Never has the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency so blatantly involved itself in an American election. However, the agency has a rich history of interfering in the elections of other nations, including Russia. The conclusions of an undisclosed CIA secret report on alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election has been summarily dismissed by the director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and several retired U.S. intelligence officers as deeply flawed and a propaganda tool concocted by the highly-politicized CIA director John Brennan and his cronies.
Brennan and his clique have upped the ante by claiming, without a shred of evidence, that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed the hacking of computer systems linked to the U.S. election. NBC News, which has a long history of cooperation with the CIA going back to the days of RCA/NBC chairman David Sarnoff and his close friend CIA director Allen Dulles, dutifully reported Brennan’s outrageous claims as “news.”
It is clear those former CIA officials who have lent credence to Brennan’s report would not have done so unless they received clearance from Brennan and his CIA to go public with their unfounded charges against Russia. Those who have echoed Brennan’s unfounded findings of election interference by Russia include former acting CIA director Michael Morell; former CIA and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden; former CIA Director Leon Panetta; former CIA clandestine service agents Robert Baer; Evan McMullin—a failed 2016 independent presidential candidate—and Glenn Carle. However, for every ex-spook Brennan pulls out of his hat to accuse President-elect Donald Trump of being a “Russian agent,” there are many more who have claimed that the CIA’s “proof” of Russian interference in the 2016 election is pure malarkey.
Brennan and his cabal of dark players know full well that it is the CIA that has pioneered in the art and science of election manipulation. In 1996, it was Russia that bore the brunt of CIA election manipulation with its agents-of-influence in Moscow and other large cities, namely the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and George Soros’s Open Society Institute and Foundation, engaged in political dirty tricks aimed at undermining the electoral chances of the Russian Communist Party presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov.
The CIA, Soros’s operatives, and the NED printed and distributed fake campaign flyers claiming to have originated with the Zyuganov’s campaign. The flyers advocated returning Russia to Stalinism and re-launching the Cold War against the West. The CIA and Soros dirty tricks operatives also announced to the press phony Zyuganov news conferences where no one showed up. The dirty tricks team also canceled reservations made by the Zyuganov campaign at hotels and public meeting halls. The CIA and their allies also helped to manipulate election returns and shaved votes from Zyuganov’s total, particularly in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. This helped the favored U.S. candidate, Boris Yeltsin, achieve a second-round victory of 54-to-40 percent over Zyuganov. In 2012, then-President Dmitry Medvedev said, “There is hardly any doubt who won [the '96 election]. It was not Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin.”
The CIA has been at the election manipulation game since its inception in 1947. In February 1948, a formerly Top Secret CIA document spelled out the efforts to be taken by the United States and its ambassador in Rome, James Dunn, in preparation for the April 1948 Italian election. Wheat shipments were to be increased from the United States to Italy to prevent a reduction in bread rations just prior to the election. U.S. military equipment was to be sent to Italy in the event martial law had to be declared if the Italian Communist Party, which had been in a coalition government with the Christian Democrats since 1944, was successful at the polls. Assisting this military effort was the political indoctrination of many Italian military officers and non-commissioned officers at military schools in the United States.
The CIA also directed a sharp stick at the Italian electorate, warning that Italians could not “combine the advantages of aid from the West with that of political safety and benefits from the Soviet Union.” The CIA was worried that if the Soviet Union returned control of the city of Trieste to Italy and renounced Italy’s war reparations to the Soviet Union prior to the April election, the Italian Communist Party would reap the electoral benefits and be victorious.
The CIA’s political dirty tricks in Italy began in earnest when it covertly directed $1 million, contained mostly in “bags of money,” to Christian Democratic politicians led by Prime Minister Alcide de Gaspari. The CIA used its front newspapers in Italy to publish forged letters, allegedly written by Italian Communist Party leaders, in an attempt to embarrass them publicly. Similarly, the CIA attempted to blackmail Italian Socialist Party leaders who were part of a Popular Front coalition with the Communists. The blackmail eventually led to a split within the Socialist Party ranks between party leader Pietro Nenni and anti-Communist leader Giuseppe Saragat. The CIA’s manipulation paid off when the Christian Democrats won 48.5 percent of the vote and formed a new government without Communist participation.
When, in 1978, it appeared that the Christian Democrats, led by former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, were prepared to enact a “historic compromise” to share political power with the Italian Communist Party, the CIA instructed its agents-of-influence within Italy and the Vatican, the so-called “Gladio” network, to arrange for Moro’s kidnapping and assassination and blame it on the leftist Italian Red Brigades. The CIA’s psychological operation designed to blame radical Communists for Moro’s death was successful when the Italian electorate voted overwhelmingly for a CIA-linked Christian Democratic faction opposed to any accommodation with the Communists. The CIA showed that it was not averse to political assassinations to achieve its electoral aims in other countries.
The CIA’s involvement by hook and by crook in the 1948 Italian election was repeated in numerous nations around the world. In 1964, the CIA ensured that the Chilean Popular Action Front (FRAP) Socialist presidential candidate Salvador Allende was defeated by the Christian Democratic leader Eduardo Frei. The CIA pumped $3 million into Frei’s campaign, mainly to generate anti-Allende propaganda. Allende lost the race with 38.6 percent of the vote to Frei’s 55.6 percent. In 1970, Allende won the presidential election with a slim 36.4 percent of the vote against the CIA-backed former President Jorge Alessandri. The CIA set about immediately to undermine Allende and on September 11, 1973, a CIA-backed military coup resulted in Allende’s assassination. The one thing that separates the CIA from other intelligence agencies that seek to influence elections, is that the CIA’s hands are always dripping with blood.
The 1956 election in Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) saw an unpopular United National Party led by pro-Western Prime Minister John Kotelawala lose to the leftist Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by Solomon Bandaranaike. Although the Kotelawala government had received the largesse of CIA aid funneled through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, it was not enough to save it from defeat by Bandaranaike’s socialists. The CIA merely set about undermining Bandaranaike’s government with the icing on the cake being the prime minister’s assassination in 1959, allegedly by a Buddhist monk who hid a revolver underneath his robes prior to a meeting with the prime minister at his private residence. The assassin’s two conspirators received life sentences, while the trigger puller, Somarama Thero, was baptized as a Christian two days before his hanging. The CIA’s MK-Ultra psychological operations program had already mastered in the science of creating programmed assassins.
Time and time again, the CIA has successfully engaged in election manipulation in parliamentary elections, presidential elections, popular referenda, and local and regional elections. The CIA is now directing its wealth of election chicanery toward the American electorate to discredit and undermine the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. For the sake of democracy everywhere, the CIA must be abolished.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
RSS
CIA meddles in US election as it has in countless foreign polls
Posted on December 21, 2016 by Wayne Madsen
Never has the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency so blatantly involved itself in an American election. However, the agency has a rich history of interfering in the elections of other nations, including Russia. The conclusions of an undisclosed CIA secret report on alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election has been summarily dismissed by the director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and several retired U.S. intelligence officers as deeply flawed and a propaganda tool concocted by the highly-politicized CIA director John Brennan and his cronies.
Brennan and his clique have upped the ante by claiming, without a shred of evidence, that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed the hacking of computer systems linked to the U.S. election. NBC News, which has a long history of cooperation with the CIA going back to the days of RCA/NBC chairman David Sarnoff and his close friend CIA director Allen Dulles, dutifully reported Brennan’s outrageous claims as “news.”
It is clear those former CIA officials who have lent credence to Brennan’s report would not have done so unless they received clearance from Brennan and his CIA to go public with their unfounded charges against Russia. Those who have echoed Brennan’s unfounded findings of election interference by Russia include former acting CIA director Michael Morell; former CIA and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden; former CIA Director Leon Panetta; former CIA clandestine service agents Robert Baer; Evan McMullin—a failed 2016 independent presidential candidate—and Glenn Carle. However, for every ex-spook Brennan pulls out of his hat to accuse President-elect Donald Trump of being a “Russian agent,” there are many more who have claimed that the CIA’s “proof” of Russian interference in the 2016 election is pure malarkey.
Brennan and his cabal of dark players know full well that it is the CIA that has pioneered in the art and science of election manipulation. In 1996, it was Russia that bore the brunt of CIA election manipulation with its agents-of-influence in Moscow and other large cities, namely the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and George Soros’s Open Society Institute and Foundation, engaged in political dirty tricks aimed at undermining the electoral chances of the Russian Communist Party presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov.
The CIA, Soros’s operatives, and the NED printed and distributed fake campaign flyers claiming to have originated with the Zyuganov’s campaign. The flyers advocated returning Russia to Stalinism and re-launching the Cold War against the West. The CIA and Soros dirty tricks operatives also announced to the press phony Zyuganov news conferences where no one showed up. The dirty tricks team also canceled reservations made by the Zyuganov campaign at hotels and public meeting halls. The CIA and their allies also helped to manipulate election returns and shaved votes from Zyuganov’s total, particularly in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. This helped the favored U.S. candidate, Boris Yeltsin, achieve a second-round victory of 54-to-40 percent over Zyuganov. In 2012, then-President Dmitry Medvedev said, “There is hardly any doubt who won [the '96 election]. It was not Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin.”
The CIA has been at the election manipulation game since its inception in 1947. In February 1948, a formerly Top Secret CIA document spelled out the efforts to be taken by the United States and its ambassador in Rome, James Dunn, in preparation for the April 1948 Italian election. Wheat shipments were to be increased from the United States to Italy to prevent a reduction in bread rations just prior to the election. U.S. military equipment was to be sent to Italy in the event martial law had to be declared if the Italian Communist Party, which had been in a coalition government with the Christian Democrats since 1944, was successful at the polls. Assisting this military effort was the political indoctrination of many Italian military officers and non-commissioned officers at military schools in the United States.
The CIA also directed a sharp stick at the Italian electorate, warning that Italians could not “combine the advantages of aid from the West with that of political safety and benefits from the Soviet Union.” The CIA was worried that if the Soviet Union returned control of the city of Trieste to Italy and renounced Italy’s war reparations to the Soviet Union prior to the April election, the Italian Communist Party would reap the electoral benefits and be victorious.
The CIA’s political dirty tricks in Italy began in earnest when it covertly directed $1 million, contained mostly in “bags of money,” to Christian Democratic politicians led by Prime Minister Alcide de Gaspari. The CIA used its front newspapers in Italy to publish forged letters, allegedly written by Italian Communist Party leaders, in an attempt to embarrass them publicly. Similarly, the CIA attempted to blackmail Italian Socialist Party leaders who were part of a Popular Front coalition with the Communists. The blackmail eventually led to a split within the Socialist Party ranks between party leader Pietro Nenni and anti-Communist leader Giuseppe Saragat. The CIA’s manipulation paid off when the Christian Democrats won 48.5 percent of the vote and formed a new government without Communist participation.
When, in 1978, it appeared that the Christian Democrats, led by former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, were prepared to enact a “historic compromise” to share political power with the Italian Communist Party, the CIA instructed its agents-of-influence within Italy and the Vatican, the so-called “Gladio” network, to arrange for Moro’s kidnapping and assassination and blame it on the leftist Italian Red Brigades. The CIA’s psychological operation designed to blame radical Communists for Moro’s death was successful when the Italian electorate voted overwhelmingly for a CIA-linked Christian Democratic faction opposed to any accommodation with the Communists. The CIA showed that it was not averse to political assassinations to achieve its electoral aims in other countries.
The CIA’s involvement by hook and by crook in the 1948 Italian election was repeated in numerous nations around the world. In 1964, the CIA ensured that the Chilean Popular Action Front (FRAP) Socialist presidential candidate Salvador Allende was defeated by the Christian Democratic leader Eduardo Frei. The CIA pumped $3 million into Frei’s campaign, mainly to generate anti-Allende propaganda. Allende lost the race with 38.6 percent of the vote to Frei’s 55.6 percent. In 1970, Allende won the presidential election with a slim 36.4 percent of the vote against the CIA-backed former President Jorge Alessandri. The CIA set about immediately to undermine Allende and on September 11, 1973, a CIA-backed military coup resulted in Allende’s assassination. The one thing that separates the CIA from other intelligence agencies that seek to influence elections, is that the CIA’s hands are always dripping with blood.
The 1956 election in Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) saw an unpopular United National Party led by pro-Western Prime Minister John Kotelawala lose to the leftist Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by Solomon Bandaranaike. Although the Kotelawala government had received the largesse of CIA aid funneled through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, it was not enough to save it from defeat by Bandaranaike’s socialists. The CIA merely set about undermining Bandaranaike’s government with the icing on the cake being the prime minister’s assassination in 1959, allegedly by a Buddhist monk who hid a revolver underneath his robes prior to a meeting with the prime minister at his private residence. The assassin’s two conspirators received life sentences, while the trigger puller, Somarama Thero, was baptized as a Christian two days before his hanging. The CIA’s MK-Ultra psychological operations program had already mastered in the science of creating programmed assassins.
Time and time again, the CIA has successfully engaged in election manipulation in parliamentary elections, presidential elections, popular referenda, and local and regional elections. The CIA is now directing its wealth of election chicanery toward the American electorate to discredit and undermine the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. For the sake of democracy everywhere, the CIA must be abolished.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).