Reply #25: Thanks for pointing this creep out [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Found an article describing him JUST the way you mentioned; it's truly ugly:

(snip)
Vin Weber, Vice Chairman of Empower America, is a former Minnesota Republican Congressman, lawyer and banker. He now lives in Virginia and is the new head of the private National Endowment for Democracy, and was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Bradley-funded Progress and Freedom Foundation (www.pff.org). (snip)



(snip) What is Weber up to now? Here's an excerpt from a New York Times story from 1998:
As one of Mr. Gingrich's best friends in the House, the Minnesota Republican was in immediate demand. "People were looking for G.O.P. consultants and lobbyists all over the place," Mr. Weber said in an interview. Mr. Weber now heads an eight-man office that reported lobbying revenues of $2.2 million in 1997.(snip)



(snip) Berkowitz writes that the NED was created to "do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades."

What has the NED done since its inception in 1983? According to a policy analyst at the Cato Institute - someone who should theoretically be friendly to Weber and the NED, it:

"...has a history of corruption and financial mismanagement, is superfluous at best and often destructive. Through the endowment, the American taxpayer has paid for special-interest groups to harass the duly elected governments of friendly countries, interfere in foreign elections, and foster the corruption of democratic movements."
More precisely, Berkowitz points out:

The NED...provides money, technical support, supplies, training programs, media know-how, public relations assistance and state-of-the-art equipment to select political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, and other media. It's aim is to destabilize progressive movements, particularly those with a socialist or democratic socialist bent. (snip/...)

http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/vin_weber.htm