I’m tired of “Russia Gate,” aren’t you?
Let’s be frank: countries trying to influence outcomes of other countries’ elections has been happening for centuries. Every country has vested interests in election results in every other country. None live in a vacuum. Regarding Russian interference in OUR elections, this too is not new. In fact their attempts to influence U.S. elections have been well documented for decades. In fact, the United States has been one of the countries MOST involved in directly affecting elections in other countries. Have you heard about that from the State Media? Nope. Let’s look-in on an interview about this subject by Ari Shapiro from NPR. He in this interview is speaking with Don Levin, who is with the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University. (Carnegie and NPR are not known to be bastions of Conservatism)
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: This is hardly the first time a country has tried to influence the outcome of another country’s election. The U.S. has done it, too, by one expert’s count, more than 80 times worldwide between 1946 and 2000. That expert is Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University. I asked him to tell me about one election where U.S. intervention likely made a difference in the outcome.
DOV LEVIN: One example of that was our intervention in Serbia, Yugoslavia in the 2000 election there. Slobodan Milosevic was running for re-election, and we didn’t want him to stay in power there due to his tendency, you know, to disrupts the Balkans and his human rights violations.
So we intervened in various ways for the opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica. And we gave funding to the opposition, and we gave them training and campaigning aide. And according to my estimate, that assistance was crucial in enabling the opposition to win.
SHAPIRO: How often are these interventions public versus covert?
LEVIN: Well, it’s – basically there’s about – one-third of them are public, and two-thirds of them are covert. In other words, they’re not known to the voters in the target before the election.
SHAPIRO: Your count does not include coups, attempts at regime change. It sounds like depending on the definitions, the tally could actually be much higher.
LEVIN: Well, you’re right. I don’t count and discount covert coup d’etats like the United States did in Iran in 1953 or in Guatemala in 1954. I only took when the United States is trying directly to influence an election for one of the sides. Other types of interventions – I don’t discuss. But if we would include those, then of course the number could be larger, yeah.
SHAPIRO: How often do other countries like Russia, for example, try to alter the outcome of elections as compared to the United States?
LEVIN: Well, for my dataset, the United States is the most common user of this technique. Russia or the Soviet Union since 1945 has used it half as much. My estimate has been 36 cases between 1946 to 2000. We know also that the Chinese have used this technique and the Venezuelans when the late Hugo Chavez was still in power in Venezuela and other countries.
SHAPIRO: The U.S. is arguably more vocal than any other country about trying to promote democracy and democratic values around the world. Does this strike you as conflicting with that message?
LEVIN: It depends upon if we are assisting pro-democratic side – could be like in the case of Slobodan Milosevic that I talked about earlier. I believe that that could be helpful for democracy. If it helps less-nicer candidates or parties, then naturally it can be less helpful.
SHAPIRO: Obviously your examination of 20th century attempts to influence elections does not involve hacking because computers were not widespread until recently.
LEVIN: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: In your view, is technology – the way that we saw in the November election – dramatically changing the game? Or is this just the latest evolution of an effort that has always used whatever tools are available?
LEVIN: I would say it’s more the latter. I mean the Russians or the Soviets before unfrequently did these type of intervention, just, you know, without the cyber-hacking tools – you know, the old style people meeting in the park in secret giving out and getting information and things like that, so to speak.
So more than 80 times worldwide between 1946 and 2000, the United States was documented interfering with other countries’ elections. Some may say, “This is ancient history. Nothing like this happens today, especially by the United States. Maybe with THIS Administration like the Bush 43 Administration, but no other.” Wrong!
This from the Washington Times last year: “The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a congressional investigation concluded Tuesday. Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report.
In one stunning finding, the subcommittee said OneVoice even told the State Department’s top diplomat in Jerusalem of its plans in an email, but the official, Consul General Michael Ratney, claims never to have seen them. He said he regularly deleted emails with large attachments — a striking violation of open-records laws for a department already reeling from former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s handling of official government records.
Mr. Netanyahu survived the election, and the U.S. spending was not deemed illegal because the State Department never put any conditions on the money. Investigators also said OneVoice didn’t turn explicitly political until days after the grant period ended.”
Hypocrisy
Let’s face it: all this current noise about Russian interference in our 2016 election is just that: noise. It was announced today by Homeland Security that they had notified 21 states in the last few days of attempts by Russian hackers to affect elections in each of those states in Fall 2016 elections. NONE were successful. “Attempting” to hack into a computer system is NOT hacking into a computer system, just an attempt. It was stated by many in the Intelligence Community that there is NO evidence of any direct election interference by anyone that changed actual votes. But then the Left started their witch hunt that was exclusively designed, implemented, and is operating as the chief tool to derail the Trump presidency and the Trump agenda.
Am I wrong? OK. PROVE IT! Google to copy the actual evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election and paste it in your comment in the comments section at the end of this article. The rest of us are waiting with baited breath. (Does anyone know what “baited breath” is? I don’t….it just sounds good!)
This is the most outrageous fraud perpetrated on the American people by the Media and the Democrat Party in a century…period. There is no Russian interference in U.S. elections that is any different from their attempts 4 years ago, 8 years ago, 12 years ago, 16 years ago, 20 years ago….. In fact we learned today that the FBI knew of attempts by Russia and other countries to interfere in multiple previous U.S. elections and even notified candidates in those elections. It’s not new.
Russia Gate is a U.S. Government/Democrat Party Fraud!
