From: michael a. lebowitz (mlebowit@SFU.CA)
Date: Fri Oct 03 2003 - 14:59:19 EDT
An important item from www.venezualanalysis.com, the new English-language
source of news and analysis from Venezuela.
in solidarity,
michael
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Magazine's reputation seriously damaged
U.S. News & World Report Spreads Disinformation about Chavez Government
Support for Terrorism
Thursday, Oct 02, 2003
By: Gregory Wilpert
An article recently appeared in one of the largest U.S. news magazines, an
article which will remind well-informed readers of a typical disinformation
campaign. The article in question, “Terror Close to Home,” by Linda
Robinson, appeared in U.S. News and World Report (10/6/03) [i] and claims
to have evidence that Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chavez, is “flirting with
terrorism.” The appearance of a baseless article like this, combined with
recent statements by Gen. James Hill, head of the Southern Command, that
Venezuela’s Margarita Island is a haven for Islamic terrorist groups,
suggests that the Bush administration is setting the stage for declaring
Venezuela a “rogue” state.
However, the article is so full of false conclusions, unnamed “U.S.
government sources,” distortions, and outright falsehoods, that one has to
wonder what the author’s real agenda is. Let’s examine the article’s
problems one by one.
Falsehoods & Distortions
Linda Robinson claims that “Venezuela is providing support … that could
prove useful to radical Islamic groups.” She goes on to say, “U.S. News has
learned that Chavez's government has issued thousands of cedulas, the
equivalent of Social Security cards, to people from places such as Cuba,
Colombia, and Middle Eastern nations that play host to foreign terrorist
organizations.” First of all, it is probably true that Venezuela issued
identification cards (“cedulas”) to citizens of these countries, something
that the U.S. does too, whenever it grants residency to a non-U.S. citizen,
in the form of a “green card.” The issuance of such identification papers,
if anything, helps track residents’ illegal activity, rather than obscures
it, as the article suggests. The accusation from an unnamed “American
official” that “more than a thousand” Colombians had received “cedulas” is
meaningless in a country that has several hundred thousand Colombians
living there as legal residents.
Robinson then says that “U.S. officials believe that the Venezuelan
government is issuing the documents to people who should not be getting
them and that some of these cedulas were subsequently used to obtain
Venezuelan passports and even American visas, which could allow the holder
to elude immigration checks and enter the United States.” First, on what
basis do U.S. officials believe that these foreign residents should not
receive residency? How could they possibly know that just from glancing at
a list of names and nationalities? Second, since when can a citizen of a
Middle Eastern country receive a U.S. visa more easily just because he or
she has Venezuelan residency? If they can, then that is the responsibility
of the U.S. government, not the Venezuelan. As Chavez suggested in a press
conference with foreign journalists on October 1, perhaps U.S. Ambassador
Charles Shapiro should be investigated for supporting terrorism, if he is
granting visas to terrorists, as the Robinson article implies.
Another issue that Robinson raises is the claim that Venezuela’s Arab
communities are “becoming centers for terrorist sympathizers.” To bolster
this claim, Robinson cites an unnamed “Venezuelan analyst,” who says that
the Venezuelan-Arab friendship association on Venezuela’s Margarita Island
is a “fortress” with armed guards. Aside from the fact that most important
buildings in Venezuela have armed guards, such an observation is completely
meaningless. According to such a standard, the U.S. embassy would have to
be the center of terrorism, since it is by far the most fortified and
fortress-like building in all of Venezuela.
Robinson’s claims are also undermined by a recent in-depth investigation by
Michele Salcedo, of Florida’s Sun-Sentinel (9/5/03). Unlike Robinson,
Salcedo visited Margarita Island and spoke to the people there. Her
investigation casts serious doubt that there are any terrorist “cells” on
the island, as Robinson and Gen. James Hill, head of the U.S. Southern
Command claim.
Hill’s accusation that Arabs on Margarita Island are involved in
“money-laundering, drug trafficking, or arms deals” is supposed to prove
that there is Venezuelan government support for terrorism, but actually it
proves no such thing. It is well known that banks throughout the world and
especially in the Caribbean are in one way or another involved in
money-laundering. If the accusation is true, then perhaps the Venezuelan
government should crack down on this, but then the U.S. government ought to
make a formal request and not let unnamed officials work with journalists
who have a political agenda to make baseless accusations.
Robinson assumes that her truly weak arguments have proven Venezuelan
government complicity in supporting Middle Eastern terrorists and to
further support her case, she digs up the old claim that Venezuela is also
supporting Colombia’s guerrilla movements, the FARC and the ELN. According
to her, U.S. News has maps that “actually pinpoint the location of camps”
of the Colombian guerrillas inside of Venezuela. How in the world does a
map with dots prove anything? Anyone can mark a map and claim that they are
secret camps. Given the “first hand reports” she claims to have, references
to such maps are clearly meant to give legitimacy where her anonymous
sources can’t.
Robinson then goes on to claim that the “first hand reports” prove
government support for the guerillas. However, all they prove, if they are
true, is that the border is porous, that there are camps within Venezuelan
territory and that there are (probably corrupt) Venezuelan officers
involved in drug smuggling and arms dealing. None of this proves in the
least that official high-level government support the guerrillas. Anyone
who knows anything about the area knows that the it is like the Wild West,
with Venezuelan and Colombian military, paramilitary, drug-smuggling,
kidnapping, and guerilla activity originating from both sides of the
border. The area is a complete mess, as far as law and order are concerned.
One could blame the government for this mess, but it is a mess for which
the U.S. and Colombian governments also bear their share of responsibility.
The area is ideal for drug-smuggling because it is a relatively easy
passage to Maracaibo Lake and then to the Caribbean.
Another unnamed “U.S. official” says, according to Robinson, that “It's no
secret the level of cooperation that the Venezuelan government is giving to
the Colombian groups, from the shipment of arms in, to the shipment of
drugs out, to the movement of people in and out of Colombia.” If this is no
secret, then why does the U.S. government not make a formal complaint and
officially declare Venezuela a “narco-state”? Robinson then quotes the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Meyers, who in August
made statements where he compared Venezuela to Syria. Robinson uses these
statements as further proof that Venezuela is involved in terrorism.
However, while the statement caused a diplomatic row between the U.S. and
Venezuela, Robinson took them out of context because Meyers did not say
that there was any proof of Venezuela supporting terrorism. He said, “I
think there is more to learn with respect to Venezuela and we are going to
have to continue to explore that.” The rest of his statements were
completely hypothetical, saying that if Venezuela supported terrorism, then
one could compare Venezuela to Syria.[ii]
Next, Robinson connects the FARC and ELN with the Bolivarian Liberation
Front (FBL) and the Bolivarian Circles. There is a complete lack of any
substantiating evidence to any of these claims (except for the unexplained
use of quotation marks around the word “instrumental” when describing FARC
and ELN involvement). It may well be that there are connections between the
three armed groups (FARC, ELN, FBL), but again, this does not prove the
overall argument that Venezuela is supporting terrorism. As for the
Bolivarian Circles, the vast majority of these are unarmed community
groups, as numerous international reporters have already discovered. It is
pure opposition propaganda to present these as some kind of paramilitary group.
Finally, Robinson ends this “investigative report” by claiming that Cubans
are directly involved in Venezuela’s intelligence and paramilitary
apparatus. Aside from the fact that Venezuela, unlike Colombia, to most
people’s knowledge, does not have a paramilitary “apparatus,” this is
another example of attempting to prove guilt by association. It is
certainly true that there have been numerous cooperation agreements between
Cuba and Venezuela, especially in the social realm, but this does not prove
in any way that Chavez wants to set-up a one party political system, with
nearly complete state control over the economy, as exists in Cuba. As for
the Chavez government providing oil shipments to Cuba at preferential
terms, this is hardly different from the preferential shipments that
Venezuela makes to numerous other nations of the Caribbean.
False Conclusions and Unnamed Government Officials
As if it were not bad enough journalism to present such a long series of
poorly substantiated claims, Robinson makes extremely heavy use of unnamed
government officials. Except for the few public comments that Gen. Hill and
Gen. Myers made, she does not provide a single name of anyone she
interviewed. It is well known that government officials want to be able to
talk off the record. Generally, however, there are two main reasons for
doing so. First, they might have information that is confidential and want
to leak it for personal or political reasons. Or, second, they want to give
a particular spin to a sensitive political issue, but cannot prove any of
their claims.
With the exception of FARC deserters, it seems very doubtful that the
numerous informants that Robinson spoke to wanted anonymity because the
information they had was confidential. If there is proof of the Venezuelan
government’s involvement in terrorist activity, then why not make it
public? Why not publicly accuse the Venezuelan government of supporting
terrorism and then provide the proof? Presumably this would cause the
break-off of relations between Venezuela and the U.S. But surely there are
more diplomatic and effective ways to deal with such an issue than via
direct confrontation or via journalists with an axe to grind.
It seems much more plausible that these unnamed officials maintain their
anonymity for reasons of generating spin using allegations for which they
lack concrete proof, as part of an effort to discredit and undermine a
government that they do not like. In this sense, the entire article is very
reminiscent of the old CIA and U.S. government practice of planting false
news as part of their undercover operations.[iii] Such tactics were used to
great effect when the CIA worked on toppling the governments of Jacobo
Arbenz in Guatemala, of Salvador Allende in Chile, and of Sukarno in
Indonesia.
There’s another, more charitable explanation for the problems with
Robinson’s article, which is that the U.S. officials she relies on receive
all of their information members of Venezuela’s opposition. This is very
similar to what we saw when the U.S. relied on Iraqi informants who were
interested in provoking a U.S. invasion and concocted as much information
as possible about the supposed existence of weapons of mass
destruction—weapons that six months after the invasion have still failed to
show up. Members of Venezuela’s opposition have a history of concocting
stories to discredit the Chavez government, whether involving false
testimonies from the pilots of President Chavez or Vice-President Rangel,
supposed government sponsored kidnappings, or the supposed chauffeurs of
pro-Chavez members of the National Assembly. All of these were eventually
proven to be false.
Perhaps the most amazing statements in Robinson’s article, for anyone
capable of logical thought, are the false conclusions she draws. For
example, she lists the supposed government support of non-Venezuelan
terrorists by issuing Venezuelan identity cards, a claim that is not
substantiated in the least, the disappearance of an Arab that the U.S. is
looking for questioning, and the existence of a fortified Venezuelan-Arab
Association building. She then jumps to the conclusion that “Venezuela's
support for terrorist organizations isn't limited to those based in Lebanon
or Egypt.” None of the forgoing arguments ever proved in any way that
Venezuela (presumably Chavez) is supporting terrorist organizations. The
entire article is peppered with such faulty logic, in an attempt to show
that “Chavez is flirting with terrorism.”
It would be nice if one could attribute this atrocious article to bad
journalism. However, the author is the Latin America Bureau Chief for U.S.
News and World Report, the third largest news magazine in the U.S. Rather,
it seems that either the author has been manipulated by her numerous
unnamed “U.S. officials” who are pursuing an agenda of their own, with the
intention of undermining and destabilizing a foreign government and perhaps
even providing the justification for intensified foreign intervention in
Venezuela, or she shares these goals herself and is a willing accomplice of
the domestic and international opposition to the Chavez government. In
either case, U.S. News does enormous damage to its reputation as a serious
news magazine.
[i] Link: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/031006/usnews/6venezuela.htm
[ii] Transcript of the August 12 press conference with Gen. Meyers:
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/conflict/03081210.htm
[iii] For a brief article on this practice, see Reuters, February 25, 2002,
“U.S. Planting False Stories Common Cold War Tactic,” By Tabassum Zakaria:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2002/02/re022502.html
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2003 VenezuelAnalysis.com
Ongoing News, Views and Analysis from Venezuela
---------------------
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Office Fax: (604) 291-5944
Home: Phone (604) 689-9510
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