How did the CIA play a role in instigating the Hungarian uprising?

Answer 1

The uprising began on October 23, 1956 with a student demonstration which quickly turned into a full-scale revolt across the country as militias formed to battle the State Security apparatus. The Soviet puppet regime fell, but on November 4, Soviet tanks rolled in taking the country back after 6 days when expected US intervention failed to materialize.

In 1958 the CIA reported that, "This breath-taking and undreamed-of state of affairs not only caught many Hungarians off-guard, it also caught us off-guard, for which we can hardly be blamed since we had no inside information, little outside information, and could not read the Russians' minds."

But it was far from "undreamed of". To get to the truth of the matter, we need to go back to June, 1953 and a NSC report titled, Interim United States Objectives and Actions to Exploit the Unrest in the Satellite States.

Point 2a of that report states, "In East Germany and other satellite areas, where feasible, covertly stimulate acts and attitudes of resistance short of mass rebellion aimed at putting pressure on Communist authority for specific reforms, discrediting such authority and provoking open Soviet intervention."

So whilst the mass rebellion itself may not have been intended, and therefore came as a surprise, elsewhere in the report, it is also noted that the nourishment of resistance in Satellite countries should be done "without compromising it's spontaneous nature". In any case, the ultimate objective was achieved; to wit, "provoking open Soviet intervention."

The only reason for wanting to provoke the Soviets into such an action would be to bolster support for anti-Communist actions - which in turn fills the coffers of the pentagon and all the private contractors of war machinery.