{"id":179408,"date":"2018-02-18T21:36:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T02:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/02\/18\/ex-cia-director-tells-the-truth\/"},"modified":"2018-02-18T21:36:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T02:36:00","slug":"ex-cia-director-tells-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/02\/18\/ex-cia-director-tells-the-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-CIA Director Tells the Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>On Fox News, (where else) Former CIA director James Woolsey admitted that the US routinely meddles in foreign elections, but &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/blog-briefing-room\/news\/374372-ex-cia-director-us-meddles-in-foreign-elections-for-a-good\">Only for very good cause<\/a>,&#8221; because, I guess it&#8217;s OK when we do it.<\/div>\n<p>You see laundering money to politicians in foreign countries is <b>MUCH<\/b> better than trolling on Facebook and Twitter:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Following a federal indictment of Russians accused of meddling in the U.S election, a former CIA director on Friday said the U.S. \u201cprobably\u201d meddles in other countries\u2019 elections, as well.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The Russian embassy flagged his comments.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">When asked whether the U.S. interferes in other countries\u2019 elections, James Woolsey said, \u201cWell, only for a very good cause in the interests of democracy.&#8221;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cOh, probably, but it was for the good of the system in order to avoid communists taking over,\u201d he told Laura Ingraham on her Fox News show on Friday night.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Woolsey served as CIA director under former President Clinton.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The <i>New York Times<\/i> has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/02\/17\/sunday-review\/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html\">suddenly discovered this historical fact as well<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Bags of cash delivered to a Rome hotel for favored Italian candidates. Scandalous stories leaked to foreign newspapers to swing an election in Nicaragua. Millions of pamphlets, posters and stickers printed to defeat an incumbent in Serbia.<\/p>\n<p>The long arm of Vladimir Putin? No, just a small sample of the United States\u2019 history of intervention in foreign elections.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/02\/13\/us\/politics\/russia-sees-midterm-elections-as-chance-to-sow-fresh-discord-intelligence-chiefs-warn.html\">American intelligence chiefs warned<\/a> the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia appears to be preparing to repeat in the 2018 midterm elections the same full-on chicanery it unleashed in 2016: hacking, leaking, social media manipulation and possibly more. Then on Friday, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, announced the indictments of 13 Russians and three companies, run by a businessman with close Kremlin ties, laying out in astonishing detail a three-year scheme to use social media to attack Hillary Clinton, boost Donald Trump and sow discord.<\/p>\n<p>Most Americans are understandably shocked by what they view as an unprecedented attack on our political system. But intelligence veterans, and scholars who have studied covert operations, have a different, and quite revealing, view. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all,\u201d said Steven L. Hall, who retired in 2015 after 30 years at the C.I.A., where he was the chief of Russian operations. The United States \u201cabsolutely\u201d has carried out such election influence operations historically, he said, \u201cand I hope we keep doing it.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hypocrisy much?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Fox News, (where else) Former CIA director James Woolsey admitted that the US routinely meddles in foreign elections, but &#8220;Only for very good cause,&#8221; because, I guess it&#8217;s OK when we do it. You see laundering money to politicians in foreign countries is MUCH better than trolling on Facebook and Twitter: Following a federal &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[375,369],"class_list":["post-179408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-elections","tag-espionage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}