But from whom did you get that information about FSB and MSS? CIA and MI6 may assassinate anyone as they please because there is no one to expose them. At least we know that Mossad doesn't have problem with killing politicians, scientist and journos.
Why not? Character assasination is far more effective than two bullets to the back of the head.
Character assasination is positive PR and a distraction. There’s no real way you can spin a “journalist who criticized the US government was found dead” story.
> Have western intelligence services been implicated in something similar to FSBs domestic assassination program lately? No?
Western intelligence services run torture camps and secret prisons all over the world. Just because they don’t have a domestic assasination program doesn’t make them any better.
Because murdering someone and making them look bad are not the same thing. Even children know this.
> Just because they don’t have a domestic assasination program doesn’t make them any better.
Why not? Is the argument here that western intelligence agencies do bad stuff at a bigger scale than the FSB and the MSS? I’d love to see evidence of that.
I think the truth is that western intelligence agencies face far more scrutiny. The FSB can (attempt to) murder leading opposition politicians without any meaningful domestic criticism, the same is absolutely not true of western services.
Yes, exactly. Or would you rather live in a China or Russia dominated world? Good luck. (Again, I am not saying they are not bad, I am saying they are not the same.)
Citizens of many countries ravaged by US/UK inability to see the results of their actions and policies tend to disagree... at least those that survived.
It’s a fair lot of money for a civil rights NGO. Even if you take a small one like Bellingcat, salaries won’t pass $60k, meaning you could staff a full on team of decent journalists of 10 people for four years.
Also a minimal donation and an accidental leak is a great way to discredit various organizations and journalists as was revealed in another leak, so this should be taken with a grain of salt.
It's miminimal that we now know about. Now the question is: what else is still not exposed? Who is being influenced? Is it still fair to dismiss such idea as "conspiracy theory"?
Interestingly Venezuela is listed as democratic country in this article. I suspect there are a lot of Venezuela people who would disagree with such statement.
I would argue that Venezuela is not very democratic, now, but Hugo Chavez was originally elected democratically. I suspect this is referring to actions to undermine his government at the time.
Pretty much like Putin or Lukashenka. Both were elected democratically in the first run. The problem is, they stayed in power long after their democratic mandate expired.
Putin is legitimately popular inside of Russia, for a multitude of reasons:
- there's no challenger in sight (which obviously is caused to a large part by any potential candidate being suppressed once they are too successful, e.g. Navalny)
- Russians - particularly those who have witnessed the events directly prior, during and after the fall of the USSR - value stability over revolutionary changes or unrest. Current Russia may not provide the level of wealth as the US or Europe, but the difference is in the eyes of many not worth the risk of repeating recent history. See also [1].
- Putin, similarly to many other Eastern European strongmen like Orban, is an expert at timing government handouts to important voter groups such as pensioners [2]
- Unlike mainland Europe or the US, there's not much of a tradition of democracy in Russia. First, you had the Tsarist monarchy, then a couple of years of civil war, then the decades of the USSR dictatorship, then a couple of years of a bit of democracy, and then at the end of 1999 Putin got into power and slowly destroyed the progress of the last eight years before.
Last year Putin gave each pensioner 35 roubles before elections. This is half a dollar, IIRC. A spit in the face. A few years ago, he stole from the Pension Fund.
I kind of agree with the remaining points, but we should not overestimate Putin's talents. Don't listen to commenters, just watch his interviews. Or the interviews of his crew. Start with Naryshkin. As the head of foreign intelligence he is supposed to be the smartest.
Very easy to be popular when you control the media and can just have the opposition poisoned. Stalin was (and to some people still is!) overwhelmingly popular.
Its amazing to me that Americans are so eager to point out Russia's poisoning of dissenters, yet choose to clearly ignore the chemical lobotomy that has been dished out to Assange while he is in one of the Wests' most heinous of all torture chambers.
HM Prison Belmarsh? I’m no fan of the U.K. government, especially because they didn’t even bother to tell Sweden he had been removed from the embassy even though Sweden’s existing case was why he was in there in the first place, but Belmarsh is neither a torture chamber nor even remotely comparable to e.g. Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Nils Melzer has severely criticised the USA for Gitmo, and also “cautiously” welcomed a British court’s refusal to expedite assigned the USA specifically on the grounds that the USA is likely to be much worse.
While Nils Melzer is critical of Assange’s treatment by U.K. authorities, the behaviour he criticised also includes the fact they were not willing to ignore him if he left his self imposed imprisonments in the embassy. Even with the most hostile interpretation I can manage (and I really don’t have a reason to like the U.K. government even before Johnson started doing Nixon impressions), Belmarsh prison, where Assange is currently being detained, is not even close to being on the list of the “Wests' most heinous of all torture chambers”.
The people always get the governments they deserve.
Putin hasn't been removed - democratically or by violent coup - simply because he is popular with the people who have chosen to be ruled by him.
This doesn't align with the two minutes hate narrative that the West want to use in order to justify its direct interference in Russian democracy - in a sovereign country - so a lot of noise is made to occlude this fact and justify the usurpation of Russian politics.
The CIA was involved in the failed 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela when the army took over and dissolved the parliament, temporarily.
In 2018 the CIA was again planning a coup, or disruption at least, revolving around the planned December 2018 elections. The Venezuelans got wind of this and bumped the elections up a few months. The CIA was caught flat footed somewhat, and the December plans went into effect early. The idea floated that the 2018 elections were rigged doesn't really fly. Even Trump didn't like the puppet the US was trying to push as the real head of Venezuela, Guaido. He called him the Beto O'Rourke of Venezuela.
> The CIA was involved in the failed 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela when the army took over and dissolved the parliament, temporarily.
Yes, but half of the country was out in the streets asking for his resignation at the same time, cannot deny that.
> The idea floated that the 2018 elections were rigged doesn't really fly.
Americans like to talk about voter oppression, what about armed guns rolling up to your voting center, firing guns into the air to scare voters away because they were losing or something.
I personally lived through that, cannot tell me it's a CIA psyop.
The VAST majority of people here are against the government, even people who were previously very pro-government, since at least 5 years ago.
Yet they somehow won the last couple elections... no one really believes those results.
This is a weak attempt to discredit Bellingcat, and frankly raises more questions about Declassified UK's intentions and objectives than it does about Bellingcat.
NED funding is easily and openly given to tons of entities and doesn't come with strings attached. It's no more evidence of being a 'CIA funded propaganda op' than receiving money from the Open Society Foundation makes you a Soros shill as others have also ridiculously claimed.
There are valid criticisms worth making against Bellingcat, and legitimate unease at the role being played by independent and unaccountable entities like it in our discourse. Declassified UK doesn't seriously try to address any of them.
It is especially telling that just on the verge of war, this piece comes out trying to undermine credibility and trust of the US, UK and UK media, and to sow discord.
There is no such thing as money with no strings attached. Even if it was not meant that way, or explicit quid pro quo in any way, after time Bellingcat would be more reticent to anger their financers.
If they're the biggest chunk of your funding, sure. If it's just one funding source amongst many, which is the strategy taken by groups like Bellingcat to avoid that sort of implicit coercion, then that's really not a factor.
Having worked in media, I do agree that there are always strings attached to the money.
However, the relationship between money and reporting is not straightforward. For instance, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and many other lobbyists that pay media are suggesting the topics, not the content.
They pay for coverage and your editor in chief commits into producing x articles on y subjects, the content is left at the exercise of the journalist.
Do not forget that journalists are often freelancers working for multiple outlets and they do try to enforce deontologic rules as a way to protect their profession.
Compared to software developers, journalists earn less but own more. They do keep the right to the content and are liable individually. There are lots of restrictions in place as to what media outlets can and can not do to journalists, and some are even enshrined in laws.
You can't possibly seriously propose, the Gates foundation would suggest the topic and then ...Although not directly involved in the content, not choose a media where they could be assured the delivery will be to their satisfaction.
From my experience, they often work on matters that are orthogonal to political divisions. If anything, they would shell out money to media with specialized audience just because they want wider coverage of issues they are interested in.
I'm sure the fact that Bellingcat almost exclusively targets CIA opponents is just a neat coincidence that exactly lines up with the documented money flows.
Whereas the fact that Wikileaks has released only one sizable cache of documents from Russia is proof positive that they're essentially their paid spies who need to know when to keep their trap shut :/
I'm pretty happy for foreign powers to dig up dirt on each other and release it publicly. It's one form of "warfare" with net positive side effects. It benefits everybody who isnt invested in maintaining the overwhelming power of "their" favored corrupt empire.
Bellingcat have done all kinds of investigations, including some which embarrass or implicate in war crimes governments like that of Ethiopia, Chad, and Cameroon who are US allies.
Here's another example, which highlights the lax security of US troops guarding nuclear weapons in Europe, and which strengthens the hands of activists campaigning for European governments to disallow those agreements: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
However, it's important to emphasise that a group can have a singular focus area and still be independent. Its researchers all have their own personal interest areas and areas of expertise (esp. in language), which drives the kinds of things they focus on. As long as nobody is directing them, and so far nobody has provided convincing evidence of that, it's not something you can rely on to prove bias. A smoking gun would be if it emerged that they actually worked on something that would embarrass the US or UK and then covered it up.
Are they pawns for the West? Maybe. But we need better evidence than this to make that a believable case.
Wikileaks I believe was accused for instance of actually having damaging documents on Russia and deciding not to release them for some reason. It was an active decision they made despite having the means, and went against their professed claim of not holding back.
Your article reminds me of another article I read about horrendous nuclear weapons security in the US that appeared years before bellingcat existed. It seemed as weird then as it is now that the US government would willingly embarrass itself, but I can see how it might come about as a result of interagency rivalry and/or frustration that deep-seated dangerous security lapses were getting bureaucratically buried.
I'd be deeply surprised if Bellingcat released anything that embarrassed the director of the CIA.
I glanced at the bellingcat page on Ethiopia to see if they really were undermining the integrity of a US ally as you implied. Top story is about the fact that they're using Iranian drones, which is a bit of a poke in the eye to the US, and, depressingly, probably is the aspect of the conflict the CIA feels most invested in.
Or, the alternative and simpler explanation: Bellingcat aren't directed by the US government in the way you believe. Nor were the journalists who exposed lax nuclear weapons security in the past.
Also, the article says Bellingcat received under 100k last year from the NED, so maybe a salary for a permanent employee. This is a very light investment if the goal was to effect large impacts on major targets.
That's what i found in less than 5 minutes browsing links on that site. I would assume that's embarrassing for US intelligence services, but hey what do i know.
The top link is more embarrassing for their Saudi allies rather than the CIA directly, but fair point - it's clearly not targeted at an enemy but an ally using Western armaments.
It is ignorant to reduce US policies into an ally or not dichotomy. An entity being allied with the US does not mean that it will always work in the interest of the US, e.g., Germany's NS2 project. And US-Ethiopian relations have deteriorated significantly in the past two years. Partly due to Trump siding entirely with Egypt in the Nile/GERD contention, going so far as to state Egypt should bomb the dam. And more recently, due to US engagement in the horrific Northern Ethiopian war, where human rights violations have been committed by all sides. However, the US has only enacted sanctions against the Ethiopian government and its allies. And some Ethiopian officials have accused the US of abetting the rebels.
The counter-argument — just as much of an applause light as your quote — is this from Cardinal Richelieu:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
I’m definitely not suggesting governments shouldn’t be investigated — indeed they should, and I suspect that only hostile governments have the resources and motivation necessary to do this effectively, more than opposition parties — but I expect that even the best government has enough skeletons inside it to fall to propaganda that is merely selective reporting of true things.
> independent and unaccountable entities like it in our discourse
Those are basically your only options, sadly. It's been absolutely incredible watching the billionaire-funded UK press struggle with the 10 Downing Street revelations. The revolving door between the Sun and the Tory party has been particularly bad - one of the parties was a leaving do for the director of communications moving from one to another.
Similarly the attempt at smearing the Labour party by bringing up old links to a Chinese spy fell apart when it was revealed she'd also been paying Tory parliamentarians. Then there's the £160k game of tennis, etc. https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-report-donors-boris-j...
Why couldn’t we have done a massive propaganda campaign for vaccination and masks? I can’t think of anything more vital to national security and well-being and it’s been basically radio silence. I wanted Rosie the Riveter style posters on every street corner and bus. 858,000 Americans are dead. I wish the CIA had worked on that instead of dicking around on pointless shit like this.
Maybe a good rule of thumb is that every independent and not-for-profit org is actually a front for covert interests, unless they are really popular and can survive on donations alone.
"Declassified could find no NED grants awarded in any of the six US-backed dictatorships in the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. By contrast, the NED spent $9.4m on 162 grants in Venezuela – where the US seeks the removal of the Nicolás Maduro government – in 2016-19 alone."
No doubt that Washington's efforts through NED and other organisations have beeen extremely succesful globally in setting the aganda and basic assumptions in all media coverage, particular at a time where independent media has become less and less economically viable.
How do we decide who are the bad guys in Myanmar, Syria, Kashmir, Kazakhstan, Balochstan etc.? The answer lies those groups mentioned in the article.
That depends on what your definition of "anti-communist" is.
Given that there are a lot of people who see stuff like universal healthcare insurance, usable public transport or a livable minimum wage as socialist/communist, "anti-communism" can be outright reactionary/ultra-conservative in reality.
It's fine to be against authoritarian communism (China/NK-style governments) / existing "realsozialismus" governments (e.g. Cuba, Venezuela). But labelling actually positive policies like the ones I mentioned as "socialist"/"communist" and opposing these on the banner of "anti-communism" is pretty bad.
Perhaps I should have said "anti-russian". They're partisan, and very much not socialist.
I'm not sure what "progressive" means. I think it's yet another in the trail of euphemisms used in the USA to refer to policies that have been associated with official enemies, such as "socialist".
"anti-russian" just like "anti-german" has double meaning. I guess you wanted to say that they are actively working on undermining the credibility of current Russian government.
The more I read it, the more I thought: yeah, good thing. Sponsoring good cause. Why not more?
Honestly, I'm the opposite of a fan of past CIA actions -- I thought.
If this wants to discredit the NED, I think it does it in a weird way.
It's more like: let's write a supporting article, by very badly criticising?
Weird, just very weird.
80 comments
[ 7.3 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadIt was obvious from the beginning that outlets like Bellingcat, that were presented as independent, in reality just CIA and Mi6 pawns.
Character assassination doesn’t count.
Have western intelligence services been implicated in something similar to FSBs domestic assassination program lately? No?
I do not believe this. Why do you think so?
Why not? Character assasination is far more effective than two bullets to the back of the head.
Character assasination is positive PR and a distraction. There’s no real way you can spin a “journalist who criticized the US government was found dead” story.
> Have western intelligence services been implicated in something similar to FSBs domestic assassination program lately? No?
Western intelligence services run torture camps and secret prisons all over the world. Just because they don’t have a domestic assasination program doesn’t make them any better.
Because murdering someone and making them look bad are not the same thing. Even children know this.
> Just because they don’t have a domestic assasination program doesn’t make them any better.
Why not? Is the argument here that western intelligence agencies do bad stuff at a bigger scale than the FSB and the MSS? I’d love to see evidence of that.
I think the truth is that western intelligence agencies face far more scrutiny. The FSB can (attempt to) murder leading opposition politicians without any meaningful domestic criticism, the same is absolutely not true of western services.
OTOH, Russia Today is a waste of money and resources by Putin's administration.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like."
Putin is legitimately popular inside of Russia, for a multitude of reasons:
- there's no challenger in sight (which obviously is caused to a large part by any potential candidate being suppressed once they are too successful, e.g. Navalny)
- Russians - particularly those who have witnessed the events directly prior, during and after the fall of the USSR - value stability over revolutionary changes or unrest. Current Russia may not provide the level of wealth as the US or Europe, but the difference is in the eyes of many not worth the risk of repeating recent history. See also [1].
- Putin, similarly to many other Eastern European strongmen like Orban, is an expert at timing government handouts to important voter groups such as pensioners [2]
- Unlike mainland Europe or the US, there's not much of a tradition of democracy in Russia. First, you had the Tsarist monarchy, then a couple of years of civil war, then the decades of the USSR dictatorship, then a couple of years of a bit of democracy, and then at the end of 1999 Putin got into power and slowly destroyed the progress of the last eight years before.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lloyd-putin-commentary-id...
[2]: https://www.dailysabah.com/world/europe/putin-butters-up-rus...
Last year Putin gave each pensioner 35 roubles before elections. This is half a dollar, IIRC. A spit in the face. A few years ago, he stole from the Pension Fund.
I kind of agree with the remaining points, but we should not overestimate Putin's talents. Don't listen to commenters, just watch his interviews. Or the interviews of his crew. Start with Naryshkin. As the head of foreign intelligence he is supposed to be the smartest.
Nils Melzer has severely criticised the USA for Gitmo, and also “cautiously” welcomed a British court’s refusal to expedite assigned the USA specifically on the grounds that the USA is likely to be much worse.
While Nils Melzer is critical of Assange’s treatment by U.K. authorities, the behaviour he criticised also includes the fact they were not willing to ignore him if he left his self imposed imprisonments in the embassy. Even with the most hostile interpretation I can manage (and I really don’t have a reason to like the U.K. government even before Johnson started doing Nixon impressions), Belmarsh prison, where Assange is currently being detained, is not even close to being on the list of the “Wests' most heinous of all torture chambers”.
Putin hasn't been removed - democratically or by violent coup - simply because he is popular with the people who have chosen to be ruled by him.
This doesn't align with the two minutes hate narrative that the West want to use in order to justify its direct interference in Russian democracy - in a sovereign country - so a lot of noise is made to occlude this fact and justify the usurpation of Russian politics.
In 2018 the CIA was again planning a coup, or disruption at least, revolving around the planned December 2018 elections. The Venezuelans got wind of this and bumped the elections up a few months. The CIA was caught flat footed somewhat, and the December plans went into effect early. The idea floated that the 2018 elections were rigged doesn't really fly. Even Trump didn't like the puppet the US was trying to push as the real head of Venezuela, Guaido. He called him the Beto O'Rourke of Venezuela.
> The CIA was involved in the failed 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela when the army took over and dissolved the parliament, temporarily.
Yes, but half of the country was out in the streets asking for his resignation at the same time, cannot deny that.
> The idea floated that the 2018 elections were rigged doesn't really fly.
Americans like to talk about voter oppression, what about armed guns rolling up to your voting center, firing guns into the air to scare voters away because they were losing or something.
I personally lived through that, cannot tell me it's a CIA psyop.
The VAST majority of people here are against the government, even people who were previously very pro-government, since at least 5 years ago.
Yet they somehow won the last couple elections... no one really believes those results.
NED funding is easily and openly given to tons of entities and doesn't come with strings attached. It's no more evidence of being a 'CIA funded propaganda op' than receiving money from the Open Society Foundation makes you a Soros shill as others have also ridiculously claimed.
There are valid criticisms worth making against Bellingcat, and legitimate unease at the role being played by independent and unaccountable entities like it in our discourse. Declassified UK doesn't seriously try to address any of them.
However, the relationship between money and reporting is not straightforward. For instance, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and many other lobbyists that pay media are suggesting the topics, not the content.
They pay for coverage and your editor in chief commits into producing x articles on y subjects, the content is left at the exercise of the journalist.
Do not forget that journalists are often freelancers working for multiple outlets and they do try to enforce deontologic rules as a way to protect their profession.
Compared to software developers, journalists earn less but own more. They do keep the right to the content and are liable individually. There are lots of restrictions in place as to what media outlets can and can not do to journalists, and some are even enshrined in laws.
Whereas the fact that Wikileaks has released only one sizable cache of documents from Russia is proof positive that they're essentially their paid spies who need to know when to keep their trap shut :/
I'm pretty happy for foreign powers to dig up dirt on each other and release it publicly. It's one form of "warfare" with net positive side effects. It benefits everybody who isnt invested in maintaining the overwhelming power of "their" favored corrupt empire.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Here's another example, which highlights the lax security of US troops guarding nuclear weapons in Europe, and which strengthens the hands of activists campaigning for European governments to disallow those agreements: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
However, it's important to emphasise that a group can have a singular focus area and still be independent. Its researchers all have their own personal interest areas and areas of expertise (esp. in language), which drives the kinds of things they focus on. As long as nobody is directing them, and so far nobody has provided convincing evidence of that, it's not something you can rely on to prove bias. A smoking gun would be if it emerged that they actually worked on something that would embarrass the US or UK and then covered it up.
Are they pawns for the West? Maybe. But we need better evidence than this to make that a believable case.
Wikileaks I believe was accused for instance of actually having damaging documents on Russia and deciding not to release them for some reason. It was an active decision they made despite having the means, and went against their professed claim of not holding back.
I'd be deeply surprised if Bellingcat released anything that embarrassed the director of the CIA.
I glanced at the bellingcat page on Ethiopia to see if they really were undermining the integrity of a US ally as you implied. Top story is about the fact that they're using Iranian drones, which is a bit of a poke in the eye to the US, and, depressingly, probably is the aspect of the conflict the CIA feels most invested in.
So yeah, real woodward and bernstein stuff.
That makes zero sense.
The CIA aren't directed by the US government in the way you believe.
Nuclear security is a joke everywhere. This industry has one of the worst track records of reliability/security, not just in the US.
> I'd be deeply surprised if Bellingcat released anything that embarrassed the director of the CIA.
A New Platform Tracks Airstrikes in Yemen ( https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2021/07/20/a-new-platfo... )
The Telltale Traces of the US Military’s New ‘Bladed’ Missile ( https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2021/08/26/the-... )
That's what i found in less than 5 minutes browsing links on that site. I would assume that's embarrassing for US intelligence services, but hey what do i know.
It did pop up not too long after a publicized "cooling" of relations between the two countries, though: https://en.qantara.de/content/under-joe-biden-us-cools-relat...
The second is practically a brag.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/09/break-in-at-y-...
Maybe. Or maybe not everything is part of a conspiracy. I don’t mean that in a snarky way.
This thread is straying pretty far from fact and relying a lot of suppositions about intent.
And a leading cause of skin cancer.
The counter-argument — just as much of an applause light as your quote — is this from Cardinal Richelieu:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
I’m definitely not suggesting governments shouldn’t be investigated — indeed they should, and I suspect that only hostile governments have the resources and motivation necessary to do this effectively, more than opposition parties — but I expect that even the best government has enough skeletons inside it to fall to propaganda that is merely selective reporting of true things.
If you spend too much time on trying to put "substantive argument" against such nutjobbery, you only work towards giving them more credulence.
It is possible that groups accepting NED funding aren't aware of this, but being a candidate for such funding means the CIA finds such a group useful.
Those are basically your only options, sadly. It's been absolutely incredible watching the billionaire-funded UK press struggle with the 10 Downing Street revelations. The revolving door between the Sun and the Tory party has been particularly bad - one of the parties was a leaving do for the director of communications moving from one to another.
Similarly the attempt at smearing the Labour party by bringing up old links to a Chinese spy fell apart when it was revealed she'd also been paying Tory parliamentarians. Then there's the £160k game of tennis, etc. https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-report-donors-boris-j...
How do we decide who are the bad guys in Myanmar, Syria, Kashmir, Kazakhstan, Balochstan etc.? The answer lies those groups mentioned in the article.
Bellingcat is not seen by me as being "on the progressive end of the political spectrum". They're strongly anti-communist.
That claim makes me doubt Declassified UK.
Given that there are a lot of people who see stuff like universal healthcare insurance, usable public transport or a livable minimum wage as socialist/communist, "anti-communism" can be outright reactionary/ultra-conservative in reality.
It's fine to be against authoritarian communism (China/NK-style governments) / existing "realsozialismus" governments (e.g. Cuba, Venezuela). But labelling actually positive policies like the ones I mentioned as "socialist"/"communist" and opposing these on the banner of "anti-communism" is pretty bad.
I'm not sure what "progressive" means. I think it's yet another in the trail of euphemisms used in the USA to refer to policies that have been associated with official enemies, such as "socialist".
Honestly, I'm the opposite of a fan of past CIA actions -- I thought. If this wants to discredit the NED, I think it does it in a weird way. It's more like: let's write a supporting article, by very badly criticising? Weird, just very weird.