After the Church Committee shutdown CIA covert ops, new organizations were formed by the Reagan Administration to carry on the "regime change" jobs of the CIA, this time with MUCH more PR.
Here's a good Mother Jones article about the IRI:
News: How an organization financed by the U.S. government has been promoting the overthrow of elected leaders abroad
By Joshua Kurlantzick
In early 2004, chaos overwhelmed Haiti. In January, a rebellion erupted against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former slum priest who had frequently angered the United States with his leftist rhetoric. Aristide had twice been elected, but he had alienated many Haitians with his increasing demagoguery and use of violence against the opposition. Yet polls showed that Aristide remained relatively popular, so even experienced Haiti watchers were surprised when, in late February, armed militias marched on the nation’s capital while demonstrators shut down the streets. In the violence, some 100 Haitians were killed. At dawn on February 29, with the militias closing in, Aristide left Haiti on a U.S. government plane.
But did the rebellion really spring from nowhere? Maybe not. Several leaders of the demonstrations -- some of whom also had links to the armed rebels -- had been getting organizational help and training from a U.S. government-financed organization. The group, the International Republican Institute (IRI), is supposed to focus on nonpartisan, grassroots democratization efforts overseas. But in Haiti and other countries, such as Venezuela and Cambodia, the institute -- which, though not formally affiliated with the GOP, is run by prominent Republicans and staffed by party insiders -- has increasingly sided with groups seeking the overthrow of elected but flawed leaders who are disliked in Washington.
In 2002 and 2003, IRI used funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to organize numerous political training sessions in the Dominican Republic and Miami for some 600 Haitian leaders. Though IRI’s work is supposed to be nonpartisan -- it is official U.S. policy not to interfere in foreign elections -- a former U.S. diplomat says organizers of the workshops selected only opponents of Aristide and attempted to mold them into a political force.
The trainings were run by IRI’s Haiti program officer, Stanley Lucas, the scion of a powerful Haitian family with long-standing animosity toward Aristide -- Amnesty International says some family members participated in a 1987 peasant massacre. “To have Lucas as your program officer sends a message to archconservatives that you’re on their side,” says Robert Maguire, a Haiti expert at Trinity College in Washington, D.C.
....
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2004/11/11_401.htmlFor those who like audio links, here's an interview with William Blum on the subject:
http://blackboxradio.wordpress.com/2005/10/17/interview-with-william-blum/Make no mistake: John McCain is NOT a foreign policy moderate. He is very much an open supporter of the use of US troops and covert ops to support US corporate interests worldwide.
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