The CIA helped install Saddam Hussein to power in Iraq, campus activists declared Wednesday during a protest in North Hall.

Defying the CIA’s presence on the UW-Madison campus, members of the Student Labor Action Coalition, Campus Anti-War Network and UW-Madison’s chapter of the International Socialist Organization distributed anti-CIA literature to UW-Madison students.

The leaflets detailed the CIA’s “atrocities against democracy,” according to SLAC member and UW-Madison senior Nick Limbeck, including allegations that the government agency opposed Iraq’s attempts at democracy throughout history.

CAWN member and UW-Madison graduate student Elizabeth Wrigley-Field said the group chanted an anti-CIA message and exited the informational session, hoping to reach out to anti-war students on campus.

Wrigley-Field said she felt the CIA’s role was to intervene unnecessarily in foreign policy, muddling international relations.

“We should shudder to think what they do in secret,” she said.

According to Limbeck, the CIA has been responsible for installing dictators who slaughter people by “the hundreds of thousands,” like Chile’s Augusto Pinochet.

Limbeck cited the CIA’s involvement in attempting to prevent Salvador Allende from becoming Chile’s president in 1970 and the agency’s alleged involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup and removal of Allende from power.

The CIA is also rumored to have trained and/or funded Osama bin Laden, according to Limbeck, and also may be responsible for keeping Haiti, an impoverished, Third-World country, by controlling its elections historically.

“The list goes on and on,” Limbeck said. “We just wanted to confront the CIA with some of its atrocities.”

According to Limbeck, there was not a large student response to the protesting.

However, Limbeck said after he asked one of the CIA officers about the agency’s involvement in Iraq, the officer said, “I am not here to debate the agency’s involvement in conspiracy theories.”

The CIA representatives are on campus roughly three times a semester to inform interested students of the agency’s opportunities and to conduct on-campus interviews.