US News & World Report frames Ven. as terrorist state

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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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