G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela?
by Dave Lindorff | Nov 30 2007 - 9:41am |
The New York Times had a news article about Venezuela in Thursday's edition,
but it was about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez saying he would cut
diplomatic ties with neighboring Colombia. There wasn't a word about a memo
from a CIA operative in Caracas to CIA Director General Michael Hayden,
uncovered yesterday, outlining a plan for interfering with a Venezuelan
referendum set for Dec. 2, and laying out the steps for instigating and
backing a coup.
The plot, called "Operation Pliers," and laid out in the letter to Hayden by
an undercover operative named Michael Steele, who reportedly works in the US
Embassy as a "regional affairs officer," was intercepted by Venezuelan
intelligence and released publicly on state TV yesterday.
In the Nov. 20-dated letter, Steele refers to an $8 million US-funded
in-country propaganda campaign against Chavez and the referendum, already
being implemented, which is designed to institutionalize many of Chavez's
socialist reforms and to permit him to continue to run for president beyond
his current two-term limit. He proposes trying to stall the referendum,
which pro-Chavez forces are expected to win handily, and failing that, to
then promote a campaign to refuse to accept the results. Steele further
confirms that the agency is working with international news agencies in an
effort to distort reports about the referendum and the reforms. (CNN had to
apologize for a "mistake" which led to the words "Who killed him?"
superimposed over a photo of Chavez broadcast on CNN's Spanish-language
international broadcast in Venezuela. Was this a deliberate CIA-inspired
black-op?)
Among the tactics Steele recommends in his letter are:
a.. Promoting street demonstrations and violent protests
b.. Creating a climate of ungovernability
c.. Provoking a general uprising
d.. Working through the US military attache at the embassy to coordinate
with
e.. ex-military officers and former coup plotters against Chavez.
Even more darkly, the letter calls for initiating "military actions" to
support opposition mobilizations and strategic building occupations,
involving US military bases in neighboring Curacao and Colombia to provide
support, and even taking control of parts of Venezuela in the days after the
referendum, while encouraging a "military rebellion" inside the Venezuelan
National Guard.
The CIA communication has been reported in articles filed by the Associated
Press, but the Times and other major US news organizations have not
mentioned it . Instead, the Times today ran a column by Roger Cohen, which
compares Chavez to the fascists of 1930s Europe, and which calls for defeat
of the referendum. (Are Cohen and the Times part of the CIA's propaganda
campaign?)
The Cohen column is so rabid that it would be almost comical, were it not
for the fact that there is a real threat of a bloody CIA-inspired coup in
the democratic nation of Venezuela.
In fact, I thought it would be fun and instructive to alter Cohen's hit
piece a bit, substituting the US for Venezuela, and Bush and Cheney for
Chavez, to show its hypocrisy. Here then, a sample of the only lightly
tweaked column:
Shutting Up America's Bush and Cheney
By Richard Cohen (courtesy of editing by Dave Lindorff)
It was a fascist general in 1930s Spain who coined the phrase "Viva la
muerte!" or "Long live death!" Essentially meaningless, the words captured
the cult of soil, blood and savagery that coursed through European Fascism,
in its Francoist and other forms. President Bush and Vice President Cheney
hate Islamo-fascists; they are central to their repertoire of insults. But
they have not hesitated to deploy the imagery of death to bolster their
rightist brand of petro-authoritarianism, now operating under the ludicrous
banner of "Homeland, Free Markets and Democracy!"
The slogan looks almost quaint in its anachronism. Bush and Cheney would
no doubt claim American Revolutionary, rather than Spanish fascist, roots
for it (Patrick Henry also invoked liberty and finality). The bottom line is
this. America's oil-gilded caudillos are getting serious about instituting
executive rule, much like Franco and Mussolini.
I might add Vladimir Putin to that list. Like the Russian leader, Bush and
Cheney have already used fears of terrorism, a pliant judiciary, subservient
institutions like the Congress, and the galvanizing appeal of vitriolic
anti-Arabism to concoct a 21st-century authoritarianism, complete with
gulags and arrest and indefinite detention without charge. But even Putin
has not contemplated going as far as Bush and Cheney with their doctrine of
pre-emptive war and "regime change" abroad.
Americans will vote next November most likely between two candidates for
president who endorse many of the new powers already claimed by Bush and
Cheney, and the Congress, even under Democratic control, continues to grant
them additional powers, including the power to conduct sweeping spying on
electronic communications without any court order or demonstration of
probable cause, the power to declare martial law anywhere in the country on
the slightest of pretexts, and the power to expropriate private property of
those deemed to be "threatening" the American occupation in Iraq.
"The measures amount to a constitutional coup," said Teodoro
Petkoff...etc.
...Bush's and Cheney's grab for emperor status is grotesque and
dangerous--as Fascism was--a terrible example for a world that is moving
towards democracy. Venezuela's Chavez got it right when he told the
assembled delegates at the United Nations General Assembly, shortly after
President Bush had left the podium after addressing the same group, that he
could still "smell the sulfur" left in the room by the American president.
Of course, we in America only read such things about foreign governments,
not about our own. [Update: The NY Times did deign to mention the memo
towards the end of a piece on Venezuela that ran Nov. 30, but it completely
sought to deny the memo's authenticity.]
Which may explain why despite the constitutional coup that has been
occurring in the US over the last seven years, we have yet to see any
hearing in the Judiciary Committee on the impeachable crimes of Bush and
Cheney.
by Dave Lindorff | Nov 30 2007 - 9:41am |
The New York Times had a news article about Venezuela in Thursday's edition,
but it was about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez saying he would cut
diplomatic ties with neighboring Colombia. There wasn't a word about a memo
from a CIA operative in Caracas to CIA Director General Michael Hayden,
uncovered yesterday, outlining a plan for interfering with a Venezuelan
referendum set for Dec. 2, and laying out the steps for instigating and
backing a coup.
The plot, called "Operation Pliers," and laid out in the letter to Hayden by
an undercover operative named Michael Steele, who reportedly works in the US
Embassy as a "regional affairs officer," was intercepted by Venezuelan
intelligence and released publicly on state TV yesterday.
In the Nov. 20-dated letter, Steele refers to an $8 million US-funded
in-country propaganda campaign against Chavez and the referendum, already
being implemented, which is designed to institutionalize many of Chavez's
socialist reforms and to permit him to continue to run for president beyond
his current two-term limit. He proposes trying to stall the referendum,
which pro-Chavez forces are expected to win handily, and failing that, to
then promote a campaign to refuse to accept the results. Steele further
confirms that the agency is working with international news agencies in an
effort to distort reports about the referendum and the reforms. (CNN had to
apologize for a "mistake" which led to the words "Who killed him?"
superimposed over a photo of Chavez broadcast on CNN's Spanish-language
international broadcast in Venezuela. Was this a deliberate CIA-inspired
black-op?)
Among the tactics Steele recommends in his letter are:
a.. Promoting street demonstrations and violent protests
b.. Creating a climate of ungovernability
c.. Provoking a general uprising
d.. Working through the US military attache at the embassy to coordinate
with
e.. ex-military officers and former coup plotters against Chavez.
Even more darkly, the letter calls for initiating "military actions" to
support opposition mobilizations and strategic building occupations,
involving US military bases in neighboring Curacao and Colombia to provide
support, and even taking control of parts of Venezuela in the days after the
referendum, while encouraging a "military rebellion" inside the Venezuelan
National Guard.
The CIA communication has been reported in articles filed by the Associated
Press, but the Times and other major US news organizations have not
mentioned it . Instead, the Times today ran a column by Roger Cohen, which
compares Chavez to the fascists of 1930s Europe, and which calls for defeat
of the referendum. (Are Cohen and the Times part of the CIA's propaganda
campaign?)
The Cohen column is so rabid that it would be almost comical, were it not
for the fact that there is a real threat of a bloody CIA-inspired coup in
the democratic nation of Venezuela.
In fact, I thought it would be fun and instructive to alter Cohen's hit
piece a bit, substituting the US for Venezuela, and Bush and Cheney for
Chavez, to show its hypocrisy. Here then, a sample of the only lightly
tweaked column:
Shutting Up America's Bush and Cheney
By Richard Cohen (courtesy of editing by Dave Lindorff)
It was a fascist general in 1930s Spain who coined the phrase "Viva la
muerte!" or "Long live death!" Essentially meaningless, the words captured
the cult of soil, blood and savagery that coursed through European Fascism,
in its Francoist and other forms. President Bush and Vice President Cheney
hate Islamo-fascists; they are central to their repertoire of insults. But
they have not hesitated to deploy the imagery of death to bolster their
rightist brand of petro-authoritarianism, now operating under the ludicrous
banner of "Homeland, Free Markets and Democracy!"
The slogan looks almost quaint in its anachronism. Bush and Cheney would
no doubt claim American Revolutionary, rather than Spanish fascist, roots
for it (Patrick Henry also invoked liberty and finality). The bottom line is
this. America's oil-gilded caudillos are getting serious about instituting
executive rule, much like Franco and Mussolini.
I might add Vladimir Putin to that list. Like the Russian leader, Bush and
Cheney have already used fears of terrorism, a pliant judiciary, subservient
institutions like the Congress, and the galvanizing appeal of vitriolic
anti-Arabism to concoct a 21st-century authoritarianism, complete with
gulags and arrest and indefinite detention without charge. But even Putin
has not contemplated going as far as Bush and Cheney with their doctrine of
pre-emptive war and "regime change" abroad.
Americans will vote next November most likely between two candidates for
president who endorse many of the new powers already claimed by Bush and
Cheney, and the Congress, even under Democratic control, continues to grant
them additional powers, including the power to conduct sweeping spying on
electronic communications without any court order or demonstration of
probable cause, the power to declare martial law anywhere in the country on
the slightest of pretexts, and the power to expropriate private property of
those deemed to be "threatening" the American occupation in Iraq.
"The measures amount to a constitutional coup," said Teodoro
Petkoff...etc.
...Bush's and Cheney's grab for emperor status is grotesque and
dangerous--as Fascism was--a terrible example for a world that is moving
towards democracy. Venezuela's Chavez got it right when he told the
assembled delegates at the United Nations General Assembly, shortly after
President Bush had left the podium after addressing the same group, that he
could still "smell the sulfur" left in the room by the American president.
Of course, we in America only read such things about foreign governments,
not about our own. [Update: The NY Times did deign to mention the memo
towards the end of a piece on Venezuela that ran Nov. 30, but it completely
sought to deny the memo's authenticity.]
Which may explain why despite the constitutional coup that has been
occurring in the US over the last seven years, we have yet to see any
hearing in the Judiciary Committee on the impeachable crimes of Bush and
Cheney.
