A Hidden Agenda: John McCain and the International Republican Institute

By Sarah Hamburger, Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Posted June 26, 2008.

Presidential hopeful John McCain is hiding a skeleton in his closet. Not your typical political scandal, Senator McCain's dirty little secret is his longtime involvement with the International Republican Institute (IRI), an organization that operates in 60 countries and is budgeted by millions of US taxpayer dollars each year. The IRI is "officially" a politically independent entity, though in reality it is aligned in most respects with the Republican Party and its ideals. Senator McCain has been chairman of the IRI since 1993 and Lorne Craner, president of the organization, is one of the presumptive Republican candidate's informal foreign policy advisors. If McCain's involvement with the IRI does not worry Latin America yet, it certainly will if the policies that have had such a destructive influence in the past are backed by the power of the presidency. His connection to the IRI could endanger already stressed US-Latin American relations in the event of a McCain victory.

The IRI: A History

In 1982, Ronald Reagan delivered a spirited speech that would lead to the founding of the controversial "research group." In that speech, Reagan said, "Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best — a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation. For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny." The IRI nostalgically identifies Reagan's words as the "historic speech" in which the vision of the IRI first took shape. Not coincidentally, the years that followed became known as the "lost decade" in Latin America, something many have attributed in part to the Reagan Administration's misguided policies toward the region. During this period, structural adjustment loans plunged regional economies and living standards into a downward spiral from which many countries have yet to recover. The 1980s were plagued by violence; US funded government security forces in Guatemala and El Salvador prosecuted dirty wars which resulted in the disappearance, torture, and massacre of thousands of the countries' own citizens. In 1984, US became embroiled in one of the region's most public and profound political scandals. The Iran Contra Affair, an attempt by the Reagan administration to overthrow Nicaragua's democratically elected Sandinista government by providing funds to the "Contras," a group of anti-communist rebels notorious for their appalling human rights record. These are the dubious auspices under which the International Republican Institute was founded, fitting when considering what the organization was to become - a covert operation to advance right-wing policy under the guise of promoting freedom.

The International Republican Institute claims to be a nonpartisan organization whose mission is to "advance freedom worldwide by developing political parties, civic institutions, open elections, good governance and the rule of law." Unfortunately, the magnanimous goals of the IRI have been distorted by a quest to advance rightist US initiatives. Ghassan Atiyyah, Director of the Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy (a beneficiary of a $116,448 donation from the IRI) commented on the inconsistency of the organization's policy: "Instead of promoting impartial, better understanding of certain ideas and concepts, they are actually trying to further the cause of the Republican administration." Though Atiyyah here refers to the current Bush Administration, the McCain administration promises to be equally compatible with the strong armed methods advocated by the IRI and practiced in Latin America in the past.

Furthermore, during the years that the presumptive candidate chaired the IRI, the organization has chosen ironic means to "advance freedom:" training corrupt opposition leaders and providing funds to groups that effectively undermine often democratically-elected officials that the US government views unfavorably. In addition to running training camps, the IRI also conducts polls in high-stakes elections; the organization has been known to conduct "secret polls" with the intention of skewing public opinion in order to yield a desired outcome. The problem with such secret polls is that they cannot be verified and often contradict the findings of other, similar studies.

The IRI: Breaking the Bank

The IRI currently operates with a robust budget of $79 million. Though one of John McCain's goals as chairman of the organization has been to increase private funding for the IRI, the overwhelming majority of funds for the organization comes from two public sources, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Founded in 1983, the NED is an organization that has come under significant scrutiny, much like the IRI. Critics claim that it illegally privatizes US foreign affairs that are supposed to be overseen exclusively by the legislative and executive branches of the government. Additionally, the NED is publicly funded but lacks the transparency of a public organization. The organization allegedly has funded far right parties in Eastern Europe, even working with convicted Nazi collaborators such as Lazslo Pasztor of the Free Congress Foundation. In Nicaragua, the NED spent what equated to more than $20 on each voter, considerably more than the combined expenditures of the candidates in the 1988 US Presidential election. Not only does the NED represent a misuse of taxpayers' dollars, but its interference in the affairs of supposedly sovereign nations is illegal and its lack of transparency should disqualify it from receiving public funds. However, the opposite has happened and NED funding has risen from $59 million in 2005 to $74 million in 2006, in addition to $10 to $15 million in operation-specific funds mandated by Congress.

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This analysis was prepared by Research Associate Sarah Hamburger at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.