Clapper: When We Interfere and Overthrow Governments, It Is for ‘The People’

Former DNI James Clapper took the opportunity of an interview with Bloomberg Saturday to brag about his (and other Americans’) role in interfering in foreign elections and overthrowing governments. Bloomberg’s Tobin Harshaw asked: “Speaking of election interference, you write candidly in your book that the U.S. has long tried to sway foreign elections where it had an important national interest, and you even cite a study of 81 examples. How do you square the current outrage over Russian manipulation of social media — which is kind of a tame practice compared to some of the things that the CIA did?”

Clapper: “I guess the way I think about that is that through our history, when we tried to manipulate or influence elections or even overturned governments, it was done with the best interests of the people in that country in mind, given the traditional reverence for human rights.”

The benevolent imperialist had said earlier in the discussion that his campaign to destroy Trump was driven by “the loss of what I’ll call the beacon of truth — where now it’s fashionable to have alternative facts or where ‘truth is relative,’ to quote Rudy Giuliani — this is very dangerous for the fundamental underpinnings of this country. What this has led to is assaults on our institutions and our values, which I spent over 50 years defending.” Of course, Clapper is most famous for his lie to the Congress about mass spying on the American people, and his many lies in Russiagate are now exposed internationally.