THE PROOF IS IN THE DOCUMENTS: THE CIA WAS INVOLVED IN THE COUP
AGAINST VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT CHAVEZ
By Eva Golinger
http://Venezuelafoia.info
On April 12, 2002, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer stated:
?Let me share with you the administration's thoughts about what's
taking place in Venezuela. It remains a somewhat fluid situation. >But yesterday's events in Venezuela resulted in a change in the
government and the assumption of a transitional authority until new
elections can be held.
The details still are unclear. We know that the action encouraged by
the Chavez government provoked this crisis. According to the best
information available, the Chavez government suppressed peaceful
demonstrations. Government supporters, on orders from the Chavez
government, fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors, resulting in 10
killed and 100 wounded. The Venezuelan military and the police
refused to fire on the peaceful demonstrators and refused to support
the government's role in such human rights violations. The
government also tried to prevent independent news media from
reporting on these events.
The results of these events are now that President Chavez has
resigned the presidency. Before resigning, he dismissed the vice
president and the cabinet, and a transitional civilian government
has been installed. This government has promised early elections.
The United States will continue to monitor events. That is what took
place, and the Venezuelan people expressed their right to peaceful
protest. It was a very large protest that turned out. And the
protest was met with violence.?
On that same day, U.S. Department of State spokesperson Philip T.
Reeker, claimed:
?In recent days, we expressed our hopes that all parties in
Venezuela, but especially the Chavez administration, would act with
restraint and show full respect for the peaceful expression of
political opinion. We are saddened at the loss of life. We wish to
express our solidarity with the Venezuelan people and look forward
to working with all democratic forces in Venezuela to ensure the
full exercise of democratic rights. The Venezuelan military
commendably refused to fire on peaceful demonstrators, and the media
valiantly kept the Venezuelan public informed.
Yesterday's events in Venezuela resulted in a transitional
government until new elections can be held. Though details are still
unclear, undemocratic actions committed or encouraged by the Chavez
administration provoked yesterday's crisis in Venezuela. According
to the best information available, at this time: Yesterday, hundreds
of thousands of Venezuelans gathered peacefully to seek redress of
their grievances. The Chavez Government attempted to suppress
peaceful demonstrations. Chavez supporters, on orders, fired on
unarmed, peaceful protestors, resulting in more than 100 wounded or
killed. Venezuelan military and police refused orders to fire on
peaceful demonstrators and refused to support the government's role
in such human rights violations. The government prevented five
independent television stations from reporting on events. The
results of these provocations are: Chavez resigned the presidency.
Before resigning, he dismissed the Vice President and the Cabinet. A
transition civilian government has promised early elections.
We have every expectation that this situation will be resolved
peacefully and democratically by the Venezuelan people in accord
with the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. The
essential elements of democracy, which have been weakened in recent
months, must be restored fully. We will be consulting with our
hemispheric partners, within the framework of the Inter-American
Democratic Charter, to assist Venezuela.?
Why do I re-cite these statements here? These statements from the
highest levels of the U.S. Government show the prepared version of
the events that took place during the April 11-12 coup d?etat
against Venezuelan President Chávez. Moreover, these revealing
statements now prove, in light of documents recently obtained from
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA), that this prepared version of events was
knowingly false and made with the intention of deceiving the
international community in order to justify a violent overthrow of a
democratic government.
The White House and the State Department both claimed that the
Chávez government had provoked violence and actions that resulted in
the President?s alleged resignation. They also asserted that the
Chávez government had fired on unarmed, peaceful protesters and that
the Venezuelan military and police had refused orders to ?support
the government?s role in human rights violations?. The U.S.
Government referred to the protests and actions of that day as
though they were spontaneous, unplanned events. The U.S. Government
has also continued to deny to this day any involvement whatsoever in
the April 2002 coup d?etat.
However, there is a vast amount of evidence that has surfaced since
the coup demonstrating that the events on April 11, 2002 were
entirely premeditated by a sector of the opposition intent on
overthrowing the Chávez government. Furthermore, my own
investigations have provided a plethora of evidence proving the U.S.
involvement in the coup on various levels. Most revealing on the
Venezuelan front was a news program on Saturday morning, April 12,
2002, ?24 Horas? with host Napoleon Bravo. On that program, Bravo
interviewed Vice-Admiral Carlos Molina Tamayo, a professed coup
leader, and Victor Manuel Garcia, Director of the polling company
CIFRA who claimed to have represented the ?civil society? during the
coup. Both Molina Tamayo and Garcia gave a jaw-dropping, detailed
account of the events leading up to the coup and those key
Venezuelans involved, including crediting the private televisions
stations for their complicity and aide. Their testimony, along with
Chacao municipal mayor Leopoldo Lopez of the Primero Justicia
political party and Napoleon Bravo?s own admissions of complicity in
the coup, provided plenty of proof that the overthrow of Chávez was
a premeditated event.
Later, an extraordinary and award-winning documentary by filmmaker
Angel Palacios, ?Puente Llaguno: Claves de un Masacre?, revealed how
the Venezuelan private media had manipulated and distorted the
events that unfolded on April 11, 2002 in the opposition march,
which resulted in widespread violence and death. The documentary
also provided sufficient proof that snipers unrelated to the Chávez
government had provoked the violence in the opposition march that
justified the forced removal of Chávez from office. Furthermore, the
documentary succeeded in proving that a well-planned
military-civilian coup d?etat had taken place that day and that
those involved were connected to the highest levels of the U.S.
government.
But the evidence of actual U.S. involvement in the coup itself remained
scarce up until recently. On http://www.venezuelafoia.info I have
posted hundreds of documents that evidence the intricate financing
scheme the U.S. government has been carrying out in Venezuela since
2001, that includes financing well over twenty million dollars to
opposition sectors. The funding of the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental entity in the U.S. financed
entirely by Congress and established by congressional legislation in
1983, has provided more than three million dollars since late 2001
to opposition groups, many of which were key participants in the
April 2002 coup. And in June 2002, the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), set up an Office of Transition Initiatives
(OTI) in the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, allegedly for the purposing of
helping Venezuela to resolve its political crisis. The OTI in
Caracas has counted on more than fifteen million dollars in funding
from Congress since June 2002 and has recently requested five
million more for 2005, despite the fact that it was only supposed to
be a two-year endeavor. All evidence obtained to date shows that the
OTI has primarily funded opposition groups and projects in
Venezuela, particularly those that were focused on the August 15,
2004 recall referendum against President Chávez.
I have written other articles explaining the intervention model
applied through NED and USAID in Venezuela. This method of
intervention is very sophisticated and complex, as it penetrates
civil society and social organizations in a very subtle way and is
often either undetectable or flimsily justified by the concept of
?promoting democracy?, which is what the NED claims to do around the
world, despite evidence to the contrary. The mere fact in Venezuela
that the NED has financed exclusively anti-Chávez groups and those
very same organizations that were involved in the April 2002 coup
shows that ?democracy? is far from the NED?s intention.
But the CIA intervention in Venezuela is of the crudest, simplest
kind. Top secret documents recently obtained and posted on
www.venezuelafoia.info show that in the weeks prior to the April
2002 coup against President Chávez, the CIA had full knowledge of
the events to occur and, in fact, even had the detailed plans in
their possession. An April 6, 2002 top secret intelligence brief
headlining ?Venezuela: Conditions Ripening for Coup Attempt?,
states, ?Dissident military factions, including some disgruntled
senior officers and a group of radical junior officers, are stepping
up efforts to organize a coup against President Chávez, possible as
early as this month, [CENSORED]. The level of detail in the reported
plans ? [CENSORED] targets Chávez and 10 other senior officers for
arrest
? The document further states, ?To provoke military action,
the plotters may try to exploit unrest stemming from opposition
demonstrations slated for later this month
?
So the CIA knew that a coup attempt would take place soon after
April 6, 2002, and moreover, they knew the plan would include
Chávez?s arrest and an exploitation of violence in the opposition
march. In other words, they knew the plans before the coup occurred
and surely they knew the actors involved, many of whose names are
probably in the censored parts of the top-secret documents. One
could assume that if the CIA had the detailed plans in their
possession in the weeks prior to the coup it was because they were
associating and conspiring with the coup plotters. So, when Ari
Fleischer and Philip Reeker made those statements on April 12, 2002
on behalf of the U.S. Government, they did so with full knowledge
that a coup had taken place, Chávez had been arrested and the
violence in the opposition march, which they attributed to Chávez,
had actually been a premeditated part of the coup plot. The top
secret documents that prove this information show they were sent to
the U.S. Statement Department and the National Security Agency,
which means frankly, the White House knew what was happening all
along.
Furthermore, the CIA documents make no mention of any attempts to
have Chávez forcibly resign from office. The CIA warnings indicated
as early as March 5, 2002 (which is the date of the earliest
document provided) that a coup was on the rise and even hinted that
prospects for a successful coup were limited. The CIA rightfully
felt the opposition was too disperse and divided to successfully
overthrow Chávez. But the concept that Chávez had ?resigned? as the
White House and State Department ?confirmed? on April 12, 2002 was
merely a set-up, a false claim made with the intention of deceiving
the U.S. public and the international community. Remember that the
U.S. stood practically alone in the world in its endorsement of the
coup-implemented Carmona Government, which it later weakly condemned
but only after the coup came tumbling down and the U.S. realized it
needed to save face quickly.
A top secret CIA document from April 14, 2002 shows concern that
Latin American governments will view U.S. foreign policy as
?hypocritical? because of its sole endorsement of the Carmona coup
government. The CIA also seems surprised that the region of Latin
America so quickly rejected the coup in Venezuela and that the
Carmona government ?stunningly collapsed?, which demonstrates a
possible out-of-date view of the hemisphere and a failure in
intelligence gathering and analysis. In fact, the CIA never imagined
the coup would buckle because of support for Chávez ? their analysis
all along showed possible failure due to lack of opposition unity
and hasty actions. This is a very important point, because it
demonstrates that although the CIA was involved in the coup plotting
and the collaborations with dissident military factions and
opposition leaders, it was fairly detached from the reality of
Venezuelan society.
The CIA?s intelligence failures in Venezuela were apparently
repeated during the oil industry strike later in 2002 and the
guarimba destabilization attempt, an old-school CIA tactic applied
in Chile and Nicaragua. Both of these harsh actions injured the
Venezuelan economy and affected the government?s international
image, but failed in their goal to oust President Chávez. The NED?s
and USAID?s tens of millions of dollars in financing to build and
maintain the opposition movement and finance the recall referendum
campaign against President Chávez also failed to achieve their
mission. In fact, all of these bungled attempts by the U.S.
government and its marionette opposition movement have served to
strengthen Chávez?s support within Venezuela and paint him as a
strong and solid international leader.
Now that some of the top-secret documents have surfaced that show
the CIA?s complicity and involvement in the April 2002 coup, it
leaves one to wonder what is next on the agenda. In September 2001,
shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York,
President Bush unconditionally authorized former CIA Director George
Tenet?s ?Worldwide Attack Matrix?, which targets leaders and
prominent figures in 80 countries around the world for
assassination. The authorization of the Worldwide Attack Matrix
provided the CIA with a virtual carte blanche to conduct political
assassinations abroad, justified under the ?war against terrorism?.
The ?Attack Matrix?, a top secret CIA document, authorizes an array
of covert CIA anti-terror actions that range from ?routine
propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military
attacks?. The plans give the CIA the broadest and most lethal
authority in history. Some analysts have indicated that Venezuela is
possibly included in the plans.
The recent assassination of Venezuelan Prosecutor Danilo Anderson,
conducted in a style reminiscent of CIA operations, could be setting
the stage for future political murders. History shows that when the
CIA fails to remove a target via non-lethal means, more desperate
measures are taken. Despite the fact that the Venezuelan government
and its supporters appear to have foiled the CIA numerous times
already over the past few years, vigilance, intelligence and
increased security measures should become a priority.
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