Ex-US spy chief defends meddling in foreign polls but slams Russia role in US vote

Former director of US national intelligence James Clapper, who has fiercely slammed alleged Russian interference in American 2016 presidential election, has justified US own meddling in elections of over 80 nations across the globe over the years as to the “best interests” of targeted countries.

“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,” Clapper claimed during an interview with US-based Bloomberg news outlet on Saturday.

He made the remarks in response to a question challenging Washington’s own history of interfering in foreign electoral processes as well as plotting to overthrow popularly-elected heads of states that did not serve US interests.

The comments by Clapper -- who notably lied about National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass surveillance program before it was exposed by a former contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden – also came while he is on a publicity campaign to promote his newly-published book ‘Facts and Fears,’ in which he cites a study of 81 instances of US meddling in foreign elections through its CIA spy agency.

The study, titled ‘When the Great Power Gets a Vote,’ was authored by Dov Levin and published in June 1, 2016 issue of International Studies Quarterly, pointing out that the 81 documented cases came only between 1946 and 2000. International news outlets have also reported widely on numerous more instances of overt and covert US election interference since 2000 in countries as close as Latin America and as far as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Despite such massive scale of US election meddling efforts, Clapper continues to insist during the campaign to promote his book that Russians pose a grave threat to the United States in alleged hacking and social media efforts to influence the American electoral process.

“The Russians, they present a profound threat to this country and one of the main reasons and catalyst for writing the book was the Russian interference,” Clapper further stated in another interview on Saturday with the Philadelphia-based The Chris Stigall Show radio broadcast. “That’s what most disturbs me and what I’m trying to alert the American public about.”

Clapper further claimed in his interview that he is not simply jumping on the book-writing bandwagon, but that the loss of what he describes as the “beacon of truth” is what motivated him to write the book.

He also emphasized that US President Donald Trump is not the problem with America, referring to him as a symbol of the wider issue, “where now it’s fashionable to have alternative facts or where ‘truth is relative,’ to quote [Trump’s attorney] Rudy Giuliani.”

‘Iran nuclear deal aimed at securing Israel’

During his Bloomberg interview Clapper also pointed to what he thought were successes of former president Barack Obama, specifically citing the Iran nuclear agreement, saying: “I do think that it enhanced stability and peace in the Mideast, and actually enhanced Israel's security.”

He further insisted, however, that the only reason for Trump’s opposition to the deal is that Obama coined it. “It's most regrettable that just because Obama did it, the current president has to undo it,” he said.

Syria: Obama’s biggest failure

As to the Obama administration’s biggest failure, Clapper pointed to Washington’s efforts to destabilize and overthrow Syria’s government of President Bashar al-Assad, describing it as “the most intractable problem.”

“It was just hard to do anything about it (Syria), and it wasn't for lack of effort or thought or a lack of having meetings about it, but that it was just an intractable, insoluble issue. And I think the current administration is finding it the same way,” he further emphasize.

His remarks on Syria come just days after President Assad stated in an RT interview that Washington and its “puppets” in the region tried but failed to destroy Syria, and that the US military will eventually be forced out of the country.

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