confusion about the administration’s policies toward attempted ousters of democratically elected leaders in Ukraine and Venezuela. Some of the non-government organizations (or NGOs) supporting these rebellions trace back to NED and its U.S. government money, even as Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials insist the U.S. is not behind these insurrections.”

How involved is NED in Ukrainian affairs?

“In furtherance of these goals, NED funded a staggering 65 projects in Ukraine, according to its latest report.  The funding for these NGOs range from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars and created for NED what amounted to a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired.

This NED shadow structure, when working in concert with domestic opposition forces, had the capability to challenge the decisions of Yanukovych’s elected government, including the recent coup – spearheaded by violent neo-Nazis – that overthrew him. Presumably, NED wanted the “regime change” without the neo-Nazi element. But that armed force was necessary for the coup to oust Yanukovych and open the path for those IMF-demanded economic ‘reforms.'”

So how do we know that NED is a CIA front?

“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.”

There is much more in that article, and a trove of investigative journalism at ConsortiumNews, so if you want to get beyond the propaganda of neocons and sputterings of imperialist sympathizers, please go read. ConsortiumNews is run by award-winning journalist Robert Parry, someone I have much more confidence in than I do of the bluster of the young and naive Polish Wolf.

Another great source of analysis and news of the goings-on in the Ukraine and elsewhere, is Wayne Madsen at the Strategic Culture Foundation. His recent piece, “CIA‘s Use of Nazi Strategy on Ukrainian Right-Wing Nationalists Unabated since Cold War” reveals the extent of the CIA’s — and its precursors’ historical — involvement in Ukraine:

“The Central Intelligence Agency appears to be caught in a time warp. At the roots of the CIA’s and George Soros’s «resistance» movement in Ukraine lie Ukrainian fascists and pro-Nazis, the ideological forbears of the current Ukrainian right-wing fascist party Svoboda and other radical right and anti-Russian groups largely based in western Ukraine.

A CIA document from August 1950 reveals that at the onset of the Cold War, U.S. intelligence exploited Nazi intelligence and strategy employed on various Ukrainian nationalist groups during World War II. This intelligence on Ukraine was captured by the pre-CIA Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from Nazi intelligence in the waning days of World War II. The revelation about the CIA’s use of Nazi intelligence on Ukraine is significant in light of present U.S. government support for anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalist groups, many of which are neo-Nazi and fascist in orientation.

During World War II, the Nazis supported a number of Ukrainian nationalist groups against the Soviet Union. After the war, these groups began receiving support from the CIA in an underground resistance movement against the Soviet Union, particularly in western Ukraine.

The Nazi intelligence report found in CIA archives is titled “Die national-ukrainische Widerstandssbewegung” or “Ukrainian national resistance.” The CIA stamped the report CONFIDENTIAL.”

And next, I’d like to point folks to another outstanding source of information about Ukraine, and the domination of global capital in general, the Centre for Research on Globalization based in Montreal. Here’s what Michel Chossudovsky had to say about the recent coup in his piece “The U.S. has Installed a Neo-Nazi Government in Ukraine:”

“According to the New York Times, “The United States and the European Union have embraced the revolution here as another flowering of democracy, a blow to authoritarianism and kleptocracy in the former Soviet space.” ( After Initial Triumph, Ukraine’s Leaders Face Battle for Credibility,  NYTimes.com, March 1, 2014, emphasis added)

‘Flowering Democracy, Revolution’?  The grim realities are otherwise. What is a stake is a US-EU-NATO sponsored coup d’Etat in blatant violation of international law.

The forbidden truth is that the West has engineered –through a carefully staged covert operation– the formation of a proxy regime integrated by Neo-Nazis.

Confirmed by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, key organizations in the Ukraine including the Neo-Nazi party Svoboda were generously supported by Washington: “We have invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals. … We will continue to promote Ukraine to the future it deserves.”

The Western media has casually avoided to analyze the composition and ideological underpinnings of the government coalition. The word “Neo-Nazi” is a taboo. It has been excluded from the dictionary of mainstream media commentary. It will not appear in the pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post or The Independent. Journalists have been instructed not to use the term “Neo-Nazi” to designate Svoboda and the Right Sector.”

And then there’s Paul Craig Roberts and the Institute for Political Economy. In today’s “Washington’s Arrogance, Hubris, and Evil Have Set the Stage for War” he had this to say: 

“Russia has been slow to react to the many years of Washington’s provocations, hoping for some sign of good sense and good will to emerge in the West. Instead, Russia has experienced rising demonization from Washington and European capitals and foaming at the mouth vicious denunciations by the West’s media whores. The bulk of the American and European populations are being brainwashed to see the problem that Washington’s meddling has caused in Ukraine to be Russia’s fault…

The ignorance, absence of integrity, and lack of independence of the US media greatly enhances the prospect for war. The picture being drawn for insouciant Americans is totally false. An informed people would have burst out laughing when US Secretary of State John Kerry denounced Russia for “invading Ukraine” in “violation of international law.” Kerry is the foreign minister of a country that has illegally invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, organized the overthrow of the government in Libya, tried to overthrow the government in Syria, attacks the civilian populations of Pakistan and Yemen with drones and missiles, constantly threatens Iran with attack, unleashed the US and Israeli trained Georgian army on the Russian population of South Ossetia, and now threatens Russia with sanctions for standing up for Russians and Russian strategic interests. The Russian government noted that Kerry has raised hypocrisy to a new level.”

So there you have 4 good sources of background information, investigative journalism, and analysis. And they all point to the fact that the U.S., and its allies in the EU and NATO, conspired to destabilize Ukraine in order to 1) steer it towards an alliance with the EU and eventually NATO; 2) make Vladimir Putin look like the aggressor, and diminish his international shine after the highly successful Sochi Winter Olympics; and 3) drive a wedge between Obama and Putin’s shadow diplomacy working towards nonviolent solutions in places like Syria and Iran.

There’s a lot more, for sure, than neocon and neoliberal agendas, but one can only digest so much before it becomes painfully obvious that in our zeal to achieve hegemony in eastern Europe, it matters not who our allies are, what human rights violations we commit, and what the ultimate fallout will be.

Yes, I am an ardent anti-imperialist. And glad not to be a liberal, if being a liberal means to accept our country’s drive to hegemony. And the conclusion that I draw from looking at Polish Wolf’s attempt to bad-mouth me in public is that he is OK with the CIA and the NED destabilizing Ukraine, because somehow the outcome will be better than what they now have. He is an imperialist sympathizer.