How to overthrow a government

Having studied the techniques of the CIA and related organizations, I am pleased to announce the following simple steps in overthrowing a democratically elected government.

1. Find some opposition...ANY opposition in the country. Your best bet is some rich members of a former oligarchy or former military. Begin giving them funds, and, start training some of them in case you need to move in the direction of military action. I understand there is a nice training facility in the Florida Everglades that is available as all the Haitian death-squadders who trained there are now busy destroying Haiti.

2. Come up with some reasons that the current government must go. The reasons could be true or not, that is irrelevant. A popular one to use would be economic issues, which goes well with number 4, below.

3. Buy and/or infiltrate significant media outlets. Use these outlets to whip up a broader backlash against the leaders.

4. Meanwhile, use overt and covert means to destabilize the economy. In Haiti, Bush simply held back 500 million dollars in aid already earmarked for that country. There are other ways to destabilize currency, including working with rich elites within the country who will be happy to help. A last resort would be an actual embargo of the country, though that's a tad obvious. Still, most Americans won't notice. We had economic sanctions on Iraq for over 12 years and yet when the second Gulf Massacre ended, news media were still talking about how Saddam had ruined the economy.

5. Infiltrate some unions. You'll need some protesters in the streets. You can pay protesters to come. That's fine.

6. Stage some opposition rallies. If possible, shoot some of the protesters and blame this on the government. This worked well in the first Chavez coup attempt. Obviously, do not tell the protesters of your intentions.

7. Ramp up the anti-government rhetoric from the media outlets you control. Be completely outrageous. Call for demonstrations. Slander government officials. Do whatever it takes. The goal is now not just to spread negative information about the government but to force a response, such as having one of your outlets shut down. Then, violation of free speech gets added to the list of grievances. You can then have some "moderates" come along and say, "Well, I wasn't really that sympathetic to the opposition, but when the government began shutting down opposition media, I realized (insert name of leader here) had to go." If you need to, pay some moderates to say this. Or some actors. This is primarily for U.S. consumption anyway.

8. Go to the CIA rolodex, and find out who the Agency controls in domestic media and get them to begin reporting on the opposition movement in ways that make it look legitimate. Be sure these media outlets blame all violence on the current government. The New York Times, FOX and CNN are good places to start. A good example of this in action is the case of Haiti. Despite the fact that the "opposition" are made of U.S. trained former Haitian military and death squads with horrible human rights records, they are called "rebels." Aristide supporters are called "armed thugs." This never fails. Don't worry that some other media will find out the truth and report it. Just make sure your headlines are bigger and get out first. Plant some stories called "The Truth about (insert name of leader here)" and make a lot of shit up. My favorite example was the "voodoo room" they found after they overthrew Noriega. It had "black magic paraphernalia AND drugs".

9. Don't actually kidnap the leader. He should be killed, as was Allende in Chile. Otherwise, they will talk. You see how much trouble Aristide was causing before they found the cell phone someone had slipped him. If it is a Caribbean or African state you are overthrowing, you might want to make sure Reps. Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel are out of the country while it's all going on.

10. Keep your own military involvement to a minimum. Some special forces in local dress is fine, but make sure there is alot of chaos before sending forces in overtly. Usually, the best approach is to wait until the leader is deposed and then send in "peacekeeping forces." Make sure you wait until the leader is actually deposed, though. It would be awfully embarrassing to be keeping the peace for the leader you are trying to get rid of.

11. Be sure to, at least at first, condemn the coup attempts, as Powell demonstrated in the opening weeks of the Haiti operation. You can switch sides later and no one will question you.

12. It can get messy, but know that, once it's accomplished, any talk that it was a U.S. orchestrated coup becomes a "conspiracy theory" and will be relegated to irrelevant blogs and leftist or conspiracy websites.
alt.conspiracy cannot hurt you.

Well, that's it. Simple. If you want to study how it works, read about Haiti and keep watching in Venezuela. Chavez is tough, but just about anything he can do from now on will simply "prove" how anti-democratic he is and how he "really brought the coup on himself".