The CIA is a “leftist” organization?



Apparently, there’s this weird, ahistorical conspiracy theory that the CIA is a leftist organization. Not only is there not an atom of evidence for this theory, there is overwhelming evidence of CIA involvement in destabilizing and overthrowing liberal and leftist governments in favor of right-wing dictatorships:

Here’s a short list of CIA interventions in foreign governments:

 

• In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup against Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh;

• In 1954, the CIA orchestrated of the democratically elected leader of Guatemala,  President Jacobo Árbenz;

 

• The CIA helped facilitate the assassination in 1961of the Congo’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba;

 

• The CIA funded and encouraged the 1963 coup against, and assassination of, the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem;

 

• In 1970, the CIA met with Chilean military contacts in a direct effort to foment a coup to stop the socialist Allende presidency; a general who opposed a coup was killed in a kidnapping plot. Allende was replaced by the right-wing military dictator Augusto Pinochet;

 

• Between 1981 and 1986, the Reagan Administration secretly and illegally sold arms to Iran in order to fund Contras, a group the CIA had recruited and organized to fight the socialist Sandinista government led by Daniel Ortega;

There’s also evidence of CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. 

I’ve yet to find a single example of the CIA overthrowing a right-wing dictatorship, although I’m happy to be educated. 

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