I’m handing over this
Chronicle to the veteran American dissident William Blum, who puts out what he
calls his Anti-Empire Report every two months or so at williamblum.org. This
one is his 156th, and it deals with the American obsession that Russians
interfered in the last American election. He comes to the conclusion that the
many contradictions in the official American version “lends
credence to the suggestion that what actually lay behind the events was a ‘click-bait’
scheme wherein certain individuals earned money based on the number of times a
particular website is accessed. The mastermind behind this scheme is reported
to be a Russian named Yevgeny Prigozhin of the above-named Internet Research
Agency, which is named in the indictment.”
Blum’s conclusion to the recent flurry of
accusations against Russia is summarized in his title,
SHAKESPEARE SAID IT
BEST: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Blum then goes on to give an astonishing list
of more than 40 elections in 27
different countries in which the United States has interfered in the 56 years
between 1948 and 2004, a list that I
think is worth reproducing below:
* * *
Here’s some Real
interference in election campaigns
[Slightly abridged version of chapter
18 in William Blum’s Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower;
see it for notes]
Philippines, 1950s:
Flagrant
manipulation by the CIA of the nation’s political life, featuring stage-managed
elections with extensive disinformation campaigns, heavy financing of
candidates, writing their speeches, drugging the drinks of one of the opponents
of the CIA-supported candidate so he would appear incoherent; plotting the
assassination of another candidate. The oblivious New York Times declared
that “It is not without reason that the Philippines has been called
“democracy’s showcase in Asia”.
Italy, 1948-1970s:
Multifarious
campaigns to repeatedly sabotage the electoral chances of the Communist Party
and ensure the election of the Christian Democrats, long-favored by Washington.
Lebanon, 1950s:
The CIA provided
funds to support the campaigns of President Camille Chamoun and selected
parliamentary candidates; other funds were targeted against candidates who had
shown less than total enchantment with US interference in Lebanese politics.
Indonesia, 1955:
A million dollars
were dispensed by the CIA to a centrist coalition’s electoral campaign in a bid
to cut into the support for President Sukarno’s party and the Indonesian
Communist Party.
Vietnam, 1955:
The US was
instrumental in South Vietnam canceling the elections scheduled to unify North
and South because of the certainty that the North Vietnamese communist leader,
Ho Chi Minh, would easily win.
British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64:
For 11 years, two
of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States,
went to great lengths to prevent Cheddi Jagan – three times the democratically
elected leader – from occupying his office. Using a wide variety of tactics –
from general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms –
the US and Britain forced Jagan out of office twice during this period.
Japan, 1958-1970s:
The CIA emptied the
US treasury of millions to finance the conservative Liberal Democratic Party in
parliamentary elections, “on a seat-by-seat basis”, while doing what it could
to weaken and undermine its opposition, the Japanese Socialist Party. The
1961-63 edition of the State Department’s annual Foreign Relations of
the United States, published in 1996, includes an unprecedented disclaimer
that, because of material left out, a committee of distinguished historians
thinks “this published compilation does not constitute a ‘thorough, accurate,
and reliable documentary record of major United States foreign policy
decisions’” as required by law. The deleted material involved US actions from
1958-1960 in Japan, according to the State Department’s historian.
Nepal, 1959:
By the CIA’s own
admission, it carried out an unspecified “covert action” on behalf of B.P.
Koirala to help his Nepali Congress Party win the national parliamentary
election. It was Nepal’s first national election ever, and the CIA was there to
initiate them into the wonderful workings of democracy.
Laos, 1960:
CIA agents stuffed
ballot boxes to help a hand-picked strongman, Phoumi Nosavan, set up a
pro-American government.
Brazil, 1962:
The CIA and the
Agency for International Development expended millions of dollars in federal
and state elections in support of candidates opposed to leftist President João
Goulart, who won anyway.
Dominican Republic, 1962:
In October 1962,
two months before election day, US Ambassador John Bartlow Martin got together
with the candidates of the two major parties and handed them a written notice,
in Spanish and English, which he had prepared. It read in part: “The loser in
the forthcoming election will, as soon as the election result is known,
publicly congratulate the winner, publicly recognize him as the President of
all the Dominican people, and publicly call upon his own supporters to so
recognize him. … Before taking office, the winner will offer Cabinet seats to
members of the loser’s party. (They may decline).”
As matters turned
out, the winner, Juan Bosch, was ousted in a military coup seven months later,
a slap in the face of democracy which neither Martin nor any other American
official did anything about.
Guatemala, 1963:
The US overthrew
the regime of General Miguel Ydigoras because he was planning to step down in
1964, leaving the door open to an election; an election that Washington feared
would be won by the former president, liberal reformer and critic of US foreign
policy, Juan José Arévalo. Ydigoras’s replacement made no mention of elections.
Bolivia, 1966:
The CIA bestowed
$600,000 upon President René Barrientos and lesser sums to several right-wing
parties in a successful effort to influence the outcome of national elections.
Gulf Oil contributed two hundred thousand more to Barrientos.
Chile, 1964-70:
Major US
interventions into national elections in 1964 and 1970, and congressional
elections in the intervening years. Socialist Salvador Allende fell victim in
1964, but won in 1970 despite a multimillion-dollar CIA operation against him.
The Agency then orchestrated his downfall in a 1973 military coup.
Portugal, 1974-5:
In the years
following the coup in 1974 by military officers who talked like socialists, the
CIA revved up its propaganda machine while funneling many millions of dollars
to support “moderate” candidates, in particular Mario Soares and his
(so-called) Socialist Party. At the same time, the Agency enlisted
social-democratic parties of Western Europe to provide further funds and
support to Soares. It worked. The Socialist Party became the dominant power.
Australia, 1974-75:
Despite providing
considerable support for the opposition, the United States failed to defeat the
Labor Party, which was strongly against the US war in Vietnam and CIA meddling
in Australia. The CIA then used “legal” methods to unseat the man who won the
election, Edward Gough Whitlam.
Jamaica, 1976:
A CIA campaign to
defeat social democrat Michael Manley’s bid for reelection, featuring
disinformation, arms shipments, labor unrest, economic destabilization,
financial support for the opposition, and attempts upon Manley’s life. Despite
it all, he was victorious.
Panama, 1984, 1989:
In 1984, the CIA
helped finance a highly questionable presidential electoral victory for one of
Manuel Noriega’s men. The opposition cried “fraud”, but the new president was
welcomed at the White House. By 1989, Noriega was no longer a Washington
favorite, so the CIA provided more than $10 million dollars to his electoral
opponents.
Nicaragua, 1984, 1990:
In 1984, the United
States, trying to discredit the legitimacy of the Sandinista government’s
scheduled election, covertly persuaded the leading opposition coalition to not
take part. A few days before election day, some other rightist parties on the
ballot revealed that US diplomats had been pressing them to drop out of the
race as well. The CIA also tried to split the Sandinista leadership by placing
phoney full-page ads in neighboring countries. But the Sandinistas won handily
in a very fair election monitored by hundreds of international observers.
Six years later,
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Washington’s specially created
stand-in for the CIA, poured in millions of dollars to defeat Daniel Ortega and
the Sandinistas in the February elections. NED helped organize the Nicaraguan
opposition, UNO, building up the parties and organizations that formed and
supported this coalition.
Perhaps most
telling of all, the Nicaraguan people were made painfully aware that a victory
by the Sandinistas would mean a continuation of the relentlessly devastating
war being waged against them by Washington through their proxy army, the
Contras.
Haiti, 1987-1988:
After the Duvalier
dictatorship came to an end in 1986, the country prepared for its first free
elections ever. However, Haiti’s main trade union leader declared that
Washington was working to undermine the left. US aid organizations, he said,
were encouraging people in the countryside to identify and reject the entire
left as “communist”. Meanwhile, the CIA was involved in a range of support for
selected candidates until the US Senate Intelligence Committee ordered the
Agency to cease its covert electoral action.
Bulgaria, 1990-1991 and Albania,
1991-1992:
With no regard for
the fragility of these nascent democracies, the US interfered broadly in their
elections and orchestrated the ousting of their elected socialist governments.
Russia, 1996:
For four months
(March-June), a group of veteran American political consultants worked secretly
in Moscow in support of Boris Yeltsin’s presidential campaign. Boris Yeltsin
was being counted on to run with the globalized-free market ball and it was
imperative that he cross the goal line. The Americans emphasized sophisticated
methods of message development, polling, focus groups, crowd staging,
direct-mailing, etc., and advised against public debates with the Communists.
Most of all they encouraged the Yeltsin campaign to “go negative” against the
Communists, painting frightening pictures of what the Communists would do if
they took power, including much civic upheaval and violence, and, of course, a
return to the worst of Stalinism. Before the Americans came on board, Yeltsin
was favored by only six percent of the electorate. In the first round of
voting, he edged the Communists 35 percent to 32, and was victorious in the
second round 54 to 40 percent.
Mongolia, 1996:
The National
Endowment for Democracy worked for several years with the opposition to the
governing Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRR, the former Communists)
who had won the 1992 election to achieve a very surprising electoral victory.
In the six-year period leading up to the 1996 elections, NED spent close to a
million dollars in a country with a population of some 2.5 million, the most
significant result of which was to unite the opposition into a new coalition,
the National Democratic Union. Borrowing from Newt Gingrich’s Contract With
America, the NED drafted a “Contract With the Mongolian Voter”, which called
for private property rights, a free press and the encouragement of foreign
investment. The MPRR had already instituted Western-style economic reforms,
which had led to widespread poverty and wiped out much of the communist social
safety net. But the new government promised to accelerate the reforms,
including the privatization of housing. By 1998 it was reported that the US
National Security Agency had set up electronic listening posts in Outer
Mongolia to intercept Chinese army communications, and the Mongolian
intelligence service was using nomads to gather intelligence in China itself.
Bosnia, 1998:
Effectively an
American protectorate, with Carlos Westendorp – the Spanish diplomat appointed
to enforce Washington’s offspring: the 1995 Dayton peace accords – as the
colonial Governor-General. Before the September elections for a host of
offices, Westendorp removed 14 Croatian candidates from the ballot because of
alleged biased coverage aired in Bosnia by neighboring Croatia’s state
television and politicking by ethnic Croat army soldiers. After the election,
Westendorp fired the elected president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, accusing
him of creating instability. In this scenario those who appeared to support
what the US and other Western powers wished were called “moderates”, and
allowed to run for and remain in office. Those who had other thoughts were
labeled “hard-liners”, and ran the risk of a different fate. When Westendorp
was chosen to assume this position of “high representative” in Bosnia in May
1997, The Guardianof London wrote that “The US secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright, praised the choice. But some critics already fear that Mr.
Westendorp will prove too lightweight and end up as a cipher in American
hands.”
Nicaragua, 2001
Sandinista leader
Daniel Ortega was once again a marked man. US State Department officials tried
their best to publicly associate him with terrorism, including just after
September 11 had taken place, and to shamelessly accuse Sandinista leaders of
all manner of violations of human rights, civil rights, and democracy. The US
ambassador literally campaigned for Ortega’s opponent, Enrique Bolaños. A
senior analyst in Nicaragua for Gallup, the international pollsters, was moved
to declare: “Never in my whole life have I seen a sitting ambassador get
publicly involved in a sovereign country’s electoral process, nor have I ever
heard of it.”
At the close of the
campaign, Bolaños announced: “If Ortega comes to power, that would provoke a
closing of aid and investment, difficulties with exports, visas and family
remittances. I’m not just saying this. The United States says this, too. We
cannot close our eyes and risk our well-being and work. Say yes to Nicaragua, say
no to terrorism.”
In the end, the
Sandinistas lost the election by about ten percentage points after steadily
leading in the polls during much of the campaign.
Bolivia, 2002
The American bête
noire here was Evo Morales, Amerindian, former member of Congress,
socialist, running on an anti-neoliberal, anti-big business, and anti-coca
eradication campaign. The US Ambassador declared: “The Bolivian electorate must
consider the consequences of choosing leaders somehow connected with drug
trafficking and terrorism.” Following September 11, painting Officially
Designated Enemies with the terrorist brush was de rigueur US
foreign policy rhetoric.
The US Assistant
Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs warned that American aid to
the country would be in danger if Mr. Morales was chosen. Then the ambassador
and other US officials met with key figures from Bolivia’s main political
parties in an effort to shore up support for Morales’s opponent, Sanchez de
Lozada. Morales lost the vote.
Slovakia, 2002
To defeat Vladimir
Meciar, former prime minister, a man who did not share Washington’s weltanschauung about
globalization, the US ambassador explicitly warned the Slovakian people that
electing him would hurt their chances of entry into the European Union and
NATO. The US ambassador to NATO then arrived and issued his own warning. The
National Endowment for Democracy was also on hand to influence the election.
Meciar lost.
El Salvador, 2004
Washington’s target
in this election was Schafik Handal, candidate of the FMLN, the leftist former
guerrilla group. He said he would withdraw El Salvador’s 380 troops from Iraq
as well as reviewing other pro-US policies; he would also take another look at
the privatizations of Salvadoran industries, and would reinstate diplomatic
relations with Cuba. His opponent was Tony Saca of the incumbent Arena Party, a
pro-US, pro-free market organization of the extreme right, which in the bloody
civil war days had featured death squads and the infamous assassination of
Archbishop Oscar Romero.
During a February
visit to the country, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Western
Hemisphere Affairs, met with all the presidential candidates except Handal. He
warned of possible repercussions in US-Salvadoran relations if Handal were elected.
Three Republican congressmen threatened to block the renewal of annual work
visas for some 300,000 Salvadorans in the United States if El Salvador opted
for the FMLN. And Congressman Thomas Tancredo of Colorado stated that if the
FMLN won, “it could mean a radical change” in US policy on remittances to El
Salvador.
Washington’s
attitude was exploited by Arena and the generally conservative Salvadoran
press, who mounted a scare campaign, and it became widely believed that a
Handal victory could result in mass deportations of Salvadorans from the United
States and a drop in remittances. Arena won the election with about 57 percent
of the vote to some 36 percent for the FMLN.
After the election,
the US ambassador declared that Washington’s policies concerning immigration
and remittances had nothing to do with any election in El Salvador. There
appears to be no record of such a statement being made in public before the
election when it might have had a profound positive effect for the FMLN.
Afghanistan, 2004
The US ambassador
to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, went around putting great pressure on one
candidate after another to withdraw from the presidential race so as to insure
the victory for Washington’s man, the incumbent, Hamid Karzai in the October
election. There was nothing particularly subtle about it. Khalilzad told each
one what he wanted and then asked them what they needed. Karzai, a long-time
resident in the United States, was described by the Washington Post as
“a known and respected figure at the State Department and National Security
Council and on Capitol Hill.”
“Our hearts have
been broken because we thought we could have beaten Mr. Karzai if this had been
a true election,” said Sayed Mustafa Sadat Ophyani, campaign manager for Younis
Qanooni, Karzai’s leading rival. “But it is not. Mr. Khalilzad is putting a lot
of pressure on us and does not allow us to fight a good election campaign.”.
None of the major
candidates actually withdrew from the election, which Karzai won with about 56
percent of the votes.
* * *
And he didn’t even mention Iraq! It seems like a case of “don’t do as I do, do
as I say!”
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