|
April 20, 2002
Chris Floyd
The Empire Never Sleeps
A Letter from the Front
April 19, 2002
Eric Flint
Free
the Books!
David Krieger
A Peace Proposal:
Bring in the Children
Jeff Paterson
Advice
to Recruits from
a Gulf War Vet
Jeffrey St. Clair
From Sen. "Lunkhead" to
Bush Energy Czar: A Year in the Life of Spencer Abraham
April 18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Latin
America's Dilemma:
The Propaganda of Otto Reich
Sam Bahour
Bush is Playing Russian
Roulette with Palestinians
M. Shahid
Alam
A
Colonizing Project
Built on Lies
Alexander Cockburn
Austin Cultural Limits:
Willie Nelson, Film and BBQ
April 17, 2002
Norman
Finkelstein
Behind
the Carnage in Palestine
Kristen Schurr
With the Wounded
and the Homeless in Nablus
Norman
Madarasz
Undoing
Chavez:
The View from South America
Brian Wood
Combing The Ruins of Jenin
George
Monbiot
Chemical
Coup: The CIA's Attempt to Undermine the UN's Weapon Inspector
for Iraq
Robert Fisk
Fear and Learning in America
April 16, 2002
Todd May
US
Should End Aid to Israel
Gabriel Ash
The Oilman, the General
and the Coup that Failed
Ron Jacobs
Wake
Up Some Mornin',
Find Your Own Self Dead:
The Chavez Coup
Brian Wood
Inside Jenin: Rubble and Decomposing
Bodies
Jack McCarthy
Citizen
Coup: The Times,
The Post and the Coup Plotters
Dave Marsh
Hymns: How I Got Through
Last Week
April 15, 2002
Susi Abeles
A
Field Trip to Jenin
Breyten Breytenbach
A Letter to Ariel Sharon:
"You Won't Break Them"
Gregory
Wilpert
CounterCoup
in Venezuela
Kristen Schurr
Amid the Rubble of Nablus
Jordy
Cummings
An
Open Letter to Abe Foxman
Christopher Reilly
The Media, the CIA
and the Chavez Coup
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
April 20, 2002
A Coup Signed by Otto Reich
By Jean-Guy Allard
His fingerprints are all over the perimeter of
the crime. The disgraceful disinformation campaign carried out
by the private Venezuelan media; the siege of the Cuban embassy
in Caracas; the false resignation of President Chavez and his
alleged plea for asylum in Cuba: everything bears the stamp
of Otto Reich.
The former top official in the Reagan
regime, buddy of the most fanatical anti-Cuba terrorists and
now--incredibly-- the number one man for Latin America in the
U.S. administration, he has personally and clearly masterminded
the subversive plans that have just failed in Caracas.
Recruited by the CIA while he was still
in the university, Reich was a specialist in deception during
the Reagan administration. Reagan's vice president, George Bush
was a former operative and then head of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA).
From his Office of Public Diplomacy,
Reich covered up all the dirtiest operations of the war in Nicaragua,
circulating false information through the media.
When the narco-contra scandal--poorly
named the Iran-Contra scandal-- blew open with the discovery
of drug trafficking operations managed by Cuban-American terrorists
Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada Carriles, Reagan was forced
to remove him from the White House.
U.S. EMBASSY,
HEART OF THE CONSPIRACY
Otto was appointed as ambassador to Venezuela,
a disparaging gesture remembered for years in Caracas. There
he dedicated himself to securing the release of killer pediatrician
and CIA agent Orlando Bosch--detained there after the horrific
sabotage of a Cuban airliner--and to act the mafioso on behalf
of U.S. interests, particularly within Venezuela's Cuban emigre
business circles.
Reich, born in Cuba of an Austrian father
and an emigre to the United States at an early age, established
his Venezuelan network in military circles--thus obtaining an
order for Bosch's release from a military tribunal--and within
the Venezuelan secret services, in which the CIA and the U.S.
embassy had their people well placed.
That same U.S. embassy in Caracas is
currently occupied by Ambassador Charles Shapiro, former head
of the State Department's Cuba Desk, who received the central
civilian conspirators of the April 11 coup on a regular basis,
for several weeks prior to that action.
During the '80s, Otto Reich launched
disinformation from his Office of Public Diplomacy, like the
one about MiG fighter planes being purchased secretly by Nicaragua
and allegedly ready to attack U.S. territory, and the story
that the Miskito Indians were being persecuted by the Sandinistas.
He also circulated rumors to discredit journalists who wrote
about the Nicaraguan revolution in terms that were considered
too positive.
Reich clearly threw himself into his
passion for "slanted" journalism again, starting on
January 11, when Bush handed him his new post, against the will
of the Senate.
Since February, the U.S. press has been
talking of an alleged malaise within the Venezuelan administration.
The Washington Post wrote of a precarious and dangerous situation,
quoting a senior State Department official.
On February 5, Secretary of State Colin
Powell affirmed before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
that Chavez had broken with democracy.
On February 6, CIA Director George Tenet
and Carl Ford, aide to the secretary of state for intelligence,
spoke before the Senate Intelligence Committee of a climate
of crisis in Venezuela.
On February 7, Colonel Pedro Soto, former
aide to Carlos Andres Perez (president at the time of the 1992
coup led by Chavez), affirming that he represented "75%
of the armed forces," publicly attacked the Chavez government.
(Invited by an international institute, a CIA client, Soto then
visited Washington and Miami, where he was to be found on April
11, loudly celebrating the "return to democracy,"
along with Cuban-American terrorist leaders).
Thus a rapidly and steadily more brazen
deception campaign was mounted, rapidly joined by the Venezuelan
private press, which ended up running a grossly hostile campaign
against the government. El Universal daily and Radio Caracas
Television, Globovision and Venevision TV networks were already
actively preparing the media-military coup, channeling information
and systematically harassing the constitutional government and
the head of state.
During the coup, the same disinformation
gang cut off the broadcast the president's speech to the people
and repeated lie after lie, unleashing violent incidents that
would subsequently serve to justify the subversive operation.
Meanwhile, the representatives of the new "order"
were destroying state television program material.
Then the communications junta shamelessly
spread the false information that Chavez had resigned, silenced
all public pronouncements by members of the government, and
the played up declarations in favor of the criminal coup. One
of these was made by Ambassador Shapiro, who affirmed that April
11 was an extraordinary day in the history of Venezuela.
In the morning of Saturday, April 13,
speaking before more than 30,000 people at rally in the municipality
of Guira de Melena, Habana province, in the presence of President
Fidel Castro, Bruno Rodriguez, Cuban ambassador to the United
Nations, clearly denounced the media disinformation campaign
in Venezuela. "The truth is that a coup d'etat has taken
place in Venezuela and that a sellout and <pro-U.S>. junta
is usurping, by means of force, the power invested in President
Chavez by the Venezuelan people, with hopes of erasing decades
of injustice and corruption by applying Bolivar's ideals."
Other lies followed the one alleging
Chavez's resignation, including the assertion that Chavez had
sought asylum in Cuba, which was rapidly refuted by Havana.
Indeed, the media complicity with the
coup organizers was so strong that when the latter attempted
to take the imprisoned president out of the country to the United
States, it was planned to transport him aboard a private plane
registered in the United States in the name of Gustavo Cisneros,
the owner of the Venevision TV network.
Meanwhile, CNN en Espanol linked up with
Globovision to finally announce the taking of Miraflores Palace
by the people and the presidential guard of honor... five hours
after it happened.
Lies, deception, violence, terror: everything
smacks of Otto Reich in this failed coup. Even that hysterical
rabble of Cuban-Venezuelan emigres that surrounded the Cuban
embassy in Caracas for a number of hours, destroying cars and
threatening to enter by force - before fleeing when the Bolivarian
leader's return was announced.
Otto Reich, the White House's top representative
in Latin America, servant of the Miami mafia and protector of
terrorists, had a fleeting triumph last weekend. But he also
had to accept a bitter lesson: that the voice of the people
is much stronger than a concert of lies.
Jean-Guy Allard writes for Granma International.
|