The gnashing of teeth over Russian intervention in the United States' 2016 Presidential election is certainly justified, but the cries of condemnation can ring hollow, especially for the US and Britain.
The British certainly did seek to interfere in the 1992 election, which saw Bill Clinton land the White House despite the best efforts of the British. Lucky for Northern Ireland, Clinton never forgot the insult and he was far more even-handed in his Irish policy as a result.
President Bill Clinton, elected in 1992.
Earlier than that, in the mid and late-20th century, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was often out of control.
This is from the Washington Post in 2013:
“The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq... in documents that also show how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow.
"The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.
Then there was the coup in Chile, in 1973, replacing Salvador Allende, the elected Marxist leader.
According to ABC News “The CIA (now) admits prior knowledge of the plot that overthrew Allende three years later but denies direct involvement.”
But my favorite is British meddling in an American election. According to the Washington Post the British, at the behest of American president George (David cop-a-feel Bush), ran through their own passport files from the period when Clinton was studying at Oxford to see if they could find that he had applied for a British passport in a bid to avoid serving in the Vietnam War.
The Washington Post stated: “The British government was conducting its own 'comprehensive' search through confidential files in London for material on the Democratic presidential candidate, a British government spokesman said yesterday.
“Officials at the British Home Office searched through immigration and naturalization files in early October to determine if Clinton, while he was a student at Oxford University, had sought or inquired about obtaining British citizenship to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, said Graham Blakeway, head of the news division of the Home Office.”
When Clinton got into power he snubbed British Prime Minister John Major for months, despite the traditional “special relationship.” Former British ambassador Christopher Meyer wrote in his autobiography that the two men had great difficulty working together after the passport fiasco story came out.
So, let’s not suppose that what Russia’s President Vladimir Putin did is all that strange. There is a precedent.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (Still via RT)
People claim that what Trump/Putin did if it is ever proven was a major crime. But let’s not forget the cozy Major/Bush deal designed to stop Bill Clinton.
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