CIA Orchestrates Coup to Oust Venezuala’s President Hugo Chavez, but Coup Fails

Unresolved Questions 1: Who were the snipers?

There seem to be four main unresolved questions, which, if they remain unresolved, will continue to shroud the coup in controversy. The first of these is the question of who shot the pro- and anti-Chavez demonstrators on April 11th. It seems obvious that the only ones who could possibly have had an interest in causing a confrontation and in causing deaths that day were the masterminds behind the coup and therefore it is reasonable to believe that it was they who made sure those shots were fired.[39] However, other than the testimony provided by Otto Neustaldt and by various coup organizers who bragged about having planned the coup, solid proof still has not yet surfaced.

Seven people were arrested on April 11th, in the hotel Ausonia, which is across the street from where several people were killed. When the DISIP (a national police force) arrested them, several weapons and drugs were found on them. Five of them had false identification papers and several were apparently Colombians. On the 13th the suspects were presented to a judge, but the hearing ended up being postponed, apparently due to the confusion the country was in. Finally, when they had their hearing on the 16th, the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to hold them any longer and let them go. According to Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez, the suspects have all fled the country.[40] One of the most promising leads on identifying the assassins was thus lost amidst the confusion of the coup days.

Unresolved Questions 2: What is Plan Avila?

A second unresolved question is whether the Plan Avila that Chavez invoked, in order to prevent a confrontation between pro- and anti-Chavez demonstrators and to prevent an assault on Miraflores, represented a potential violation of human rights and thus warranted the military disobedience of Generals Vasquez Velasco and Manuel Rosendo and of other officers. It would seem, though, that as long as there was no order to attack demonstrators, the plan would merely have protected governmental installations with lethal force. That is, as long as no one tried to physically attack governmental buildings, such as the presidential palace, no one would have been injured. As such, the plan is clearly not a plan to attack. National Guard General Francisco Belisario Landis, who was in charge of the National Guard on April 11th, explains that, “The Plan Avila was the one that was applied when the Pope visited Venezuela… It is implemented when the police force has been overcome and there is a situation in which the public order has been significantly altered or there is a latent, visible, and notorious threat to it.”[41] If the plan has been applied to control crowds before, such as during the Pope’s visit, it makes little sense to say that Generals Vasquez and Rosendo were justified in disobeying Chavez on April 11th, on the basis that this is a lethal plan (in which they were no doubt at least partly responsible for drafting).

Unresolved Questions 3: Were Rosendo and Vasquez part of the plan?

This leads to the third unresolved question of whether Vasquez and Rosendo were part of the coup plan in the first place. The fact that Gen. Vasquez was considered for the post of Defense Minister back in March suggests very strongly that the coup organizers could count on his support for their project. More than that, Tejera Paris, a former foreign minister of Venezuela who was also being considered for the transition presidency, reports that meetings were held at his home to discuss the coup. According to La Fuente and Meza, Paris recounts how, “Various officials came here [to his home] and one of them, a major, told me that he would arrange a meeting with [Gen.] Vasquez Velasco. … He came to my home one morning in March dressed as a civilian. He made a great impression on me, of a decent and concerned man, reluctant to change the government. I think he knew that Chavez presented a problem, but he did not want to topple him. But we talked about how the coup should unfold.”[42]

Vasquez Velasco later confirmed that he indeed met with Tejera Paris, but always denied that he was part of any plan to topple Chavez. This claim, however, does not sound particularly credible, given the key position he had in the success of the coup. If it had not been for the rebellion of Vasquez Velasco (and of General Manuel Rosendo), the coup would in all likelihood have failed. The coup organizers must have known how he was going to react to the events of the day, which Vasquez knew of well in advance.

Unresolved Questions 4: How involved was the U.S. government?

Finally, one of the biggest unresolved questions is what role the Bush administration played in the coup. There are numerous instances of circumstantial evidence that suggest that the Bush administration was involved in one way or another. In late 2003, though, several documents have surfaced, as a result of a series of Freedom of Information Act requests made by the lawyers Jeremy Bigwood and Eva Golinger, that the CIA did know that a coup was being planned. The documents that show that the Bush administration was aware of the coup plans are the five “Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs,” issued between March 5 and April 8, 2002.[43] This brief is distributed to the 200 highest level decision-makers in the U.S. government.

The April 1 brief states:

“President Chavez is facing continued strong opposition from the private sector, the media, the Catholic Church, and opposition political parties angered by a host of laws he decreed in December. Reporting suggests that disgruntled officers within the military are still planning a coup, possibly early this month.”

The next brief, of April 6, states, under the headline, “Conditions Ripening for Coup Attempt:

“Dissident military factions, including some disgruntled senior officers and a group of radical junior officers, are stepping up efforts to organize a coup against President Chavez, possibly as early as this month. [deleted section] The level of detail in the reported plans [deleted]—targets Chavez and 10 other senior officials for arrest—lends credence to the information, but military and civilian contacts note that appears ready to lead a successful coup and may bungle the attempt by moving too quickly.”

The brief goes on to note that the coup will be unsuccessful as long as it is not supported by a broader political base. It then continues,

“To provoke military action, the plotters may try to exploit unrest stemming from opposition demonstrations slated for later this month or ongoing strikes at the state-owned oil company PDVSA…”

Considering that this is exactly how the coup unfolded, it would seem that the CIA was indeed quite well informed about the plans. (Top video confirms they did know and planned it in advance)

The April 8 brief makes it very clear that the CIA knew that a coup was in the works:

“Disgruntled military officers are planning a coup, although the military and the opposition as a whole appear to prefer that Chavez be removed by constitutional means.”

When these documents became public, in November 2004, the Venezuelan government demanded an explanation from the Bush administration. At first a Bush administration spokesperson said that the administration did not send a warning to Chavez, since this would have constituted “interference” in Venezuela’s internal affairs. Later, another spokesperson backtracked, saying that the administration had indeed warned Chavez. Chavez, though, denied ever having received such a warning.

More importantly, though, these briefs reveal that the Bush administration was at the very least contributing to the coup, when it claimed, contrary to its own intelligence findings, that the events of April 11th were Chavez’s own fault. White House spokesperson Ari Fleisher said on April 12th,

“We know that the action encouraged by the Chavez government provoked this crisis. According to the best information available, the Chavez government suppressed peaceful demonstrations. Government supporters, on orders from the Chavez government, fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors, resulting in 10 killed and 100 wounded. The Venezuelan military and the police refused to fire on the peaceful demonstrators and refused to support the government’s role in such human rights violations. (…) The results of these events are now that President Chavez has resigned the presidency. Before resigning, he dismissed the vice president and the cabinet, and a transitional civilian government has been installed. This government has promised early elections.”[44]

By endorsing the coup, with its confirmation of the opposition’s version of events as the only valid version, the U.S. government essentially became an accomplice to the coup, regardless of whether the U.S. government also had a larger hand in the coup behind the scenes. More than that, since it is now proven that the Bush administration knew of the coup plans well in advance, its endorsement of the opposition’s version of events constitutes active participation in the cover-up of the actual events in order to support the coup plotters’ version of what happened.

The question of whether the U.S. government was clandestinely involved in the coup remains unresolved though. While the security briefs leave the impression that the U.S. was merely observing events and not participating in them, it is important to note that the security briefs are prepared by the intelligence section of the CIA, not its operational arm. That is, the CIA covert operations arm could have had a hand in the coup, even though the security brief presents events in Venezuela from an observer’s and not a participant’s perspective.

However, there are numerous other bits and pieces of evidence that point to U.S. government complicity and perhaps even leadership in the coup. It will probably take twenty years, as was the case with the uncovering of U.S. involvement in the overthrow of Chile’s Salvador Allende, before the full story of U.S. involvement in the Venezuelan coup is revealed.

One of the pieces of evidence comes from Chavez himself, who has on several occasions told of the story of a formal farewell reception, held April 8th, 2002, for the Chinese military attaché, which was attended by a large cross-section of Venezuela’s national and foreign military representatives. At that reception, a U.S. marine officer by the name of David Cazares asked to speak to “General Gonzalez” of the Venezuelan military. Not knowing that there were at least two General Gonzalezes in Venezuela’s military, he was directed to the wrong one. Cazares wanted to speak to General Nestor Gonzalez Gonzalez, the General who was actively plotting the coup with the opposition, but was instead directed to General Roberto Gonzalez Cardenas, a Chavez loyalist. Since the name tag on the uniform only says the first last name, he could not have known that he was approaching the wrong Gonzalez. According to Chavez, he said to Gen. Roberto Gonzalez, “Why haven’t you contacted the ships that we have on the coast and the submarine we have submerged in La Guaira?[45] What has happened? Why has no one contacted me? What are you waiting for?” Puzzled about the question, the wrong Gonzalez merely responded, “I’ll find out.” Thereupon Cazares gave the general his business card, so that he might contact him. Chavez says that Roberto Gonzalez gave him the card as proof.[46]

A second piece of the puzzle, which fits well with the story above, was provided by Wayne Madsen, a former officer of the National Security Administration (NSA) – the military’s spy and electronic eavesdropping arm. According to Madsen, “Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFEX) training exercises in the Caribbean the US Navy provided signals intelligence and communications jamming support to the Venezuelan military,” [47] during the coup. Furthermore, “The National Security Agency (NSA) supported the coup using personnel attached to the US Southern Command’s Joint Interagency Task Force East (JIATF-E) in Key West, Florida. NSA’s Spanish-language linguists and signals interception operators in Key West; Sabana Seca on Puerto Rico and the Regional Security Operating Centre (RSOC) in Medina, Texas also assisted in providing communications intelligence to US military and national command authorities on the progress of the coup d’êtat.”

An intelligence report by Venezuela’s Air Force, which was submitted to coup president Pedro Carmona and found in the Presidential palace after it was re-taken by Chavez confirms that U.S. ships entered Venezuelan territorial waters. According to the report, “These ships were identified as NC1 3300, NC22027, and NC# 2132; they entered territorial waters at 9:00am on April 12, 2002, without due authorization. After 4:00pm they headed towards the high seas.”[48]

Colonel Rodgers, along with Colonel Ronald McCammon signed their names upon entering Fort Tiuna, the Caracas military headquarters, on April 11 and were seen there by several witnesses.[49] The U.S. State Department later denied the existence of these officers or that any officers were in Fort Tiuna at that time. Wayne Madsen elaborated on this information in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian. “I first heard of Lieutenant Colonel James Rogers [the assistant military attaché now based at the US embassy in Caracas] going down there last June [2001] to set the ground,” said Madsen to The Guardian.[50]

Finally, Chavez and other witnesses say they saw a U.S.-registered airplane on the island that Chavez was being held captive on, La Orchila. The island is a military base and thus normally would not have any U.S. planes on it. According to one account, the plane belonged to a Paraguayan banker named Victor Gil of Total Bank and that the plane’s purpose was to take Chavez to Puerto Rico.[51]

What these bits and pieces of evidence point to is a suggestive picture of direct U.S. government support for the coup. The exact extent and nature of this support will probably remain an issue of controversy for quite some time. It seems that the support was minimally in the form of supportive statements and advice on what the coup would have to look like in order for the U.S. to accept it. It seems more plausible, though, that the support was much more substantial than that and included extensive coordination between Venezuelan and U.S. coup planners, logistical military support as described by Madsen, and a plan for secretly flying Chavez to the U.S. or some other country, as happened to both President Bertrand Aristide of Haiti in 2005 and to General Manuel Noriega in 1990, when they were deposed with U.S. help.

Bibliography

Elizade, Rosa Miriam and Luis Baez (2004), Chávez Nuestro, La Habana: Casa Editorial Abril

Garcia Ponce, Guillermo (2002) El Golpe de Estado del 11 de Abril. Caracas: Comando Política de la Revolución

Golinger, Eva (2005), The Chavez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela, Havana: Editorial José Martí (also published in 2006 at: Olive Branch Press)

Harnecker, Marta (2003), Hugo Chávez Frías: Un Hombre, Un Pueblo. Caracas: Asociación Civil Universitario por la Equidad (Published in 2005 in English as: Understanding the Venezuelan Revolution, New York: Monthly Review Press)

La Fuente, Sandra and Alfredo Mesa (2004) El Acertijo de Abril. Caracas: Random House Mondadori

Rosas, Alexis (2005) La Noche de los Generales. Self-published

Sanz, Rodolfo (2003) Dialectica de una Victoria. Los Teques: Nuevo Pensamiento Critico

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sHomNWFRCA&t=110s

VIDEO: Chavez: Man Of The People Or Communist Autocrat?

Additional Reading:

• http://www.globalresearch.ca/venezuela-coup-and-countercoup-revolution/18618
• https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/800