Sen. Bernie Sanders once called the CIA a "dangerous" agency that needed to be abolished,
Politico reports.
His incendiary statement came in 1974 when Sanders, then 33, was running for the U.S. Senate as a candidate on the anti-war Liberty Union Party ticket and addressed a crowd in Vermont.
"[The CIA is] a dangerous institution that has got to go," said Sanders, who claimed the agency was accountable to no one "except right-wing lunatics who use it to prop up fascist dictatorships."
Politico reports that Sanders went after the CIA again years later, when during a C-SPAN interview in 1989, he said every "revolution for the poor people" in Latin or Central America had been "overthrown by the CIA" or another U.S. agency.
Sanders, a far-left socialist, took second place after Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, after defeating her earlier this month in the New Hampshire primary.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.