CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces
By JAMES PETRAS
CounterPunch, November 28, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/petras11272007.html
On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government
broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from
the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly
revealing of US clandestine operations and which
will influence the referendum this Sunday,
December 2, 2007.
The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael
Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director
of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo
was entitled 'Advancing to the Last Phase of
Operation Pincer' and updates the activity by a
CIA unit with the acronym 'HUMINT' (Human
Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine
action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum
and coordinate the civil military overthrow of
the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA's
polls concede that 57 per cent of the voters
approved of the constitutional amendments
proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60 per
cent abstention.
The US operatives emphasized their capacity to
recruit former Chavez supporters among the social
democrats (PODEMOS) and the former Minister of
Defense Baduel, claiming to have reduced the
'yes' vote by 6 per cent from its original
margin. Nevertheless the Embassy operatives
concede that they have reached their ceiling,
recognizing they cannot defeat the amendments via
the electoral route.
The memo then recommends that Operation Pincer
(OP) [Operación Tenaza] be operationalized. OP
involves a two-pronged strategy of impeding the
referendum, rejecting the outcome at the same
time as calling for a 'no' vote. The run up to
the referendum includes running phony polls,
attacking electoral officials and running
propaganda through the private media accusing the
government of fraud and calling for a 'no' vote.
Contradictions, the report emphasizes, are of no
matter.
The CIA-Embassy reports internal division and
recriminations among the opponents of the
amendments including several defections from
their 'umbrella group'. The key and most
dangerous threats to democracy raised by the
Embassy memo point to their success in mobilizing
the private university students (backed by top
administrators) to attack key government
buildings including the Presidential Palace,
Supreme Court and the National Electoral Council.
The Embassy is especially full of praise for the
ex-Maoist 'Red Flag' group for its violent street
fighting activity. Ironically, small Trotskyist
sects and their trade unionists join the
ex-Maoists in opposing the constitutional
amendments. The Embassy, while discarding their
'Marxist rhetoric', perceives their opposition as
fitting in with their overall strategy.
The ultimate objective of 'Operation Pincer' is
to seize a territorial or institutional base with
the 'massive support' of the defeated electoral
minority within three or four days (presumably
after the elections though this is not clear. JP)
backed by an uprising by oppositionist military
officers principally in the National Guard. The
Embassy operative concede that the military
plotters have run into serous problems as key
intelligence operatives were detected, stores of
arms were decommissioned and several plotters are
under tight surveillance.
Apart from the deep involvement of the US, the
primary organization of the Venezuelan business
elite (FEDECAMARAS), as well as all the major
private television, radio and newspaper outlets
have been engaged in a campaign of fear and
intimidation campaign. Food producers, wholesale
and retail distributors have created artificial
shortages of basic food items and have provoked
large scale capital flight to sow chaos in the
hopes of reaping a 'no' vote.
President Chavez Counter-Attacks
In a speech to pro-Chavez, pro-amendment
nationalist business-people (Entrepreneurs for
Venezuela EMPREVEN) Chavez warned the President
of FEDECAMARAS that if he continues to threaten
the government with a coup, he would nationalize
all their business affiliates. With the exception
of the Trotskyists and other sects, the vast
majority of organized workers, peasants, small
farmers, poor neighborhood councils, informal
self-employed and public school students have
mobilized and demonstrated in favor of the
constitutional amendments.
The reason for the popular majority is found in a
few of the key amendments: One article expedites
land expropriation facilitating re-distribution
to the landless and small producers. Chavez has
already settled over 150,000 landless workers on
2 million acres of land. Another amendment
provides universal social security coverage for
the entire informal sector (street sellers,
domestic workers, self-employed) amounting to 40
per cent of the labor force. Organized and
unorganized workers' workweek will be reduced
from 40 to 36 hours a week (Monday to Friday
noon) with no reduction in pay. Open admission
and universal free higher education will open
greater educational opportunities for lower class
students. Amendments will allow the government to
by-pass current bureaucratic blockage of the
socialization of strategic industries, thus
creating greater employment and lower utility
costs. Most important, an amendment will increase
the power and budget of neighborhood councils to
legislate and invest in their communities.
The electorate supporting the constitutional
amendments is voting in favor of their
socio-economic and class interests; the issue of
extended re-election of the President is not high
on their priorities: And that is the issue that
the Right has focused on in calling Chavez a
'dictator' and the referendum a 'coup'.
The Opposition
With strong financial backing from the US Embassy
($8 million dollars in propaganda alone according
to the Embassy memo) and the business elite and
'free time' by the right-wing media, the Right
has organized a majority of the upper middle
class students from the private universities,
backed by the Catholic Church hierarchy, large
swaths of the affluent middle class
neighborhoods, entire sectors of the commercial,
real estate and financial middle classes and
apparently sectors of the military, especially
officials in the National Guard. While the Right
has control over the major private media, public
television and radio back the constitutional
reforms. While the Right has its followers among
some generals and the National Guard, Chavez has
the backing of the paratroops and legions of
middle-rank officers and most other generals.
The outcome of the Referendum of December 2 is a
major historical event first and foremost for
Venezuela but also for the rest of the Americas.
A positive vote (Vota 'Sí') will provide the
legal framework for the democratization of the
political system, the socialization of strategic
economic sectors, empower the poor and provide
the basis for a self-managed factory system. A
negative vote (or a successful US-backed
civil-military uprising) would reverse the most
promising living experience of popular self-rule,
of advanced social welfare and democratically
based socialism. A reversal, especially a
military dictated outcome, would lead to a blood
bath, such as we have not seen since the days of
the Indonesian Generals' Coup of 1966, which
killed over a million workers and peasants or the
Argentine Coup of 1976 in which over 30,000
Argentines were murdered by the US- backed
Generals.
A decisive vote for 'Sí' will not end US military
and political destabilization campaigns but it
will certainly undermine and demoralize their
collaborators. On December 2, 2007 the
Venezuelans have a rendezvous with history.
James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at
Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year
membership in the class struggle, is an adviser
to the landless and jobless in brazil and
argentina and is co-author of Globalization
Unmasked (Zed). His new book with Henry
Veltmeyer, Social Movements and the State:
Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina, will be
published in October 2005. He can be reached at:
jpetras@binghamton.edu
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