Muzzling a watchdog.

• Author: Corn, David
• Position: General Accounting Office (GAO - NED

THE INDEPENDENT WATCHDOG OF Congress. That's the impressive-sounding catch phrase often used to describe the General Accounting Office (GAO), the nonpartisan government outfit that conducts hundreds of investigations a year for the legislators of Capitol Hill. Its 2,500 evaluators investigate subjects ranging from acquisition problems at the Pentagon to the efficiency of penny manufacturing at the U.S. Mint, and they often do a good job. Readers of The Washington Monthly are well aware of the GAO's importance and of the need for an objective evaluator of government programs that is immune to political pressures and bureaucratic power plays.

Yet the independence of the GAO was challenged recently when it dared to question the existence of a small, obscure, government-financed foundation that happens to be a personal favorite of major players across Washington. What happened doesn't constitute a major scandal. But if the GAO softpedaled a report for political reasons, that ought to worry any citizen concerned about government accountability.

Several years ago, the House Foreign Affairs Committee asked the GAO to look into the proliferation of pro-democracy programs run by federal agencies. With the end of the Cold War, the State Department, the US. Agency for International Development (AID), the U.S. Information Agency, the Pentagon, and others were each grabbing for a piece of this growth industry. One small but significant participant in the pro-democracy field has been the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which receives up to $50 million a year from Congress and disburses these federal funds to organizations supposedly promoting democracy in foreign lands. Most of its money is funneled to four "core grantees"-the international arms of the Democratic and Republican parties, the AFL-CIO, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

With this quartet of politically wired organizations as the prime beneficiaries of the NED, influential people throughout the capitol have a vital stake in the foundation. To say the NED is well connected is an understatement. Its board members and supporters include such political luminaries as Richard Lugar, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Walter Mondale, John McCain, and Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

Using NED dollars, the core grantees and other recipients conduct assorted activities, from worthy projects like how-to-register-voters seminars in newly democratic nations, to more questionable exercises like flying operatives and consultants to fancy overseas hotels for conferences. Managed since its creation by a small band of neoconservatives who use government funds to wage their own foreign policy, the foundation bears a troublesome past. It has assisted groups with agendas other than the promotion of democracy, such...