[NYTr] Venezuela Releases US Memo on Destabilization

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

COUNTERPUNCH EXCLUSIVE - Nov 28, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/petras11272007.html


CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces

Counterattack as Fateful Referendum Looms


By JAMES PETRAS

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 at binghamton.edu ]