Peter Certo: CIA is well practiced in subverting elections

Via OtherWords.org

Even in an election year as shot through with conspiracy theories as this one, it would have been hard to imagine a bigger bombshell than Russia intervening to help Donald Trump. But that’s exactly what the CIA believes happened, or so unnamed “officials brief on the matter” told The Washington Post.

While Russia had long been blamed for hacking e-mail accounts linked to the Clinton campaign, its motives had been shrouded in mystery. According to The Post, though, CIA officials recently presented Congress with a “a growing body of intelligence from multiple sources” that “electing Trump was Russia’s goal.”

Now, the CIA hasn’t made any of its evidence public, and the CIA and FBI are reportedly divided on the subject. Though it’s too soon to draw conclusions, the charges warrant a serious public investigation.

Even some Republicans who backed Trump seem to agree. “The Russians are not our friends,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, announcing his support for a congressional probe. It’s “warfare,” added Sen.  John McCain.

There’s a grim irony to this. The CIA is accusing Russia of interfering in our free and fair elections to install a right-wing candidate it deemed more favorable to its interests. Yet during the Cold War, that’s exactly what the CIA did to the rest of the world.

Most Americans probably don’t know that history. But in much of the world it’s a crucial part of how Washington is viewed even today.

In the post-World War II years, as Moscow and Washington jockeyed for global influence, the two capitals tried to game every foreign election they could get their hands on.

From Europe to Vietnam and Chile to the Philippines, American agents delivered briefcases of cash to hand-picked politicians, launched smear campaigns against their left-leaning rivals, and spread hysterical “fake news” stories like the ones some now accuse Russia of spreading here.

Together, political scientist Dov Levin estimates, Russia and the U.S. interfered in 117 elections this way in the second half the 20th Century. Even worse is what happened when the CIA’s chosen candidates lost.

In Iran, when elected leader Mohammad Mossadegh tried to nationalize the country’s BP-held oil reserves, CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt led an operation to oust Mossadegh in favor of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah’s secret police tortured dissidents by the thousands, leading directly to the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

In Guatemala, when the democratically elected Jacobo Arbez tried to loosen the U.S.-based United Fruit Co.’s grip on Guatemalan land, the CIA backed a coup against him. In the decades of civil war that followed, U.S.-backed security forces were accused of carrying out a genocide against indigenous Guatemalans.

In Chile, after voters elected the socialist Salvador Allende, the CIA spearheaded a bloody coup to install the right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet, who went on to torture and kill thousands of Chileans.

“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people,” U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger purportedly said about the coup he helped orchestrate there.

And those are only the most well-known examples.

I don’t raise any of this history to excuse Russia’s alleged meddling in our election — which, if true, is outrageous. Only to suggest that now, maybe, we know how it feels. We should remember that feeling as Trump, who’s spoken fondly of authoritarian rulers from Russia to Egypt to the Philippines and beyond, comes into office.

Meanwhile, much of the world must be relieved to see the CIA take a break from subverting democracy abroad to protect it at home.

Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and the editor of OtherWords.org. 

Don Pesci: The CIA, Trump and an unhinged Democrat

VERNON, Conn.

U.S. Rep. Jim Himes,  a Democrat who just won re-election to office, has been pushed over the edge by Donald Trump,  according to a story in the New York Post.

“What finally pushed me over the edge, Himes said in an interview on CNN’s New Day, “was when the president-elect of the United States criticized the CIA and the intelligence community. Can you imagine what the leaders in Beijing and Moscow and Tehran are thinking as they watch the next president of the United States delegitimize and criticize his own intelligence community and stand up for the defense of Russia, one of our prime adversaries.”

Mr. Himes must have been standing very close to the edge, because he believes that Mr. Trump’s remarks on the CIA report show that the President-Elect is unhinged: “We’re five weeks from inauguration and the president-elect is completely unhinged.” In plain-speak, “completely unhinged” means  that he’s  nuts.

Among Democratic politicians still suffering from painful election losses – Republicans, this election season won the House, Senate and White House, a trifecta – the expression may indicate a general unease with the results of the election, rather than a serious appraisal of Mr. Trump’s mental health. Wounded politicians under stress are occasionally subject to hissy fits.

We should be thankful that the CIA, unlike Caesar’s wife, is not yet above criticism. Mr. Himes failed to note in his press response that reports issuing from the CIA and the FBI were in conflict. The FBI’s investigation found no unimpeachable evidence that Russian intelligence services – which, like their counterparts at the CIA, engage in hacking – had materially affected the U.S. elections. The CIA instructed members of Congress that Russian intelligence services did engage in hacking, perhaps through intermediaries, but hard evidence supporting the charge has not, and probably will not, be made public, principally because the CIA as a rule safeguards top-secret information more diligently than did former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose loss to Mr. Trump has unhinged many a Democrat. 

Mr. Himes will appreciate the distinction between spying, which may include acquiring data by hacking, and election interference through the manipulation of voting data. In fact, it would be nearly impossible for Russian spooks to manipulate election votes, because polling machines carry separate computer chips. Mr. Himes has not charged Russians with manipulating voter data, to be sure, but the charge he does make is broad and amorphous enough to leave in the public mind the notion that foreign entities have tampered with our near sacred voting process.

 “The leaders in Beijing and Moscow and Tehran,” we know, are all expert in the fine art of hacking, as is the CIA -- one hopes. China in particular has masterfully exploiting data it illicitly gathered from American businesses, which permits it to produce products – cheap drone knockoffs, for instance – it then underprices and sells to countries such as North Korea, Iran and Syria, all announced enemies of the United States, a continuing practice that really should push American politicians over the tolerance edge.

Some Republicans and many Democrats have urged that a special prosecutor should be appointed to examine hacking by foreign entities and their bearing, if any, on elections. Mr. Himes is not new to investigatory work; he serves on The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which conducts oversight of the U.S. Intelligence Community. He must know that the proper venue for the investigation of possible voter interference by foreign entities lies within the political jurisdiction of appropriate Senate committees.

Timorously peeking out of Mr. Himes’s campaign hoopla is a serious point. Mr. Trump should be more concerned than he appears to be with Vladimir Putin’s ambitions affecting Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and his bosom buddies in the Middle East, which include Bashir Assad, Syria’s mass murderer, and the ayatollahs in Iran who, despite Mr. Obama’s velvet-glove treatment, continue to finance terrorist organizations with the planeloads of cash given to them by Mr. Obama as a side agreement to a deal struck between Mr. Obama and the Iranian regime; suspiciously, the dark deal arranged between Iran and the United States was never referred to the Congress for its advice and consent.

Neither Mr. Himes nor any of the six other members of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. congressional delegation were advised by Mr. Obama that planeloads of hard cash, easily transferable to Hamas, a militant organization that grew out of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement in the 1990s and the early 2000s, were in the dead of night delivered to terrorists that had conducted numerous suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel. U.S. Sen. Dick Blumenthal's silence on matters affecting Israel in particular is crushing. Mr. Blumenthal is Jewish.  Had Mr. Himes been advised that American taxpayers were clandestinely supporting a heavily armed anti-Israeli terrorist group, presumably he might rightly have been pushed over the edge.

Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net) is apolitical writer who lives in Vernon, Conn.

Senate CIA report cover for brutal dictators

Perhaps the worst thing about the Senate's report on CIA interrogation methods is that it will provide cover for the many regimes that have engaged in, and will continue to engage in, vastly worse practices  every day but do not have the open, democratic system we have to monitor and if need be punish bad behavior by government agents.