Meanwhile, U.S. military intelligence and its successor organization, the Central Intelligence Agency, meddled in Japanese politics, helping to facilitate the rise to power of former suspected Class-A war criminal Nobusuke Kishi. C.I.A. funding and logistical support helped Kishi orchestrate the unification of the Japan's conservative parties into the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955, thus establishing the so-called 1955 System of conservative, anti-communist dominance of Japanese domestic politics. It was only after trusted partner Kishi became prime minister in 1957 that the U.S. considered it possible to revise the Security Treaty. From the 1950s through the 1970s, the C.I.A. would spend millions of dollars attempting to influence elections in Japan to favor the LDP against more leftist parties such as the Socialists and the Communists, although these expenditures would not be revealed until the mid-1990s when they were exposed by "The New York Times".