International Freedom Foundation (IFF)

The South African Government was spending a million dollars a year keeping the IFF afloat so Abramoff could help them. Jesse Helms and Dan Burton initially supported the IFF, which brought him deeper into to the secretive far right group the Council for National Policy. The IFF was also located next door to Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation. Its purported aim was to promote individual and collective freedoms worldwide: freedom of thought; free speech; free association; free enterprise; and, the free market principle. It came into being after the Democratic International, a 1985 meeting of anti-Communist rebels held at the headquarters of UNITA in Jamba, Angola. The IFF campaigned against regimes and movements it described as Soviet allies. To achieve its aim the IFF, with offices in London and Johannesburg, sponsored symposia with high-profile speakers such as Henry Kissinger. Among its eight periodicals, the IFF published a monthly newsletter—the Freedom Bulletin—with three editions: International; UK/Europe; and, Republic of South Africa. The IFF ceased its activities in 1993.