Tag: regime change

Time to Revive the 1995 Act that Called for Abolishing the CIA

In a recent feature article in The New Yorker magazine, writer Amy Davidson Sorkin recalls the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1995 bill, the Abolition of the Central Intelligence Agency Act.

One of the original neoconservatives, Moynihan had served on the 1975/76 Church Committee, which exposed CIA crimes around the world. Thereafter, he emerged as a staunch supporter of the CIA from his perch on the Senate Foreign Intelligence Committeee—which was set up to provide oversight of the CIA but in practice rubber-stamped most of its activities.

Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff called Moynihan, “the biggest friend of the CIA the Agency ever had.”

However, with the end of the Cold War, Moynihan started arguing that the country did not need a CIA—which accords with my own view.

The CIA had not redeemed itself after the Church Committee exposed the fact that the CIA had been working around the world to overthrow governments, influence election, assassinate world leaders, and spy on Americans involved in civil rights or anti-war organizations.

Moynihan’s bill was referred to the Senate Intelligence Committee, where it garnered not a single cosponsor and died a quiet death. Worse than that, the debate over the appropriateness of even having a CIA has ended.

Sorkin focuses on the many travails that the Agency has had over the years. She’s not the first person to write about the crimes that the CIA has committed, beginning with stealing the Italian election of 1948, the CIA’s first covert action operation and continuing through the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran, the attempted (and in some cases successful) assassinations of Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba, Rafael Trujillo, Sukarno, Ngo Dinh Diem, Salvador Allende, Muammar Qaddhafi, and others.

Sorkin’s analysis is both deft and important. But it’s incomplete.

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John Bolton Calls For Putin Assassination, Regime Change

Former White House national security adviser John Bolton is now taking to the networks to call for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assassination. “I think we should make it clear publicly so that not just Putin but that all the top Russian leadership… that if Putin authorizes the use of a nuclear weapon he’s signing his own suicide note,” the well-known neocon hawk said to CBS in a Friday appearance.

Describing that Putin is head of command and control for all Russian – including nuclear – forces, Bolton continued by stating what he says should be official US policy: “He’s a legitimate military target… he needs to know that he’s on our target list at this point.” Bolton essentially called for the US to assassinate the Russian leader if the opportunity ever arises.

Bolton went on the discuss an op-ed he penned days prior in the online military journal 1945 wherein effecting regime change in Russia was the focus.

“There is no long-term prospect for peace and security in Europe without regime change in Russia. Russians are already discussing it, quietly, for obvious reasons. For the United States and others pretending that the issue is not before will do far more harm than good,” Bolton spelled out in that op-ed. 

“To avoid the war simply grinding along indefinitely, we must alter today’s calculus. Carefully assisting Russian dissidents to pursue regime change might just be the answer, he continued. “Russia is, obviously, a nuclear power, but that is no more an argument against seeking regime change than against assisting Ukrainian self-defense.”

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The CIA in Ukraine—Philip Agee Would Have Been Outraged

The U.S. establishment called the 2014 overthrow of President Victor Yanukovych in Ukraine a “revolution.” But given his commitment to social justice and equality, former CIA agent-turned-CIA-whistleblower Philip Agee would have known better. He would call it more accurately a violent, CIA-backed coup. 

Agee would have recognized the usual pattern within the United States’s imperialist, foreign policy: to protect U.S. interests in its attempt to make Ukraine a market satellite, even though the latter is on the other side of the world. Agee would have been aware of the imposition of private monopolies characteristic of capitalism, or what is called neoliberalism. The idea of taking advantage of the wealth, resources and labor in the former Soviet republic as it has done in other nations.  

Another familiar element in the imperial pattern would be the supporting of rights abusers in and out of government. The CIA is particularly known to support right-wing tyrants and death squads in the nations of Latin America, e.g., during the 1980s. It imposed what was called “enhanced interrogation techniques” when the U.S. Empire illegally invaded Iraq in 2003.

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69 Years Ago Today, the CIA Conspired with the UK to Overthrow Iran on Behalf of Big Oil

Today marks the 69th anniversary that the west carried out a coup in Iran that destabilized the county by overthrowing the country’s democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed a CIA groomed dictator.

What was once considered a conspiracy theory is now a fact as the government has since admitted to carrying out Operation Ajax that was planned by the CIA in conjunction with MI6 in the UK to exploit the Iranian people and steal their oil on behalf of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) – the British state-owned oil company established in 1908 with this objective in mind and the forerunner of today’s global oil conglomerate BP.

As TFTP reported, the State Department released a trove of documents that give insight into the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup d’état that led to the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq.

Those declassified documents, titled “Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Iran, 1951–1954,” provide a notable difference from the State Department’s 1989 version of the coup, which left out any involvement from American and British intelligence.

A memorandum from Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles to President Eisenhower, dated March 1, 1953, serves as a reminder that internally, “the elimination of Mossadeq by assassination or otherwise,” was used as a method in repairing ties with Iran, restoring oil negotiations, and stopping a “Communist takeover.”

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John Bolton Admits He Helped Plan Foreign Coup Attempts

John Bolton, the former White House national security adviser for the Trump administration, has claimed that he previously helped plan attempted coups of foreign leaders.

Bolton made the comment in an interview with CNN’s “The Lead” on Tuesday, shortly after the Jan. 6 House Select Committee had wrapped up its seventh congressional hearing, regarding the breach of the U.S. Capitol.

Panel lawmakers focused much of Tuesday’s hearing on evidence around testimony provided by former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and alleged ties between former President Trump and “extremist” right-wing groups.

The committee claims that Trump intentionally tried to mount an insurrection against the United States government in a last-ditch effort to remain in power after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

Speaking to CNN, Bolton insisted that Trump could not have pulled off a “carefully planned coup d’etat aimed at the Constitution” because “that’s not the way Donald Trump does things.”

“It’s not an attack on our democracy,” Bolton said. “It’s Donald Trump looking out for Donald Trump. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.”

CNN host Jake Tapper responded, “I don’t know that I agree with you, to be fair, with all due respect” adding that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”

However, Bolton said he disagreed with this statement before referencing his own alleged experience helping to plan a coup.

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Nuland-Pyatt Tape Removed From YouTube After 8 Years

The smoking gun proving U.S. involvement in the 2014 coup in Kiev has been removed from YouTube after eight years. 

It was one of the most watched versions of the intercepted and leaked conversation between then Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, in which the two discuss who will make up the new government weeks before democratically-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a violent coup on Feb. 21, 2014.

The two talk about “midwifing” the unconstitutional change of government and “gluing it together” and of the role then Vice President Joe Biden should play and what meetings to set up with Ukrainian politicians.

The U.S. State Department never denied the authenticity of the video, and even issued an apology to the European Union after Nuland is heard on the tape saying, “Fuck the E.U.” Mainstream media at the time focused almost exclusively on that off-color remark, ignoring the greater significance of U.S. interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs. 

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They’re Just Outright Telling Us That Peace In Ukraine Is Not An Option

US Senator Joe Manchin said at the World Economic Forum on Monday that he opposes any kind of peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia.

Manchin, who at the moment is one of the most powerful elected officials in Washington, added that only the complete forcible ejection of Russia from all of Ukraine is acceptable, that the war should ideally be used to remove Putin from power, and that he and the strategists he talks to see this war as an “opportunity”.

“I am totally committed, as one person, to seeing Ukraine to the end with a win, not basically with some kind of a treaty; I don’t think that is where we are and where we should be,” Manchin said.

“I mean basically moving Putin back to Russia and hopefully getting rid of Putin,” Manchin added when asked what he meant by a win for Ukraine.

Manchin clarified that he did not mean pushing Putin back to “pre-February”, ostensibly meaning with Russia still controlling the largely Moscow–loyal Crimea and supporting separatist territories in the Donbass, but with Kyiv fully reclaiming all parts of the nation.

“Oh no, I think Ukraine is determined to take their country back,” Manchin said when asked to clarify, further clarifying that he wants his call for regime change in Russia to be carried out by “the Russian people.”

“I believe strongly that I have never seen, and the people I talk strategically have never seen, an opportunity more than this, to do what needs to be done,” Manchin later added. “And Ukraine has the determination to do it. We should have the commitment to support it.”

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The return of Vindman, clamoring to start World War III

Among the most fervent war hawks in America today is Alexander Vindman, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and a former member of the NSC, who now works at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Foreign Policy Institute.  His previous claim to fame was as a witness who testified about former president Donald Trump’s call to Ukrainian officials in the second impeachment trial of Trump.  He became an instant hero to the crowd at MSNBC and other anti-Trump major media (is there any other kind?).  Vindman also reportedly claimed that Trump “bears an enormous burden of responsibility” for the Russia-Ukraine war, even though Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has occurred during the Obama and Biden administrations.  There was no Russian aggression against Ukraine on Trump’s watch.

 Vindman has now taken to the pages of Foreign Affairs to urge U.S. policymakers to “embrace the goal of Ukrainian victory” against Russia by throwing caution to the wind.  The United States, he writes, is not doing enough to help Ukraine win this war.  We should forget about building a stable relationship with Russia and instead provide Ukrainian forces with sufficient military weaponry to take the war to Russia’s territory, Vindman counsels.  We need to “discard the desire” to seek a compromise with Russia for a negotiated peace.

Vindman writes that our aid thus far has been too “incremental.”  Too many of our policymakers, he says, are acting based on a “flawed assessment of the risk of escalation and the potential consequences of a Russian defeat.”  The United States should provide Ukraine with weapons that can reach far inside Russia to destroy “militarily relevant targets” there.  “There can be no return to business as usual with Russia,” according to Vindman, “as long as Putin rules from the Kremlin.”  In other words, our policy toward Russia should be regime change.

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