Dave Lindorff: News Not Fit to Print: U.S. Coup Planned for Venezuela?

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Thu Nov-29-07 08:16 PM
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Dave Lindorff: News Not Fit to Print: U.S. Coup Planned for Venezuela?

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 12:19pm. Dave Lindorff
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 U.S. Embassy as a "regional affairs officer," was intercepted by Venezuelan intelligence and released publicly on state TV yesterday.

In the Nov. 20 letter, Steele refers to an $8 million U.S.-funded in-country propaganda campaign against Chavez and the referendum, already being implemented, 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:

* Promoting street demonstrations and violent protests

* Creating a climate of ungovernability

* Provoking a general uprising

* Working through the U.S. military attach� at the embassy to coordinate with 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 U.S. 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 U.S. news organizations have not mentioned it.

Instead, the Times today ran a column by Richard 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 U.S. for Venezuela, and Bush and Cheney for Chavez, to show its hypocrisy. Here then, a sample of the only lightly tweaked column:

Link: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/lindorff/043