12 December 2016
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Not surprisingly, the mainstream media is aghast that President-elect Donald
Trump is not automatically deferring to the CIA and its pronouncement that
Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential election with the intent of helping
Trump defeat his Democratic Party opponent Hillary Clinton.
Never mind that the CIA has provided no evidence to support its claims. In the
eyes of the mainstream media and the national-security establishment, that's
irrelevant. Trump's responsibility, they hold, is to automatically, without
question or challenge, defer to the authority of the CIA and accept whatever
it says.
Of course, one big problem here is that the CIA, along with the rest of the
national-security establishment, sometimes lies. In fact, CIA officials are
expected to lie if they feel that ''national security'' depends on it.
Recall when CIA Director Richard Helms was asked under oath by Congress about
the U.S government's meddling in Chile's presidential elections. He denied
that the U.S. government had engaged in such meddling. He lied, and his lie
was ultimately discovered. Since he was the CIA director, he was given special
treatment, permitted to plead to a misdemeanor, given probation, and fined.
When Helms returned to CIA headquarters after sentencing, he was met with
overwhelming cheers and support, which gives one a pretty good idea as to the
CIA's attitude about lying.
Don't forget DIA chief Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr. He was asked under oath by
Congress about whether the NSA was engaging in massive secret surveillance of
the American people. He said, ''Not wittingly.'' He lied. As Edward Snowden
revealed, the NSA was very wittingly, knowingly, and deliberately spying on
the American people when Clapper made that statement. He was luckier than
Helms. Nobody charged him with anything.
Indeed, casting doubts on the CIA's pronouncement, Trump referred to the CIA's
bogus WMD pronouncements that were used to gin up support for the U.S.
invasion of Iraq.
It might also be instructive to mention in this context Operation Northwoods,
the secret plan that the military component of the national-security
establishment proposed to President Kennedy in 1962. It called for terrorist
attacks and plane hijackings by U.S. operatives posing as agents of Cuba's
communist regime, which thereby would provide a false pretext for invading
Cuba and effecting regime change there. To Kennedy's everlasting credit, he
summarily rejected the plan.
Of course, the bogus pronouncement that North Vietnamese forces had attacked
U.S. warships operating off the coast of North Vietnam, which provided the
pretext for the unrestrained U.S. war in Vietnam, also come to mind.
There is another factor to consider in all this: the fact that the U.S.
government has no moral standing to object to any foreign interference in U.S.
elections. That's because U.S. officials come into the controversy with what
is known in the law as ''unclean hands.'' That's the legal doctrine that holds
that whenever a party comes into court seeking equitable relief, it will be
denied such relief if it has ''unclean hands''—that is, if it itself has
engaged in wrongful conduct.
While the CIA's complaint about Russia is in the court of public opinion, the
principle of unclean hands still holds, at least from a moral standpoint. For
decades, the U.S government has been meddling in the affairs of other
countries, in both democratic and non-democratic regimes.
I've already mentioned Chile, where the CIA engaged in bribery, kidnapping,
murder, and a violent military coup which resulted in the kidnapping, rape,
torture, incarceration, execution, or assassination of tens of thousands of
innocent people, including two Americans, with the full support of the U.S.
government.
There is also Guatemala, where the CIA violently ousted the democratically
elected president of that country and replaced him with a brutal unelected
military general.
Also, the violent coup in Iran, where the CIA ousted the democratically
elected prime minister, Mahammad Mossadegh, and replaced him with the brutal
Shah of Iran.
Also, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, with the aim of installing
U.S.-approved regimes into power.
And there is the U.S. support of the military coup in Egypt, which destroyed
that country's experiment with democracy.
The list of countries, both democratic and non-democratic, in which the U.S.
government has intervened goes on and on. If I were Buddhist, I'd say that
what is now happening with Russia might be karma, given all the meddling in
other countries that the U.S. national-security state has engaged in since its
establishment in 1947.
Indeed, it would be a particularly ironic form of karma given the U.S.
government's meddling in the affairs of Ukraine, with the aim of ousting the
democratically president of that country, who was friendly to Russia, and
replacing him with a president who was friendly to the United States. It was
that U.S. meddling, along with the NATO's wish to install U.S. missiles on the
Russian-Ukraine border, that led to the crisis with Russia over Ukraine.
In fact, one cannot help but wonder if the U.S. national-security
establishment and the U.S. mainstream media might not be suffering from some
sort of massive subconscious guilt for all the damage, death, and destruction
that their meddling and support of meddling have wrought in other countries.
It certainly would not be the first time that deep, unresolved guilt
manifested itself through projection and paranoia.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in
economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the
University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He
also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught
law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become
director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has
advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the
country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and
he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show
Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full
Context.
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