Us Engineered Lebanese Elections Of

US-Engineered Lebanese Elections of 1957

Josh Buermann of Flagrancy to Reason has dug up a printed source for the allegation I reported from a former USG official, that the CIA engineered the 1957 Lebanese elections (and so helped to provoke the mini-civil war of 1958). He writes:

From the March 31st, 1997 New York Times:

In Lebanon in 1957, the CIA supported Christian parties with U.S. government money and donations by American oil companies that wanted to insure a friendly government in Lebanon, a pivotal Middle Eastern country.

Wilbur Crane Eveland, a CIA officer, later described driving his gold and white DeSoto onto the grounds of President Camille Chamoun’s residence in Beirut and delivering political payoffs.

“Throughout the elections, I traveled regularly to the presidential palace with a briefcase full of Lebanese pounds, then returned late at night to the embassy with an empty twin case” to be replenished with CIA money, Eveland wrote in “Ropes of Sand” in 1980, a history of American policy failures in the Middle East.