[R-G] State Department's Iran Democracy Fund Shrouded in Secrecy

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.pubrecord.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=191

State Department's Iran Democracy Fund Shrouded in Secrecy

By Jason Leopold
The Public Record
Thursday, July 10, 2008

Favoured : 3

Published in : Nation/World

Since 2006, Congress has poured tens of millions of dollars into a  
State Department program aimed at promoting regime change in Iran.

The “Democracy Program” initiative has been shrouded in secrecy since  
its inception and many critics of the initiative (who are also  
outspoken critics of the Iranian government) believe that it is  
directly linked to a spate of arrests of dozens of Iranian dissidents  
suspected of working secretly with the Bush administration to topple  
the Iranian government.

Up until last November, the program was operated by the State  
Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and overseen by David  
Denehy, the bureau’s senior adviser. The program was reportedly moved  
last November to the State Department's Bureau of Iranian Affairs.  
Denehy did not return calls for comment.

One of the influential figures who helped launch the democracy program  
was Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, who  
as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern  
Affairs, headed the Iran-Syria Policy and Operations Group and, with  
the financial help of a prominent Republican foundation, the  
International Republican Institute, financed efforts of dozens of  
Iranian and Syrian exiles to promote a campaign to overthrow their  
government leaders. Elizabeth Cheney left the State Department last  
year to work on Fred Thompson's presidential campaign.

An aggressive effort by the State Department to fund regime change in  
Iran is ongoing, but the State Department has refused to provide  
lawmakers with specific details of the program other than to say that  
the core mission of the initiative is to assist “those inside Iran who  
desire basic civil liberties such as freedom of expression, greater  
rights for women, more open political process, and broader freedom of  
the press.”

Congress has appropriated more than $120 million to fund the project.  
The State Department has spent most of the money on the U.S.-backed  
Radio Farda, Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe, and to  
broadcast Persian programs into Iran via VOA satellite television.

Some funds, according to State Department sources familiar with the  
how the program is run, have also been secretly funneled to exile  
Iranian organizations, and politically connected individuals in order  
to help the U.S. establish contacts with Iranian opposition groups.

In June of 2007, the State Department said it would spend $16 million  
on democracy promotion projects that extends beyond broadcasting.  
However, to date the State Department has not released details on how  
it intends to obligate or expend those funds.

A State Department spokesman declined to comment for this story.

Carah Ong, an Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and  
Non-Proliferation, said in an interview that because the State  
Department operates the program under a veil of secrecy “we don’t know  
where the money is going.”

“There is no reporting requirement to Congress,” Ong said. “There’s  
absolutely no accountability at all with this money.”

Next Wednesday, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and  
Foreign Operations will consider the fiscal year 2009 budget that  
calls for setting aside $65 million http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/100014.pdf 
  for additional regime change and democracy promotion efforts inside  
Iran.

The State Department has said it intends to spend $1.2 million of  
those funds to launch Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Azerbaijani in  
an effort to address the lack of objective and comprehensive news and  
information for Azerbaijanis, the largest ethnic minority group in Iran.

The $65 million requested by the State Department “is more than three  
times the amount appropriated for FY 2008, which is estimated to be  
$21.623 million,” Ong said of the $65 million in democracy promotion  
funds for Iran. “This tripling in Economic Support Funds is the result  
of several developments. First, some restructuring recently occurred  
in the State Department and its Iran desk.

“Second, the FY 2008 Foreign Operations bill appropriated $60 million  
(under Section 693) for so-called "Programs to Promote Democracy, Rule  
of Law and Governance in Iran." It has been unclear since Section 693  
was originally added as an amendment introduced by Rep. Ander Crenshaw  
(R-FL) to the House Foreign Operations Appropriations bill for exactly  
which programs this funding was meant. Was it meant to increase  
funding for the Economic Support Fund or the Human Rights and  
Democracy Fund? Or was it meant to serve as an overall guideline for  
total spending on so-called "democracy promotion" programs? This is  
still a question that needs to be answered.”

The State Department has refused to provide specific details on the  
nuances of the democracy promotion project. The agency told lawmakers  
that the classified nature of the democracy promotion project serves  
to protect the identity of Iranian individuals and organizations that  
have received funding to promote a U.S. policy of regime change in  
Iran from being harassed or threatened by the Iranian government.

Yet that is exactly what has happened to some Iranian dissidents—even  
those who have publicly denounced the program.

A letter sent to lawmakers last October by Trita Parsi, the president  
of the National Iranian American Council, and more than a dozen other  
Middle East scholars all of whom are critics of the Iranian  
government, stated that the “secret State Department “democracy  
promotion” funding has enabled Iranian authorities to label those  
supporting reforms or engagement with the West as foreign agents and  
traitors. Recent detentions of Iranian-American scholars, journalists,  
union leaders, student activists, and others are widely viewed as  
responses to threats posed by U.S.-funded efforts.”

“We believe this program, intended to aid the cause of democracy in  
Iran, has failed and has instead invigorated a campaign by  
conservative regime elements to harass and intimidate those seeking  
reform and greater openness in Iran,” the Oct. 11, 2007 letter says.  
“The intended beneficiaries of the funding, - human rights advocates,  
civil society activists and others - uniformly denounce the program,”

“Rather than promoting democracy, the U.S. funding has narrowed the  
space for the pro-democracy movement to operate,” Parsi said. “Today,  
the conditions for civil society have significantly deteriorated.  
Executions are at an all-time high. Many human rights workers have  
been imprisoned.”

Ong said most of the State Department funds have been doled out to  
organizations outside of Iran, such as Freedom House and Eurasia  
Foundation because “no one in Iran will take the money.”

But just the possibility that some Iranians may be linked to American  
led efforts to overthrow the Iranian government, or have accepted  
money from the Bush administration, has led to numerous arrests last  
year.
Emaddeddin Baghi, a human rights activist based in Tehran who was sent  
back to prison in September said “it is neither wise nor morally  
justifiable for the U.S. to continue its path” of promoting regime  
change by trying to give money to dissidents.

Last year, Haleh Esfandiari, was arrested and sent to a prison in  
Tehran on charges of spying for the U.S. He was incarcerated for eight  
months, four of which were spent in solitary confinement.

Former Congressman Lee Hamilton told CNN last year that Esfandiari was  
likely captured because Iranians believed she was linked to the State  
Department’s campaign to promote regime change in Iran. Hamilton said  
Esfandiari did not receive any funds but he said the secrecy  
surrounding the State Department’s democracy program was causing more  
harm than good.

“If the policy of the United States government is to overthrow the  
government, then the Democracy Fund obviously would be viewed with a  
great deal of suspicion and hostility by the target government,"  
Hamilton said in May 2007, shortly after Esfandiari’s arrest.

In an October column published in The Chronicle of Higher Education,  
Esfandiari, the director of Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East  
program said “the fact that the identity of Iranian recipients of U.S.  
aid is regarded as classified information by the U.S. government feeds  
the regime's paranoia and casts suspicion on all Iranian” non- 
government organizations.

Last September, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, (I-Conn.), introduced an  
amendment to the Senate Foreign Operations Bill, adopted by unanimous  
consent, that restored the democracy promotion funds to the $75  
million requested by the State Department. An earlier version of the  
bill reduced the funding by less than half.

"This amendment would provide $75 million in funds, the amount  
requested by the administration; in fact, announced by Secretary of  
State [Condoleezza] Rice,” Lieberman said in a floor statement last  
September. “That announcement, I know from sources I have, was broadly  
heard and appreciated within the Iranian civil society dissident  
movement. The committee has recommended one-third of that amount of  
money. This $75 million would go to labor activists, women's groups,  
journalists, human rights advocates, and other members of Iranian  
civil society. It provides Congress an opportunity to demonstrate that  
even as we condemn the behavior of the Iranian regime, we stand with  
the Iranian people, a people with a proud history who truly are, in my  
opinion, yearning to be free. That freedom is suppressed by the  
fanatical regime that dominates their lives today.”

But Shirin Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2003,  
explained that “no truly nationalist and democratic group will accept”  
State Department funds to promote a policy of regime change because  
“Iranian reformists believe that democracy can't be imported. It must  
be indigenous.”

“They believe that the best Washington can do for democracy in Iran is  
to leave them alone,” Ebadi wrote in a May 30, 2007 column published  
in The International Herald Tribune. Ebadi’s column was published as  
Congress approved emergency supplemental legislation to fund the Iraq  
war, which contained a $75 million earmark for the State Department’s  
Iran Democracy project.

“The secret dimension of the distribution of the $75 million has also  
created immense problems for Iranian reformists, democratic groups and  
human rights activists. Aware of their own deep unpopularity, the hard- 
liners in Iran are terrified by the prospects of a "velvet revolution"  
and have become obsessed with preventing contacts between Iranian  
scholars, artists, journalists and political activists and their  
American counterparts,” Ebadi added. “Thus, Washington's policy of  
"helping" the cause of democracy in Iran has backfired. It has made it  
more difficult for the more moderate factions within Iran's power  
hierarchy to argue for an accommodation with the West.”

The final appropriation for 2008 was set at $60 million to be made  
available for "programs to promote democracy, the rule of law and  
governance in Iran."

But a statement that was included with the bill cited only two numbers  
related to Iran: $21.8 million for Economic Support Funds (ESF) and $8  
million for the Democracy Fund. It is unknown how the State Department  
intends to spend the remainder of the $60 million.

Ong and Parsi have called on the Government Accountability Office to  
conduct an investigation to examine the effectiveness of the program,  
which the GAO said it has initiated but could not say when the report  
would be complete.

Additionally, Ong said she has been trying to educate lawmakers for  
more than a year on how the program has backfired.

“It’s difficult to bring the voices of Iranian dissidents to the Hill  
to explain how the program is hurting their cause because if they  
speak out publicly they will be arrested when they return to Iran and  
accused of being spies,” Ong said in an interview. “I’ve tried to  
raise this issue with some members [of Congress] and some listen and  
some don’t.”