Click here to access article by Steve Weissman and Frank Browning from Salon.
After learning of the Egyptian government's allegations of US sponsored NGOs meddling in their political affairs, I was very curious to learn more. I knew that US political operatives were extremely concerned about the Egyptian popular uprising a year ago as hinted at in several reports I reviewed (see this and this).
When the uprising broke, Frank Wisner Jr. was immediately dispatched to Egypt to get the situation under US control. Wisner Jr. is the son of the number two CIA man in the early days of the CIA, Frank Wisner Sr., and I have little doubt that he, Wisner Jr., is a major political operative in today's inner circle of political operatives--the people who really run things for the ruling One Percent, often referred to as the National Security State.
This article really doesn't shed much light on what the NGOs in Egypt were up to, but the authors do provide a very good historical outline of the use of false front NGOs in the past to further Empire objectives and were likely used in the same manner last year in Egypt. For more historical information on this subject of covert NGO and other CIA activities, I highly recommend that you read The Mighty Wurlitzer by H. Wilford, and The Fish is Red by Hinckle and Turner.
Although Wilford provides a rather good historical review of many nefarious activities of the CIA, he erroneously implies that all such activities ceased in the 1970s following investigations by the Church and Pike Congressional committees which revealed widespread use of illegal covert operations in both foreign countries and within US society: media, academia, foundations, government agencies, non-profit organizations, spying on citizens, etc.
