[News] US Company that Smuggled Weapons Into Venezuela Linked to CIA Renditions

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-company-that-smuggled-weapons-into-venezuela-linked-to-cia-renditions/255049/ 



  US Company that Smuggled Weapons Into Venezuela Linked to CIA Renditions

by Whitney Webb - February 13th, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

*GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA – *Two executives at the company that 
chartered the U.S. plane that was caught smuggling weapons into 
Venezuela last week have been tied to an air cargo company that aided 
the CIA in the rendition of alleged terrorists to “black site” centers 
for interrogation. The troubling revelation comes as Venezuelan 
President Nicolás Maduro has rejected a U.S. “humanitarian aid” convoy 
over concerns that it could contain weapons meant to arm the country’s 
U.S.-backed opposition.

Last Tuesday, Venezuelan authorities announced 
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/venezuela-authorities-discover-cache-of-us-made-guns-amid-uss-slow-rolling-coup/254698/>that 
19 rifles, 118 ammo magazines, 90 radios and six iPhones had been 
smuggled into the country via a U.S. plane that had originated in Miami. 
The authorities blamed the United States government for the illicit 
cargo, accusing it of seeking to arm U.S.-funded opposition groups in 
the country in order to topple the current Maduro-led government.

A subsequent investigation 
<https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/latin-america/article225949200.html>into 
the plane responsible for the weapons caché conducted by 
/McClatchyDC/received very little media attention despite the fact that 
it uncovered information clearly showing that the plane responsible for 
the shipment had been making an unusually high number of trips to 
Venezuela and neighboring Colombia over the past few weeks.

Steffan Watkins, an Ottawa-based analyst, told /McClatchy /in a 
telephone interview that the plane, which is operated by U.S. air cargo 
company 21 Air <http://21air.us/about-us/>, had been “flying between 
Philadelphia and Miami and all over the place, but all continental U.S.” 
during all of last year. However, Watkins noted that “all of a sudden in 
January, things changed” when the plane began making trips to Colombia 
and Venezuela on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day.

According to Watkins’ analysis, this single plane had conducted 40 
round-trip flights from Miami International Airport to Caracas and 
Valencia — where the smuggled weapons had been discovered — in 
Venezuela, as well as to Bogota and Medellin in Colombia in just the 
past month.

Publicly available flight radar information 
<https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/n881yv#1f69aaff>shows that 
the plane, although it has not returned to Venezuela since the discovery 
of its illicit cargo, has continued to travel to Medellin, Colombia, as 
recently as this past Monday.


    Multiple CIA ties

In addition to the dramatic and abrupt change in flight patterns that 
occurred just weeks before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence prompted 
Venezuelan opposition member Juan Guaidó to declare himself “interim 
president,” a subsequent /McClatchy/ follow-up investigation 
<https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article226011940.html>also 
uncovered the fact that two top executives at the company that owns the 
plane in question had previously worked with a company connected to 
controversial CIA “black sites.”

Indeed, the chairman and majority owner of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, and 21 
Air’s director of quality control, Michael Steinke, both have “either 
coincidental or direct ties” to Gemini Air Cargo, a company previously 
named by 
<https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/72000/amr510512006en.pdf>Amnesty 
International as one of the air charter services involved in a CIA 
rendition program. In this CIA program, individuals suspected of 
terrorism were abducted by the intelligence agency and then taken abroad 
to third-country secret “black sites” where torture, officially termed 
“enhanced interrogation,” was regularly performed.

Steinke worked for Gemini Air Cargo from 1996 to 1997, according to a 
2016 Department of Transportation document cited by /McClatchy/. Moreno, 
although he did not work for Gemini, registered two separate business at 
a Miami address that was later registered to Gemini Air Cargo while the 
CIA rendition program was active. /McClatchy/noted that the first 
business Moreno registered at the location was incorporated in 1987 
while the second was created in 2001. Gemini Cargo Logistics, a 
subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo, was subsequently registered at that same 
location in 2005.

21 Air has denied any responsibility for the weapons shipment discovered 
onboard the plane it operates, instead blaming a contractor known as 
GPS-Air for the illicit cargo. A GPS-Air manager, Cesar Meneses, told 
/McClatchy/that the weapons shipment had been “fabricated” by the 
Maduro-led government to paint his government as the victim. Meneses 
also stated that “the cargo doesn’t belong to 21 Air and it doesn’t 
belong to GPS-Air” and that it had been provided by third parties, whose 
identities Meneses declined to disclose.


    Contras redux?

The revelation that the company that operates the plane caught smuggling 
weapons into Venezuela has connections to past controversial CIA 
programs is unlikely to surprise many observers, given the CIA’s 
decades-long history of funneling weapons to U.S.-backed opposition 
fighters in Latin America 
<https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp90-00965r000302540004-7>, 
Southeast Asia 
<https://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-assisted-plot-to-overthrow-laos-foiled/5890>and 
other conflict areas 
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/10218288/CIA-running-arms-smuggling-team-in-Benghazi-when-consulate-was-attacked.html>around 
the globe.

One of the best-known examples of the CIA using airliners to smuggle 
weapons to a U.S.-backed paramilitary group occurred during the 1980s in 
what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, in which the Reagan 
administration delivered weapons to the Contra rebels in order to topple 
the left-leaning Sandinista movement. Many of those weapons had been 
hidden 
<https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/17/world/abrams-denies-wrongdoing-in-shipping-arms-to-contras.html>on 
flights claiming to be carrying “humanitarian aid” into Nicaragua.

The parallels between aspects of the Contra scandal and the current 
situation in Venezuela are striking, particularly given the recent 
“outrage” 
<https://fair.org/home/western-media-fall-in-lockstep-for-cheap-trump-rubio-venezuela-aid-pr-stunt/>voiced 
by mainstream media and prominent U.S. politicians over Maduro’s refusal 
to allow U.S. “humanitarian aid” into the country. Maduro had explained 
his rejection of the aid as partially stemming from the concern that it 
could contain weapons or other supplies aimed at creating an armed 
opposition force, like the “rebel” force that was armed by the CIA 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/world/middleeast/cia-arms-for-syrian-rebels-supplied-black-market-officials-say.html>in 
Syria in 2011.

Though the media has written off Maduro’s concern as unfounded, that is 
hardly the case 
<https://fair.org/home/western-media-fall-in-lockstep-for-cheap-trump-rubio-venezuela-aid-pr-stunt/>in 
light of the fact that the Trump administration’s recently named special 
envoy in charge of the administration’s Venezuela policy, Elliott 
Abrams, had been instrumental in delivering weapons to the Nicaraguan 
Contras, including hiding those weapons in “humanitarian aid” shipments. 
In subsequent testimony after the scandal broke in the 1980s, Abrams 
himself admitted 
<https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/17/world/abrams-denies-wrongdoing-in-shipping-arms-to-contras.html>to 
funneling weapons to the Contras in exactly this way.

With the recently uncovered illicit weapons shipment from the U.S. to 
Venezuela now linked to companies that have previously worked with the 
CIA in covert operations, Maduro’s response to the “humanitarian aid” 
controversy is even more justified. Unfortunately for him, the 
U.S.-backed “interim president,” Juan Guaidó, announced on Monday 
<https://twitter.com/jguaido/status/1095049572748050432>that his 
parallel government had received the first “external” source of 
“humanitarian aid” into the country, but would not disclose its source, 
its specific contents, nor how it had entered the country.

    Esta entrega representa 20 raciones para cada beneficiario, y
    corresponde a la primera fase de atención a las poblaciones más
    vulnerables como consecuencia de la crisis humanitaria que estamos
    enfrentando. pic.twitter.com/nwSRsK6gA2 <https://t.co/nwSRsK6gA2>

    — Juan Guaidó (@jguaido) February 11, 2019
    <https://twitter.com/jguaido/status/1095049572748050432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>


/*Whitney Webb* is a staff writer for MintPress News and has contributed 
to several other independent, alternative outlets. Her work has appeared 
on sites such as Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute, and 21st 
Century Wire among others. She also makes guest appearances to discuss 
politics on radio and television. She currently lives with her family in 
southern Chile./

*Republish our stories! * MintPress News is licensed under a Creative 
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

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