What to Look For if the CIA Is Plotting Against Trump

The Agency has a routine

by ANDREW DOBBS

Is the CIA plotting against U.S. president Donald Trump? A handful of observers think so — and some of them are even cheering it on.

Neoconservative publisher of the Weekly Standard WIlliam Kristol tweeted in February 2017 that while he “strongly” prefers “normal democratic and constitutional politics,” he would “prefer the deep state to the Trump state.”

Trump, you’ll remember, gave a speech at CIA headquarters the day after his inauguration, admitting that it was meant to address claims that he and the Agency didn’t get along.

A series of leaked stories since then have undermined the administration, particularly in regards to its relationship with Russia and Russian intelligence services, leaks that seem to have come from CIA sources.

Trump’s politics should not be a problem for this vanguard of U.S. imperialism. Few of them, however, can tolerate Trump’s possible collaborations with hostile governments, and their actions to date suggest that they have something concrete on him.

One emerging hypothesis — Russian intelligence colluded with the Trump campaign to use hacked information to undermine Hillary Clinton’s already tenuous credibility and then the Russian government gave Trump a well-disguised 19-percent stake in its state oil company — worth $11 billion — in return for an end to sanctions against Russia and the weakening or dismantling of NATO.

If this has happened and the CIA knows about it they have substantial motivation for action against this state, but how will we know? How would CIA go about overthrowing a U.S. president, and what signs would we be able to see as it went down?

The best way to answer this question is to look at some of the major coups the CIA has supported throughout its history. A plot against Trump would be a very different undertaking, and no two overthrows have been alike to date. There are, however, some significant commonalities among the major coups backed or attempted by the CIA.

These commonalities are basic facts of life for a coup, and if they are plotting against the duly-elected president of the United States then they are working on them right now. Some seem to be taking place, others will remain invisible for years to come and others are important signs to watch for because in the end even if you despise Trump for the threat he poses to democracy and all life on earth the costs of a coup are, as we’ll see, devastating.

Any CIA plot against Trump’s regime or any other government will begin and end with concerted propaganda campaigns and political intrigue. This is fundamental to every coup, because they are always trying to convince a small group of people that they can take on the entire government at once and win. In the end coups are always rooted in psychological warfare.

The CIA-orchestrated coup in Guatemala in 1954 provides a case in point. Targeted at the freely elected government of progressive populist Jacobo Arbenz, the Agency managed to use a wildly successful radio station and various other deception tactics to convince that country’s government and military that they were facing an existential threat from U.S. Marines and CIA-backed rebels.

In fact there were no Marines. And the rebels — numbering fewer than 500 — were complete military failures who never managed to capture any territory beyond small, undefended border towns.

Much broader than just a radio station, a similar program in Iran codenamed BEDAMN laid the foundation for the plot in that country. “Under the propaganda arm of BEDAMN, anti-communist articles and cartoons were planted in Iranian newspapers, books and leaflets critical of the Soviet Union and the Tudeh party [Iran’s communist-affiliated party at the time] were written and distributed, rumors were started,” political scientist Mark Gasiorowski wrote in a definitive 1987 history of the coup.

BEDAMN also involved a political arm that used “black operations” such as hiring street gangs to break up Tudeh rallies, funding right-wing political organizations and other tactics. The group also targeted the mass supporters of coalition parties in Mossadeq’s National Front political movement, stoking their specific prejudices with targeted propaganda and creating conflict within the organization.

Overt press manipulation also made a big difference. Once CIA planted stories appeared in The New York Times — and the “newspaper of record” repeatedly published such pieces — or the major papers in Latin American capitals it was only natural that other major newspapers in the region would pick them up and spread the story. That slant would then pervade elite opinion around the world.

It is in this regard that we see the see the most obvious present evidence of possible CIA machinations against Trump. CIA sources leaked surveillance of the Russian foreign minister to force the removal of Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor. Other sources for other key stories on this front seem to be coming from the CIA, but this one proves that at least one spy with the highest levels of access was working the press.

The more of this we see, the more we should be concerned. Most importantly — if formerly pro-Trump publications quickly turn on the president without warning or if we begin to see a great deal of very targeted propaganda clearly trying to flip Trump’s base against him or against other elements of his support structure then we should be especially concerned.