<incom> FT: spy agencies analyse role in global drive for democracy

[Geert Lovink]

http://www.ngowatch.org/articles.php?id=306

Spy agencies analyse role in global drive for democracy
Financial Times, June 16, 2006

In the first meeting of its kind, the cream of the US intelligence 
community's strategic analysts recently huddled behind closed doors in 
Washington, with academics and experts from the US and Europe, to talk 
about building global democracy.

The conference follows an initiative led by John Negroponte, the new 
director of national intelligence, to get the diverse US intelligence 
community more deeply involved with US efforts at democracy assistance 
- analytically and in the field.

Non-government participants said there was no sense of cloak and 
dagger. They also admitted they would probably never know how Mr 
Negroponte's project would turn out, in terms of covert activities and 
strategic advice to the president.

"This is a laudable effort by the analytical intelligence community to 
learn from open sources," said Larry Diamond, a leader of democracy 
projects at Stanford University, who chaired the conference. He had 
underscored that it would be a big mistake to have covert operations 
focused on democracy promotion. "That would cast a pall over legitimate 
democracy activities and strengthen the ability of regimes - like 
Russia and Iran - opposed to this to demonise and stigmatise democracy 
efforts." The conference was hosted by the National Intelligence 
Council and the State Department's own intelligence wing.

Experts said the discussions took place against a backdrop of two 
parallel crises that are playing out behind the scenes in Washington's 
complex world of democracy promotion.

Firstly, neo-conservatives and their critics broadly agree that the 
administration's freedom agenda - forcefully expressed by President 
George W. Bush inhis second inaugural address 18 months ago - is 
indisarray.
In testimony to a Senate committee last week, experts described how a 
collapse in US credibility worldwide - through prison abuse and torture 
scandals, secret detentions and the carnage in Iraq - had made it 
easier for autocrats, both friendly and hostile to the US, to resist 
and sometimes reverse the democratic tide. Russia, China, Egypt, 
Venezuela and central Asia were singled out.

At the same time, a split has emerged between and within US 
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in democracy promotion. 
The issues revolve around how closely associated they should be with an 
official US freedom agenda that, through the invasion of Iraq, has 
become easily confused with "regime change".

Several NGO boards have held fierce internal debates over the "grey 
area" between democracy promotion and regime change, how to maintain 
transparency and when "covert" activities are justified. A drive by 
Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, to take control of the 
administration's democracy spending away from quasi-independent 
intermediaries has added to the discomfort of NGOs that see their own 
independence jeopardised.

The State Department's Iran-Syria Operations Group was "trying to push 
money out the door" to back organisations working for democratic change 
in those countries, said one adviser. Some NGOs, for example Freedom 
House, have quietly accepted the funding. Others have refused, saying 
they want to remain transparent and keep their distance from the US.

"It's dog eats dog in the democracy-building world," said one board 
member, who asked not to be named.
He said the split was most evident in a rift between the National 
Endowment for Democracy (NED), a grant-making NGO funded by Congress 
and set up in the cold war, and Freedom House, which is taking a much 
more aggressive stance in supporting peaceful movements and activities 
directed at regime change. Keeping a distance from the US government 
was "absolutely critical", Carl Gershman, head of NED, told a Senate 
hearing. "Our credibility is at stake." But Mark Palmer, vice-chairman 
of Freedom House said the US government should be a radical 
democratising agent and close co-operation with US embassies in the 
field was good.