‘Biggest PR fiasco in History’ for US govt Regime Change Arm. Emails Leaked
The Grayzone caused ‘biggest PR fiasco in history’ for US govt regime change arm, leaked emails reveal
■ The Grayzone’s publication of an embarrassing phone call with a National Endowment for Democracy VP triggered an institution-wide meltdown at the US government’s regime change laboratory. Following the call, the group’s founding president privately admitted the “fiasco” exposed major “problems beneath the polished surface.”
■ Now, leaked emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal the organization has since descended into chaos, with two senior officials fired due to the fiasco, and remaining staff engaged in civil war between the neocon old guard and the “woke” new generation hired to replace them.
■ Senior NED management is currently in complete disarray, with two high-ranking staffers fired due to their handling of The Grayzone’s phone call, and founding president Carl Gershman isolated and marginalized by those who took his place.
■ What began as a bitter dispute over the decision to engage with The Grayzone ultimately devolved into a full-fledged culture war that pitted the group’s neoconservative founders against its more liberal recent hires, derided by the neocon old guard as “woke flakes” obsessed with “microaggressions” and compulsory DEI trainings.
■ One of the fired NED staffers, neocon Michael Allen, accused his progressive boss of a “clear campaign of harassment, marginalization and victimization,” and fretted over her allowing NED staff to attend pro-Palestine rallies. He was so incensed by his dismissal that he threatened to reveal the details of his firing to the “many mailing lists of key decision-makers and opinion-formers that I have built and retained over the years” if he did not receive a substantial settlement.
■ Read a collection of the NED files exclusively obtained by The Grayzone here.