The Eerie Similarities Between This Election And A Cold War Covert Operation

Perhaps those of you old enough to experience the Cold War remember this particular story. There was a small Latin American country where a marginally popular technocrat was running for Presidente on a platform that intended to institute some minor reforms that would be provide a greater benefit to all his citizens at a small expense to the ruling elites. There were some in our government who thought this might be some Communist incursion and they decided to do something about it. That meant a classic CIA covert operation.

First, the CIA rounded up a fiery demagogue who could rouse the population into some sort of action and attempt to criminalize the technocrat in order to delegitimize him should he win. Then the CIA colluded with the media that was already in bed with the ruling elites and bought off other media outlets that might support the technocrat. The media gave the demagogue boatloads of free publicity and airtime while attacking his technocratic opponent. Even so, the race was still tight right down to the end until the very last weeks of the campaign when all of a sudden an accusation of corruption came out of the blue against the technocrat. The public prosecutor made some very vague charges that the technocrat had been caught embezzling millions of dollars from the treasury. Since the details of the charges were not presented, it was almost impossible for the technocrat to refute the charges other than to issue a broad denial. And the charges reinforced the demagogue's message that the technocrat was a criminal. Finally, when election day arrives, the technocrat still believes he will win but by some miracle the demagogue gets just the right amount of votes he needs in almost every part of the country in order to squeak out a victory. Of course, the demagogue goes on to become an autocratic, almost fascist, leader but it's still a big win for the CIA.

The contours of this story were pretty much repeated many times over during the Cold War. Of course, there is no country where exactly what I described happened. But every one of the elements of that story did in fact take place at one point or another in some country or another during the Cold War.

Now delete the driving force of the CIA from my account, and you pretty much have the contours of our latest election. I am not saying and I have no proof that there was some mysterious conspiracy that led to Hillary Clinton's defeat. But all the elements in our election are eerily similar to the very events that occurred in so many countries during the Cold War, in addition to the Trump campaign's Russian connections.

In fact, the outlines of this kind of plan could very easily have been presented to Trump for his campaign. He was already a demagogue who had the correct racist and xenophobic message to actually get out the "missing white vote" and who knew how to manipulate the mainstream media from his days in the New York media circus. In the NY tabloid wars, there was no such thing as "bad" press and the more outrageous the better. There would have been no need to buy the media off. And he already had plenty of other alternate media sources to spread the attacks on Clinton without having to sully himself, but just repeating what "some have said". Trump was a real-estate developer in New York City and then moved into the casino business in Atlantic City. You have to be pretty naïve to believe that he did not have extensive relations with the Mafia. There is evidence that Trump was able to cover up his mob connections with the help of Rudy Giuliani and the NY FBI office. Without their help, Trump would have never received his casino license. So, it would not be a stretch to have Giuliani and the NY FBI office, with which he has always maintained close contacts, produce the charges that Clinton had no way to refute. That resulted in Comey's letter and other unfounded accusations emanating from the NY FBI. Assuming that there was no way to rig the voting, Trump could rely somewhat on the large voter suppression measures that were certainly in play in North Carolina and Wisconsin.

In conclusion, I in no way want to state that there was a vast conspiracy behind this election. And I do not want to dismiss the lessons that Democrats can and should learn from this election, especially the downward mobility and the plight of the working and lower middle class. But I do want to point out the similarities the events in this election have to so many prior covert operations and that it would not take something like a CIA manipulation to make that happen. All the pieces were pretty much already in place. They just needed to be exploited in order to get the result that was hoped for. And just remember, even if Trump did not win, he just needed to come close enough to ensure that he could claim the election was rigged and make it as hard as possible for Hillary to govern by calling her election illegitimate. In a covert operation like the one just described, a result like that is considered a success.