According to Allen Weinstein, the founder of the NED, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA".

The NED is not the CIA (and the degree of inter-agency cooperation is likely not much greater than that between the CIA and NSA), but it serves the same purpose as an arm of the US intelligence apparatus. This is indisputable, as admitted directly by the founder of the NED.

IIRC with the pending fall of the Soviet Union (the primary counterweight to US influence) the US no longer saw a need for covertly influencing governments.