Because I have other obligations today and I’m pressed for time, I’m going to do something unusual. Instead of writing a post, I am going to give you the raw material I was going to use to write a post. The basic idea is that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is opening an investigation into the Obama administration’s alleged meddling in the Israeli election. The State Department has apparently given grants to organizations that are actively working for Netanyahu’s defeat. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is actually going to do the inquiry and the effort has bipartisan support. Now, they can investigate whatever they want, but it’s curious that the Senate would think there’s something out of order for the Executive Branch to intervene in democratic elections in friendly countries.
After all, the first covert operation ever carried out by the CIA was a successful effort to help the Christian Democrats defeats the socialists and communists in the 1948 Italian election. I was going to write about that effort, using the testimony of F. Mark Wyatt, a career CIA officer who played a major role in those Italian elections. You can read Wyatt’s obituary in the New York Times and Washington Post.
Of particular interest in the Wyatt interview are the segments dedicated to Secretary of State George Marshall’s role and opinion about the decision to send the CIA into Italy with millions of dollars in black bags, and how the CIA case officers managed to give away the money without being detected by the media.
So, the idea for the piece was to show what happened in Italy, use some more examples in less detail, and ask when it became naughty to take sides in foreign elections.
