Latin America's Dilemma

The Bush administration isengaging in damage control for their questionable involvement in the failed 2 day coup against thedemocratically elected government of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Alarmingly, the ominous Otto Reich isemerging as a key player in the administration's role in the failed coup attempt to replace Chavez with anoligarchy of business, military and wealthy elites. Scrambling to distance themselves from the botchedoverthrow of the democratically elected Chavez government, the Bush administration admitted that Mr. Reichcalled the coup leader, Mr. Carmona, and asked him not to dissolve the National Assembly because it would be a"stupid thing to do". The next day the administration revised their story and said Reich only askedour ambassador to relay that message to Carmona.

The New York Times noted that the disclosure raised questions as to whether Mr. Reichand other administration officials were stage-managing the takeover by Mr. Carmona. Although the Bushadministration admits their desire to replace the Chavez government because of its opposition to U.S. policiesand friendship with countries like Cuba and Iran, they now insist that they were not involved in the armedcoup. The administration also admits talking with various Venezuelan officials prior to the coup includingGeneral Lucas Romero Rincon, head of the Venezuelan military, who met with Pentagon official Rogelio Pardo-Maurer,a former close associate of the U. S. supported Contra forces in Nicaragua.

Mr. Reich's propensity to pernicious propaganda has once again emerged from eventssurrounding the coup. According to the New York Times, Reich told congressional aides that the administrationhad received reports that "foreign paramilitary forces"-suspected to be Cuban-were involved in thebloody suppression of anti-Chavez demonstrators, in which at least 14 people were killed in Venezuela. Reich,a former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela and lobbyist with ties to Mobil Oil in Venezuela, further told theCongressional staffers that Mr. Chavez had meddled with the historically independent state oil company,provided haven to Colombian guerillas, and bailed out Cuba with preferential rates on oil.

Reich is a right-wing Cuban-American obsessed with overthrowing Fidel Castro's regimeand is also a big political supporter of President Bush's brother and Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who needsstrong support from Cubans in Florida in his re-election bid this year. Reich, along with fellow Reaganadministration cohorts, Elliott Abrams and John Negroponte, were discredited for their covert activities andfalse assertions when the United States intervened in Central America in the 1980's and '90s, but have beenre-instated in prominent positions in the second Bush administration. They abhor Latin-American governmentsthat are elected by the poor and working class people, like the Chavez government in Venezuela and the deposedSandinista government in Nicaragua.

Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra scandal, but has beenremarkably rehabilitated and recycled back into the second Bush administration as head of the "Office ofDemocracy and Human Rights". Negroponte was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations lastSeptember in spite of being implicated as a friend of Honduran death squad leaders who committed atrocitiesagainst the people of Honduras while he was the U.S. Ambassador there.

The most recent resurrection of this trio of right-wing renegades is the appointmentof Otto Reich as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. President Bush used the trickyrecess appointment procedure to bypass potential hostile and damaging questioning by Democrats on the SenateForeign Relations Committee. The Senators had some interesting examples of Mr. Reich's malfeasance to ask himabout when he was the director of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy(OPD).

On September 30, 1987 a Republican appointed comptroller general of the U.S. foundthat Reich had done things as director of the OPD that were "prohibited, covert propaganda activities,"beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities...". The same report said Mr.Reich's operation violated "a restriction on the State Department's annual appropriations prohibiting theuse of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress." Reich used thecovert propaganda to demonize the democratically elected Sandinista government of Nicaragua and establish theContras as fearless freedom fighters. The purpose was to make the U.S. public afraid enough of the Sandinistasto get Congress to fund the Contras directly. The Boland Amendment was passed by Congress in 1982 thatprohibited U.S. funds from being used to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Meanwhile, the Contras werebeing illegally armed by the Reagan administration via the Iran-Contra arms deal.

On the night of Reagan's re-election in 1984, Reich's office put out the news that"intelligence sources"revealed that Soviet MIG fighter jets were arriving in Nicaragua and AndreaMitchell interrupted election night coverage on NBC to give the phony report. This resembles the JosephGoebbel's fabrication that Polish troops had attacked German soldiers to give the Third Reich an excuse tolaunch the Nazi blitzkrieg into Poland to begin World War II in 1939. Other Reich prevarications given tomedia sources included: Nicaragua had been given chemical weapons by the Soviets, according to the MiamiHerald; and leaders of the Sandinistas were involved in drug trafficking, according to Newsweek magazine.

In Latin American countries the United States has a history of doing business andsiding with wealthy oligarchies of business, professional and military elites who tend to be lighter skinnedpeople of European descent against the poor and working class composed mainly of darker skinned, indigenouspeople and those of African descent. The second Bush administration appears to be adhering to this traditionwith gusto. With Otto Reich churning out the hate and fear, it is a safe bet to predict that President HugoChavez of Venezuela will be increasingly presented as the devil incarnate and his government as evil,anti-American terrorists. Mr. Reich will dish out the poisonous propaganda to every news source that coversthe Bush administration's Latin American policy. Joseph Goebbels would be proud.

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and civil rights activist in Columbia, South Carolina.