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Alex Lo
SCMP Columnist
My Take
by Alex Lo
My Take
by Alex Lo

Hong Kong is a perfect target for CIA

  • A new study published in Foreign Affairs journal may shed light on how influence operations including covert manipulation of local media could have been carried out by the US intelligence agency
One key justification for the new national security law has been the need to counter foreign interference. The opposition and protest movement used to deny any foreign links. More recently, though, some of their key representatives haven’t bothered to hide their connections, as they openly consort, most notably, with the United States to threaten sanctions and other punishments against Hong Kong and the rest of China.

But such are overt cooperation with a foreign power. What about covert operations? Well, it’s hard to know, since by definition, they are hidden from view. However, a new article in Foreign Affairs may shed light on the issue.

For his research, David Shimer, a doctoral candidate in international relations at the University of Oxford, interviewed many current and former CIA operatives, including a former director, Leon Panetta.

Panetta admitted to Shimer that the CIA had conducted media manipulation and other influence operations in places where the US was working against their governments.

Explainer: How will China enact Hong Kong national security law?

“He said he never ‘got into’ altering votes directly or spreading disinformation,” Shimer wrote in the study, titled “When the CIA interferes in foreign elections: a modern-day history of American covert action”.

“But on rare occasions, his CIA did influence foreign media outlets ahead of elections in order to ‘change attitudes within the country’.

“The CIA’s method, Panetta went on, was to ‘acquire media within a country or within a region that could very well be used for being able to deliver’ a specific message or work to ‘influence those that may own elements of the media to be able to cooperate, work with you in delivering that message’ … The programmes that Panetta described complemented overt propaganda campaigns.”

03:08

Hongkongers fearing national security law see BN(O) passports as sign of hope

Hongkongers fearing national security law see BN(O) passports as sign of hope

Panetta didn’t name the places that were so targeted, but his descriptions may sound eerily familiar to many of us in Hong Kong.

In this context, what Apple Daily boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying said recently about foreign interference may be relevant. The video clip, which has since gone viral, was an interview he conducted in Mandarin on May 12, with Yahoo!TV in Taiwan.

“I really want the CIA,” he told his interviewers. “I really want American interference, I really want British interference, I really want foreign interference. Why? Their support is the only reason we can continue. Foreign interference is what we really need to continue.”

The irony, however, is that foreign interference, whether covert or overt, has made national security legislation inevitable.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Hong Kong is a perfect target for the CIA
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