IAR’s Rodrigo Guevara reports: Otto Reich, a political thug eternally implicated in secret CIA networks to overthrow President Hugo Chavez, and outgoing Special Envoy to Latin America for the Bush administration, recently told the BBC that the White House would like to see the Venezuelan President out of power. As the man responsible for State Department Latin American policy, Otto Reich was the lead proponent of the April 2002 coup d’etat that briefly ousted Chavez. Reich collaborated with the Miami Cuban-American mafia and the coup-leading media mogul Gustavo Cisneros. Now, they wish history to repeat itself.
Dictator-for-a-Day - Pedro Carmona Estanga
When the dictator Pedro Carmona announced his “resignation” after the failed coup, he said that he would assume “full responsibility,” assuring that he had acted “without premeditation or conspiracy.” However, when the Vice President at that time, Diosdado Cabello, showed the press the ceremonial presidential sash abandoned by the dictator with the stamp of a Madrid factory, this was but one indication that the coup wasn’t in response to the April 11 demonstrations, but rather that it had been premeditated and calculated.
But, the operation that put the puppet Pedro Carmona in Miraflores Palace as “President” wasn’t planned in Madrid, but in Washington.
According to a report published by the Voltaire Network in October 2002 (“Stay-behind: Failure of the Operation in Venezuela”), the decision to overthrow Hugo Chavez formed part of the “World Attack Matrix” doctrine proposed by former CIA director George Tenet on September 15, 2001 and supported by President George W. Bush.
The CIA was thinking of overthrowing or assassinating Chavez. The operation was rushed because of a call by Iran and Iraq to impose an oil embargo on all of the nations that supported the actions of Ariel Sharon in his occupation of Palestinian territories. Thus, the CIA planned the coup d’etat to kill two birds with one stone: It would liquidate Chavez and paralyze OPEC, which was led by Venezuela at that time.
The planning of these operations was supervised in the White House National Security Council by Elliot Abrams, distinguished member of the pro-Israeli lobby (whose most visible members are the Pentagon hawks Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith) and former Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Reagan.
At Abrams’ side in planning the coup was Otto Reich, Subsecretary of State for Latin American Affairs, who was US ambassador to Venezuela from 1986 to 1989, and therefore “knew the terrain.”
Otto Reich and Elliot Abrams were also implicated in drug trafficking organized by the US State Department and the CIA to finance the Nicaragua contras, whose operative head was Colonel Oliver North.
When the Congressional investigations into the Iran-Contra affair made it inconvenient for Otto Reich to remain in Washington, the Reagan administration named him ambassador to Venezuela.
Billionaire Gustavo Cisneros
In Caracas, Reich contacted the Cisneros clan, a powerful Venezuelan family of Cuban origin, whose patriarch, Gustavo Cisneros, through the private TV channel Venevision, led the media coup against Hugo Chavez in April 2002.
As reported in IBLNEWS, an article in the April 29, 2002 issue of Newsweek ("Hugo's Close Call") points out that Otto Reich, who then had chief responsibility for Latin America in the State Department, admitted that he had spoken with Cisneros “two or three times” during the April 11 coup, but only to ask for information about what was happening.
According to Newsweek, Cisneros warned Reich in an April 13 phone call that a group of enraged Chavez partisans had surrounded the Venevision building. Newsweek affirmed that Gustavo Cisneros was at the “apex” of the plot, and that Venezuelan businessman Pedro Carmona “was seen leaving Cisneros’ office” on April 12, before swearing in as provisional president at Miraflores Palace after the coup against the constitutional government of Hugo Chavez.
Uniting Cisneros and Reich were their ties to the Cuban-American mafia operating in South Miami, their close relationship with Florida governor Jeb Bush, and their privileged relationship with the brains behind the Iran-Contra plan, former US president George Bush (father of W, the current US president), whom many consider to be the true “shadow president” of the United States.
Pedro Carmona’s selection as puppet president of the brief dictatorial regime was made in consultation with the family of Venezuelan ex-president Rafael Caldera and Gustavo Cisneros. Pedro Carmona, a man of malleable profile and little character, would have permitted Cisneros to govern Venezuela from the shadows. According to a report written by Omar Fazio and published in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada (“Otto Reich, expert in undercover operations, according to the US Congress”, April 30, 2003), when he was US ambassador in Caracas, Reich used to organize meetings with Hubert Matos and Carlos Alberto Montaner when both were seeking to establish a counterrevolutionary alternative to Jorge Mas Canosa’s National Cuban American Foundation (FNCA) in Miami.
At one of those private meetings, Reich assured that Washington “would contribute to the cause through increased financial aid to anti-Castro organizations based in Venezuela.”
According to Cuban investigator Reinaldo Taladrid, the same conspirators financed by Reich at the end of the 1980’s in Venezuela participated in the 2002 coup d’etat against President Hugo Chavez. The connection between the FNCA and the April 11 coup leaders in Caracas was pointed out by notes and testimonies appearing in the US press.
Fugitive trade union - mafia boss Carlos Ortega
In Washington, Abrams and Reich received many Venezuelan leaders in the weeks preceding the coup, among them Elias Santana (of Queremos Elegir) and CTV union boss Carlos Ortega, both involved with the FNCA. In an article appearing in Miami’s El Nuevo Herald newspaper, FNCA executive director Joe Garcia was quoted as recognizing that he had met with and “aided” leaders opposed to Chavez. The newspaper also published the testimony of Cuban-Venezuelan ex-banker Orlando Castro: “The hands of the FNCA were all over the scheme to remove Chavez from power, as they were in the Florida elections leading to the (George W.) Bush triumph.”
According to the Herald, Cuban exile activists “from the Junta Patriotica Cubana to the Unidad Cubana, the Vigilia Mambisa, the F-4 Commandos, and the most important TV and radio broadcasters in the city” gave to the anti-Chavez leaders “resources, experience, strategies, logistical support, lobbying, and contacts throughout the United States,” to promote opposition maneuvers aimed at destabilizing the President of Venezuela.
During the petroleum strike of December 2002 to January 2003 aimed at toppling Chavez, some of the “resources” provided by radical Cuban exile groups were channeled through bank accounts at the Transatlantic Bank and Ocean Bank in Miami.
Ocean Bank is known for its connections to the April 2002 coup. According to journalist Lilliam Oviedo, “the Venezuelan conspirators… received resources through Ocean Bank. One of its principal shareholders is Mario del Valle, husband of Clara del Valle, vice president of the FNCA” (“The far right’s tricks,” El Nacional, May 5, 2002).
The operation to manipulate the mass media was designed by Abrams and Reich, and the structure was provided by Cisneros, who has majority ownership of AOL Latin America, DirecTV Latin America (300 channels of radio and television in 28 countries), and Univision (US Hispanic TV chain). During the coup d’etat, these stations broadcasted false information saying that Hugo Chavez had ordered police to fire on opposition demonstrators. In reality, the victims were assassinated by the Caracas city police, trained in the US by an FBI unit.
From the State Department, Reich gave his immediate support to Carmona and the military coup leaders.
To prepare the ground and public opinion, and at the same time open the possibility of direct US military intervention, $200,000 were deposited in Miami bank accounts in the names of Admiral Carlos Molina and Colonel Pedro Soto. These were the two men who demanded the resignation of Hugo Chavez, accusing him of aiding the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) guerrillas, a defamatory accusation that allowed the US to support the coup operations under the guise of the “War against Terrorism.”
But, Otto Reich committed an error that he later had to retract. The US government, through a disinformation campaign, spread the false rumor that four Cuban airplanes were stationed in Caracas during the April coup.
Reich was also behind the media campaign financed by the FNCA against the energy pact between Venezuela and Cuba. High leaders in the Venezuelan state petroleum company PDVSA were invited to Miami by the FNCA, and were transported in a Folem airplane owned by Mas Santos.
To finance opposition protests against Chavez, Elliot Abrams and Otto Reich resorted to black CIA accounts, principally the National Endowment for Democracy. Created in 1983 by Ronald Reagan, the NED was administered by Henry Kissinger and AFL-CIO union president Lane Kirkland. Now presided by Carl Gersham and administered by General Wesley Clark (former NATO supreme commander during the Kosovo War) and Frank Carlucci (former adjunct director of the CIA and now president of the Carlyle Group).
The “selection” of Venezuelan military leaders to participate in the coup was done by Otto Reich, who administered the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in Fort Benning, Georgia, known in the past as the School of the Americas. This school offers professional training for Latin American military leaders, and during the 1970’s, it taught Latin American dictators and officials who, under the façade of “counterinsurgent warfare,” received training in terror tactics and torture techniques.
Source: VHeadlne.com - Venezuela Electronic News
