 to fund media institutions and political dissident groups that they had lost during the Carter administration when Jimmy Carter fired 30% of the CIA operations directorate in one night. And to avoid the scandals of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, what William Colby proposed was that instead of having CIA fingerprints on this, we would create a private non-governmental organization called the National Endowment for Democracy to do it instead. That way, if an operation got busted, it wouldn't look like the CIA did it.