Jackbooted security forces raided the offices of foreign and Egyptian political think tanks on December 29, 2011, confiscating computers, records, cell phones, maps, documents, and cash. Five of the organizations targeted were overseas branches of the federally funded quasi-non-governmental National Democratic Institute (NDI), International Republican Institute (IRI), the International Center for Journalists, Freedom House, and Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The others were locally headquartered professional advocacy organizations, including the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and the Arab Center for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. The Minister of International Cooperation, Fayza Aboulnaga, often nicknamed “the iron lady,” and a “Mubarak holdover,” had asked prosecutors to investigate what foreign democracy brokers were up to, how Egyptian organizations received foreign aid, and whether they all had official authorization.

This news event was spun in various directions. That evening, Dawlat Soulam, a bilingual Egyptian-American, gave a scathing in-depth interview on a Channel 2 TV program called The Truth (al-Haqiqah) about why she and six colleagues had already resigned their jobs at IRI. She complained of blatant anti-Islamist bias in party training, CIA officers posing as democracy experts, grant-making according to ulterior motives, deliberate provocation of sectarian tensions, and anti-Egyptian prejudices expressed by drunken consultants at after-hours expatriate social gatherings. Soulam’s accusations fed tales in Cairo’s state-run media and unofficial rumor-mills about colonial agents undermining Egyptian sovereignty and fomenting instability.