Lincoln Gordon, architect of 1964 Brazilian Coup died (may he rot in hell)

The American elite

Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon's diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".

You get the picture? Boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot.

Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington's on-site, and very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which overthrew the moderately leftist government of João Goulart and condemned the people of Brazil to more than 20 years of an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners have long maintained that Brazil's military regime originated the idea of the desaparecidos, "the disappeared", and exported torture methods across Latin America. In 2007, the Brazilian government published a 500-page book, "The Right to Memory and the Truth", which outlines the systematic torture, rape and disappearance of nearly 500 left-wing activists, and includes photos of corpses and torture victims. Currently, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is proposing a commission to investigate allegations of torture by the military during the 1964-1985 dictatorship. (When will the United States create a commission to investigate its own torture?)

In a cable to Washington after the coup, Gordon stated — in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster Dulles — that without the coup there could have been a "total loss to the West of all South American Republics". (It was actually the beginning of a series of fascistic anti-communist coups that trapped the southern half of South America in a decades-long nightmare, culminating in "Operation Condor", in which the various dictatorships, aided by the CIA, cooperated in hunting down and killing leftists.)

Gordon later testified at a congressional hearing and while denying completely any connection to the coup in Brazil he stated that the coup was "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century."

Listen to a phone conversation between President Johnson and Thomas Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, April 3, 1964, two days after the coup:

MANN: I hope you're as happy about Brazil as I am.

LBJ: I am.

MANN: I think that's the most important thing that's happened in the hemisphere in three years.

LBJ: I hope they give us some credit instead of hell.¹

So the next time you're faced with a boy wonder from Harvard, try to keep your adulation in check no matter what office the man attains, even — oh, just choosing a position at random — the presidency of the United States. Keep your eyes focused not on these "liberal" ... "best and brightest" who come and go, but on US foreign policy which remains the same decade after decade. There are dozens of Brazils and Lincoln Gordons in America's past. In its present. In its future. They're the diplomatic equivalent of the guys who ran Enron, AIG and Goldman Sachs.

Of course, not all of our foreign policy officials are like that. Some are worse.

And remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: Prison was "a good corrective to three years at Harvard."

Notes

1. Michael Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-1964 (New York, 1997), p.306. All other sources for this section on Gordon can be found in: Washington Post, December 22, 2009, obituary; The Guardian (London), August 31, 2007; William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 27 ^↩

Bolivia terror plot: The Argentine connection, revisited and confirmed

This is what they fear, kiddies...indigenous Bolivians fighting back against fascism.

Via ABI, I came across this report in Argentina's Página/12. It's shocking, explosive, highly relevant to what I've written about in here previously--and worth translating in its entirety, which I did:

"I was present in Beni (northern Bolivia) with an Argentine cell of eleven ex-carapintadas ("painted faces", notorious paramilitaries), along with ex-militaries who had been on missions in the Balkans. The above-mentioned 'Argentine cell' maintained contacts with sectors of the 'far right', opposed to the current Bolivian government, in Santa Cruz and Cobija, department of Pando."

The information, dated May 4, received by the Argentine Chancellery from the embassy in Bolivia and which was received by Página/12, indicated that "business owners and landowners of Santa Cruz de la Sierra requested the presence of the ex-militaries with the objective of training them in self-defence in case of their eventual imprisonment by the Bolivian authorities."

The pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place following an investigation into a group of suspected terrorists, led by Eduardo Rózsa Flores, "Hero of the Balkan War", which was dismantled by the Bolivian National Police last April 16. President Evo Morales denounced the group for planning his assassination.

Last April 21, we reported that the vice-president of Bolivia, Alvaro García Linera, had communicated with the Argentine ambassador in La Paz, Horacio Macedo, to ask him to collaborate in the control of the border regions "due to the presence of Argentine activists in certain regions of Bolivia". At that time, there was mention of the travels to Bolivia of retired major Jorge Mones Ruiz, one of the "carapintadas" who between 1987 and 1991 took part in armed uprisings to demand impunity for repressors [active during the time of the Argentine military junta, 1976-83].

The new report states that "Mones Ruiz had been in contact with the late suspected terrorist/mercenary Rózsa Flores and with [Luis Enrique] Baraldini", another comrade-in-arms and fugitive-from-justice for his actions during the illegal repressions in La Pampa, and currently based in Santa Cruz under a false name. Mones Ruiz was assigned to Bolivia as an intelligence official of the Argentine army during the last dictatorship, and liked to boast of the recognition of his Bolivian comrades.

The ex-carapintada was seduced by his links to the ultra-right in Latin America. In '87, the Military Circle published his book, in which he outlined his expertise on the formation of commando groups against the revolutionary processes in Central America. This year, Mones Ruiz found anchorage in the so-called UnAmérica, an NGO claiming to be a counterweight to Unasur, the organization to which all the South American heads of state belong. Leftist governments, particularly those of Bolivia and Venezuela, were the focus of the efforts of the committee, led by the anti-Chavista Venezuelan, Alejandro Peña Esclusa.

Mones Ruiz showed his notions in various formats, but with the same obsession. With another of his carapintada comrades, Breide Obeid, he formed the "Conjunto Patria" (Homeland Alliance) and began to sing his own lyrics in all kinds of encounters. More academically, he published various books, among them "Argentina--without a future?". He studied the "new dangers" and broadcast himself on Web pages on subjects such as "misrule and institutional bankruptcy, attacks on businessses, price controls, energy crises, the 'Papeleros' case, citizen insecurity, corruption, 'twisted' justice, widening of the gap between rich and poor, 'crooked' legislators, social violence, forgotten military commanders, police forces with fewer rights than delinquents, etc., which are generating the conditions for structural changes that society demands." A hyperactive man, last year he began to show up during rural meetings and stir up conflict.

The violent entry of the police into the fourth floor of the Hotel Las Américas, which ended in the deaths of Rózsa Flores (Bolivian-Hungarian-Croatian), Arpád Magyarosi (Romanian of Hungarian origins) and Michael Dwyer (Irish), and the arrests of Mario Francisco Tadic Astorga (Bolivian with Croatian passport) and Elöd Tóásó (Romanian-Hungarian) exacerbated the virulence of the Bolivian opposition. President Evo Morales is looking for re-election next December 6, and read the actions of these transnational commandos as proof of a cabal with plans to assassinate him. Throughout this minefield, there are footprints of the same personages.

Five days after the sting in the hotel, the Hungarian Television Network broadcast an interview by journalist Andras Kepes on September 8, 2008, in which Rózsa confirmed that he was bound for Santa Cruz de la Sierra at the request of persons who asked him to form a "self-defence group" in the region and that if there was no peaceful coexistence with the rest of the country, they would seek independence. The newspaper El Deber, of Santa Cruz, stated that "the 49-year-old assured that his mission 'had legal backing' because the decision to organize his militia had the authorization of the Council of Santa Cruz. The president of the Departmental Assembly, Juan Carlos Parada, assured that he knew nothing about it and that he did not know which of the councils or assemblies of Santa Cruz had sought permission. According to Rózsa, a group of political opposition members contacted him about a year and a half earlier, from Santa Cruz. His principal mission was to defend the region against supposed armed indigenous groups and militias. "We were convinced after a few months that there was no peaceful coexistence and, in the name of autonomy, decided to proclaim the independence of Santa Cruz and create a new country," said Rózsa.

Rózsa recorded the interview as a kind of last will and testament, to be distributed only in the event of his death. The strange personage who had been a militant of Opus Dei, converted to Islam and was hailed as a "Hero of the Balkan War", ended up recruiting mercenaries to defend the Bolivian ultra-right. His participation in the Croatian war established ties with Latin American soldiers who found in these militias a sought-after niche in which to develop their competence as armed commandos.

The detailed report before the Argentine chancellery tells that businessmen and landowners in Santa Cruz de la Sierra appealed to the ex-militaries "with the objective of being instructed in self-defence in case of possible imprisonment by official organisms and various affiliates, including the taking of private lands by social entities such as the MAS"--alluding to the Movement Toward Socialism party led by President Evo Morales.

The "model" of Brazilian landlords who installed virtual death squads to counteract the landless peasant movements demonstrates what the reactionary secessionists of the rich regions of Bolivia had in mind. The "Human Rights Foundation of Bolivia", under the offices of Victor Hugo Achá, was a school in the strategies and objectives of UnAmérica, according to the report.

On April 30, prosecutor Marcelo Sosa announced that Achá would be called upon to testify, in order to corroborate the testimonies of various detainees in the case. The president of the HRF had gone to the United States one week earlier and announced that he would no return until he received legal guarantees that he would be able to defend himself against the accusations. However, in a telephone conversation with a local channel, he admitted that he had conversed on more than three occasions with Rózsa but, obviously, denied any ties with the militia organized by the Bolivian-Hungarian-Croat.

According to the daily La Prensa, of La Paz, Juan Carlos Gueder, recently arrested, declared: "There was another person with ties to the political field, to be assassinated in Bolivia, but I don't know his name either, because there are other people who should be coming forward here. Mr. Hugo Achá should show his face." Gueder assured that he HRF director had met with the suspected terrorist group. Gueder was given house arrest in exchange for collaborating with the judicial authorities.

On May 1, the Bolivian president said that if the organization had not clarified its links with "the terrorists, it would be expelled from Bolivia, as had already occurred in Venezuela. The Comité Pro Santa Cruz, a leading light in the opposition which repeatedly tried to destabilize the Morales administration, called an assembly to decide what to do against the advances of the investigation into ties between its businessmen and the suspected terrorists killed in the Hotel Las Américas.

This is how the sectors of UnAmérica act--an organization in which the Argentine paramilitary Mones Ruiz preens himself as secretary, and which says it will present a denunciation before the Inter-American Human Rights Court, accusing the Morales government of being responsible for the massacre of Pando. The objective is to counteract the report approved by Unasur which landed in prison, among others, the prefect of Pando, for racial persecution and racist murders committed by the ultra-right.

Links added.

So, another piece of the puzzle is indeed falling into place, and it's a large one. This Argentine fascist, a self-styled defender and apologist of repressors from the junta, is not surprisingly a big wheel in the fascist plot against Evo. He has ample experience in fascism in Bolivia, too, as he was a liaison between the Argentine junta and its counterpart, the Bolivian military dictatorship of the era. (Recall that Bolivia was the victim of several military coups beginning in 1964, and did not regain democracy until 1982, one year before the Argentine junta fell.) It seems natural that Mones Ruiz would therefore have abiding sympathies for fascists in Bolivia, and possibly even ties stretching back to his time in country the first time around. It would not be at all hard for him--whom Página/12 also characterizes as being "nostalgic for other times" and "frankly putschist"--to cheerfully become part of an antidemocratic plot to pull Santa Cruz out of Bolivia and install an authoritarian para-government, however illegally. To him, it would be just like the "good old days" of impunity and repression both there and in Argentina!

The name of Luis Enrique Baraldini has also come up here before. According to this report, Baraldini is currently in Bolivia. (He's also wanted by Interpol for human rights violations in Argentina, so if you've seen him, you know who to call.) Baraldini is of the Santa Cruz horsey set; he's a judge in equestrian events, and also currently runs a "school of equine therapy", presumably catering to disabled children, which may well be a front for something less pleasant--or at the very least, a way of covering his multitudinous sins. He may be using his mother's surname, Pellegri, as an alias (how macho, hiding behind Mama's skirts). He also was decorated by the Bolivian military for his "services"--a major WTF? until you consider that he, too, was operative during the days of military dictatorship, and undoubtedly, like Mones Ruiz, was sent by the higher-ups in Buenos Aires to "help" the poor, beleaguered unpopular generals maintain their death grip on that impoverished but still fractious country! Alas, it was an epic fail. Bolivia is now democratic and ruled by an uppity Injun. How lucky for him, then, that there has been mostly impunity for Argentine repressors since the return of democracy to Bolivia in '82 and Argentina in '83, otherwise he'd be in a world of hurt. (Well, it's still not too late to call Interpol if you've seen him. Or the Bolivian federal authorities, who I'm sure are more than a little interested in him again, though in a markedly different light, by now.)

And of course, there's that weaselly little UnAmérica thing again, too. Too bad it's totally illegitimate, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is likely to throw out its charges with a loud belly-laugh. Unasur, not UnAmérica, holds the legal cards. The declarations of this right-wing astroturf group are therefore no more legitimate than the "autonomy" declarations of the Media Lunatics (which were so preposterous that no respectable international observer wanted to be caught dead at their illegal referendum, much less dignify it with the stamp of approval.) I don't imagine that the smarmy Twat From Caracas and his little astroturf-roll will fare any better either; no one's about to grant them immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony since they're clearly in this plot up to their collective, beady eyeballs.

I've lost count of how many points this makes for Evo's side, but I know for sure that the oppo count is still 0. Apologists for fascism, the ball's in your court now...but I doubt you can return THIS serve convincingly. You haven't done all that well with any of the previous ones.

Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs - Distorting the Venezuelan media story

Media Advisory

The story is framed in U.S. news media as a simple matter of censorship: Prominent Venezuelan TV station RCTV is being silenced by the authoritarian government of President Hugo Chávez, who is punishing the station for its political criticism of his government.

According to CNN reporter T.J. Holmes (5/21/07), the issues are easy to understand: RCTV "is going to be shut down, is going to get off the air, because of President Hugo Chávez, not a big fan of it." Dubbing RCTV "a voice of free speech," Holmes explained, "Chavez, in a move that's angered a lot of free-speech groups, is refusing now to renew the license of this television station that has been critical of his government."

Though straighter, a news story by the Associated Press (5/20/07) still maintained the theme that the license denial was based simply on political differences, with reporter Elizabeth Munoz describing RCTV as "a network that has been critical of Chávez."

In a May 14 column, Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl called the action an attempt to silence opponents and more "proof" that Chávez is a "dictator." Wrote Diehl, "Chávez has made clear that his problem with [RCTV owner Marcel] Granier and RCTV is political."

In keeping with the media script that has bad guy Chávez brutishly silencing good guys in the democratic opposition, all these articles skimmed lightly over RCTV's history, the Venezuelan government's explanation for the license denial and the process that led to it.

RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chávez's democratically elected government. During the short-lived insurrection, coup leaders took to commercial TV airwaves to thank the networks. "I must thank Venevisión and RCTV," one grateful leader remarked in an appearance captured in the Irish film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film documents the networks' participation in the short-lived coup, in which stations put themselves to service as bulletin boards for the coup?hosting coup leaders, silencing government voices and rallying the opposition to a march on the Presidential Palace that was part of the coup plotters strategy.

On April 11, 2002, the day of the coup, when military and civilian opposition leaders held press conferences calling for Chávez's ouster, RCTV hosted top coup plotter Carlos Ortega, who rallied demonstrators to the march on the presidential palace. On the same day, after the anti-democratic overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a Venevisión reporter (4/11/02): "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."

That commercial TV outlets including RCTV participated in the coup is not at question; even mainstream outlets have acknowledged as much. As reporter Juan Forero, Jackson Diehl's colleague at the Washington Post, explained (1/18/07), "RCTV, like three other major private television stations, encouraged the protests," resulting in the coup, "and, once Chávez was ousted, cheered his removal." The conservative British newspaper the Financial Times reported (5/21/07), "[Venezuelan] officials argue with some justification that RCTV actively supported the 2002 coup attempt against Mr. Chávez."

As FAIR's magazine Extra! argued last November, "Were a similar event to happen in the U.S., and TV journalists and executives were caught conspiring with coup plotters, it's doubtful they would stay out of jail, let alone be allowed to continue to run television stations, as they have in Venezuela."

When Chávez returned to power the commercial stations refused to cover the news, airing instead entertainment programs?in RCTV's case, the American film Pretty Woman. By refusing to cover such a newsworthy story, the stations abandoned the public interest and violated the public trust that is seen in Venezuela (and in the U.S.) as a requirement for operating on the public airwaves. Regarding RCTV's refusal to cover the return of Chavez to power, Columbia University professor and former NPR editor John Dinges told Marketplace (5/8/07):

What RCTV did simply can't be justified under any stretch of journalistic principles?. When a television channel simply fails to report, simply goes off the air during a period of national crisis, not because they're forced to, but simply because they don't agree with what's happening, you've lost your ability to defend what you do on journalistic principles.

The Venezuelan government is basing its denial of license on RCTV's involvement in the 2002 coup, not on the station's criticisms of or political opposition to the government. Many American pundits and some human rights spokespersons have confused the issue by claiming the action is based merely on political differences, failing to note that Venezuela's media, including its commercial broadcasters, are still among the most vigorously dissident on the planet.

When Patrick McElwee of the U.S.-based group Just Foreign Policy interviewed representatives of Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists?all groups that have condemned Venezuela's action in denying RCTV's license renewal?he found that none of the spokespersons thought broadcasters were automatically entitled to license renewals, though none of them thought RCTV's actions in support of the coup should have resulted in the station having its license renewal denied. This led McElwee to wonder, based on the rights groups' arguments, "Could it be that governments like Venezuela have the theoretical right to not to renew a broadcast license, but that no responsible government would ever do it?"

McElwee acknowledged the critics' point that some form of due process should have been involved in the decisions, but explained that laws preexisting Chávez's presidency placed licensing decision with the executive branch, with no real provisions for a hearings process: "Unfortunately, this is what the law, first enacted in 1987, long before Chávez entered the political scene, allows. It charges the executive branch with decisions about license renewal, but does not seem to require any administrative hearing. The law should be changed, but at the current moment when broadcast licenses are up for renewal, it is the prevailing law and thus lays out the framework in which decisions are made."

Government actions weighing on journalism and broadcast licensing deserve strong scrutiny. However, on the central question of whether a government is bound to renew the license of a broadcaster when that broadcaster had been involved in a coup against the democratically elected government, the answer should be clear, as McElwee concludes:

The RCTV case is not about censorship of political opinion. It is about the government, through a flawed process, declining to renew a broadcast license to a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States. In fact, it is frankly amazing that this company has been allowed to broadcast for 5 years after the coup, and that the Chávez government waited until its license expired to end its use of the public airwaves.

Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ). We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org.





"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano