In the 1980s, the U.S. meddled in French elections, supposedly to stop Communism
The Reagan administration secretly funded a right-wing outfit
During his 1981 inauguration address, Ronald Reagan told the world that those “who share our freedom, we will strengthen our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment.” However, at a moment of peak paranoia in the Cold War, the president’s administration also authorized a program that meddled in the elections of France, a 200-year-old democracy and one of our closest allies.
Reagan was among the first world leaders to congratulate François Mitterrand when he was elected president of France on May 10, 1981, defeating incumbent centrist Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
Reagan, who identified with Mitterrand’s third presidential attempt after coming up short once before eventually winning the White House in 1980 himself, praised the new French head of state, writing, “Only those who have devoted the hard work and years-long dedication to winning the presidency can fully appreciate what today’s reaffirmation of the democratic process in France represents.’’
But Mitterand was also the Socialist Party candidate, and Reagan struck a tone of warning: “Together we face serious challenges to the security and well-being of our peoples and to the cause of peaceful progress worldwide.’’
Reagan made his expectations of Mitterrand clear from the beginning. “I am confident,’’ wrote Reagan, “that the centuries-old tradition of Franco-American friendship, together with the democratic values our two nations deeply share, will enable us to meet these challenges and preserve the spirit of Western cooperation on which the constructive future of the world increasingly depends.’’
What had the Reagan administration on edge was whether or not the already leftist president would bring members of the Communist Party into his cabinet as a way of guaranteeing their cooperation in matters of parliamentary affairs. The Reagan administration, like administrations before it, opposed Communist participation in government, no matter how minor the role. Italy’s inability to govern without at least tacit consent of the Communist members of parliament and the 1974 Portuguese revolution that relied on communists were front-of-mind at the White House.
When asked for an official statement on the potential communist role in the new French government, State Department spokesman Dean Fischer replied, “The decision of how France is governed rests with the French alone. We, of course, have an interest in the composition of the French government, with which we work closely in view of our alliance and our many common interests. We will be watching carefully the evolution of events in France, particularly the composition of a new government when it is formed.’’
With the whole world watching, Mitterrand, on his first full day in office, named a cabinet that reflected the moderate sectors of the Socialist Party, as well as prominent political figures representing the French center. He appointed no members of the Communist Party.
The next month, his decisions appeared to have the backing of the French population during parliamentary elections when the Socialist Party gained 166 seats and the Communist Party had its seats cut nearly in half to just 44.
But the massive defeat of the Communist Party in Mitterrand’s cabinet and in the parliament was not reassuring enough for the Reagan administration.
In 1983, the administration established the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a Congress-backed initial budget of $18 million (nearly $45 million in 2017 dollars). Through “private diplomacy” the N.E.D. was charged with funneling money abroad to help fledgling democracies mature and to plant the seeds of democracy in authoritarian societies.
But after a seven-page exposé ran in the French tabloid Libération, it was revealed that the administration had secretly funneled $1.5 million (approximately $3.6 million in 2017 dollars) to France to “defend democracy.” Force Ouvrière, a well-respected anti-communist labor union, received the bulk of the funds, but more than one-third had gone to a right-wing student group, National Inter-University Union, that had ties to dangerous extremist groups in the country.
The aim was simple: First, act as a counterbalance to the leftist policies of the Mitterrand government and, second, perhaps even prevent his reelection in the 1988 election.
According to the Libération report, and later confirmed by N.E.D. officials and congressional aides, the funding was secretly channeled through an overseas branch of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., through the Paris-based director of international relations of the labor organization, Irving Brown.
In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, he defended the secret funding, saying France was still a battleground between democracy and communism.
“We’re defending democracy in France,” Brown said, adding, “Let’s go back to Jefferson: ‘The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.’”
While Carl Gershman, president of the N.E.D., and members of the government sought to distance themselves from Brown, it was hard for others to believe checks were disbursed without knowing who would be cashing them. Brown, who first arrived in Europe in 1944 as the old A.F.L. representative, worked for decades to strengthen non-communist trade unions abroad and to weaken communism wherever he could — and for a time, he was a CIA agent.
The ordeal wasn’t the N.E.D.’s first embarrassment. The previous year, a State Department cable surfaced that $20,000 had been routed by the N.E.D. through another branch of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to spend in the 1984 Panamanian presidential campaign to support Nicholas Ardito Barletta, the candidate backed by the nation’s armed forces. The official U.S. position was neutrality.
On Capitol Hill, legislators were angry about what the blunders would do to America’s reputation abroad.
“This thing is not the National Endowment for Democracy but the National Endowment for Embarrassment,” said Sen. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina.
Others were concerned about the degree of N.E.D. operations without the knowledge of Congress or the countries in which they worked — especially when they were functioning democracies at least as old as the U.S.
Representative John Conyers of Michigan raised the case of France before a session of Congress, saying, that when the N.E.D. was instituted, “we were repeatedly told that it was to openly promote democracy in a nonpartisan manner in countries lacking a democratic political structure.” He added, “I still cannot fathom exactly why the United States sees the need to intervene without the consent of the government in one of the world’s oldest democracies.”
But Brown said the critics of his work and the N.E.D. were looking in the wrong direction.
“France is not threatened by the 10% vote of the Communist Party,” he said. “It is threatened by the Communist apparatus. Is it a clear and present danger? It is a clear and present danger if the present is thought of as 10 years from now.”
Of course, 10 years from then, the Berlin Wall would come down, the USSR would collapse, and the so-called Communist threat would be no more.
