link:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/GOP_organization_linked_to_dirty_politics_0609.html
GOP organization linked to dirty politics, attempted coups, 'building democracy' for US
snip: The International Republican Institute, though billing itself as an independent nonprofit unaffiliated with the Republican Party, acts essentially as a wing of the GOP. Its is chaired by party presidential frontrunner Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Representatives David Dreier (R-CA) and Jim Kolbe (R-AR) serve on its board of directors. Many of IRI’s high-ranking staff members have at some point worked directly for the Bush administration.
What makes these connections troubling is that the organization, nominally dedicated to nurturing free institutions in emerging democracies, has also been associated with unscrupulous and undemocratic campaign practices both at home and overseas.
snip:
The secretive aspect to some of IRI's activities, combined with its repeated involvement in subverting left-leaning politicians and parties, creates the appearance that it may be acting as one more tool in the Bush administration's arsenal for regime change by any means available. The recent increase in IRI's federal funding -- which almost tripled, from $26 million to $75 million, between 2003 and 2005 -- adds grounds to this suspicion.
snip:
At present, the International Republican Institute appears to be slowly gearing up to participate in the Bush administration's current initiative to promote regime change in Iran by supporting Iranian pro-democracy activists. However, some of IRI's alumni and associates have already been on the move.
snip:
More surprisingly, three members of the Serbian student group Otpor showed up in Dubai last summer, running training sessions in which they tutored Iranian activists in the same kinds of tricks that IRI had taught them five years earlier during the push to overthrow Milosevic. In a recent article, Asia Times described these workshops as "highly secretive" and said that "stress was laid on the importance of ridiculing the political elite as an effective tool of demythologizing them in the eyes of the people."
Asia Times further quotes an Iranian analyst as saying, "As I gather, the idea was to fund and train activists to be agents provocateurs along the lines of the Otpor movement in Serbia. Their job was to utilize various techniques, such as anti-government graffiti etc, to embolden the student movement and provoke a general government crackdown, which could then be used as a pretext to 'spark' a mass uprising in Iran that appeared to be spontaneous and indigenous."
The article goes into depth as to how this group discredited Kerry in the '04 campaign, helped shape elections in Iraq & Afghanistan, and is now possibly trying to effect regime change in Iran.
edit: spelling