Journalist Tracey Eaton has just published an article reflecting that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), that, out of $5,077,788, earmarked for its Cuba Program in 2020, they kept the recipients of $1,062,136 a secret.

 These undeclared funds were directed to dissimilar projects, entitled “Promoting Greater Access to Uncensored Information for Cubans”, “Promoting Access to Independent Sports Coverage in Cuba”, “Promoting Freedom of  Expression in Cuba through the Arts”,  “Promoting Independent Thinking in Cuba”, “Strengthening Access to Information and Enhancing Critical Thinking in central Cuba”, “Promoting the Use of Data in Journalism in Cuba”, “Times of Change and a New Role for Different Sectors in Cuba” and “Promoting a Space for Pluralistic Information in Cuba”.

My attention is drawn to the program “Promoting Access to Independent Sports Coverage in Cuba”, to which it allocated $50,000 for the purpose of “Promoting freedom of information in Cuba by providing public access to independent sports news and analysis”, specifying at one point that, in order to “attract a wider audience, special emphasis will be placed on creative reporting to depict the daily challenges faced by Cuban athletes.”

Will the website “Swing Completo” be related to this project? My doubt comes from the publication in recent years of “sports chronicles” where they overtly or covertly criticize certain decisions made many years ago about some Cuban baseball players; in others, they make statements about alleged decisions made by Cuban managers now disappeared so that their statements cannot be questioned and verified. We are talking about issues related to Cuban baseball, which we all know how many passions it arouses.

I carefully searched the Internet for other sites that dealt with Cubansports topics with that approach and my search was fruitless, only Swing Completo appeared. I do not mean by this that this site is receiving funds from the NED to pay the journalists who publish articles in it or to maintain this site. I am only saying that the work it develops, coincidentally, is very consistent with the objectives of this NED program.

Another element in favor of this is that I did not find any materials reflecting the negative impact of the blockade on Cuban sports or the theft of talent in baseball, much less criticizing the illegal trafficking of our baseball players.

Moving on to the central point at hand, why is the NED hiding this information? In other works on this subject, I have mentioned that the organization itself has stated that it does so to “protect” them.

Protect who and from what? From alleged reprisals by the Cuban government? But, why these and not others, because there are many more who are “exposed” and, of course, have not received any reprimand.

From my point of view, it would be possible to hypothesize about two main issues. First, that they are protecting the identity of institutions that do strong and sensitive covert work in Cuba to promote the overthrow of the Revolution and, second, that they are protecting people who are being trained to serve as leaders of destabilizing action in Cuba or as future leaders of the country, once their intended objectives have been achieved, that they have no interest in these people being identified as mercenaries in the service of a foreign power.

The overprotective attitude of the NED is suspicious, to say the least, and points to the fact that if they are covering up and preserving it is because they do not want to spoil a program that is highly sensitive to their interests. This behavior contrasts with the usual “burning” of their disposable pawns, those who serve them to create chaos or riots and petty tasks, while the “heavyweights” are kept in the shadows, incognito, waiting for their purposes to materialize.

This tendency of the NED to be selective in what they cover-up and what they make public is not new. In previous years they have shown similar behavior. And that behavior reminds me of the words of Carl Gershman, the first president of this organization, created in 1983 when he acknowledged in 1986 that “it would have been terrible for the ‘democratic groups’ to present themselves as being financed by the CIA, so they formed a foundation”. In other words, they do publicly what the CIA does in secret. But, at this point, a doubt jumps out at me. Could it be that NED also does things in secret? What do you think?

source Cuba y Punto