(Graphic, including highlight, by Lee Ferran / Code and Dagger. Original background image courtesy of the U.S. State Department.)
Even before President Donald Trump’s latest push to overturn the election he lost – recently revealed in a stunning , potentially criminal phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state – two former senior U.S. intelligence officers mused about what American officials abroad would be writing back to headquarters if this was all playing out in a foreign capital.
“This is EXACTLY what I’d write cables about from the middle East,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA station chief and vocal Trump critic, said on Twitter in December, referring to the reported controversial make-up of the group of people speaking to Trump about the election.
This is EXACTLY what I’d write cables about from the middle East. “Who’s who in the zoo” re the nutty influencers around Saddam, Bashar, Qaddafi...never thought 🇺🇸 would rival the lunacy of the banana republics/autocracies I followed... https://t.co/9RO5zVHtnT
— Marc Polymeropoulos (@Mpolymer) December 22, 2020
After former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn suggested Trump could use the military to “rerun” the election in some states, former senior intelligence official and Hayden Center Director Larry Pfeiffer told SpyTalk, “This is the kind of behavior that gets intelligence officers at embassies writing cables home about impending coup plotting. Usually those are Americans writing the cables. Not this time.” (Each of the 10 living former U.S. defense secretaries apparently took the possibility of military involvement seriously enough that they felt compelled to write in an op-ed Sunday arguing that the military should have no role in changing the election outcome.)
MORE: Spies on Flynn-Trump Coup Talk (SpyTalk)
Of course, U.S. spies and diplomats posted abroad have written cables about foreign governments in crisis for decades. One cable in particular describes a president who refuses to acknowledge a political defeat and uses dubious legal strategies to try to get the election overturned, even after losing before the nation’s supreme court. It happened in Niger in 1995.
The “confidential” State Department cable, written in February of that year and currently posted on the CIA’s public database, came from the U.S. Embassy in Niamey and reported with some wry humor the latest legal effort by then-President Mahamane Ousmane aimed at “overturning the election results.”
The race in question was a parliamentary one in which Ousmane’s party had been defeated. His newest weapon, the cable says, was the notorious French lawyer Jacques Verges.
“Question: What does President Ousmane now have in common with Carlos ‘the Jackal’ and Klaus Barbie? Answer: Maitre Jacques Verges, the French attorney who has achieved notoriety for his legal defense of the indefensible,” the cable says. Carlos the Jackal refers to terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez. Barbie was a Nazi Gestapo chief also known as the “butcher of Lyon.”
The report indicates Ousmane had already lost an election-related legal challenge in the nation’s supreme court, and the cable says that Verges’ involvement was “perceived as a political ploy aimed at intimidating the court.”posted
(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
It goes on to analyze Ousmane’s motives but notes that Nigeriens were growing impatient with his refusal to work with the incoming government.
“Comment: President Ousmane – by [his] apparent unwillingness to accept the verdict of the courts on the legality of the elections and his obstinate insistence on his constitutional right to reject the opposition majority’s candidate for prime minister – is running real political risks,” the cable says. “President Ousmane’s intent may be to portray himself and his coalition as the defenders of the rule of law and constitutional democracy. But Nigeriens increasingly are frustrated by the political machinations and the consequent lack of progress towards forming a new government. End comment.”
Democracy was especially fragile in Niger at the time, as Ousmane was the country’s first democratically elected president since the former French colony declared its independence 35 years before. It wouldn’t last.
It’s unclear what impact Verges might’ve had on re-litigating the election, but a broader political crisis continued for months as Ousmane battled with the opposition party’s prime minister. Then, in January 1996, they were both ousted in a violent military coup. Niger has struggled to establish a stable democracy since.
This year, however, could be the first in Niger’s history in which there is a peaceful transfer of power between two democratically elected presidents, according to Al Jazeera. After a successful general election, which was monitored and lauded by the U.S. embassy, a run-off is planned between two final presidential candidates, one of whom is Ousmane.
In its statement of praise, the U.S. Embassy in Niamey reminded Nigerien political parties to “use the judicial procedures in place for electoral dispute resolution and to ensure their members remain patient and calm throughout the election certification process, voicing any objects through peaceful and legal means.”
In the U.S., Congress is expected to officially count the Electoral College votes and affirm President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory on Wednesday – but not without objections from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters on Capitol Hill, and likely protests on the streets.
In the meantime, and after Trump’s phone call with the Georgia official emerged, former CIA officer-turned-lawmaker Rep. Abigail Spanberger said foreign officers would be busy writing their own reports about the fault lines widening in America’s system of government.
“I can tell you this – every foreign diplomat and intel officer posted to the United States is surely writing cables back home tonight about the fragility of America’s democracy and the depravity of her President,” the Democratic lawmaker tweeted Sunday.
I can tell you this — every foreign diplomat and intel officer posted to the United States is surely writing cables back home tonight about the fragility of America’s democracy and the depravity of her President. 1/8
— Abigail Spanberger (@SpanbergerVA07) January 4, 2021
Trump has yet to address the leaked phone call with Georgia officials, but he has claimed since his election loss – and long before it as well – that the election was “rigged.” In more than 50 court cases, including two that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, courts have found purported evidence of election fraud to be uncompelling or have dismissed the cases on procedural grounds.
PRIMARY SOURCE: State Dept. Cable From Feb. 1995 (CIA.gov)
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