With Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez recently telling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "don't mess with me girl," it is interesting to revisit the Bush administration's involvement in the attempted coup against Chavez in April 2002.
SHOCKED TO FIND COUP PLOTTING IN THIS HEMISPHERE
April 23, 2002
By Wayne Madsen
Speaking on the recent attempted coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, President Bush said his administration made known to the plotters that it was "very clear . . . that we support democracy and did not support any extra-constitutional action." Bush's exclamation of ignorance about the coup seemed to borrow liberally from the movie Casablanca, in which Claude Raines, playing the French police inspector, proclaimed how shocked he was at finding gambling in Rick's Bar.
The facts do not support President Bush's claim of the United States being an innocent bystander to the constitutional upheaval in Venezuela that began in earnest on April 11. Since last June, the CIA had a U.S. Special Operations Forces field grade officer on the ground in Venezuela to start "rounding up the usual suspects" to support a coup against the irksome Chavez. As soon as the CIA decided on what was in store for Chavez, it was a mere matter of time before Venezuela's business syndicates, pro-U.S. military officers, Catholic Church hierarchy, and selected leaders in the oil workers' unions launched their uprising.
The retrogressive nature of the Bush administration, packed with the Iran-contra "stars" like Otto Reich, John Negroponte, and even Elliott Abrams and John Poindexter, sends a clear message to Latin America that America does not countenance leaders who get out of line. Chavez's forays to Cuba, Iraq, Iran, and Libya made him an honorary member of Bush's Axis of Evil. But terrorists and "evil" are not endemic to Venezuela or its OPEC allies. A quick check of Otto Reich's dossier reveals his own close ties to a brutal Cuban terrorist named Orlando Bosch.
Reich, who became Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America over the objection of the U.S. Senate and after a recess appointment, while U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, helped pressure the government to release Bosch from jail after being found guilty for masterminding the 1976 bombing of a civilian Air Cubana Boeing 707. The plane blew up shortly after it took off from Bridgetown, Barbados. Ironically, U.S. Navy divers and medical personnel from the small naval facility on the island were called upon to help recover the bodies from the Caribbean. There were no survivors among the 73 men, women, and children on board. With wonderful people like Reich in Bush's cabinet, so much for the laughable "War against Evil."
For the Reagan-era members of the Bush II administration it must have been like old times in gearing up for the Venezuelan coup. In scenes harkening back to the days of U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras and the Salvadoran death squads, the coup plotters began visiting the U.S. embassy in Caracas; the armed forces chief Gen. Lucas Rincon met with the Pentagon's Latin America affairs chief, Rogelio Pardo-Maurer; and the CIA's shadowy network of continually whoring and hard drinking American and foreign expatriates began their mischief making, albeit in the name of counter-narcotics, along the Colombian-Venezuelan border. They were intent on finding trucks crossing the border carrying weapons to Colombia's FARC guerrillas and then blame Chavez.
But like the failed coup, the attempt to tag Chavez as a FARC supporter - along the same lines as Hitler branding Poland as an aggressor in 1939 - crumbled. Chavez was not sending arms to the FARC and the CIA lost its chance to create a "border incident."
When Chavez replaced the directors of Venezuela's state-owned oil company with his own men, he triggered a trip wire for the Bush administration. Because when anyone threatens the international oil cabal, the Bush people - most of whom are subservient pawns of U.S. oil companies - go into red alert. Days after Chavez shook up Venezuela's oil monopoly, he found himself besieged in his own presidential palace by upper and middle class demonstrators, not the usual people found battling police in the streets.
Shortly after being sent to temporary exile on the island of La Orchila, Chavez, a former Venezuelan paratrooper, spotted a civilian executive jet with U.S. markings parked on the apron near his detainment room. And Chavez must have known about the large U.S. Navy carrier task force, led by the USS George Washington, steaming just north of Venezuela. Students of the coup against Chile's Salvador Allende in 1973 are all painfully aware of the key role played by the U.S. Navy is helping that coup along. Chavez must have quickly put two and two together.
However, the ultra-conservatives in the Bush administration miscalculated. More extreme rightists within the Venezuelan military forced the interim President Pedro Carmona to dissolve the National Assembly and Supreme Court. Support for the coup quickly faded and even Bush's closest friend, Mexico's President Vicente Fox, condemned it. Washington kept blaming Chavez for all the events until it became clear the plan for installing a pro-business puppet government in Caracas had as much chance for success as Enron's future business plans.
As for the CIA, its spokes-puppets claimed any reports that it was involved in the coup were "utter nonsense." Strange that during the coup, one of "The Agency's" top operatives in Caracas sent e-mail to the United States containing upbeat language on the coup's progress, only to be quickly followed by disappointment that the "coup didn't stick."
After having his new Latin America policy handed to him in a spittoon, Bush offered Chavez some Forrest Gump-like advice: "When the pressure gets on, leaders should not compromise those institutions that are so important for democracy." Very interesting words from a person, who, lacking a majority of the votes of the American people, took every opportunity in the wake of September 11 to compromise America's most valued democratic traditions.
