Better NED than Dead?

Just down the hall from a door marked “20th Century Fox,” on the third floor of a nondescript office building on the edge of downtown Washington, D.C., are the offices of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Controversy has regularly wafted out of this unlikely bureaucratic outpost over the last two years. The Endowment’s mission—”to strengthen democratic institutions around the world”—seems unobjectionable. With only thirteen employees, the Endowment&...