By Aaron Kesel

Former CIA director James Woolsey has admitted the U.S. interferes in foreign elections for a “very good cause.”

In an interview on Fox News, former CIA Director James Woolsey was asked whether the U.S. interferes in other countries’ elections, Woolsey responded, “Well, only for a very good cause in the interests of democracy.”

“Oh, probably, but it was for the good of the system in order to avoid communists taking over,” Woolsey told Laura Ingraham on her Fox News show laughing.

According to WikiLeaks, the U.S. government’s own data shows that its deep state in the CIA and the military-industrial complex has meddled in the elections of a whopping 81 foreign governments between 1946 and 2000, including Russia in the 1990s. That’s no laughing matter and frankly worrying.

Perhaps unshockingly those numbers don’t even include the regime change operations the U.S. has conducted and attempted across the world for the past decade which includes but is not limited to Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, Brazil, Chile, Syria.

Chillingly, a massive 72 of those were between 1947 and 1989, including 66 covert operations and six overt missions according to the Washington Post.

So enough about CIA coups and regime change, who is James Woolsey the agency’s former director?

Woolsey served as CIA director under former President Bill Clinton during 1993 – 1995, in which there was only one known U.S.-helped government coup to have taken place in Somalia in 1993. Although, there is no documented evidence to suggest that Woolsey was behind or had a hand in Operation Gothic Serpent.

However, more notably, years later after his occupation at the CIA, Woolsey was a member of the infamous Project for the New American Century (PNAC) which called for “a catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor,” in its Rebuilding America’s Defenses document. Interestingly, years prior Woolsey was also one of the signatories to the January 26, 1998 letter sent to President Clinton that called for the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Then on September 11th, 2001, Woolsey was one of the first cheerleaders within mere hours, appearing on TV suggesting Iraqi complicity in the attacks and promoting allegations that Saddam Hussein harbored WMDs (weapons of mass destruction).

That’s not all. In 2003, the former CIA director, commented on targeting Arab countries with regime change and being “on the side of the Arab people.” In his speech, he mentioned the need for regime change in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Libya. (Woolsey later blamed the 9-11 attacks on Iran and Iraq in 2015.)

Three of the seven countries ironically and coincidentally were planned invasions whistleblown by U.S. General Wesley Clark who said that “wars were planned almost immediately after 911” by senior officials in the Pentagon.

Despite Woolsey himself not being responsible for regime change during his tenure at the CIA, his antecedents and the agency itself is rife with a history of committing coups and even suggesting domestic false flag attacks against the American people for geopolitical reasons by blaming adversaries like Cuba (Operation Northwoods), and more recently revealed Russia to be the bogeyman of the hour as JFK documents detailed.

Then there is CIA agent Miles Copeland, who claims a bloodless coup took place on March 29th in Syria.

The CIA plan called for the use of Husni al-Za’im, former Cheif of Staff of the Syrian Army as their man to overthrow then-President Shukri al-Kuwatli.

It isn’t just the current Assad government that the CIA has been trying to overthrow, various Syrian presidents throughout history have been targeted as far back as March of 1949 when Syria was under the rule of President Shukri al-Kuwatli.

This coup was subsequently followed by several more coups in the years to come including — Operation Straggle, Operation Wappen and several assassination plots that eventually led to the rise of Hafez al-Assad being elevated to power in 1971.

The CIA then planned to overthrow Hafez al-Assad, the father of current President Bashar-al Assad. A CIA report from September, 1983 outlined the U.S. goal of destabilizing Syria and opening a two-front war against the country to put pressure on and overthrow Hafez al-Assad’s government.

The 1983 secret report called for a U.S. covert operation to utilize a U.S.-allied Iraq as a base of attack on Syria. “Iraq might supply them with sufficient weapons to launch a civil war,” the analysis said.

While another document in 1986 entitled “Syria: Scenarios of Dramatic Political Change,” was authored by the Foreign Subversion and Instability Center, a part of the CIA’s Mission Center for Global Issues. Its analysis covered “a number of possible scenarios that could lead to the ouster of President Assad Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez or other dramatic change in Syria,” for an oil pipeline.

This brings us to the current day with the release of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Within Hillary’s emails from 2001 is the discussion of plans to overthrow both the Syrian government and Iranian government.

Deep state or the shadow government of elitist interests that has embedded itself within Washington has a vested interest in destabilizing Syria and the Middle East to continue an endless war for the Military Industrial Complex.

WikiLeaks cables years later show the CIA continuing its regime change operations in Syria, under Clinton’s State Department in 2011 and the previous George Bush administration when the CIA secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects including a satellite TV channel Barada TV, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. While another 2006 cable reveals the Bush administration tried to award $5 million in grants to “accelerate the work of reformers in Syria.” But no dissidents inside Syria were willing to take the money, fearing it would lead to their arrest or execution for treason.

Thanks to Jeremy Hammond and WikiLeaks releasing the Stratfor files, it’s known that British and American special forces were already on the ground advising anti-Assad militants in the first year of the current Syrian conflict. Which, coincidentally enough, started in 2011 while the CIA was running an ongoing propaganda campaign in Syria.

Even more damning is a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from 2006 which shows that the U.S. Embassy in Damascus had discussed plans to destabilize the Assad government by exploiting “potential vulnerabilities” 5 years before the conflict started.

This is just some of the history available that we know about when it comes to more recent examples of CIA meddling in foreign countries’ affairs.

Woolsey was on Trump’s transition team and quit abruptly in January of last year after Trump challenged the intelligence community for its determination that Russia meddled in the U.S election.

Unsurprisingly, the former CIA head has called for regime change in Syria and North Korea under Trump, calling both countries a “problem.”

If it wasn’t clear by now, the former CIA director has made it abundantly transparent that the CIA interferes in foreign elections for a “very good cause.” This reporter wonders what the “very good cause” was for recently interfering in France’s 2012 election targeting all major French political parties for infiltration by the CIA’s human (“HUMINT”) and electronic (“SIGINT”) spies within just seven months leading up to the country’s presidential election, which was also revealed by WikiLeaks. So that’s at least 82 foreign elections where the U.S. has interfered, with the likely potential that the number is much higher because that’s only what we publicly know.

Again, that doesn’t account for regime change, and drug- and gun-running operations which destabilizes another country.

Woolsey didn’t state exactly what the “very good cause” was for interfering in other countries’ democratic electoral process, or if it’s the same “good cause” of manipulating the American people under Operation Mockingbird and other foreign states for geopolitical conquest done by his predecessors.

I guess we should all sleep well at night resting assured that Neocon James Woolsey is not an adviser for America’s current foreign policy. However, there is still war monger H. R. McMaster who wanted/wants to send upwards to 50,000 troops into Syria, which thankfully Trump has denied … at least for now.

Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Steemit, and BitChute. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets.

Image credit: Mintpress News