Covert U.S. regime change actions
The United States government has been in-
volved in and assisted in overthrowing many
governments without the use of overt military
force, primarily through the Central Intelli-
gence Agency.
Introduction
According to a variety of sources,[1][2][3] the
United States of America government has
forcibly overthrown, and attempted to over-
throw, foreign governments perceived as hos-
tile, and replaced them with new ones, ac-
tions that has become known as regime
change.[1][2][3] It has been noted that govern-
ments targeted by the U.S. have included
democratically-elected governments, thus the
target "regimes" are not necessarily authorit-
arian governments or juntas, but in some
cases are replaced by such dictatorships. In
other cases dictatorships have been replaced
by democracies.
This article covers regime change actions
by the United States government, not regime
change actions in or against the U.S. (see,
e.g., the Business Plot of 1933 to overthrow
the U.S. government, or the conspiracy to as-
sassinate President Lincoln and members of
his cabinet).
Regime change has been attempted
through direct involvement of U.S. operat-
ives, the funding and training of insurgency
groups within these countries, anti-regime
propaganda campaigns, coup d’états, and
other, often illegal, activities usually conduc-
ted as operations by the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA). The U.S. has also accom-
plished regime change by direct U.S. military
action, see List of United States military his-
tory events, instead of by covert means.
It has been argued that non-transparent
United States government agencies who
work in secret and sometimes mislead or do
not fully implement the decisions of elected
civilian leaders has been an important com-
ponent of many such operations.[4]
For example the historian Spencer R.
Weart has argued that the US has more sup-
ported coups against democracies that it
perceived as nondemocracies, such as Com-
munist states, or turning into such.[4]
Notwithstanding a histor