TEHRAN, February 18- As Democrats indict Russians over "election meddling," former CIA officers say the US has been interfering in foreign elections for decades and “hopefully” will keep doing so because it has the moral high ground.
TEHRAN,Young Journalists Club (YJC) -As Democrats indict Russians over "election meddling," former CIA officers say the US has been interfering in foreign elections for decades and “hopefully” will keep doing so because it has the moral high ground.
“If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all,” retired CIA veteran Steven Hall told NYT’s Scott Shane.
Hall, who left his job as CIA Chief of Russian Operations in 2015 after 30 years of service, noted that the US has never shunned attempting to meddle in other countries’ elections.
Saying that the CIA had “absolutely” engaged in such operations in the past, Hall added that he hopes “we keep doing it.”
Thirteen Russian nationals and three entities were indicted on Friday as part of the special FBI counsel Robert Mueller's lingering probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, and collusion between Moscow and US President Donald Trump's campaign. As proof to support either of the two allegations is still scant, the Russians listed in the indictment were accused of waging “information warfare against the United States of America,” including by sowing discord on social media with “divisive” posts on Facebook and Twitter.
While the social media boom is a recent phenomenon, the US intelligence has a long record of weaponizing information, albeit in a more conventional form, Loch Johnson, a scholar at the University of Georgia, who has been investigating the CIA since the 1970s, told the Times.
“We’ve used posters, pamphlets, mailers, banners — you name it. We’ve planted false information in foreign newspapers. We’ve used what the British call ‘King George’s cavalry’: suitcases of cash,” Johnson said, recounting that in the late 1980s he was told by CIA operatives that they used to plant reports that fit the US agenda or bluntly fake news in foreign newspapers by the dozen. The number of such daily “insertions” ran in as many as 70 to 80 publications, he recounted.
But when the US does it, it's for the greater good, the scholar and the CIA officers claim.
Likening the American operations to what Russia is accused of, “is like saying cops and bad guys are the same because they both have guns — the motivation matters,” Hall said. Because, just like the bloody wars the US is waging around the world, it is being done for the sake of democracy.
Source:RT