Last week, Reuters reported that CIA Director William Burns explicitly urged top Brazilian officials to stop calling into question their country’s ability to carry out a free and fair election. “Burns was making it clear that elections were not an issue that they should mess with,” the Reuters source is quoted as saying. “It wasn’t a lecture, it was a conversation.”
That the CIA would apparently weigh in on an upcoming foreign election on the side of democracy struck many as a welcome shift from a long history of supporting anti-democratic movements and individuals around the world.
Others found the news to be either unconvincing, self-serving, or ridiculous. The point, however, is not that the CIA has suddenly become “the good guys,” as some skeptical commentators put it. It’s that the CIA — and, by extension, the U.S. government — sees no benefit to American interests in President Jair Bolsonaro calling into question the results of Brazil’s 2022 election.
This is a far cry from the last major moment of CIA intervention in Brazil.
On March 30, 1964, according to documents made available by the National Security Archive, the CIA station chief in Brazil correctly reported that “a revolution by anti-Goulart forces will definitely get underway this week, probably within the next few days.” João Goulart...
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