US complicity in coup - Abrams, Reich up to old tricks?

[vox]

Published on Sunday, April 21, 2002 in the Observer of London

Venezuela Coup Linked to Bush Team

Specialists in the 'dirty wars' of the Eighties encouraged the plotters who tried to topple President Chavez

by Ed Vulliamy in New York

The failed coup in Venezuela was closely tied to senior officials in the US government, The Observer has established. They have long histories in the 'dirty wars' of the 1980s, and links to death squads working in Central America at that time.

Washington's involvement in the turbulent events that briefly removed left-wing leader Hugo Chavez from power last weekend resurrects fears about US ambitions in the hemisphere.

It also also deepens doubts about policy in the region being made by appointees to the Bush administration, all of whom owe their careers to serving in the dirty wars under President Reagan.

One of them, Elliot Abrams, who gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup, has a conviction for misleading Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra affair.

The Bush administration has tried to distance itself from the coup. It immediately endorsed the new government under businessman Pedro Carmona. But the coup was sent dramatically into reverse after 48 hours.

Now officials at the Organization of American States and other diplomatic sources, talking to The Observer, assert that the US administration was not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it, presuming it to be destined for success.

The visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources, 'several months ago', and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend. The visitors were received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich.

Reich is a right-wing Cuban-American who, under Reagan, ran the Office for Public Diplomacy. It reported in theory to the State Department, but Reich was shown by congressional investigations to report directly to Reagan's National Security Aide, Colonel Oliver North, in the White House.

North was convicted and shamed for his role in Iran-Contra, whereby arms bought by busting US sanctions on Iran were sold to the Contra guerrillas and death squads, in revolt against the Marxist government in Nicaragua.

Reich also has close ties to Venezuela, having been made ambassador to Caracas in 1986. His appointment was contested both by Democrats in Washington and political leaders in the Latin American country. The objections were overridden as Venezuela sought access to the US oil market.

Reich is said by OAS sources to have had 'a number of meetings with Carmona and other leaders of the coup' over several months. The coup was discussed in some detail, right down to its timing and chances of success, which were deemed to be excellent.

On the day Carmona claimed power, Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin America and the Caribbean to his office. He said the removal of Chavez was not a rupture of democratic rule, as he had resigned and was 'responsible for his fate'. He said the US would support the Carmona government.

But the crucial figure around the coup was Abrams, who operates in the White House as senior director of the National Security Council for 'democracy, human rights and international operations'. He was a leading theoretician of the school known as 'Hemispherism', which put a priority on combating Marxism in the Americas.

It led to the coup in Chile in 1973, and the sponsorship of regimes and death squads that followed it in Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and elsewhere. During the Contras' rampage in Nicaragua, he worked directly to North.

Congressional investigations found Abrams had harvested illegal funding for the rebellion. Convicted for withholding information from the inquiry, he was pardoned by George Bush senior.

A third member of the Latin American triangle in US policy-making is John Negroponte, now ambassador to the United Nations. He was Reagan's ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 when a US-trained death squad, Battalion 3-16, tortured and murdered scores of activists. A diplomatic source said Negroponte had been 'informed that there might be some movement in Venezuela on Chavez' at the beginning of the year.

More than 100 people died in events before and after the coup. In Caracas on Friday a military judge confined five high-ranking officers to indefinite house arrest pending formal charges of rebellion.

Chavez's chief ideologue - Guillermo Garcia Ponce, director of the Revolutionary Political Command - said dissident generals, local media and anti-Chavez groups in the US had plotted the president's removal.

'The most reactionary sectors in the United States were also implicated in the conspiracy,' he said.

[El Che]

Interesting, could you give us a link to The Observer? seems like a nice source. And like I`ve said before, I have a feeling the "most reactionary sectors in the United States" aren`t through with Chavez yet. As for the long list of terrorist crimes the US is responsible for in south america, although they ignore the world court and refuse to take responsibility for their actions we will never forget, and as Fidel once said of him self, history will judge them, though the verdict will be different.

[revolutionary spirit]

so what?hugo chavez guy got back in?

[deimos]

I knew it!Chavez wanted to nationalize the oil productions!The end of the usa oil-operations in venezuela!

[vox]

El Che,

Actually, I get a lot of articles from Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/). That's where I got this one. It's one of the places I check everyday.

Revolutionary Spirit,

Yep, Chavez was released last Sunday. Where ya been? :-)

As they say in the States: back by popular demand.

vox

[Vostok]

Check out this site:

http://www.vheadline.com/0204/11830.asp

Article:

VHeadline.com : Monday, April 15, 2002 -- The fix is out! The biggest question now facing the CIA concerning Venezuela is how to recork champagne.

Message from Venezuela to Bush:
This Ain't Florida, Gringo!
The New York Times sent out two special e-mail bulletins when Chavez Frias was temporarily driven from power but for some reason didn't seem to feel that the reversal of a US-backed coup, the day after it took place, was worthy of special notice.

All the US cable networks and Sunday morning network news shows fixated on Colin Powell's this morning because they wouldn't have had time to cover his meeting with Arafat and reverse all the lies that they disseminated concerning Venezuela.

Nationalist procurement deviser Condasleeza Rice did tell NBC resident asskiss Tim Russert that Chavez has "been given another chance to right his ship." No need to worry there Sleeza, it is much easier to keep ships on course when they are divested of mutineers.

It must be very scary for Rice to see collaborators brought to justice.

In just a sentence Rice told a lie big enough to spend a lifetime analyzing and refuting. Her implication was that Chavez was given his chance by the United States and implied that he was somehow put on notice by the scurrilous attempt to subvert Venezuelan democracy. The truth is that Rice and Bush and the rest of the slime that infests the executive branch of the US government are the ones with a lesson to learn here. They made their move and it failed in spectacular fashion. Chavez Frias was supposed to be in jail or dead for representing the will of the people rather than kowtowing to the greed of corporate riffraff. Instead the traitors will go on trial and Venezuelan democracy is stronger than ever.

Bush hasn't failed this badly since the last time he took a breathalizer.

Chavez Frias knows his "chance" emanates from the same source that made him president of Venezuela in the first place -- the people. They stood up to US covert imperialism, they told the devil he's a liar and they deep-sixed the corporate junta that took illegal control of their country. As an American I must say I am deeply impressed by the Venezuelan people, not to mention humbled.

The US made a big mistake in Venezuela -- it planted lies and distortions in the US corporate media meant to besmirch Chavez Frias but it failed to remember that very few people in Venezuela read the New York Times to find out what is happening in their own country. So despite Wolf Blitzer's best insights, the people knew that they were being robbed and they defended what was theirs and routed the intruders.

The Court-appointed Bush Administration got its smarmy ass kicked by a country that will not allow the illegitimate leader of the USA to impose an equally bogus president upon them. This is a great, great, great day. Just tremendous.

You lose, Bush. You lose CIA. But I repeat myself.

And now that the cards are on the table, Venezuela's chances are great to remain an autonomous democracy controlled by its people. The US has tipped its bloody hand and it's now clear that lies and prefab insurrection, constructed in Langley and assembled in Caracas, aren't enough to drive democracy from Venezuela. This gritty sovereign state is lead by a man who owes the people everything and they are the only special interest he must service. The wealth of its natural resources will enrich the nation rather than a few privileged quislings. A wonderful precedent has been set.

The people of the USA are so politically illiterate that they cannot understand that the words "leftist" and "democracy" go together. The truth Americans need to learn from Venezuela is simple -- democracy means that the will of the people must be respected. The average person in the world is poor so the average person in the world is naturally going to favor the idea that there is a need for redistribution of wealth. So if the world were truly democratic, like Venezuela, there would be a lot more redistribution of wealth.

This does not mean people want Stalinist police state aberrations of socialism, it means they just want to be paid a living wage for their labor and have basic human rights like health care, good nutrition, literacy, a clean environment, public transportation and decent housing. It means they do not want to live in squalor so that parasitic fat cats can engorge themselves on their very lives.

In other words, everyone should get a home before anyone gets a summer home.
If that seems like a dangerous idea to you, then you better watch yourself, Fat Cat, because a big dog just moved into the neighborhood.

Viva Chavez! Viva Democratic Venezuela!

© 2002 Barry Crimmins


More stuff:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/april0203.htm...tml#041802144am (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/april0203.html#041802144am)

The key mistake made by most people who endorse conspiracy theories is assuming that discrepancies in different accounts of a single event point to deception or the existence of some hidden truth behind the maze of contradictions. The messiness and ambiguity of real-life events is what they don't figure on. Military men call it the fog of war. But the same concept applies to everyday life, particularly to its more hectic and confusing moments. Reality, you might say, tends to be rather over-determined.

The various accounts surfacing of the Venezuelan coup and the United States government's reaction to it brings this to mind. Yet there is still something odd and perplexing about the drifting accounts being provided by administration officials. Every day there's a new detail. Each new detail is provided to exonerate administration officials but as often as not they tend rather to inculpate them.

For instance, discussions at which US officials told Venezuela's future coup plotters that they would not support a coup. Well, how'd the topic come up exactly? Or Otto Reich's statement that he tried to prevent 'interim' President Carmona from dissolving the National Assembly. That sounds as much like coup-management as trying to support democracy.

I've never thought that the US was 'behind' this coup in a strong sense. But administration officials seem to be implicated in it in various small and -- let's just say it -- incompetent ways.

Let me point out another interesting discrepancy. Tomorrow's Washington Post has what strikes me as an extremely ingenuous article by Scott Wilson, based largely on an interview with 'interim' President Carmona. Wilson says Carmona only got the job because he was the only guy who didn't want it. Perhaps Wilson needs to read up on literary and political tropes -- I think that line warranted a touch more skepticism.

Much of the piece looks like it was dictated by Carmona's post-coup spin-doctor (you know, he's just a bespectacled economist, happened upon this coup thing...).

Anyway, let me point out this discrepancy that strikes me as important.

In Wilson's article Carmona says he visited Washington in November to meet with John Maisto, Bush's Latin America guy at NSC, Energy Secretary Spence Abraham and Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich.

Then Carmona said he "next spoke with U.S. officials Saturday morning at the presidential palace when he received the recently arrived U.S. ambassador, Charles Shapiro, and the Spanish ambassador."

But if Wilson or his editors would have read today's edition of an obscure metropolitan daily called The New York Times they might have noticed the following contradiction. The Times article quotes a State Department official saying that Assistant Secretary Reich placed an urgent call to Carmona on Friday, one day earlier. It's a pretty big difference since the coup took place in the overnight hours between Thursday and Friday.

Why wasn't this discrepancy pointed out in the interview or at least in the article? Good question.

As it happens, I just now notice that tomorrow the Times reports that the State Department has now changed its story -- 'revised' is the term they use. Reich didn't contact Carmona on Friday. He asked Ambassador Shapiro to talk to Carmona. And Shapiro talked to Carmona on Friday. First, that's a pretty big change in the story. Second, the discrepancy in the day when contact is made still stands, even though the personnel is different.

Then there's another strange thing that pops out from the apparently hastily written and indifferently copyedited Post story. Read these four grafs nestled more than half way down into the article ...

At least three people who landed key jobs within the provisional government have acknowledged that they met with U.S. officials in the past six months. One of them was Vice Adm. Carlos Molina, who said that he had a meeting with a U.S. official outside the U.S. Embassy within the past six weeks.
But U.S. officials say that although they were aware of the growing dissent, they sought to distance the United States from opposition figures that might be plotting a coup. In November, the U.S. ambassador at the time, Donna Hrinak, took the unusual step of ordering the embassy's military attache to stop meeting with a group of dissident officers, according to a U.S. official.

That group, according to a Western diplomat here, included Molina, Air Force Col. Pedro Soto and several other officers who in February publicly demand Chavez's removal. The U.S. diplomat said Soto and Molina each received $100,000 from a Miami bank account for denouncing Chavez.

Soto and Molina could not be reached for comment today. Molina is under arrest and was the subject of a military hearing today. Soto is among three officers seeking asylum in the Bolivian Embassy.

Hold on a second. They each got $100,000 from a bank account in Miami? What's that about? This really gives new meaning to the phrase 'burying your lede.' The article just drops it there and provides no explanation or discussion. But this seems like something well worth discussing, doesn't it? Two members of the Venezuelan military who later participated in the coup each got $100,000 from a bank account in the United States "for denouncing Chavez."
That's a bit of money. Whose was it? And how does this American diplomat know about it?

Also, let's be frank: Miami isn't just any American city. One of America's big beefs with Chavez is that he's close to Fidel Castro. So I think you can assume that the Cuban exiles in South Florida don't much care for him. And again, let's be frank, Otto Reich, the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America is himself a Cuban exile with close ties to the anti-Castro firebrands in South Florida. Not to put too fine a point on it, but whose money was that?

If a "U.S. Diplomat" -- a good catch-all phrase for someone who wants to remain both very anonymous and very credible -- knows that two of the key coup plotters got paid off for turning against Chavez, and that the money came from a US bank account, isn't this worth looking into?


-- Josh Marshall

[chupacabra]

Well now they are saying that there are Al-Qaeda terrorist cells in Ecuador and as Bush's so-called "Waron Terrorism" that the US will fund govts like Colombia, Ecuador, with $$ to fight the terrorists. We all know these are terrorists, right? These are left-winged socialists and communists they want to get rid of. Remember how many time the FBI and CIA wanted to get Castro and Che? This pathetic government is so transparent. Don't they know by now that the undercurrent of Che's legacy runs deeper than any group they will seize. There will always be revolutionaries in latin america and it;s about time the US learned this and learned to stick their nose out of countries where they don;t belong!

[vox]

Published on Thursday, April 25, 2002 in the New York Times

U.S. Bankrolling Is Under Scrutiny for Ties to Chávez Ouster
by Christopher Marquis

WASHINGTON — In the past year, the United States channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to American and Venezuelan groups opposed to President Hugo Chávez, including the labor group whose protests led to the Venezuelan president's brief ouster this month.

The funds were provided by the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit agency created and financed by Congress. As conditions deteriorated in Venezuela and Mr. Chávez clashed with various business, labor and media groups, the endowment stepped up its assistance, quadrupling its budget for Venezuela to more than $877,000.

Full Story (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0425-03.htm)

For those not familiar with the NED, here's a little background:

"The NED is one of the many institutions of the Cold War that not only managed to survive the fall of the Soviet Union, but also to grow in power and prestige. Americans are barely aware of its existence or, if they are, the magic word "democracy" in its name frees it from serious scrutiny. Founded in 1983, the NED took over functions that were once the responsibility of the CIA. During the early decades of the Cold War, the CIA would intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries with the objective of thwarting Communist influence. In "democratic" European countries the CIA would covertly promote center-left political parties, non-Communist trade unions and even highbrow journals. In "non-democratic," usually non-European, countries CIA operations tended to be a little nastier. Following the embarrassing revelations about the CIA during the 1970s, a lot of its hitherto covert operations now received open Congressional appropriations. The NED thus became the successor organization to the CIA covert operations arm once run by the likes of William Colby and Frank Wisner."

Read More (http://www.tenc.net/articles/szamuely/neda2.htm)

vox

[chupacabra]

Vox--
thanks for the info. . I think more people need to know what is going on!

[vox]

I've been thinking about what to put up on my site, and I think it's going to be stuff like this. Rather than simply linking to various sources, I'll create a kind of synthesis that attempts to tie all of these things together. The big picture is often hidden in the details. You know, first the Bush team celebrates the coup, then Ari Fleischer stated that administration officials told Chavez’s opponents the U.S. “would not support a coup.” Now it comes out that the US was funding, through a rather shadowy organization, Chavez's opponents. Plus you have Abrams and Reich in high positions, and their history is well known.

Put all of it together and it makes for interesting reading, I think. But then, I'm a geek. :)

vox

[chupacabra]

Vox--
You should be a journalist in Latin America then maybe the people would open their eyes to the real truth.

[Dreadnaht1]

When I first heard about the "Venezuelan Fiasco" and Presidente Hugo Chavez's brief removal from office I instantly thought the CIA was involved. There was very little doubt in my mind that they were behind the whole thing especially when they denied it several times. So 3 decades after Che's death the CIA is still up to the same old shit protecting '[inter]national security' and Amerikkka's backyard. Disgusting.

-Dread

[Dreadnaht1]

I'd also like to add that I think Chavez is an excellent President and that Venezuela is proving to be the next Cuba. I mean how can someone who likes Simon Bolivar so much, like Chavez, be a bad person?

[elizquierdista]

Long live the will of the people! Chávez has stood up against the U.S. and continues to do so, although much less because now he's concentrating more on his people and his country. ¡Grande Chávez!

[vox]

chupacabra,

Thanks, but I'm not really qualified for such a job. I just take other people's work and put it together. :)

vox

[vox]

According to a former US intelligence officer, the US Navy assisted in the coup against Chavez.

From the Guardian of London:

Wayne Madsen, a former intelligence officer with the US navy, told the Guardian yesterday that American military attaches had been in touch with members of the Venezuelan military to examine the possibility of a coup.

"I first heard of Lieutenant Colonel James Rogers [the assistant military attaché now based at the US embassy in Caracas] going down there last June to set the ground," Mr Madsen, an intelligence analyst, said yesterday. "Some of our counter-narcotics agents were also involved."

He said that the navy was in the area for operations unconnected to the coup, but that he understood they had assisted with signals intelligence as the coup was played out.

Mr Madsen also said that the navy helped with communications jamming support to the Venezuelan military, focusing on communications to and from the diplomatic missions in Caracas belonging to Cuba, Libya, Iran and Iraq - the four countries which had expressed support for Mr Chavez.

Complete Article (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0429-01.htm)

The more we learn about this, the more it looks like the US was involved, which shouldn't surprise anyone. *So much for Bush's commitment to democracy and freedom, huh?

vox

[I Will Deny You]

Quote: from vox on 12:31 pm on April 29, 2002
So much for Bush's commitment to democracy and freedom, huh?He meant to say oil and money. He just misread the teleprompter. It happens sometimes.

[vox]

Chavez Raises Idea Of U.S. Role in Coup

by Scott Wilson

CARACAS, Venezuela, May 4 -- President Hugo Chavez, who is settling back into governing this oil-rich but socially divided country, raised questions in an interview about a possible U.S. role in a coup last month that he says was an attempt on his life.

His return to the presidential palace three weeks ago has energized his mostly poor supporters, frightened the country's mostly wealthy opposition and left much of Latin America relieved by the resilience of democracy in a part of the world not known for that trait.

Full Story (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0505-06.htm)

Yep, it keeps going on. I'm very curious about the ship, helicopter and plane that mysteriously disappeared from radar as soon as Chavez was returned, especially in light of the last article I posted here from the Guardian.

vox