Editor’s Note: Jakarta has been engulfed in fiery unrest in recent days, as thousands of protesters attempted to storm parliament in response to controversial changes to election laws. In September 2023, MintPress News revealed leaked files from the National Endowment for Democracy, suggesting that this CIA-linked organization has built an extensive network of political, media, and civil society infrastructure in Indonesia aimed at facilitating regime change. After years of fostering insurrectionary fervor in the country, has the NED’s influence finally reached a boiling point? MintPress News is republishing the following groundbreaking investigation by Kit Klarenberg as events in Indonesia once again come to the fore.

Documents passed anonymously to MintPress News reveal the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a notorious CIA front, is laying the foundations for a color revolution in Indonesia.

In February 2024, citizens will elect their President, Vice President, and both legislative chambers. Current maverick leader Joko Widodo, widely beloved by Indonesians, is ineligible for a third term, and NED is preparing to seize power in the wake of his departure. This operation is conducted despite the leaks indicating Jakarta’s foremost intelligence agency has expressly warned U.S. officials to stay put.

The paper trail is a stunning insight into how NED operates behind the scenes, from which obvious inferences can be drawn about its activities elsewhere, past and present. By the organization’s own reckoning, it operates in over 100 countries and disperses in excess of 2,000 grants every year. In Indonesia, these sums have helped extend the Endowment’s tendrils into various NGOs, civil society groups, and, most crucially, political parties and candidates across the ideological spectrum.

This broad spread bet goes some way to ensuring U.S. assets, one way or another, will emerge victorious next February. However, a veritable army of NED operatives on the ground is also primed to challenge, if not overturn, the results should the wrong people win. Personal grants – in other words, bribes – from the Endowment have already secretly been distributed to Indonesians for staging anti-government protests.

What skullduggery NED has in store for election day isn’t certain, although sparks are assured to fly. At the very least, these documents amply reinforce what Endowment cofounder Allen Weinstein openly admitted in 1991:

A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”