KATHMANDU: A story published this week by The Grayzone presents a dramatic explanation for Nepal’s political transformation: Washington, it claims, helped manufacture the country’s new political leadership.

The September 9 article, written by Kit Klarenberg and Wyatt Reed, argues that Prime Minister Balen Shah, Rastriya Swatantra Party chairman Rabi Lamichhane and several other political figures were “groomed” for power through programmes connected to the US-funded National Endowment for Democracy, or NED. It portrays the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening, or CEPPS, as part of a covert American regime-change apparatus.

The article is built around a potentially important set of questions. Foreign governments do fund civil-society, electoral and political-development programmes in Nepal. American organisations have worked with Nepali political institutions and young leaders. Foreign influence deserves scrutiny.

But The Grayzone makes a leap that its evidence does not clearly prove.

There is a fundamental difference between American-funded democracy assistance and a CIA operation to install political leaders.

The first is documented.

The second requires considerably stronger evidence.

That distinction matters-not merely for Nepal’s domestic politics, but for a country whose relationship with the United States has become increasingly important.

The documents are real. The conclusion is another matter

The Grayzone’s central evidence concerns CEPPS and its older Niti Sambad programme.

CEPPS is not a secret organisation. It is a consortium involving the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute. A 2018 recruitment notice for its Nepal programme described Niti Sambad as a five-year programme running from 2017 to 2022, focused on governance, transparency, accountability, elections, political parties and institutional strengthening.

Those activities are not evidence of a clandestine Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) programme. They are evidence of an American-supported political-development program with transparency.

That does not make them beyond criticism. On the contrary, Nepal should ask difficult questions about foreign-funded political programmes: who receives money, who receives training, what political networks are created, and whether foreign assistance crosses the line into political engineering.

But journalism must distinguish evidence of influence from evidence of control.

The Grayzone’s article says leaked CEPPS documents identify Shah, Lamichhane, Sagar Dhakal and Sudan Gurung among “catalytic civic leaders” that the organisation would support.

That is certainly worth examining.

But being identified in a democracy-support programme does not, by itself, establish that an individual is a CIA asset, American agent or Washington’s chosen candidate for prime minister.

The article provides no public intelligence document showing CIA recruitment of these politicians.

It does not produce a CIA communication ordering that they be elevated.

It does not establish that Washington controlled their parties, campaigns or election results.

And it does not demonstrate that American assistance caused Nepal’s political upheaval.

Instead, it connects a real foreign-funded programme to later political events and presents the connection as a causal chain.

That is precisely where readers should slow down.

The CIA claim is doing most of the political work

The rhetorical centre of the story is the description of NED as a “CIA cutout”.

NED has long been controversial. It was established during the Reagan administration and receives US government funding. Critics have argued for decades that it performs openly some of the political functions that intelligence agencies once carried out covertly.

But “CIA cutout” is a political characterization, not proof that every NED programme is a CIA operation.

The Grayzone takes that characterization and then places CEPPS and its Nepali participants inside it.

A serious investigation would need to establish each link independently. That is particularly important in Nepal, where political change has multiple causes: public dissatisfaction, corruption, unemployment, traditional-party fatigue, social media, generational change, institutional weakness and genuine domestic political mobilisation.

Reducing all of that to a Washington-directed operation risks turning Nepalis themselves into extras in somebody else’s geopolitical screenplay.

Who is The Grayzone?

This is where the story becomes more interesting.

The Grayzone presents itself as an independent investigative publication. It has published genuine document-based investigations and has challenged Western governments and mainstream media on subjects ranging from Syria and Ukraine to Israel and US foreign policy.

But the professional backgrounds of several of its leading contributors deserve scrutiny—particularly when the publication is making accusations about foreign influence.

The Grayzone managing editor Wyatt Reed had worked extensively for Russia’s state-funded Sputnik. Grayzone contributor Mohamed Elmaazi worked full-time for Sputnik from 2019 to 2021, while freelancer Jeremy Loffredo worked full-time for Russian government funded Russian Today (RT) during roughly the same period.

The Grayzone founder and editor Max Blumenthal regularly appeared on Russian television and attended a 2015 Moscow celebration of RT at which Vladimir Putin appeared.

These are not allegations based on anonymous internet posts. They are publicly documented professional relationships. And they matter because RT and Sputnik are not ordinary privately owned foreign broadcasters.

The US State Department has described RT and Sputnik as key elements of Russia’s state-directed disinformation and propaganda ecosystem, saying they operate as state-funded international messengers supporting Kremlin foreign-policy objectives.

Sputnik as a Russian government-funded operation operating under the supervision of the Kremlin-controlled Rossiya Segodnya media structure.

In 2024, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken went further, accusing RT of being used by the Kremlin for covert influence and intelligence-related operations.

The Wyatt Reed connection

The Reed case is particularly striking. Reed worked as a Washington correspondent for Sputnik from 2019 until June 2023. During that period, hacked Press TV documents indicated he also received payments for contributions to Iran’s state-owned broadcaster.

The Post reported that Reed’s work included appearances and contributions concerning American politics and foreign policy. Emerson Brooking of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab describing the Grayzone environment as a destination for “narrative laundering from Russia.”

It can mean that a geopolitical narrative originating in or favoured by a state propaganda ecosystem is repeated by apparently independent Western voices, giving the message a different appearance and potentially wider credibility.

That is precisely why the distinction between Russian state media and Western outlets with relationships to Russian state media matters.

Blumenthal and Moscow

Max Blumenthal is an even more established figure in this ecosystem.

He has appeared repeatedly on RT and Sputnik. He attended an RT gala in Moscow in 2015 at which Putin appeared.

Blumenthal has never been a conventional advocate of Washington’s foreign-policy establishment. His journalism is deeply hostile to American foreign policy. A journalist is entitled to oppose US foreign policy.

The question is different: When an outlet repeatedly adopts narratives that coincide with the strategic interests of Moscow, Tehran or Beijing, and some of its journalists have worked for state-controlled media of those governments, how should readers evaluate its claims?

The answer should be neither blind acceptance nor automatic dismissal. It should be scrutiny.
This is perhaps the most sophisticated lesson of modern information warfare.

Propaganda does not necessarily require fabricated facts. Sometimes it begins with a genuine fact. A real document. A real payment.
A real foreign-funded programme. A real diplomatic dispute. Then comes the interpretation. And finally the political conclusion. The danger lies in the distance between those three stages.

The Grayzone’s Nepal story contains genuine material about US-funded programmes. But its argument turns those programmes into evidence of a CIA-backed political succession without publicly demonstrating the missing links.
That is how a complicated reality can become a simple geopolitical story.

Nepal is particularly vulnerable to this narrative

Nepal occupies an unusual geopolitical position.
It is not merely another developing democracy receiving Western aid. It sits between India and China, while maintaining a longstanding relationship with the United States and a growing network of international partnerships.

The United States has become an important development partner, donor, investor and diplomatic actor in Nepal.

China is an increasingly important political, economic and strategic partner.

India remains Nepal’s largest and most immediate external economic and geopolitical relationship.

For Kathmandu, therefore, foreign policy is not an ideological luxury. It is a balancing exercise.

A narrative suggesting that Nepal’s political leadership is essentially an American creation can have consequences far beyond one website.

It can feed public suspicion toward American development assistance.

It can turn legitimate questions about foreign funding into blanket hostility toward the United States.

And it can encourage the false idea that Nepal’s political transformation is something imposed from abroad rather than something driven principally by Nepali citizens.

That does not mean Washington should be immune from scrutiny.

Quite the opposite.

American programmes should be transparent.

Nepali political parties should disclose foreign assistance.

Civil-society organisations should disclose funding.

International donors should publish beneficiaries and objectives.

And journalists should investigate whether programmes intended to strengthen democracy have crossed into partisan political engineering.

But the same standard must apply to every foreign power.

If American influence deserves investigation, so does Chinese influence.

So does Indian influence.

So does Russian influence.

And so does the influence of foreign media narratives entering Nepal through apparently independent platforms.

The irony of the Grayzone’s argument

There is an irony in the article. The Grayzone accuses Washington of manipulating Nepal’s political information environment while presenting its own highly geopolitical interpretation of Nepal to an international audience.

It portrays American involvement as hidden manipulation while offering little discussion of the complex domestic reasons Nepalis themselves have turned away from traditional political parties.

It frames Nepali political actors as products of Washington’s strategy.

That risks diminishing the agency of millions of Nepali voters.

Perhaps Nepal’s young voters really were angry about corruption.

Perhaps they genuinely wanted different political leadership.

Perhaps social media transformed political mobilisation.

Perhaps traditional parties failed to adapt.

Perhaps all of these things happened simultaneously.

A serious country deserves a serious explanation.

What the evidence actually allows us to say

The most defensible conclusion is therefore narrower than The Grayzone’s.

Yes, American-funded organisations have operated political, electoral and civil-society programmes in Nepal.

Yes, those programmes included youth leadership, political participation and institutional development.

Yes, documents cited by The Grayzone appear to identify several individuals who later became prominent political figures.

Yes, foreign-funded political activity deserves scrutiny.

But: No publicly demonstrated evidence in the Grayzone article establishes that the CIA recruited Balen Shah, Rabi Lamichhane or the other named Nepali politicians. Nor does the article establish that Washington engineered Nepal’s political upheaval.

Nor does identifying a politician in a foreign-funded leadership programme prove that the politician became an American agent.

That is the line between investigation and insinuation.

Nepal should investigate-not inherit someone else’s narrative

There is a legitimate story here.

It is not necessarily the story The Grayzone wants readers to believe. The legitimate story is about foreign money, political networks and democratic sovereignty.

How much money entered Nepal?

Who received it?

What were the contracts?

Who attended the programmes?

What did the training involve?

Were political parties or individual candidates favoured?

Were foreign officials involved in selecting participants?

Were programme outcomes measured?

Were donors informed about political developments?

Were any Nepali political actors encouraged to pursue specific political strategies?

Those questions should be answered through documents, interviews and financial records.

If evidence shows improper political intervention, Nepalis should know.

But if evidence shows ordinary democracy assistance being transformed into a CIA conspiracy narrative, Nepalis should know that too.

That is the real media test.

The Grayzone’s latest article asks Nepalis to distrust Washington.

Fair enough.

Nepalis should question Washington. But they should also question Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi-and The Grayzone itself.

A foreign publication with journalists who have worked for Russian state media does not automatically become Russian intelligence.

But neither should its geopolitical narratives receive a free pass. Nepal does not need to choose between believing Washington and believing Moscow. It needs to believe the evidence.

And that is precisely where the Grayzone’s most dramatic claim currently appears weakest: the documents may demonstrate American engagement in Nepal, but they do not, by themselves, demonstrate a CIA-made Nepali government.

The difference is not semantic. It is the difference between journalism and propaganda.