3/19/18 Jim Bovard on Trump’s cuts to American funding for the NED

by | Mar 25, 2018 | Interviews

Investigative columnist Jim Bovard returns to the show to discuss his latest piece for The Hill, “Time for the US to end democracy promotion flim-flams.” Bovard makes the case for  why cutting spending to “pro-democratic organizations” would be a good thing, and explains what the consequences would be. Bovard and Scott then discuss the rule of Vladimir Putin and his perception in the United States before finishing with a rundown of the latest events in Syria.

Jim Bovard is a columnist for USA Today and a prolific writer who has written numerous books. Find all of his books and read his work on his website and follow him on Twitter @JimBovard.

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Hey y'all, check it out, the audiobook has finally been released.
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And very soon actually, I've got a brand new website going up at scotthorton.org, and so soon you'll be able to buy that audiobook directly from me.
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The audiobook of Fools Erend, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and yes it's read by me, and I'm sorry it took so long, I nitpicked the hell out of it trying to get it ready for you guys, and then plus it took them forever after I submitted it to finally release it.
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Also of course available in paperback and Kindle if you want the 1150 footnotes.
Sorry I'm late, I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America, and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had, you've been took, you've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world, then there's going to be an invasion.
Alright you guys, on the line, I got the great James Bovard, Jim Bovard, to you and me, because we're friends.
Welcome back to the show Jim, how are you?
Hey, doing good Scott, thanks for having me on, and it was great to see you on C-SPAN last night, you did a fine job.
Well thanks very much.
Hey everybody, you can find the link in the show notes, because Jim just mentioned it.
Appreciate that.
Hey listen, so you wrote a bunch of books, but it only occurred to me this second that you have another new book that you've put out since Public Policy Hooligan, and the title of it is on the tip of my tongue, but you're going to have to help.
I think Freedom Frauds is the title, this is from Future Freedom Foundation.
Freedom Frauds, there you go.
And this is the author, everybody, of a lot of great books, but he told me not to list them all for you.
I was trying to make it easy for you, Scott.
Freedom and Tyranny, and the Bush Betrayal, and Attention Deficit Democracy.
The masterpiece, Attention Deficit Democracy, by the great James Bovard.
You know what, Bovard, here's what he is.
He's an investigative columnist, right, he writes opinion pieces that are full of original investigative journalism, and he just kicks ass at it, and he's the best libertarian journalist we got, that's what I say.
And I'm right about everything.
Thanks very much, that's very kind, Scott.
Yeah, no, I love your work, seriously.
It's really, really great, always.
And here you are in the Hill, oh, and he writes for USA Today, he's on the editorial board thingamajig there.
And now here you are in the Hill, Time for the U.S. to End Democracy Promotion Flim Flams.
And here this is about the NED.
What is the NED, and why is it in the news so that you're commenting on it, Jim?
It's the National Endowment for Democracy, and it's in the news because Trump has proposed a cut to our budget by 60%, which is long overdue.
This is an agency that was created under Reagan.
It's been meddling in foreign elections ever since.
It was caught interfering in elections in France, Panama, Costa Rica, Poland, Nicaragua.
It helped spark coups in Venezuela and Haiti.
It's done a lot of mischief, and this is an agency which should not exist because it has given a license for U.S. government tools to interfere in foreign elections at the same time that much of the media is so indignant about alleged Russian interference here in the 2016 election.
But this is not the first time that hypocrisy has been one of the U.S. government's biggest exports.
Yeah.
Hey, by the way, I drove by the National Endowment for Democracy when I was in D.C. the other day.
I'm going to totally ruin your interview here.
You know what I think is hilarious about driving around D.C., which is a place I've very rarely gone to in my life, but when I'm there, I'm always so impressed by the government buildings where they go, National Endowment for Democracy has this giant stone mansion, whatever the hell it is, thing that it's based out of there, but also the giant towers that say Lockheed and Raytheon and BAE Systems and all this stuff, where they don't know that they should be ashamed and that they should have their buildings on the far side of the prison out in the country from here where nobody can see them.
They're proud to say, like, we have the best looking campus in Maryland or Virginia, whichever side of whichever river it was where they were, and they're just bragging and boasting and not ashamed in the slightest that we all know that it's all government money where this comes from.
Well, I mean, I just like it.
It's so crass, you know?
Well, it makes sense for them to have those very large, very large and visible sign in front, since they also spend a lot of money in full page ads in The Washington Post and places like that.
So, you know, it's not like these people are going to get shy anytime soon.
I guess not.
They don't know it's a scandal.
They're like, what scandal?
Yeah.
Oh, the empire.
Oh, it's not a scandal in D.C.
I mean, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's good for business and makes the politicians happy, you know, and it keeps The Washington Post editorial page, gives them something to write about one more country that we have to liberate.
Right.
All right.
Now, so the National Endowment for Democracy here.
Well, what's the agenda going on there with Trump cutting their budget by 60 percent?
I think that Trump sees them as a kind of a.
Well, you know, I started to say Trump thinks this and Trump thinks that.
I don't know.
It's hard to know what Trump thinks, because as far as I know, he's he's never sent out a tweet on the National Endowment for Democracy.
But there are people in his administration that think that a lot of this stuff the U.S. government has done on democracy promotion in the past was either not that not effective or stuff we should not have been doing.
So I think this ties into some of the good rhetoric that Trump had during his presidential campaign, much of which he seemed to have forgotten as far as cutting back U.S. meddling abroad.
Well, and so what's the reaction been to the announcement?
I mean, other than yours in the Hill here?
What's The Washington Post and the.
Oh, my God.
It's like the end of the world.
And this is I mean, you know, the the the standard pundits like some of the Washington Post columnists are acting like the Trump is it's sabotaging American values.
It's sabotaging American decency.
It's you know, it's a failure to save the world from themselves.
So, I mean, there's this level after level of indignation.
A number of the folks, groups that have been most indignant are have been on this gravy train for a long time.
There's there's a lot of lots of this money gets sloshed around.
So the National Endowment for Democracy has a lot of friends who will scream like stuck pigs if somebody proposes to cut their budget.
But this is typical how budget games are played in D.C.
Well, speaking of which, and I guess I'm asking you to speculate here, but sounds like, you know, you do know how this works when they're slashing the budget from one hundred and seventy million to sixty seven million, as it says here.
Does that sound to you like, well, there's this one big project they want to keep and that's where the sixty seven million is going or that's just keep the lights on and the the pensions paid?
No, I mean, you know, with sixty seven with sixty seven million, they'd still be able to allow stuff.
It's unlikely the Congress will will go along with this.
I mean, part of it, part of the reason is, is it a lot of the money from the endowment goes to the front groups for the GOP and the Democrats.
And the the the so, you know, the money, you know, they buy a lot of friends.
And when you have friends in Congress for these kind of things, something so it makes it very difficult to cut the budget.
Plus, most members of Congress simply don't pay much attention to this except to act like it's, you know, a sign of American moral greatness.
Yeah.
Well, that aside, it does seem strange to me.
I guess I don't really understand how it works that you have the International Republican Institute Institute and the International Democratic Institute.
And you mean the National Democratic?
Oh, what am I saying?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
OK.
But yeah.
Oh, I see.
International.
Oh, I see.
They don't have the exact same name here.
I need to read more carefully, but they both do the same thing and they both work.
They both implement the NED's policies.
It just seems like that's a strange way to do it through the parties on an international basis.
It's strange if you're thinking about something that would look honest and credible and, you know, clean.
But I mean, you know, I mean, how effective can the Republican Party be at exporting revolution?
I must be missing something.
There are three words that will help you understand this.
There are, I guess, four words jobs for the boys, you know, and this is this is what the National Endowment for Democracy does.
I mean, you know, there's a lot of these different groups which gets which get money from the agency and they're there.
It's very rare for there to be effective audits.
And that's probably there been so many scandals.
But most people in Congress either don't care or don't want to know.
So but, you know, just the fact that you have John McCain as the head of the GOP version, the institute, it's like, OK, could you find a bigger warmonger?
Probably not.
And you got Madeleine Albright at the head of the Democrat one.
So she she is a famous line as far as a half a million dead children there.
And thanks to the sanctions on on Iraq.
So, well, it's it's worth it.
So this is this is her moral scheme.
And plus, Madeleine Albright is a butcher of Belgrade.
But, you know, you and I and many of us and your listeners would be mortified by that.
But it's a bragging point in D.C.
So because people, you know, well, you know, we forced the Serbs to change their government.
So, OK, paradise was achieved or at least made a nice talking point for Bill Clinton for a few weeks.
Yeah.
Well, and that really drives home the point when it's McCain and Albright.
What does democracy mean anyway, other than your government better do what our government says or we'll kill you?
Yeah, that's a nice summary.
I mean, that's you know, there are so many levels of hypocrisy in this program.
And there have been so many cases where the US has blatantly interfered in foreign elections.
You know, the the law that set up this agency said it was prohibited from giving direct aid to foreign political parties and candidates.
That has been evaded so many times.
You know, the money is laundered here or, well, this is a special case, whatever.
And there are no consequences.
Not only that, but since 1984, this agency's had the same president, Carl Gershman, who is so so there's a so there's a president for life of the federal agency, which is in charge of exporting democracy.
But here's another wrinkle in this.
Gershman likes to claim that this this endowment is private, non-governmental.
Almost all the money comes from Congress, and yet they have this fig leaf.
It's one fig leaf after another.
And foreigners, many foreigners are not fooled by this kind of BS.
But, you know, it works for the Washington Post editorial page.
Oh, this is great.
You know, this is the, you know, private, non-governmental, you know, the voice of the American people.
I mean, there are so many it's sort of like peeling an onion.
There are so many levels of BS here.
Yeah, man, so this guy, Gershman, I guess I didn't even realize that they pretended that it was a private foundation or something.
I just thought, well, anyway, hey, who made the quote that the NED's job is doing what the CIA used to do in terms of fomenting the revolutions, printing up the posters and arranging for the broad, the big screen TVs and stuff?
I don't know that that's all part of the actual quote.
Alan Weinstein.
Yeah, it was the first part.
Yeah.
He was in the he was high up in the agency when it was first created and he made the comments in 1991, I believe, that said that the gist of it was that the that this agency was created to do things that the CIA used to do, which is part of the reason that I started out this article with the wonderful quote from former CIA chief James Wolsey, who was on Fox News last month.
And he was asked if the U.S. was still meddling in foreign elections.
He said only for a good cause in the interest of democracy.
But what he did was have a really Weasley laugh before he said that he just like it's odious.
It's odious.
I'm looking at the I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
No, tell me what you're looking at.
No, no.
I was you know, I had a joke about the Weasley laugh, but it didn't make it into the text of the article.
That's OK.
Not a thing.
I mean, if you listen to that tape, listen to the audio.
It's a very strange, like four to five second laugh.
It's almost like guttural that Wolsey's doing.
And you wonder, well, gee, what is this?
Gee, this must be really clean.
Well, I mean, Wolsey is historically a raving loon, right?
He's the guy that says this is World War Four against the Islamic world.
You know, there's a reason he's popular in Washington.
Yeah, exactly.
He also was one of the prime pushers of the Iraq is behind the Al Qaeda movement altogether.
Conspiracy theory in the 1990s.
Well, that certainly hurt his credibility in D.C.
Something horrible.
It's almost, you know, it's suffered almost as much as Max Boot has done.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Meanwhile, we're sitting here talking about this quote from him on cable TV, explaining as an expert how it works and admitting it.
But now so here's the thing.
Here's Carl Gershman in the fall of 2013.
Boy, I guess I better have my date right in front of me here.
The date on it is September 26th, 2013.
Former Soviet states stand up to Russia.
Will the U.S.?
And it's Carl Gershman in The Washington Post.
And it's all about, well, much of it is about Ukraine.
And also he talks about Georgia and Moldova and this and that in there.
But at the end, he and we know that at the time, this is at the start of the maiden so called revolution there, the American-backed coup and the NED-backed coup that took place a few months later in February of 2014.
And Gershman wrote here at the end of the article, Russians, too, face a choice and Putin may find himself on the losing end, not just in the near abroad, but within Russia itself.
And I guess I wonder, I mean, it's crazy.
And you can see, I mean, what do you think the Russians thought of that on the eve of this coup in Ukraine?
But then so also, you know, it does raise the obvious question about whether the CIA and or the NED and these groups really are messing around inside Russia and trying to foment problems inside Russia, because it sort of seems like, hey, that's a bridge too far.
Right.
But well, maybe I guess it's not.
Well, yeah, the NED and some of their affiliates have funded a lot of programs in Russia, which were very critical of Putin.
And there's a lot of good reason to criticize Putin.
I mean, he's, you know, he's done a lot of odious things, but that doesn't justify the U.S. to try to topple him.
There was another there was an op-ed, Carl Gershman is beloved by the Washington Post editorial page.
He had an op-ed in October 2016, which he basically called for the ouster, for the U.S. to help oust Putin.
And this is this is where it becomes interesting that, you know, to claim that this national endowment is private, non-governmental.
But everybody knows that Carl Gershman is tied in, that he's basically a government front group.
It's openly funded by the government.
And here he is calling shortly before the 2016 election for the U.S. to help oust Putin.
It's like, you know, this is this is a loose cannon at best.
And it's understandable that with things like this, there would be intense distrust of U.S. foreign policy.
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Now, I mean, OK, I get it that the guys in D.C. would prefer to have Yeltsin back, except he's dead and that ship sailed and Putin just basically ran with, you know, against virtually no opposition and was reelected to another six year term as dear leader over there.
And so it doesn't seem like they could really do anything about that.
And after all, as bad as Putin is, which he is, isn't he basically sort of a center right conservative as opposed to a right wing radical or whatever the hell?
And I know Russian politics aren't an exact analogy to American ones and this and that.
But, you know, aren't there a lot of people to the right of Putin who are a lot more dangerous than Putin?
And how could the Americans think that they could really control what's going to happen in that country at this point?
I mean, they got away with bloody murder, I guess, in their support of Yeltsin back in the 90s.
But they can't really think that they can replicate that.
Not after the 16, the 20 year reign of Putin, right?
Well, you know, as I was saying, there's a lot of a lot of things that Putin has done that made me cringe.
And if I was Russian, I would strongly and actually oppose.
But, you know, he's he's he's a mixed bag on a lot of issues.
But we don't have the right to dictate who rules Russia.
That's what it comes down to.
And with the head, with the chief, the president for life, this National Endowment for Democracy writing in The Washington Post calling for the U.S. to help oust Putin effectively.
That's what he was saying.
It's like, well, what gave us the right?
But this is this is the same mindset that's happened that's permeated U.S. foreign policy off and on since World War Two.
There are at least 80 times the U.S. government has intervened in foreign elections, most of the time covertly.
And, you know, we don't have any such right to do that.
I mean, there's a lot of good.
It's great that foreigner that that people have a right to vote for who has power over them.
It's more important to have that power severely limited.
But the whole idea that the U.S. has a right to intervene, it's it's you know, it's incredibly arrogant.
And very often it's very it's done very foolishly and swagger.
And you've got a lot of people pulling strings.
And, you know, we often don't know who's pulling those strings.
Yeah.
Well, look, they support the moderate rebels in Syria and we get al-Qaeda and ISIS.
They support the moderate rebels in Ukraine.
We get the Azov battalion and the Social Nationalist Party.
I love that one.
And so, yeah, I mean, never even mind their right to do it.
Can you imagine them really getting a coup in Russia that works out the way they want it, assuming they could even get a coup or get whatever pressure to force Putin out, that whoever replaces him would then be under their control and would have control of Russia and America's interests from now on?
I mean, that's crazy.
Well, it's crazy.
But if you read the Washington Post editorial page there, you know, it's so pro intervention.
If you look at the kind of people who they brought in as columnists, people like Josh Rogin, Max Boot is their latest addition.
They have a number of other warmongers there.
And it's, you know, there are some very there are some very good reporters at the Washington Post.
But the editorial page has been so bellicose for so long and it simply takes it as self-evident that the U.S. the U.S. government has a right to intervene practically everywhere.
And they don't pay attention to the batting average because so many of these some of these interventions have been complete debacles.
But you wouldn't know that from reading the Washington Post editorial page.
Yeah, no, definitely not.
And I guess there's you seem to be implying that there's a certain segment, maybe most of D.C. that pretty much just reads the Post and that's all they know.
Well, I mean, it's I don't know how much that they read, period, at this point.
I mean, people's reading habits have gotten a lot worse, I think, in the last 25 years.
People got in the habit of gliding over articles instead of actually reading them and absorbing them.
I mean, lots of lots of individuals still do that.
But but it's it's a it's a frustration I have in general is that there is, you know, that the people so many people in D.C. simply ignore the U.S. government debacles, the debacles at home here, a lot of the government programs and a lot of the fiascos abroad.
I mean, you'd mention Syria.
I mean, a year or two, a year or two ago, we had you know, it was U.S. policy was such a mess that you had Pentagon rebels, Pentagon backed Syrian rebels who were fighting CIA backed Syrian rebels and the U.S. government.
You know, there was a piece I did for USA Today about a year ago.
I said one of the things Trump should do when he comes into office is open the files.
And one of the things we should see the files on is Syria, because what did the government know?
What did the U.S. government know?
When did it know it as far as when it was jumping into this mess and backing all these different factions?
And, oh, some of them are kind of like al Qaeda, but you know, but they're anti Assad.
So we'll you know, so we'll pretend that there are good guys this week.
I mean, I'm sure that there were some CIA analysts who who called it very early and very clearly and said, look, this is nuts.
What the heck are we doing?
These are horrendous, dangerous folks.
Why are we arming them?
Why are we bankrolling them?
So but and if we could see those memos, see those files, it would have a wonderful effect as far as waking up more people on the follies of U.S. government foreign interventions.
Yeah, well, we have one good one, that DIA memo from 2012.
It's funny, you know, I publish an article.
There's a guy named William Waganen, who's been writing some articles about Syria for the Institute site.
And he went back and found that it was, I think, the same day or the same week or something of that 2012 DIA memo was an interview that I did with Flint Leverett from Bush's National Security Council.
We were talking all about this and basically predicting the exact same thing that support for the Sunni-based insurgency led by al-Qaeda in Syria is risking the future of all of Western Iraq, which could fall into their hands as radicalizing the insurgency and reigniting the Sunni-based insurgency against the Baghdad government there.
And this could lead to a nightmare.
And that was the same thing that was going into their their memo right then.
But yeah, you're right.
That was just one from DIA.
The CIA must have an entire file cabinet full of, OK, here's for more money for al-Qaeda in Syria.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there are some very smart people that work there and some that paid very good attention.
And I think that they would have laid out, if we do this, then this and this and this bad thing is going to happen.
But the U.S. media is in general not showing a lot of curiosity in that.
They've they've been you know, they've spent a lot more time cheerleading for the very Syrian rebel groups as if they're going to bring peace and democracy to Damascus.
It's like ain't going to happen, folks.
It's a mess.
There is going to be a mess.
We made it a hell of a lot worse.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, and you look at it right now, you mentioned about America back in both different sides.
You have the al-Qaeda guys are joining up with the Turks to fight against our NATO allies, the Turks, to fight against the Kurds, who the Americans are better with in the SDF.
And yet former ISIS guys are now joining the SDF with the Kurds, at least some, I don't know how many, to fight against the Turks and the al-Qaeda guys.
And anyway, man, sounds like maybe Carl Gershman ought to go in there and give these people democracy so they can just vote all these differences away instead of fighting, Jim.
Well, you know, I you know, we don't have a magic wand.
And that's that's part of why I'm very critical of U.S. democracy promotion efforts, because there is often a tacit presumption that the U.S. has a Midas touch and that all the U.S. government needs to do is throw some money and designate, well, let's help these people and let's give aid to that group.
And all of a sudden there'll be, you know, you know, a Bill of Rights, free press, freedom of speech, so on and so forth.
And I'm all in favor of foreign people having, you know, a foreign government respecting the natural rights, the individual rights of people living abroad.
But we've been trying to do this for a long time.
We've screwed up massively.
We should throw in the towel.
Yeah, well, and, you know, the counterfactual is so obvious, too, that if the United States just practiced what they preached about self-evident truths and Bill of Rights, this and that, that that would really be a much better way if they believe if their agenda really was, you know, individual freedom and self-government for all of mankind for the future, that would obviously be a much better way to spread it, would be by selling it, by showing by example how it's done when you set prisoners free.
Yes.
And, you know, something that's probably had far more effect abroad than all of our democracy promotion for the last 15 years is the U.S. secret torture regime.
I mean, after 9-11, George W.and his wizards decided to set up a worldwide torture regime, which we, you know, lied about, which the U.S. government lied about for many years.
And now and now you've got Donald Trump proposing one of the key people in that torture regime to be head of the CIA.
This this sends a lot louder and a more effective message than all of our, you know, claptrap about, well, you know, Bill, you know, Human Rights Day, this, that, and the other.
Human Rights Day, except for torture.
That's a hell of an asterisk.
Yeah, exactly.
John Kiriakou said, hey, you think it's a coincidence that these guys in the beheading videos are wearing orange jumpsuits?
You know?
Yep.
Yep.
He's someone he's someone who's, you know, I have so much admiration for his courage and speaking out.
And he's still like a really nice guy.
Yeah.
Well, I just interviewed him, so you can listen to that probably in a couple of days when it's up.
Well, I had a chance to drink a beer with him.
You missed it, but that's OK.
Next time you catch a beer with him.
Next time.
All right.
Listen, Jim, I'm sorry I'm late.
I got Mark Perry on about a old, uh, was somebody on Twitter wrote, uh, Tyrant Sore at Rex.
You guys can use that as a headline if you want.
OK, sounds good.
Get it?
Tyrant Sore at Rex.
Rex Tillerson.
Yeah, the cutter thing.
Anyway, I ruined the punch line.
Hey, tell you what, I'll interview you again another time if you'll come on the show.
Thanks so much, Scott.
And best of luck with the book.
I hope it keeps selling like hotcakes.
Hey, thanks very much.
I appreciate it.
All right.
Bye bye.
All right, you guys, that's Jim Bovard.
And here's the books that he wrote.
Freedom in Chains, Lost Rights, Freedom Frauds, Hard Lessons in American Liberty.
That's the most recent.
And his memoirs are Public Policy Hooligan, which you'll love.
They're really great.
And and then my favorite.
It's such a great book.
Attention Deficit Democracy.
And yeah, yeah, he knows about democracy and this and that.
It's just a damn title.
All right.
And then check out this article.
It's Time for the U.S. to End Democracy Promotion Flim Flams at the Hill.
And you can find it at Antiwar.com as well.
Thanks, guys.
You know, the website's Fool's Errand.
Buy the book.
Bye.
Hey, y'all.
Next Saturday, I'm giving a speech to the Libertarian Party of New Jersey State Convention.
And this is at the University Inn on the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick.
And so I'm not exactly sure what time I go on.
But it's in the afternoon of next Saturday, March the 24th in New Brunswick, New Jersey, there at Rutgers University.
So check it all out at NJLP.org.

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