War supporter Clifford May fails to disclose State Dept. grants to organization he heads

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http://mediamatters.org/items/200709100007?f=i_latest

Iraq war supporter Clifford May fails in media appearances to disclose State Dept. grants to organization he heads

Summary: Former Republican National Committee official Clifford D. May has appeared in the media several times to defend the administration's conduct of the Iraq war, but in none of his columns or on-air appearances has May disclosed that the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an organization of which he is the president, has received at least $1.2 million in State Department grants since 2004, or that May himself is a member of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion.

Since 2004, Clifford D. May, former Republican National Committee communications director and president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), has appeared in the media several times to defend the administration's conduct of the Iraq war -- most recently in his September 5 Scripps Howard News Service column, where he listed as "Al Qaeda's hope<(s)" that "Congress will save them by legislating America's retreat from Iraq" and "that lawmakers in Washington will vote to stop fighting al Qaeda in Iraq and to abandon those Iraqis who have been fighting with us and relying on us." However, in none of his columns or on-air appearances has May disclosed that FDD has received at least $1.2 million in State Department grants since 2004, or that May himself is a member of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion.[br />
The FDD is a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization that claims to be "the only nonpartisan policy institute dedicated exclusively to promoting pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that drive terrorism." According to the group's website: "As a result of our proven effectiveness, the State Department awarded FDD grants to run training conferences on democracy with Iraqi women leaders in Hilla in 2003 and Amman in 2005, and to sponsor a network of university professors to give lectures on democracy to hundreds of university students in Baghdad, Hilla, Mosul, Najaf and Tikrit."

According to the State Department website, FDD was awarded an $800,343 grant for fiscal year 2005 to "support[] a new generation of activists in the Middle East through training, technical assistance and mentoring." FDD received a separate $426,457 grant for fiscal 2005 to "provide[] advanced personalized, practical campaign training to female candidates in the Middle East and North Africa region running in elections in 2006 and 2007."

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