Niklas quoted The Mission by Tim Weiner
The CIA had been at the heart of almost every American attempt to overthrow foreign governments for more than fifty years, supporting uprisings, subverting rulers, stealing elections. But rarely had its officers conducted covert operations that catapulted the leader of a nation to power. In the cold war, the station chief in the Congo had installed the tyrant Gen. Joseph Mobutu, a coup in Iran had put the imperious Shah on the Peacock Throne, counterinsurgency in the Philippines kept the kleptocrat Ferdinand Marcos secure. These three had reigned for decades, backed by American intelligence, diplomacy, and weapons. The United States supported their brutal and corrupt regimes as bulwarks of anticommunism and American power in Africa and the Middle East and Asia. They brought stability, until they fell.
— The Mission by Tim Weiner
