The CIA Has Been Undermining Governments For Years

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Chilean President Salvador Allende, right, and Commander of the Army General Augusto Pinochet, who toppled Allende in a coup d'etat on September 11, 1973. Pinochet ruled the country in a dictatorship until 1990. Darius Shahtahmasebi... Reuters

This article first appeared on Antimedia.org.

According to a "secret CIA assessment," Russia intervened in the U.S. election to undermine confidence in the electoral system and boost support for Donald Trump.

The president-elect has already rejected this notion, though the implications of claims regarding Russian involvement are still unclear.

Once again, this kind of pro-Clinton/anti-Russian-based narrative has already been completely debunked. For example, in his recent article, "Anonymous Leaks to The Washington Post. About the CIA's Russia Beliefs Are No Substitute for Evidence," Glenn Greenwald brilliantly explains why this story does not merit our attention. He astutely notes:

There is still no such evidence for any of these claims. What we have instead are assertions, disseminated by anonymous people, completely unaccompanied by any evidence, let alone proof.

As a result, none of the purported evidence — still — can be publicly seen, reviewed, or discussed. Anonymous claims leaked to newspapers about what the CIA believes do not constitute proof, and certainly do not constitute reliable evidence that substitutes for actual evidence that can be reviewed.

Until such evidence is produced, rather than wasting time speculating on the extent of Russia's involvement in the U.S. elections, we could instead turn to the real issue at play here.

The CIA, an entity that has interfered in sovereign governments across the geopolitical chessboard for decades, has accused another country of doing exactly what the agency does best without offering any physical evidence for their claims.

Let's say Russia did intervene in the U.S. elections; it would be the most fitting example of "chickens coming home to roost."

Related: Did Russian hackers help Donald Trump win?

No entity should ever interfere in any sovereign elections, but clearly, if one is going to accuse others of doing so and cry wolf when they feel aggrieved, perhaps they should take a step back to reconsider what they have done to the rest of the world countless times. As even The Washington Post—an establishment mouthpiecepoints out, the United States has a long history of interfering in other countries' elections.

According to Foreign Policy, the U.S. has gone beyond interfering with elections — it has overthrown seven governments since World War II.

The most strikingly obvious example, which the CIA has admitted to, was when the U.S. and U.K. instigated a coup to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, over oil.

As the Guardian has explained:

Britain, and in particular Sir Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, regarded Mosaddeq as a serious threat to its strategic and economic interests after the Iranian leader nationalised the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, latterly known as BP. But the UK needed US support. The Eisenhower administration in Washington was easily persuaded.

The American puppet the CIA installed, Shah Reza Pahlavi, was an appalling dictator with a poor human rights record whose reign incited the country's 1979 revolution.

The other countries on Foreign Policy's list include Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Dominican Republic (1961), South Vietnam (1963), Brazil (1964) and Chile (1973).

However, as Anti-War has noted, Foreign Policy's list of countries constitutes a "significant undercount":

J. Dana Stuster, who posted this map, does specify that these are covert CIA-supported coups only and mentions it doesn't include 'a number of U.S. military interventions against hostile regimes and U.S.-supported insurgencies and failed assassination attempts, including a plan to kill Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar…'

But if you go by Stephen Kinzer's book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, this map leaves out quite a bit of history. In addition to Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, Brazil, and Chile, the U.S. also had a hand overthrowing the governments of Hawaii in 1893, Cuba in 1898, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan, and of course Iraq.

According to The New York Times, the CIA also supported Saddam Hussein's rise to power in Iraq because they viewed his competitor, Abdel Karim Kassem, to be a "grave threat." We all know how this story ended.

Recent events across the Middle East and Europe have been no different. The U.S. State Department was caught red-handed helping neo-Nazis in Ukraine topple the democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, to install an American puppet. The president who took office following Yanukovych's abdication was Petro Poroshenko, a former mole for the U.S. State Department. The U.S. referred to him previously as "our Ukrainian insider."

And then there's Syria.

In an article originally written for Alternet, Salon published a list of 35 countries where the U.S. has supported "fascists, drug lords and terrorists." American allies France, Greece, Israel and Turkey, to name a few, all make the list.

An often overlooked part of history is that the terror network al Qaeda is a CIA construct. As Anti-Media previously reported:

As such, through a CIA program called Operation Cyclone, United States taxpayers sent about $20 to $30 million per year to the mujahideen in 1980, a figure that had risen to $630 million per year by 1987 under President Reagan.

Due to his key role as the main pro-mujahideen force in Congress, Wilson worked closely with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a leader of the rebel group who later worked closely with Osama bin Laden through the Hezb-e Islami militant group, which was formed at the time to fight Soviet forces with the help of the U.S. government's aid.

Osama bin Laden, the son of a billionaire construction magnate connected to the Saudi royal family, also funneled money from his own family's business to support the anti-Soviet cause in Afghanistan.

As bin Laden went on to create al Qaeda in 1988 after receiving training from the U.S.-backed Pakistani Armed Forces and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the United States provided the group with money and weapons . As Osama bin Laden went on to plan and carry out the 9/11 attacks, becoming one of the biggest targets of the Barack Obama administration, the 'Butcher of Kabul' as Hekmatyar is known, was officially pardoned by the Afghan government — an entity currently supported by the U.S. government.

Apparently, America reserves the right to topple governments and help establish regimes they support all across the globe. If Russia really is able to interfere with America's so-called democracy, then perhaps the CIA is experiencing firsthand what they have been doing to countless governments for decades — and perhaps America's seemingly omnipotent power is waning if it can be undermined by a foreign power.

As it stands, however, the only evidence we have of anyone interfering with any election or government implicates the U.S. — not Russia.

But don't let facts get in the way of a good story.

Read more from Newsweek.com:

- The Russian Hacking Whodunnit
- Republicans in Congress Break With Trump on Russia
- Can Trump be stopped by the Electoral College?

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

About the writer

Darius Shahtahmasebi

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