The involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the overthrow of governments and the assassination of leaders is the stuff of legends immortalized in many blockbuster movies and bestselling books. Many of these stories are documented and attested to by many of the participants while others are simply the product of the fertile imagination of writers and movie makers.
It is altogether possible that many regime changes that have taken place recently involved CIA participation. Still, we cannot know for sure, unless in the not-too-distant future, some of the participants could not resist the temptation to write their memoirs. Such is the nature of covert and clandestine operations.
The CIA is a relatively young intelligence organization if we compare it to the MI6 of the United Kingdom, the Deuxieme Bureau of the French, and the Russian KGB now FSB. It is only 69 years old, having been founded as a result of the National Security Act of 1947. Before that, it was the Office of Strategic Services led by William Donovan.
During the Second World War, the OSS did sabotage work and helped the partisans fighting Nazi Germany like those in France and Yugoslavia. It was disbanded after the war. It did not, however, take long for the United States to realize the need for a centralized intelligence agency; that was how the CIA was born. Not long after, we would read the involvement of the spy agency in the political affairs of many less developed countries.
The CIA, being the only US government agency that is authorized to conduct foreign covert operations, does so for many reasons. One is to enhance and protect the national security interests of the US. But as we will find out later, they also do it for very flimsy reasons. The first documented participation of the CIA in regime change was in Iran in 1953. This operation eventually installed the Shah of Iran to power. This was the Shah that was eventually deposed by the Iranian revolution of 1979. The cause for the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadegh was oil. After a relatively short period of political instability orchestrated by the CIA, Mossadegh was forced to step down and the Shah was installed.
The second was the Guatemala coup d’état of 1954. Jacobo Arbenz, the leader, was deposed for instituting land reform that affected the land holdings of the United Fruit Company which was a US company. The company lobbied for the overthrow of the Arbenz government.
There were many more documented CIA operations like the one in Italy that prevented the election of the Communist party in the Italian election of 1948. The CIA also operated in Syria in 1949 and also tried to overthrow the late Indonesian leader Sukarno in the 1950s. The murder of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo in 1961 that eventually ushered Mobutu Sese Seko was participated in by the CIA. Another famous CIA operations was the ouster and ambush of the Dominican Republic strongman General Rafael Trujillo in 1960. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba in 1961 was a classic failed CIA operation. South Vietnamese Ngo Dinh Diem was ousted and killed in 1963 was reputedly a CIA operation together with the ouster and killing of President Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973.
We can go on and on. For all the might and resources of the CIA, not all its operations were successful. There were also many intelligence failures.
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Not long after President Du30 started his tirades on the US, EU, UN, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and President Obama, rumors started to circulate about destabilization plots against the Du30 administration fueled by a statement from Secretary Martin Andanar, during a trip to the US. Since there are many conspiratorial theorists living in Metro Manila, the involvement of the CIA started to emerge. This prompted President Duterte to make the unprecedented challenge to the CIA to go ahead and kill him. The influence of the US in our internal affairs is known to all. We often hear the phrase—“yun ang gusto ng mga kano”—that is what the Americans want. And to this day, many believe that the CIA had a hand in the ouster of President Marcos and President Estrada.
Can and will the CIA oust or kill President Du30? Can is a given. The CIA has a budget bigger than that of many countries. But whether it will do it is another matter. If it serves the furtherance of their national interest, maybe or as one acquaintance told me, – to save us from ourselves. Nonetheless, the involvement of the CIA in the overthrow of the government of third world countries is no longer as frequent compared to earlier times.
This is not to say, however, that the CIA had no hand in the regime changes in some countries in Africa and Middle East. The public may simply be not aware. Hopefully, the so-called brotherly advice of President Ramos to President Du30 will be taken positively without any rancor to show that he can accept some form of criticism especially from the senior statesman of the country.
The article of President Ramos last Sunday was the first significant critique of the Du30 administration by a high-profile Filipino because no one seem to be able to say anything contrary to what the President is saying. We all support President Duterte in his quest to eliminate crime and corruption but we want our President to be careful that the medicine prescribed is not going to be worse than the disease.