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The most dangerous and pervasive lie of the last six months can finally be put to rest. CIA allegations of Russian influence over the 2016 elections have dominated the corporate media landscape over this period. The accusation that Russia “hacked” into the elections spiraled quickly into a narrative about President Trump's connections to the Russian Federation. Then Michael Flynn was ousted as National Security Adviser for speaking with a Russian ambassador. Now Jefferson Sessions hangs on by a thread to his Attorney General position for the same reason. The CIA was the first to stir up the anti-Russia madness that consumes Washington.

So it is only fitting that the recent WikiLeaks dump put the allegations to rest by implicating the CIA in the whole charade. According to WikiLeaks' Vault7 leak, a CIA project called UMBRAGE has been developing a library of cyber attack techniques stolen from other countries. The techniques are used to develop further cyber attacks and misdirect the attribution back to the country stolen from. This means that the so-called "digital fingerprints" proving Moscow's intrusion into the election could very well have come from the very intelligence officials who reported it. But the CIA would never use these available techniques for such a purpose, right?

Well, the rest of the Vault7 leaks do not necessarily inspire confidence. WikiLeaks revealed that the CIA possesses a global covert hacking program. The program has developed tools that allow the CIA to hack into most of the world's smart phones and computer devices. This includes Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Android phone, television, and computer products. The CIA has the ability to turn eighty percent of the world's Apple smart technology into recorders and/or cameras.

And WikiLeaks is not done. The organization claims that the CIA dump is only one percent of the total findings in its possession. Yet the one percent released thus far has significant implications, including whether the CIA was involved in the murder of journalists Michael Hastings of the Washington Post and Serena Shim of Press TV. Both died in mysterious car accidents. Both were critical of key US policies such as surveillance in the case of Hastings and state sponsorship of terrorism in Syria in the case of Shim. The Vault7 leaks reveal that the CIA can at any time turn a vehicle into a death trap if the vehicle is operated by smart computer technology.

While there remains no damning proof connecting the CIA to the deaths of these journalists, it should not surprise anyone that the CIA would engage in such dirty games. Indeed, the CIA’s mission is to collect intelligence and carry out the covert military projects of the US government. Ample history has been documented of the CIA's domestic and international political influence. Now that the CIA cat has been pulled out of the bag by WikiLeaks, it is important to question the broader interests behind the CIA's dealings. What compels the CIA to conduct such massive surveillance operations?

Anyone familiar with the CIA's record must conclude that the agency is the covert military apparatus of monopoly capital. The CIA has historically sought to topple any leader, organization, or government that does not concede to the dictates of US capitalist expansion. On the domestic front, the CIA has been implicated in the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. By the end of his life, Malcolm X had begun to develop deep relationships with the Pan-African movements in Africa, meeting with independence leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana (overthrown by a CIA-sponsored coup in 1966). Martin Luther King Jr. became a problem when his influential leadership threatened US war efforts in Vietnam.

What has received the most attention, and rightfully so, is the CIA's atrocious record beyond US borders. The list of nations that have been the target of CIA-sponsored coups is truly staggering. Since the end of WWII, the US has overthrown over fifty foreign governments. Many of these wars have included the direct participation or leadership of the CIA. This is not to mention the CIA's support for actual fascism, from its recruitment program of Nazi intelligence after World War II to its support of fascism in Greece against communism in the same period.

Wherever US monopoly capital found it necessary to expand and divide the world, the CIA was there. In 1953, Iran nationalized its massive oil deposits under the leadership of democratically elected President Mohammad Mosaddegh. The CIA backed the military dictatorship of the Shah to crush all forces inside of Iran who fought for independent control of the nation's resources. On September 11th 1973, the CIA armed and funded the fascist dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and installed him into power. Socialist President Salvador Allende was brutally assassinated and tens of thousands of people were killed or kidnapped by Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

These are but a few examples of the imperialist brutality of the CIA. A full list of CIA atrocities is provided here. The point is not to give a full history of the agency, but to explain the interests that the agency serves. US intelligence is a branch of the military state of imperialism. The CIA was founded to covertly enforce the dictatorship of capitalism and repress socialism wherever it developed on the world stage.

To align with the CIA in any capacity is to commit the highest crime against working class and oppressed people. Trump and his Administration should be opposed when it reinforces or escalates oppression and exploitation in any form. We do not need to align with the CIA and the Democrats or ask for their assistance in the process. Imperialism cannot be dealt with by merely ridding of Trump and his appointees. The system must be torn down, root and branch, if a new one is ever to find political space to grow.

*(Illustration: Almudena Fernández/ flickr).