c
 



 

 

  
 
R







V
 

  

US Latin Americanist Cold Warriors and their far-right allies in the region
kicked off a propaganda campaign in May to influence Congress and US
citizens against Venezuela and fellow ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the
Peoples of Our Americas) countries. With declining attention being paid to
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, neoconservatives and neoliberals want to
turn our attention to rolling back social and economic advances in Latin
America.

The campaign began with a Sunday, May 22, 2011, opinion piece in
the  penned by Reagan administration chief propagandist Otto
Reich and continued with a Congressional briefing that he moderated on
May 26. His premise in the  article: ³Dictatorships are being
established in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua by an alliance of
self-avowed µ21st-century socialist¶ leaders who utilize free elections to
reach power and then set about destroying the very institutions of
democracy that put them there.´

He claimed that ALBA, which is a trade agreement based on cooperation

rather than competition, ³has not only managed to survive as a retrograde
movement in a modernizing hemisphere, but is now actively exporting its
subversive model to neighboring countries.´

R
c


Reich knows a lot about subversion. As head of the Office of Public

Diplomacy in the Reagan White House, Reich used military PSYOPS
techniques to mold congressional and public opinion in favor of Reagan¶s
illegal Contra War to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

In a finding dated Sept. 30, 1987, the Comptroller-General of the U.S., a

Republican appointee himself, found that efforts of Reich¶s office were
³prohibited, covert propaganda activities,´ ³beyond the range of acceptable
agency public information activities«.´ He concluded that Reich¶s office
had violated ³a restriction on the State Depart ment¶s annual appropriations
prohibiting the use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes
not authorized by Congress.´
According to information compiled by the National Security Archive,
astaff report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee concluded that
³senior CIA officials with backgrounds in covert operations, as well as
military intelligence and psychological operations specialists from t he
Department of Defense, were deeply involved in establishing and
participating in a domestic political and propaganda operation run through
an obscure bureau in the Department of State which reported directly to the
National Security Council rather than through the normal State Department
channels«Almost all of these activities were hidden from public view and
many of the key individuals involved were never questioned or interviewed
by the Iran/Contra Committees.´

Reich¶s history calls into question his own democratic credentials, an issue
which gained currency with his very public support for the June 28, 2009,
military coup against democratically -elected President Manuel Zelaya in
Honduras.

Ñ
c


 
R
 


The purpose of Reich¶s Miami Herald piece was to call attention of the
press and policymakers to a congressional briefing on May 26, in the
Rayburn House Office Building provocatively entitled: ³Legitimacy Lost:
How 21st Century Socialism Subverts Democracy in Latin America.´ The
briefing, moderated by Reich, featured Ileana Ros - Lehtinen, chair of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, fellow Florida Congressional
Representative Connie Mack, chair of the Sub -Committee on the Western
Hemisphere, and its ranking member Eliot Engel (D -NY), along with two
panels of US and Latin American opponents of the democratic political and
economic changes increasingly prevailing in Latin American elections.

By chance or design, on May 24, the State Department declared

sanctions against Venezuela¶s state-owned oil company for refusing to
recognize US sanctions against Iran. Rep. Mack subsequently took credit
for the sanctions.

The congressional briefing was sponsored by Americas Forum, which says

it advocates for a ³robust U.S. engagement within the Hemisphere.´ An
article on the organization¶s web page headlined ³Venezuelans could be
forced to donate organs under 21st Century Socialism´ reminds me of
articles from my childhood with titles like ³Communists Will Take Away
Your Children´.
Hard-right former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar¶s A  
 





also co-sponsored, as did the Inter-
American Institute for Democracy. Aznar's government posthumously
granted a medal of Civil Merit to Melitón Manzanas, the head of the secret
police in San Sebastián under the Fascist government of Francisco Franco
(1936-1975). The Inter-American Institute for Democracy web site
includes a report on a lecture they sponsored entitled, ³BOLIVIA: The Path
to a Plebiscitary Dictatorship´.

The Heritage Foundation and Hudson Institute, right -wing Washington

think tank powerhouses also co-sponsored along with the Venezuelan
opposition group   
!", something called Secure Free Society
which does not appear to have a web page, and finally the Ce nter for
Security Policy, which according to Wikipedia advocates a policy of
"Peace through Strength," which "is not for military might but a belief that
America's national power must be preserved and properly used for it holds
a unique global role in maintaining peace and stability."

None of the co-sponsoring organizations have what one would call stellar
democracy credentials. All do hold in common authoritarian philosophies:
the rule of elites under the hegemony of US leadership and of course, that
democracy is inseparable from free market capitalism.

The speakers, led off by Chairwoman Ros-Lehtinen, laid out a litany of

complaints, half-truths and comments in the tradition of Arizona Senator
John Kyl¶s, ³not intended to be a factual statement´. The s peakers
proclaimed elected presidents Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa,
and Daniel Ortega as dictators. They reserved their strongest language for
Chavez and worked hard to brand the word ALBA with a connotation
approaching that of Al-Qaeda.

The attacks on ALBA would be laughable if it weren¶t for the fact that
those making the charges hold positions capable of setting public policy
and molding public opinion. ALBA is a cooperative trade agreement
entered into by Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia , Ecuador and several
small Caribbean island nations. Under ALBA, Venezuela trades oil to Cuba
in exchange for Cuban doctors. It trades oil to Nicaragua in exchange for
beef and black beans (which Nicaraguans won¶t eat). Nicaragua trades beef
and other food products to Cuba in exchange for doctors and literacy
trainers. Cooperative trade is anathema to the neoliberal ³free´ trade
ideology because it doesn¶t force nations to compete and most importantly
does not force down wages.
Ros-Lehtinen made the link clear when she used the briefing to criticize US
³special interest groups´ that stand in the way of signing free trade
agreements, singling out the the Colombia FTA as an example. The
congresswoman criticized the role that Chavez played (along with
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos whom she didn¶t mention) in the
negotiated return of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. Under
Zelaya, Honduras was also a member country of ALBA. Ros-Lehtinen,
who vocally supported the coup in Honduras said about the likely return of
its membership in the Organization of American States made possible by
Zelaya¶s return, ³Honduras should not have been suspended and its return
is long overdue.´

She went on to say about Venezuela that sanctions are ³just the first ste p
and more must be done.´ She went on to say that Otto Reich ³will be very
involved in these efforts´ and will take a more ³active role´ on trade,
democracy and security. Since he is now a paid lobbyist, one wonders just
what role Ros-Lehtinen sees for Reich?

The role she sees for the master propagandist may have been revealed in
Reich¶s remarks following hers. He called ALBA an ³ideology´ and a
³threat to democracy.´ He said the ³dictatorships´ are trying to spread their
ideology to other Latin American countries. Reich, who is an expert in the
³Big Lie´ technique perfected in his namesake, the Third Reich, called for
the US to take more of a role in ³ending ALBA´ because, he claimed,
³ALBA exiles or imprisons without charges whoever disagrees with it.´

Most of the other panel speakers said the predictable things, usually
without any evidence to back their claims. Notable though for one upping
Reich was Joel Hirst, a Fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations. Hirst
was Acting Head of the Office of Transition Initiatives in the US embassy
in Venezuela from 2004-2008. In that position he had the responsibility for
allocating funds to the Venezuelan opposition. In 2006, when I led a
delegation to Venezuela to investigate US interference in that year¶s
presidential elections, we were refused a meeting with Hirst.

He accused the ALBA countries of supporting the doctrine of ³asymmetric

warfare´, which he described as guerrilla warfare, terrorism, arming
children, contempt for the Rules of War and Internation al Humanitarian
Law, and ³imperial´ control. He predictably threw the FARC, Hezbollah,
and Iran into the mix.

Carlos Ponce, the Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the mis-named National

Endowment for Democracy, laid out the right -wing case that the presidents
of Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia, though democratically
elected, then proceed to break down democratic institutions in their
countries. He used as an example Daniel Ortega¶s winning of a ruling by
the Nicaraguan Supreme Court that the constitutiona l provision against
running for a consecutive term was void. However, the strategy Ortega
used to permit him to run again is precisely the same as that used by Nobel
Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias in Costa Rica which allowed him to serve
run and win a second term. No one on the right uttered a breath of
criticism when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe amended the
constitution to run a second time. Uribe tried, and failed, to amend it again
so he could run for a third term.

In the ALBA countries, Hirst said, ³no one else can be elected because the
current elected leaders have changed the laws.´ This is an absurd statement.
In these countries no one else has yet to be elected because the poverty
reduction programs and economic and political democracy they¶v e
implemented have made the current leaders the most popular candidates in
their countries. Venezuela has the most fraud -proof election mechanisms in
the world ± much more so than the US. Its electronic voting complete with
paper trail, thumb print verification and large sample recount system leaves
little room for manipulation. There is no legitimate way that anyone can
claim election fraud in Venezuela.

On Capitol Hill special interest groups hold ³congressional briefings´

virtually every day. Most are little noted nor long remembered. The
³Legitimacy Lost´ briefing is worthy of note only because Ros -Lehtinen
and Mack hold powerful positions in the US foreign policy arena. The
hearing was attended by a significant number of media representatives. The
message conveyed is bound to be repeated over and over and to soon enter
the mainstream press as ³conventional wisdom.´ That is the trajectory of
the ³Big Lie´ propaganda campaign. It is up to people who care about true
democracy and economic justice to count er the propaganda using all the
communications means at our disposal.

÷ #$% 
   %  %& 


'     #(A&')'