The US is not allowed to interfere in other countries’ affairs but gets away with it, a former CIA officer told RT. Philip Giraldi added that intelligence agencies’ resources shouldn’t be expended unless there’s a security threat.

Former CIA director James Woolsey admitted the US interfered in other countries’ elections and domestic affairs when it was “for a very good cause in the interests of democracy.”

When asked by Laura Ingraham on her Fox News show on Friday night whether the US interfered in other countries’ elections, he said “Probably, but it was for the good of the system in order to avoid communists taking over.”

His comments followed Friday’s revelation that a US Federal Grand Jury had indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly interfering with the US 2016 election.

Giraldi told RT that he doesn’t think that CIA or any intelligence agency should have the authority to intervene on the ground that “it is a good cause.”

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“Intelligence agencies exist legally because they are there to defend the country against a threat — and a threat could be any kind of threat — but in this case, messing around or doing good things or good works is not necessarily what you have an intelligence agency for. I think that this kind of argument is a false argument; that you should not use this kind of resource unless there is something that is threatening you,” he continued.

According to Giraldi, the US is not allowed to interfere in other countries’ affairs, “it just gets away with it.”

Giraldi explained that the only organization that really could sanction the US in terms of what it does internationally is the UN and the US has a veto.

“The US can stop any kind of action being taken against it when it chooses to act internationally as it has done recently in Syria, as it did in Iraq, as it has done in Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen — there are many examples of what the US has done. And basically it is able to get away with these things because it is able to exercise its veto,” he added.

Giraldi also said that the US has been interfering in other counties’ elections, in the Caribbean and Latin America, since the 1930s.

“When I was in CIA in the 70s and 80s in Europe, I would say that the CIA and the US government basically were interfering in elections — almost every election that was taking place in Europe. There were legitimate concerns about communists getting in government in places like Italy and France, in Spain and Portugal. But other than that, this was just routine that the US wanted a friendly government of a certain type, and was willing to do certain things to enable that to happen,” he noted.

If we are going to claim that America has the right to interfere behind the scenes in the politics of another country, it is a little hypocritical for America to say ‘Russian intelligence has been interfering in American elections.’ You don’t get to have it both ways: Either no one should be doing this, or you accept that that’s what goes on in the world. — Gene Coyle, CIA veteran and Russia specialist.

Giraldi pointed out that the US is “basically quite as willing as anybody else to support a dictator, if the dictator is doing what we want him to do.”

“And that is basically what all countries do. Countries use their intelligence and military resources to back up national interests,” he claimed.

Giraldi said he is “still somewhat perplexed about the allegations of these 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies,” as he suspects that this will be “less than it seems in terms of actual interference.”

“If this was a real government intelligence agency effort, it would have been better organized, it would have had better security and it would have had a much bigger budget with more people working on it. And I think in this case we are seeing something that might well be explicable in other terms than trying to destroy our democracy. It could be much ado about nothing,” he said.