Retired U.S. Army Colonel and former Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State (2001–2005), Lawrence Wilkerson, discusses how the CIA utilised the media and NGOs.

In a podcast with Glenn Dissen, a professor at the University of Eastern Norway, Wilkerson revealed that similar practices were being carried out in several countries, including Ukraine and Georgia.

“We were buying newspaper editors, we were buying newspapers, we were buying television stations, we were buying communicators in general, we were siccing the NGOs on them without their knowing it, lots of time, they’d been infiltrated by the CIA. We were teaching them, we were weaponising liberal democracy.

We did it in Georgia, we did it everywhere, and we were very successful. We were very successful. I remember some people asking me, “Why do you think these people suddenly cast aside neutrality and wanted to be members of NATO?”

Would you like to know why? We built their governments, we paid for their governments, just as surely as Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon paid for the labour union heads, the newspaper editors, the business leaders in Chile to get rid of Santiago,” Lawrence Wilkerson said.