The 7 Governments the U.S. Has Overthrown Yes, we now have confirmation

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The 7 Governments the U.S. Has Overthrown
Yes, we now have confirmation that the CIA was behind Iran’s 1953
coup. But the agency hardly stopped there.

he era of CIA-supported coups dawned in dramatic fashion: An
American general flies to Iran and meets with “old friends”; days
later, the Shah orders Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh to step
down. When the Iranian military hesitates, millions of dollars are
funneled into Tehran to buy off Mossadegh’s supporters and finance
street protests. The military, recognizing that the balance of
power has shifted, seizes the prime minister, who will live the
rest of his life under house arrest. It was, as one CIA history
puts it, “an American operation from beginning to end,” and one of
many U.S.-backed coups to take place around the world during the
second half of the 20th century.

Several national leaders, both dictators and democratically
elected figures, were caught in the middle of the U.S.-Soviet Cold
War — a position that ultimately cost them their office (and, for
some, their life) as the CIA tried to install “their man” as head
of state. The U.S. government has since publicly acknowledged some
of these covert actions; in fact, the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup
was just declassified this week. In other cases, the CIA’s
involvement is still only suspected.

The legacy of covert U.S. involvement in the seven successful coups
below (not to mention a number of U.S. military interventions
against hostile regimes and U.S.-supported insurgencies and failed
assassination attempts, including a plan to kill Fidel Castro with
an exploding cigar), has made the secret hand of the United States
a convenient bogeyman in today’s political tensions. Even now,
despite waning U.S. influence in Cairo, conspiracy theories
suggesting that both the Muslim Brotherhood and the military-backed
government are in cahoots with the United States abound in
Egypt.

Iran, 1953: Despite continued speculation about the CIA’s role
in a 1949 coup to install a military government in Syria, the
ouster of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh is the earliest
coup of the Cold War that the U.S. government has acknowledged. In
1953, after nearly two years of Mossadegh’s premiership, during
which time he challenged the authority of the Shah and nationalized
an Iranian oil industry previously operated by British companies,
he was forced from office and arrested, spending the rest of his
life under house arrest. According to the just-declassified
CIA-authored history of the operation, “It was the potential … to
leave Iran open to Soviet aggression — at a time when the Cold War
was at its height and when the United Sates was involved in an
undeclared war in Korea against forces supported by the U.S.S.R.
and China — that compelled the United States [REDACTED] in planning
and executing TPAJAX [the code name of the coup operation].”

Guatemala, 1954: Though the United States was initially
supportive of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz — the State
Department felt his rise through the U.S.-trained and armed
military would be an asset — the relationship soured as Árbenz
attempted a series of land reforms that threatened the holdings of
the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company. A coup in 1954 forced Árbenz
from power, allowing a succession of juntas in his place.
Classified details of the CIA’s involvement in the ouster of the
Guatemalan leader, which included equipping rebels and paramilitary
troops while the U.S. Navy blockaded the Guatemalan coast, came to
light in 1999.

Congo, 1960: Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the
Congo (later the Democratic Republic of the Congo), was pushed out
of office by Congolese President Joseph Kasavubu amid the
U.S.-supported Belgian military intervention in the country, a
violent effort to maintain Belgian business interests after the
country’s decolonization. But Lumumba maintained an armed
opposition to the Belgian military and, after approaching the
Soviet Union for supplies, was targeted by the CIA once the agency
determined he was a threat to the newly installed government of
Joseph Mobutu. The Church Committee, an 11-senator commission
established in 1975 to provide oversight of the clandestine actions
of the U.S. intelligence community, found that the CIA “continued
to maintain close contact with Congolese who expressed a desire to
assassinate Lumumba,” and that “CIA officers encouraged and offered
to aid these Congolese in their efforts against Lumumba.” After an
aborted assassination attempt against Lumumba involving a poisoned
handkerchief, the CIA alerted Congolese troops to Lumumba’s
location and noted roads to be blocked and potential escape routes.
Lumumba was captured in late 1960 and killed in January of the
following year.

Dominican Republic, 1961: The brutal dictatorship of Rafael
Trujillo, which included the ethnic cleansing of thousands of
Haitians in the Dominican Republic and the attempted assassination
of the president of Venezuela, ended when he was ambushed and
killed by armed political dissidents. Though the gunman who shot
Trujillo maintained that “Nobody told me to go and kill Trujillo,”
he did in fact have the support of the CIA. The Church Committee
found that “Material support, consisting of three pistols and three
carbines, was supplied to various dissidents…. United States’
officials knew that the dissidents intended to overthrow Trujillo,
probably by assassination…”

South Vietnam, 1963: The United States was already deeply
involved in South Vietnam in 1963, and its relationship with the
country’s leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, was growing increasingly strained
amid Diem’s crackdown on Buddhist dissidents. According to the
Pentagon Papers, on Aug. 23, 1963, South Vietnamese generals
plotting a coup contacted U.S. officials about their plan. After
some fits and starts plus a period of U.S. indecision, the generals
seized and killed Diem on Nov. 1, 1963 with U.S. support, which by
some accounts partially came in the form of $40,000 in CIA
funds.

“For the military coup d’etat against Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S.
must accept its full share of responsibility,” the Pentagon Papers
state. “Beginning in August of 1963 we variously authorized,
sanctioned and encouraged the coup efforts of the Vietnamese
generals and offered full support for a successor government…. We
maintained clandestine contact with them throughout the planning
and execution of the coup and sought to review their operational
plans and proposed new government.”

Brazil, 1964: Fearing that the government of Brazilian President
Joao Goulart would, in the words of U.S. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon,
“make Brazil the China of the 1960s,” the United States backed a
1964 coup led by Humberto Castello Branco, then chief of staff of
the Brazilian army. In the days leading up to the coup, the CIA
encouraged street rallies against the government and provided fuel
and “arms of non-US origin” to those backing the military. “I think
we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do
everything that we need to do,” President Lyndon Johnson told his
advisors planning the coup, according to declassified government
records obtained by the National Security Archive. The Brazilian
military went on to govern the country until 1985.

Chile, 1973: The United States never wanted Salvador Allende,
the socialist candidate elected president of Chile in 1970, to
assume office. President Richard Nixon told the CIA to “make the
[Chilean] economy scream,” and the agency worked with three Chilean
groups, each plotting a coup against Allende in 1970. The agency
went so far as to provide weapons, but the plans fell apart after
the CIA lost confidence in its proxies. U.S. attempts to disrupt
the Chilean economy continued until Gen. Augusto Pinochet led a
military coup against Allende in 1973. The CIA’s official account
of the seizure of power on Sept. 11, 1973, notes that the agency
“was aware of coup-plotting by the military, had ongoing
intelligence collection relationships with some plotters, and —
because CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to
instigate a coup in 1970 — probably appeared to condone it.” The
CIA also conducted a propaganda campaign in support of Pinochet’s
new regime after he took office in 1973, despite knowledge of
severe human rights abuses, including the murder of political
dissidents.

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