"Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate," Casey said in one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III, urging creation of a "National Endowment" that would support "free institutions throughout the world."
On Jan. 21, 1983, Raymond updated Clark about the project, which also was reaching out to representatives from other conservative foundations, including Les Lenkowsky of Smith-Richardson, Michael Joyce of Olin and Dan McMichael of Mellon-Scaife.
"This is designed to develop a broader group of people who will support parallel initiatives consistent with Administration needs and desires," Raymond wrote.
In the late 1970s and through the 1980s, those and other conservative foundations poured millions of dollars into right-wing think tanks, media outlets and anti-journalism attack groups that targeted American reporters who challenged the Reagan administration's propaganda.
The early planning papers also indicated a desire to use this relatively overt system to funnel money to pro-U.S. trade unions in Asia, Africa and Latin America in support of a variety of political operations, including setting up television stations and funding print publications.
Some examples were $150,000 to a Bolivian trade union; $50,000 to Peru as a "direct counter to Soviet funding"; $50,000 to Grenada "to the only organized opposition to the Marxist government of Maurice Bishop (The Seaman and Waterfront Workers Union). A supplemental to support free TV activity outside Grenada"; $750,000 to Nicaragua "to support an array of independent trade union activity, agricultural cooperatives"; and $500,000 for "Central America labor publishing house and distribution center for printed materials TV materials, cooperatives, land reform, etc. to counter Marxist literature."
The document's reference to money being spent to counter Bishop's government in Grenada adds weight to long-held suspicions that the Reagan administration engaged in propaganda and destabilization campaigns against Bishop, who was ousted by internal rivals and killed in October 1983, setting the stage for the U.S. invasion of the tiny Caribbean island.
The invasion of Grenada, though condemned by much of the world as an act of U.S. aggression, proved popular in the United States, an important step in readying the American people for larger military adventures ahead.
Taking Shape
Eventually, Casey's concept of a global initiative led to the founding of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983 ostensibly for the purpose of promoting foreign democratic institutions. But the NED also created a cover for the United States to funnel money to pro-U.S. groups in hostile countries. And it subsidized Washington's growing community of neoconservatives who wrote op-ed articles in leading newspapers and went on TV news shows advocating an aggressive U.S. foreign policy.
Since 1983, NED has been involved in numerous controversies, including allegations that it helped buy the Nicaraguan election in 1990 by spending some $9 million, including $4 million poured into the campaign of U.S.-backed candidate Violeta Chamorro.
NED's hand also has been detected in "velvet revolutions" staged in Ukraine, Georgia and other eastern European nations. NED has been active, too, in Iran, fueling government suspicions there that its opposition, which took to the streets after last June's presidential election, represented another U.S.-backed scheme to achieve regime change.
Though many of Raymond's documents at Reagan's Library in Simi Valley, California, remain secret, the recently discovered material and some of the previously released documents offer a panorama of how the administration's perception management campaigns evolved, from the early days of Casey prodding the process forward to later years when Raymond's apparatus grew increasingly powerful and even paranoid.
According to a secret action proposal that Raymond submitted on Dec. 20, 1984, to then national security adviser McFarlane, Raymond wanted an even greater commitment of manpower.
"I have attempted to proceed forward with a whole range of political and information activities," Raymond wrote. "There are a raft of ties to private organizations which are working in tandem with the government in a number of areas ranging from the American Security Council to the Atlantic Council, to the nascent idea of a "Peace Institute.'"
Among the examples of his "specific activities," Raymond listed "significant expansion of our ability to utilize book publication and distribution as a public diplomacy tool. (This is based on an integrated public-private strategy). " The development of an active PSYOP strategy. " Meetings (ad hoc) with selected CIA operational people to coordinate and clarify lines between overt/covert political operations on key areas. Examples: Afghanistan, Central America, USSR-EE [Eastern Europe] and Grenada."
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