[News] Clinton Manages Corp that Funds Honduras Coup Regime

[Anti-Imperialist News]

US Secretary of State Clinton’s Micro-Management 
of the Corporation that Funds the Honduras Coup Regime




Records Demonstrate that the Secretary Has 
Hands-On Control of the Fund that Gave $6.5 
Million to the Regime After the June 28 Coup

http://www.narconews.com/Issue59/article3760.html



By Bill Conroy and Al Giordano
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

August 11, 2009

In recent days, Narco News has reported that, in 
the three months prior to the June 28 coup d’etat 
in Honduras, the 
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/08/millennium-challenge-corp-poured-millions-honduras-months-leading-putsc>US-funded 
Millennium Change Corporation (MCC) gave at least 
$11 million US dollars to private-sector 
contractors in Honduras and also that 
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/too-cute-half-honduras-mr-president>since 
the coup it has doled out another $6.5 million.

The latter revelation – that the money spigot has 
been left on even after the coup – comes in spite 
of claims by the State Department that it has 
placed non-humanitarian funding “on pause” pending a yet-unfinished review.

Narco News has further learned – based on a 
review documents available on the websites of the 
Millennium Challenge Corporation and the US State 
Department – that Secretary Clinton, as chairman 
of the MCC board, is not just a figurehead in 
name only. She has played an extremely active 
role in governing and promoting the fund and its decisions.

An <http://www.mcc.gov/blog/ceo/>August 6 
statement by MCC acting chief executive officer 
Darius Mans praises Clinton and President Obama 
for their balls-out support of MCC:

Now, well into a new administration and era, I am 
encouraged by the level of support MCC has been 
given by Congress and senior government leaders. 
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, chair 
of MCC’s board, confirms, “President Obama 
supports the MCC, and the principle of greater 
accountability in our foreign assistance 
programs.” The Secretary herself has referred to 
Millennium Challenge grants as a “very important 
part of our foreign policy. It is a new approach, 
and it’s an approach that we think deserves 
support.” Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew has 
said, “MCC is getting off the ground and making real progress.

Secretary Clinton’s official “blog” at the State 
Department reveals that the 
<http://secretaryclinton.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/>June 
10 meeting of MCC’s board – just 18 days before 
the Honduras coup – was on the Secretary’s schedule:

Here’s what Hillary has on her plate for today, 
June 10th: 10:00 a.m. Millennium Challenge 
Corporation (MCC) Board Meeting and Luncheon.

Last March, the previous MCC acting executive 
director Rodney Bent <http://www.mcc.gov/blog/ceo/page/2/>wrote:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton chaired 
her first MCC Board meeting this week. I was 
pleased to be part of this historic transition, 
and I welcomed Secretary Clinton’s active 
participation at the meeting. Her presence and 
the presence of Treasury Secretary Timothy 
Geithner and other public and private sector 
Board members signal the importance of MCC’s 
ongoing commitment to delivering change in the lives of the world’s poor.

A recent move by the Clinton-led MCC board 
documents that the US-funded corporation has 
already discussed the cutting of funds to another 
Central American country, Nicaragua, based on 
criticism of its government, and that this was 
the topic of MCC’s June 10 session, chaired by 
Secretary Clinton. 
<http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0609/p06s10-woam.html>The 
Christian Science Monitor reported:

LEÓN, NICARAGUA - US concerns over last year’s 
questionable municipal elections in Nicaragua 
could be strong enough to cause leftist President 
Daniel Ortega, a cold-war nemesis of the US, to 
lose $64 million in development aid.

In a Wednesday meeting with the board of 
directors of the Millennium Challenge Corporation 
(MCC), an international development initiative 
started during the Bush administration, Secretary 
of State Hillary Clinton will discuss whether to 
cancel the remaining portion of a $175 million compact awarded in 2006.

In December, the US government froze new aid 
after expressing serious concern about “the 
government of Nicaragua’s manipulation of 
municipal elections and a broader pattern of 
actions inconsistent with the MCC eligibility criteria.”

At the June 10 meeting, the MCC board approved 
partially terminating the agency’s foreign-aid 
compact with 
<http://www.mcc.gov/mcc/press/releases/release-061009-boardmeets.shtml>Nicaragua 
­ resulting in some $62 million in U.S. foreign 
aid being withheld from that nation, which shares 
a border with Honduras. And in May o f this year, 
the Clinton-led MCC board approved the 
termination of the agency’s compact with 
<http://www.mcc.gov/mcc/press/releases/release-051909-mccboardauthorizes.shtml>Madagascar 
in the wake of 
a<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/world/africa/01madagascar.html?_r=1> 
coup in that nation. However, no such action has 
been taken by the MCC board, to date, in the wake of the Honduran coup.

In the context of President Obama’s statement 
last weekend that those who urge the US to take 
stronger action against the Honduras coup regime 
“think that it’s appropriate for us to suddenly 
act in ways that in every other context they 
consider inappropriate,” calling it “hypocrisy.” 
The revelation that Clinton and MCC have already 
sanctioned the elected government of Nicaragua 
and its private sector in ways that it so far 
refuses to sanction the illegal coup regime of 
Honduras and its private backers has revealed one 
important fact: That Washington has already 
determined that “it’s appropriate” to deny MCC 
funds to a country for lighter and more transient 
reasons than those that exist to sanction a coup regime in another.

Didn’t a certain US President, last weekend, 
speak the word “hypocrisy” in the context of the US and the Honduras coup?

If “it’s appropriate” to sanction Nicaragua for 
lesser reasons, why not apply the sanction of 
denying MCC funds to a criminal coup regime in 
Honduras that Washington claims it has “paused” 
giving money, but that it continues to fund?




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