'Bipartisan' Think Tank Attacks Democrats

By Spencer Ackerman 02/26/2008

A neo-conservative but ostensibly bipartisan counterterrorism think tank has lost all its Democratic board members by running an attack ad in Democratic congressional districts through an affiliated enterprise.

The think tank, called the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is a 501(c )3—meaning it was incorporated as a non-profit and non-partisan organization, barred from political activity. Last week, it established Defense of Democracies, a 501(c )4 "non-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization," that ran an advertisement urging the House of Representatives to pass the Senate’s version of a bill providing retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that collaborated with the Bush administration’s constellation of warrantless surveillance programs. The arrangement is probably legal, experts say, but the parent think tank receives several grants from the State Department—at least one is worth $487,000—for democracy-promotion programs, making its political activities questionable.