Electoral security

CIA’s Gold Standard for Influencing Foreign Elections

The DNC emails confirmed what everyone already knew beyond a reasonable doubt. The DNC and its Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz were de facto megaphones and foot soldiers for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Party primary elections for the presidential nomination. The political benefit to Republican presidential nominee Trump is speculative at best. Indeed, the Putin-orchestrated WikiLeak disclosures could benefit Ms. Clinton because the American electorate generally views Russia with a jaundiced eye—especially after the annexation of Crimea, aggression against Ukraine, and industrial-scale covert doping of its Olympian athletes.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden fretted, “they’re clearly taking their game to another level. It would be weaponizing information. You don’t want a foreign power affecting elections.”

Thereby hangs a tale of United States hypocrisy which speaks volumes about our suboptimal global reputation. The very first CIA covert action manipulated the 1948 Italian elections. By its own later admissions to the House Select Committee on Intelligence, the CIA gave $1 million to Italian “center parties.”