BY FEDERICO FUENTES
The April 22 edition of Newsweek magazine reported that the plotters behind the failed April 12-14 coup in Venezuela had revealed their plan to the US embassy in Caracas less than two months earlier.
A senior US state department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the magazine that members of Venezuela's military, media owners and opposition politicians had met with US officials "to complain and to tell us about the situation".
A US defence department official told Newsweek, "we were not discouraging people, we were sending informal, subtle signals that we don't like [Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez]. We didn't say 'No, don't you dare' and we weren't advocates saying, 'Here's some arms; we'll help you overthrow this guy'."
Two of the generals who backed the coup — army commander Efrain Vasquez and General Ramirez Poveda — were trained at the US Army's School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia. SOA graduates are notorious for their human rights abuses and atrocities throughout Latin America, as well as their cooperation with the CIA.
The most startling evidence of US involvement has come from comments by former National Security Agency officer Wayne Madsen. Madsen, in an article written with Richard Bennett and published by the National Press Building, revealed that US participation was not only financial, but also military.
Madsen and Bennett reported: "Under the cover of ... training exercises in the Caribbean, the US Navy [USN] provided signals intelligence and communications jamming support to the Venezuelan military... From eastern Colombia, CIA and US contract military personnel, ostensibly used for counter-narcotics operations, stood by to provide logistics support for the leading members of the coup...
"Additional USN vessels ... stood by in the event the coup against Chavez faltered, thus requiring a military evacuation of US citizens in Venezuela...
"For its part, the CIA provided Special Operations Group personnel, headed by a lieutenant colonel on loan from the US Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to help organise the coup against Chavez. They had been in the country since the summer of 2001 ...
"The group reportedly made contact with senior, pro-US military officers ... and business and union leaders, especially those with the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, and the Venezuelan Workers' Confederation. Last summer, the CIA lieutenant colonel began meeting with corporate and labour leaders at the PDVSA refinery in Maracaibo to lay plans for the coup against Chavez. One of those recruited early on by the CIA was the new interim Venezuelan President, Pedro Carmona, the head of the Fedecamaras business syndicate."
From Green Left Weekly, April 24, 2002.
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