An embarrassing interview has exposed rifts at the National Endowment for Democracy
A major public relations debacle for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has led to the dismissal of two senior officials and a “civil war” between the organization’s old neoconservative leadership and its newer, “woke” management, according to documents obtained by The Grayzone.
The incident at the heart of the controversy was a phone call between NED vice-president for communications Leslie Aun and Grayzone reporters Max Blumenthal and Alex Rubinstein, published by the outlet in May 2023. Aun initiated the call to address Rubinstein’s characterization of the Endowment as a “CIA cutout,” but her responses were largely evasive.
On Tuesday, The Grayzone released several emails between Michael Allen, formerly the editor of the NED’s ‘Democracy Digest’ blog, and the Endowment’s founding president Carl Gershman, suggesting that the fallout from the call may have cost Aun and Allen their jobs.
“Amateur hour – hugely embarrassing!” Allen emailed Gershman and NED VP for government relations, David Lowe, the day after the recording was posted on YouTube. “I specifically counseled against her talking to these people.”
Lowe described Aun’s performance as “breathtakingly ignorant” and “too painful to listen to.” Both he and Gershman, who retired in 2021, seemed critical of the new NED president Damon Wilson for hiring Aun.
You can read a comprehensive selection of the obtained exclusively by The Grayzone here:
I think many will be shocked that Congress allocates $200 million a year to an unstable, politically partisan organization with obviously inept leadership
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal)
Gershman described the call as a “disastrous screwup” and referred to Aun as “obviously clueless,” a “moron,” and a “clueless wonder” whose hiring was an “egregious error” reflecting Wilson’s focus on media and image.
In messages to Gershman and Lowe, Allen blamed NED communications director, Christine Bednarz, who reportedly encouraged Aun to talk to the Grayzone. Allen also criticized Bednarz for implementing mandatory “diversity, equity and inclusion” training and reprimanding him about his “white male privilege.”
In one email, Allen complained about the DEI training agenda including “microaggressions” and the “ideological, not historical” 1619 Project, noting that Bednarz had scolded him for not using pronouns on his business cards and email signature.
In a June 5, 2023 email to Gershman, Allen complained about the communications team prioritizing the “more urgent matter of NED’s LGBTQIA+ agenda” over the Grayzone fallout.
Another point of contention arose after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, with Allen complaining that several NED staffers “promoted and attended the pro-Palestinian march organized by ANSWER” and that the NED president still supported Black Lives Matter on Facebook even after they “enthusiastically celebrated the Hamas massacres.”
At one point, Gershman inquired if Bednarz harbored some kind of personal resentment for her Israeli ex-husband, or if she was “just a woke flake,” to which Allen replied: “The latter, combined with a certain megalomania and defensive resentment over the Grayzone fiasco.”
Allen was ultimately fired on December 12. In an email to Gershman and Lowe in February, he claimed his dismissal was partially due to “marginalization prompted by the Grayzone affair, arguably the biggest PR fiasco in NED’s history.”
Aun was also dismissed at some point and received a substantial settlement for “sex discrimination,” according to the documents obtained by the Grayzone. Her online biographies make no mention of her work at NED.
The Endowment was founded by Gershman and Alan Weinstein in 1983, after the CIA suggested the creation of such an organization to then-President Ronald Reagan. “What we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” Weinstein admitted to the Washington Post in 1991. Rubinstein had mentioned the CIA connection in passing, in an April 2023 article about the controversial outfit Bellingcat getting NED funding.