CIA's 1985 list of vulnerable Third World leaders: 27 of 38 were ousted through coups, revolts, or death

CIA hit list on Third World leaders discovered

Virtually gone unnoticed in the millions of pages of declassified CIA files is an August 1985 report prepared by the agency's Directorate of Intelligence on the survivability of 38 Third World leaders. When compared to the historical record of what befell these leaders, a whopping 73.6 percent, 27 leaders on the CIA list, lost power as a result of assassinations, coups, untimely deaths, and mass popular revolts engineered from abroad.

CIA's 1985 list of vulnerable Third World leaders: 27 of 38 were ousted through coups, revolts, or death

Bahrain	Isa bin Sulman al Khalifa. Died of heart attack, 1999, after meeting U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen
Benin	Mathieu Kerekou. Ousted in civilian coup, 1990
Bhutan	Jigme Singye Wangchuck. Abdicated 2006
Burma	U Ne Win. Ousted, internal coup, 1988
Chile	Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Stepped down in negotiated agreement, 1988
Cuba	Fidel Castro. Resigned in 2006 during grave illness
Gambia	Dawda K. Jawara. Ousted, CIA coup, 1994
Guyana	Forbes Burnham. Died after throat surgery at Georgetown Hospital, Washington, DC, 1985. Originally inserted by CIA after coup against British Guiana's Marxist prime minister Cheddi Jagan
Haiti	Jean-Claude Duvalier. Ousted in CIA coup, 1986
Indonesia	Suharto. Resigned during mass demonstrations, 2003. Originally inserted into power by CIA coup in 1965
Lesotho	Leabua Jonathan. Ousted in military coup in 1986
Libya	Muammar Qaddafi. Executed in 2011 by CIA-supported rebels
Malawi	H. Kamuzu Banda. Ousted by popular revolt 1993
Mali	Moussa Traore. Ousted by popular revolt 1991
Nepal	Birendra Bir Bikram. Assassinated in CIA-backed coup 2001
Niger	Seyni Kountche. Died in Paris hospital of brain tumor, 1987
Paraguay	Alfredo Stroessner. Ousted in coup, 1989
Philippines	Ferdinand E. Marcos. Ousted in popular revolt, 1986
Qatar	Khalifa bin Hamad al Thani. Ousted in palace coup, 1995

Rwanda	Juvenal Habyarimana. Assassinated in CIA-linked aircraft shoot down, along with Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira, 1994
Somalia	Mohammed Siad Barre. Ousted in revolt in 1991
Sudan	Gaafar al Nimeiry. Ousted in coup in 1985
Syria	Hafez al Assad. Died in 2000. His son, Bashar al Assad, faced CIA-backed civil war in 2011
Vietnam	Le Duan. Died of heart attack suffered during 27th Communist Party Congress during party schism
Zaire	Mobutu Sese Seko.  Ousted in CIA-led foreign invasion in 1997

Zambia

Forced from office by international pressure in 1991

The CIA even ranked the vulnerability of the above leaders. The leaders of Burma, Morocco, and Tunisia were considered among the most vulnerable in 1985, with those of the Philippines, Somalia, Sudan, and Zambia closely following. The least vulnerable leaders were those of Qatar, Rwanda, Togo, Oman, Bhutan, Benin, and Nepal.
 
Gambian President Dawda Jawara was overthrown in a 1994 U.S.-backed military coup while he was on board the visiting U.S. Navy ship, the USS Lamoure County, docked in Banjul harbor.

The CIA report concluded that "U.S. interests are substantial in about two-thirds of these high-risk cases -- Chile, Indonesia, Morocco, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, and Tunisia." The report strongly suggests that whether a Third World regime was "friendly or antagonistic to U.S. interests" any political instability that would affect U.S. strategic or economic interests would be grounds for the U.S. to seek the removal from power of friend or foe. In this regard, the CIA report cited "Cuba, Indonesia, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, North Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Zaire as "important to the United States."



Perhaps in what was an early recognition of the power of civil society organizations to create political instability, something that was later employed by the CIA, George Soros, and Gene Sharp against governments in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Egypt, Tunisia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tunisia, the CIA report states: "Greater instability occurred in countries where social organizations were able to mobilize their constituents -- South Korea, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, and the Dominican Republic."

The CIA considered Tunisia under President Habib Bourguiba ripe for post-succession turmoil. Bourguiba was a special target because of his links to "revolutionary regimes dominated by longstanding charismatic leaders like Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, Mao Zedong of China . . . Tito of Yugoslavia." All except Bourguiba were Communists. Marcos pf the Philippines was likened to one of aging oligarchs who, in their older years, became problems for the United States. In addition to Marcos, these leaders cited by the CIA included Franco of Spain and Hafez al Assad of Syria.

The CIA interest in fomenting insurrections against world leaders, which, in some cases, would lead to assassination, was in direct violation of three presidential executive orders barring the CIA from involvement in any way with political assassinations. The orders were EO 11905 signed by Gerald Ford; EO 12036signed by Jimmy Carter, which barred even indirect CIA involvement in political assassinations; and EO 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan. In 1998, Bill Clinton reinterpreted the assassination ban and permitted assassinations as long as there was a  counter-terrorism predicate. After 9/11, George W. Bush authorized the CIA to kill anyone the CIA placed on its Worldwide Attack Matrix. Barack Obama has done nothing to change the Bush policy on political assassinations.

Putin cracks down on Soros influence in Russian state media

Putin cracks down on Soros influence in Russian state media
Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken proactive measures against a Russian state media organization which had been infiltrated by journalists who could hardly be distinguished from the raft of paid propagandists who have been targeting the Russian government for years.

The English-language Russian state-owned news broadcaster RT, formerly "Russia Today," came under the sights of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former chairman of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors Walter Isaacson before the launching of the "Arab Spring" movement.Clinton and Isaacson bemoaned the fact that RT was trumping the U.S. propaganda networks in ratings, including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Asia/Liberty at a time when the Russian and Western broadcast media were facing off in a way not seen since the Cold War. Alarming to the Obama administration was the fact that more and more Americans were seeking their news from news networks like RT and Al Jazeera and bypassing the traditional commercial and highly-controlled U.S. commercial news networks.

Soon, RT's studio in Washington, DC began regularly featuring guests and even hosts paid by pro-western think tanks and non-governmental organizations funded by anti-Putin hedge fund tycoon George Soros. Among these were the Center for American Progress, a pro-Barack Obama think tank funded by Soros and located around the corner from RT's studios. Many RT guests actually used and increasingly abused the network's airwaves to criticize Putin.

Under siege by the West in Kyiv's Maidan Square and facing boycotts and snubs at the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics, Putin acted swiftly. He announced that the parent of RT, the Russian Information Agency (RIA)/Novosti, which also ran the Voice of Russia, was being disestablished. Replacing RIA/Novosti was Rossiya Segodnya, which is Russian for "Russia Today," the same name that the RT English-language television news network once used.

RIA/Novosti and the Voice of Russia had been caught broadcasting anti-government content during the waves of 2012 anti-Putin demonstrations in Russia which were indistinguishable from that emanating from the Soros- and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)/National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-funded media in Moscow and other cities in central and eastern Europe which once again followed the cookie-cutter recipes by Harvard’s Gene Sharp’s color revolution recipes which had been so successfully funded in a number of countries before. This editor's own experience with some Voice of Russia correspondents in the United States has been challenging, to say the least.  In one instance, a West Coast Voice of Russia correspondent stooped down to calling a WMR story as a "conspiracy theory", the by now familiar buzzwords of mainstream media defamation of investigation of uncomfortable truths.  Not surprisingly, an examination of the correspondent's background yielded a link to CIA activities. The same CIA links are apparent in the resumé of an RT host operating out of the network's Washington studio.
The new head of Russia Today is a popular news anchor on Rossiya 1 named Dmitry Kiselev. No sooner had Kiselev broadcast a news report featuring this WMR editor  warning of a British embassy in Moscow plot to capture National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, Putin scrapped RIA/Novosti and named Kiselev the chief of the new Russia Today operation.

 

Putin not only signaled that he would no longer tolerate Russian state-paid journalists acting as ciphers for Soros and Western intelligence propaganda outlets, but he simultaneously telegraphed his confidence in Kiselev's reporting, including the report on the British embassy operation targeting Snowden.

       

On December 8, Rossiya 1 news anchor Dmitry Kiselev (left) broadcast a report on a British embassy spy plot to kidnap Edward Snowden that featured WMR editor. The next day, December 9, President Putin named Kiselev as the new head of a revamped state news organization called Russia Today, which combines the Voice of Russia, RT, and RIA.



Since his appointment, Kiselev has been denounced by the Soros- and U.S.-funded media in a far-reaching agitptop campaign throughout Russia, Europe, and the United States. He was immediately stereotyped withclichés from the Soros progressive linguistic war chest as a Cold Warrior, a homophobe, and a Putin lackey.

 

However, the Soros outlets fail to include the fact that Kiselev is the most popular news anchor in Russia and is viewed in the same manner by Russians that Walter Cronkite was once seen by Americans. Considering these strong characteristics, WMR warmly applauds the appointment of Mr. Kiselev and anticipates that the true voice of Russia will be restored and preserved and under his leadership will certainly not be replaced by the paid messages of Soros which are so common in the western world.

The purging of Soros-linked journalists from Russian state media will restore somewhat the checks-and-balances seen in global journalism during the Soviet era. The CIA constantly complained that the Soviet media continually placed "disinformation" in the western English-language media. However, these Soviet news stories, including those from Novosti and TASS, often exposed CIA and other U.S. covert operations that were largely ignored by the western media. Every time the CIA was caught involved in a clandestine operation, courtesy of the Soviet media, the U.S. State Department had to issue denial after denial. The fact that the stories were carried by the Soviet media did not make them untrue.

Some examples of the Soviet reporting of possible CIA misdeeds include:

- An alleged coup plot by the United States in Ghana in 1984.
- CIA involvement in the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi due to the CIA's role in bankrolling the Sikh uprising.
- Reports picked up by the Guyanese media that the CIA was behind the 1978 Jonestown massacre.

In an era when only a few corporations control most of the world's media, an aggressive Russian state-owned media is not only welcome but it is necessary.