<html>
<body>
<font size=3><a href="http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21987" eudora="autourl">http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21987<br>
</a>Published: Monday, July 12, 2004<br>
Bylined to: <a href="mailto:coha@coha.org">Council on Hemispheric
Affairs</a> <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=5 color="#A80000">Council on Hemispheric
Affairs: Otto Reich .. a career in disservice </font>
<ul>
<li><font face="georgia" size=2><b>A master at deconstructing US-Latin
American relations
<li>Greed, chicanery and raw ideology add up to the vulgarization of
hemispheric issues.
<li>Reich’s secret formula: promote skewed pseudo-democracy by utilizing
thuggish tactics
<li>He accuses his leftist adversaries, like Aristide, of lying; but no
one in public life has so persistently manipulated the truth than Otto
Reich. </b></font>
</ul><font size=3><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>Having just resigned on June 16 from
his position as a controversial White House adviser on Latin American
issues, Otto Reich’s highly visible career has spanned three decades
during which he has held a series of senior public positions. During this
period he has worked as a highly paid lobbyist for a number of
corporations and controversy has never been far from his door.<br><br>
</font><img src="cid:6.1.0.6.2.20040713060221.027018f8@66.103.156.66.0" width=189 height=221 alt="13810a.jpg">During
this entire period, the profoundly extremist Cuban-American exile has
been the proponent of an abrasive US foreign policy aimed at the heart of
Latin American dignity, targeting any of its leaders who did not share
his Zoroastrian world view of absolute darkness versus absolute light.
Until his resignation took effect in late June, Reich was an
indefatigable warrior against whatever he decided was a leftwing cause.
During his years of ostensible public service to the US, he routinely
violated domestic laws by working behind the scenes to overthrow the
radical but democratically-elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. In
El Salvador, he was an assiduous apologist for the death squads, at a
total cost of 85,000 lives <i>(mostly innocent civilians that included
Catholic Priests)</i>, and condoned brutal human rights violations by the
Contras, a US-created force for which he later to broke the law to
support. In so doing, Reich made the choice to protect drug traffickers
to service the higher goal of putatively fighting communism. It would not
be an exaggeration to say that Reich never met a liberal who he did not
view a covert operator for Moscow, or an extreme rightwing cause that was
not shrouded in rectitude. As head of the notorious Office of Public
Diplomacy during the Iran-Contra era of the mid-1980s, Reich’s
skullduggery was so infamous that he was repeatedly reprimanded by
federal authorities for violating proper financial procedures. <br><br>
<font face="georgia" size=5>The War of the Titans: Reich vs. Castro
<br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>Reich is primarily known for being an
unflagging champion of an anti-Castro obsession that has done great
damage to Washington’s Latin American relations by focusing them almost
entirely on the US-Cuba conflict. Reich viewed Chile as good because it
obediently fell in line with US interests, while Haiti and Venezuela were
bad because they did not. Promoted as a leader of the extreme rightwing
segment of the Cuban-American leadership due to his rabid hatred of Fidel
Castro, he relentlessly stalked the Cuban communist leader as being the
apotheosis of diabolism in our time. If someone failed to share his
perception, he would be in great risk of being instantly denominated as
being a communist. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=2><b>Ironically, Castro was essential to
Reich’s own fame and fortune because without him, Reich’s talents would
have likely landed him little better than the job of an apparatchik,
which was the fate of Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, who,
many would contend, was the one Bush official less intellectually
prepared than Reich. <br><br>
</b></font><font face="georgia" size=3>Reich’s moments in the spotlight
came about due to his prominent role in both the Iran-Contra Affair and
in his later capacity as a big-time player in the attempted April 2002
coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Reich built a murky
relationship with predatory big business interests including Bacardi Rum
and Lockheed-Martin, and an array of questionable private Cuban-American
militant groups, as both a private lobbyist in the 1990s and later as a
candidate to be Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere
Affairs in President George W. Bush’s State Department. These bitterly
controversial actions persuaded Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to block Reich’s confirmation to that
diplomatic post in January of 2002, prompting President Bush to exercise
his right of executive privilege by appointing Reich on an interim basis
for a one-year period, thus skirting the need for Senate approval.
<br><br>
<u>Henchman in the Anti-Castro Effort, Pork Meister Supreme in Diverting
Taxpayer Funds for His Ideological Causes <br><br>
</u>Ever since fleeing Cuba with his family at the age of fourteen, Reich
has passionately sought the demise of Castro and his regime. Reich’s
personal crusade inevitably led him to a broad range of affiliations with
radical right-wing Cuban-American exile groups that he was always ready
to finance with US taxpayer funds. He has served as a trustee for the
Center for a Free Cuba and worked for the US-Cuba Business Council, a
nonprofit organization that, to a large extent, is financed by the
ultra-rightwing owners of the Bacardi Company, which is at least as
focused on undermining the Castro regime as it is on producing rum.
Cuban-American leadership in Miami and members of the US’ rightist
pantheon have helped make Reich perhaps the most visible contemporary
radical right figure available to champion the extremist wing of the
passionate anti-Castro movement. <br><br>
Secretary of State Colin Powell’s egregious lack of feel for Latin
American issues has led to a willingness to defer to non-mainstream and
ill-prepared hyper-ideologues like Reich and Roger Noriega, who succeeded
the former as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere
Affairs. Under the aegis of these two prominent Cuban bashers, US-Latin
American relations have arguably hit their lowest level in years, with
Washington losing much of its leverage over the outcome of regional
issues in which its commanding economic and trade clout presumably should
have brought success. This coupled with the non-stop political intrusions
coming from Governor Jeb Bush of Florida <i>(himself with absolutely
solid extremist credentials)</i>, acting on behalf of the older
generation of the leadership of the Miami-Cuban exile community, has led
the handling of US-Latin American policy into total disarray. <br><br>
Reich’s role as head of the Latin American section of USAID in the early
’80s, and then as the director of the Office of Public Diplomacy during
the Reagan presidency, was based on his ability to ingratiate himself
with powerful political figures whom he could count on to advance his own
personal welfare, including then Vice President and former CIA director
George H.W. Bush. Reich’s relationship with the Bush family was
undoubtedly facilitated by his connection with Miami’s influential
rightwing nexus, including the late Jorge Mas Canosa and his ultra-right
Cuban-American National Foundation. Reich’s indisputable zeal in the
anti-Castro mission made him part of the team that helped deliver some of
the all-important Cuban-American vote to the Reagan-Bush ticket in the
crucial state of Florida, and later to George W. Bush in his extremely
controversial 2000 presidential election victory. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=5>Architecting the Anti-Castro Struggle
<br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>Such activities placed Reich at the
center of a Miami-linked cadre of anti-Cuban-American militants who
uniquely perceive Washington’s Latin American policy as a method to
pursue their narrow agenda. As a private lobbyist for the venomously
anti-Castro Barcardi family in 1995-96, Reich’s company provided free
legal service to Senator Helms in the drafting of the near-universally
condemned Helms-Burton Act. Under that measure’s Title III <i>(routinely
suspended by the Bush and Clinton Administrations)</i> and Title IV, US
authorities may penalize any foreign company or individual engaged in
commerce involving previously confiscated and once American-owned Cuban
property. This measure brought about a dangerous confrontation between
the US and the EU and was only resolved by the Clinton administration and
current Bush administrations’ repeated non-enforcement of the law’s main
provisions. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=5>Reich’s MO <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>As Assistant Secretary of State for
Western Hemisphere Affairs <i>(2002-2003)</i>, Reich continued to press
the administration to reinforce existing sanctions against Cuba,
frequently resorting to blatantly counterfeit charges as he did in a
speech given in 2002 at Heritage Foundation, a Washington conservative
sanctuary. In that address, he stated that “Cuba is a state sponsor of
terrorism. We believe that Cuba has at least a limited offensive
biological warfare research and development effort” and also that “Cuba
has engaged in a deliberate effort to confuse, distract and divert US
intelligence from its vital counter-terrorism mission by dangling false
leads.” When pressed for evidence, neither Reich nor any of his
colleagues came forth with any proof beyond his and Undersecretary of
State for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, John Bolton’s hoax that
Havana was exporting bio-terrorism. <br><br>
The administration’s uninterrupted drive to create a contrived situation
in order to pump up sanctions against Havana, prompted Oscar Arias,
former president of Costa Rica and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to
remark to the Los Angeles Times: “I believe many American farmers and
businessmen are aware that US economic warfare against Cuba harms broader
US interests, while at the same time injuring the people, but not the
government, of Cuba.” The new anti-Castro measures being implemented by
the Bush administration at the urging of Reich, Noriega and their
immediate coterie include a controversial proposal on May 6 to attempt
provocative, and perhaps illegal, flights through Cuban airspace by the
American military with specialized equipment meant to prevent Cuba’s
jamming of US funded, anti-Castro propagandistic broadcasts of TV Marti.
<br><br>
Although many consider the tactics of Reich and his fellow exile
demagogues as largely ineffective, they still greatly damage general US
foreign policy objectives, Powell, who appears to have abdicated all
responsibility for US policy towards Cuba, or for that matter, the rest
of Latin America, has become merely one more choirboy in the
administration’s anti-Cuba rant. That said, Reich has shown that he was
willing to promote nearly every affliction on the Cuban people, be it
hunger through embargoes, violence through Cuban domestic terrorist
Orlando Bosch, or destruction through an anti-Castro uprising, if such
steps promised to weaken the Castro regime. Ignoring all existing
peaceful precedents for handling allegedly unregenerate or totalitarian
states by engaging them through commerce and aid, Reich offered only
sinister and coercive tactics to force Cuba to embrace his version of
democracy. In the spring of 2002, after a failed confirmation, President
Bush appointed Reich as special envoy to the White House. In this
position, Reich displayed his bitter hard-line rhetoric in response to a
reporter’s inquiry about how the United States would promote freedom in
Cuba: “One way we can help […] is not throwing a lifeline to a failed,
corrupt, dictatorial, murderous regime. We're not going to do it. We are
not going to help Fidel Castro stay in power by opening up our markets to
Cuba.” Libya and China, it seems, are another matter. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=5>Working in the Satanic Mills
<br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>When not officially involved in the
public spotlight plying his ideological trade, Reich founded RMA
International, a lobbyist firm, in 1996. This event did not, however,
signify any major change in lifestyle. Since 1996, Reich’s clients have
included the Cuban-American owned Bacardi Corporation, from which he has
reportedly received US$600,000 in compensation. Upon his later failed
nomination as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere
Affairs, Reich failed mention his employment as a paid lobbyist for the
Helms-Burton Act <i>(pushed through the legislature in the mid 1990s)</i>
in a required financial disclosure report. Not until it was revealed in
other federal reports filed with the Department of Justice concerning the
Helms-Burton campaign <i>(which handsomely paid Reich for his efforts to
pass the anti-Havana legislation)</i>, did Reich lightly excuse the
omission of this information as simply a “clerical oversight.”
Lockheed-Martin, British American Tobacco and Mobil Oil were also on
Reich’s list of big business clients. “Although Reich is no longer
employed by Bacardi, you do not have to be a cynic to see a dangerous
conflict of interest,” wrote the Guardian’s Duncan Campbell. <br><br>
While working for Bacardi, Reich facilitated the inclusion of Section
211, denying trademark protection to Cuba in the 1998 Omnibus
Appropriations Bill. This measure, coupled with the drafting and passing
of the Helms-Burton Act, the process in which Reich played an integral
role <i>(including arranging the loan of Bacardi lawyers to help draft
the measure’s most controversial provisions for now retired Senator
Helms)</i>, ended up dangerously straining trade relations with the
European Union, which filed a complaint against the U.S. at the World
Trade Organization. While Reich and the big business groups that served
as his clients may have realized handsome profits thanks to his
career-long commitment to seeking out clients who applaud his raw
ideology and abusive campaigns against the region’s assortment of
lefties, many US businesses and agricultural groups, as well as Americans
in other commercial and public sector pursuits, have certainly not. One
glaring example of Reich’s grossly negative impact on US business
interests was when Cuba, in retaliation to Section 211, vowed to produce
AIDS pharmaceuticals despite existing US patents, inevitably sparking a
trade war that will do more harm than good to US commercial interests.
<br><br>
Reich’s seeming inability to easily distinguish between the boundaries of
public and private funds and his repeated indifference to ethical
standards was again exhibited upon his return to government in 2001. In
response to questions regarding possible conflicts of interest between
his private lobbying and his State Department nomination, he submitted a
report to the Senate that stated he would surrender control of his
private lobby, RMA International, but would continue to receive
commissions from RMA clients. Only after a reporter questioned the
integrity of such a proposal did Reich concede that these lucrative
payoffs could pose an ethical dilemma. His financial statement was later
revised and resubmitted without the provision for his continue
compensation from the private sector. <br><br>
Although not allowed to directly receive funds from his former clients,
Reich has shamelessly used his position to promote their interests. There
was the attempted anti-Chavez coup in Venezuela in April 2001 in which
Reich played a key role in meeting with the conspirators and in arranging
for them to receive US tax. Coincidentally, the coup, if successful,
would certainly have been in the best interests of Mobil Oil, a former
Reich client. Subsequently, by lobbying hard for Lockheed-Martin, which
had been given permission by the Pentagon to sell F-16 fighter jets with
advanced missile systems to Chile’s historically brutal military, Reich
helped to lift the two-decade-old congressional ban on the sale of
advanced weaponry in Latin America, thus risking the inception of a
destructive Chilean-led arms race with Argentina and Peru. <br><br>
In 2000, Reich became vice-chairman of WRAP, an apparel industry lobby
that was seen by its foes as an avenue through which domestic clothing
importers could avoid scrutiny of their non-union production. Critics
claim, that WRAP facilitated continued maintenance of sweatshops
throughout Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world.
<br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=5>Master of Deception: OPD
<i>(1983-86)</i> <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>As the head of the ill-reputed US
Office of Public Diplomacy, Reich orchestrated the "White
Propaganda" campaign of running unacknowledged op-ed editorials in
newspapers across the nation. In an initiative illegally coordinated with
the CIA, these articles were designed to manipulate and intimidate
unwitting major American media outlets to favor the Contra rebels in
Nicaragua. Such efforts were intended to generate a public following in
the US and abroad for Washington’s support of a Sandinista overthrow and
to suppress widely circulating reports at the time of atrocities being
committed by the US-backed Contras against Nicaraguan civilians. While
bearing the names of some well-known academic and public figures, the
bogus op-eds and other material were authored in Reich’s office by
professional speech writers. In 1987, the Comptroller-General of the US,
a Republican appointee, formally found that Reich had acted illegally:
‘We conclude that the<i> [OPD’s]</i> activities involving the preparation
and dissemination of certain types of information violated restriction on
the use of appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not
authorized by Congress.’ <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=5>Ambassador to Venezuela <i>(1987-89)
<br><br>
</i></font><font face="georgia" size=3>Reich’s most ethically
questionable behavior during his ambassadorship to Venezuela was his
controversial role in the release and ultimate arrangement for asylum of
accused Cuban-American terrorist Orlando Bosch. Although Bosch had
smuggled a bomb onboard a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing all 73 onboard,
his subsequent conviction on overwhelming evidence in a Venezuelan court
was shockingly overturned on appeal. After fleeing Venezuela, Reich
helped him to procure refugee status inside the US, despite a State
Department intelligence report implicating Bosch in approximately thirty
acts of international violence and sabotage. While Reich always takes a
strong stand against terrorism, he directly advanced the interests of the
most prolific terrorist figure to emerge in the US-Latin American
environment in recent decades, Bosch. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=4>Assistant Secretary of State for
Western Hemisphere Affairs <i>(2002-June 14, 2004)</i> <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>In January 2002, Reich was elevated by
President Bush in a recess appointment to be the State Department’s chief
Latin Americanist. After Senator Dodd froze Reich’s appointment this
action was taken to stave off potentially embarrassing questions
concerning his earlier career in public service that were sure to be
aired. His confirmation also seemed highly unlikely after several key
Republican Senators, including the chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Richard Lugar (R-IN), announced they could not
support his appointment due to his fatefully flawed professional history.
Once in office, Reich was soon tasked to orchestrate a massive
international media defamation campaign against Chávez that has continued
until this day. <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=5>Choosing One’s Enemies <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>Along with Reich’s unbridled aversion
to Chavez, due in part to the Venezuelan leader’s close relationship with
Fidel Castro, he has shown a disturbing readiness to manipulate
Venezuela’s domestic political scene that is reminiscent of similar
actions he has taken in many other Latin American nations. The
English-speaking Caribbean countries, and almost all of the other Latin
American nations that he visited while serving Powell and then the White
House, became, during his short tenure, the venue for vituperative and
minatory statements about political candidates that he might oppose in
upcoming elections. Faced with the prospect of a possible presidential
election victory in El Salvador by the leftist FMLN, Reich had no problem
with erroneously linking the party to the Spanish separatist terrorist
group ETA. He stated, “We <i>(the US government)</i> could not have the
same confidence in an El Salvador led by a person <i>[Schafik Handal]
</i>who is obviously an admirer of Fidel Castro and of <i>(Venezuelan
President)</i> Hugo Chavez.”</font>
<ul>
<li><font face="georgia" size=2><b>What he did not bother to tell his
audience was that he fabricated the link between the ETA and Cuba when,
in fact, the then-Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez asked Castro, as
an accommodation to Spain, to grant several ETA militants asylum in Cuba.
</b></font>
</ul><font size=3><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>Reich’s connection to the US
intelligence agencies and reputation as one of the Bush administration’s
master conspirators and disinformation specialists leads many to suspect
that he played an important role in Jean Bertrand Aristide’s fall from
favor in the international media, and in fostering international support
for the Haitian rebels.<br><br>
Throughout the closing days of the embattled Aristide administration’s
stay in office, Secretary of State Colin Powell ostensibly attempted to
avoid the Haitian President’s overthrow, while Reich made some
off-the-record comments to the media alluding that a violent coup against
Aristide’s government was certainly a viable option. The OAS and a
congressional sub-committee are currently preparing investigations into
the true circumstances of Aristide’s loss of power.
<ul>
<li>In order to superimpose his political will, Reich has often simply
resorted to bully tactics and outright extortionist threats against those
he feels are most vulnerable. To a distressing extent, Reich expresses
the exact authoritarian profile that he routinely ascribes to Castro.
Could it be that Reich would be a perfect Castro if given the
chance?</font>
</ul><br>
<font face="georgia" size=3>When the United States invaded Iraq, Reich
was clearly displeased with the Caribbean-based organization Caricom’s
decision not to support the controversial war. Over Barbados TV he said,
“It is not the kind of support that we expect from friends… We listen
very carefully to what our friends say and we're very disappointed by
some of the statements. We're not violating international law, neither is
Great Britain or any of the other countries and I would urge Caricom to
study very carefully not only what it says, but the consequences of what
it says.”<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>“What do I tell a member of Congress,” he hypothetically questions,
“if I go asking for increased access for Caribbean products, for example,
and he says, ‘Well, they did not support us in our time of need’?”
<br><br>
</dl><font face="georgia" size=5>Questionable Legacy <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>As a career propagandist and
huckster-ideologue, Otto Reich built his professional persona on his
provision of public misinformation and his capacity for extremist
politics that have done incalculable damaged the maintenance of a
balanced and responsible US Latin American policy. Almost
single-handedly, he has bent and distorted US-Latin American relations,
and in the past several decades has contributed to a level of odium that
cannot easily be recalled in the bilateral relationship between the two
continents. His legacy hardly deserves that word, filled as it has been
with vulgar rhetoric, meretricious analysis, Rasputin-like conspiracies
and inability to distinguish responsible behavior from that of a low
quality goon. He, together with his fellow alumnus from former Senator
Helms’ foundry for debased regional policy-making, the State Department’s
Roger Noriega and Dan Fisk, have gone a long way to polluting US
hemispheric ties so much that it will likely take a generation to undo
the damage. We certainly have not heard the last from him, because --
giving the Devil his due -- he has displayed a cruel genius for making
big money out of craven deeds and then reappearing to get another crack
at ultra-extremist public policymaking. While he constantly preaches
about “democracy,” in truth his authoritarian tactics make him one of its
worst foes. He calls other people liars, when, in fact, he is leagues
ahead of any would-be rival in public life in crafting tall tales with no
substance. On a strictly competitive basis, he would struggle to acquire
any job requiring honesty, public rectitude or a strong moral foundation.
<br><br>
Reich has repeatedly shown that he is the anti-Christ for any crusade for
responsible democratic self-rule, and his name will rank high among those
pathalogues who manage to diminish everything they touch. His resignation
marks the second retirement of one of the ill-reputed officials from the
Reagan area who was exhumed after the Bush victory, for another round at
public life. They had all participated in the Iran-Contra Affair’s “Iron
Triangle” -- Reich, John Negroponte, current US ambassador to Iraq, and
Elliot Abrams, current senior director of the National Security Council's
Office for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations, and
Admiral John Poindexter (Ret.) who was recently forced once again to
resign in disgrace. He leaves behind him a tainted record characterized
by a series of abject dirty deeds committed under the guise of promoting
democracy in Latin America. </font>
<ul>
<ul>
<li><font face="georgia" size=2>This analysis was prepared by Will
Conkling and Sam Goble, COHA Research Associates
</b></font><font size=3><br>
</font>
<font face="georgia" size=2 color="#000080">The Council on Hemispheric
Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan,
tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described
on the Senate floor as being “one of the nation’s most respected bodies
of scholars and policy makers.” For more information, please see web page
at <a href="http://www.coha.org/">www.coha.org</a> ; contact in
Washington by phone (202) 216-9261, fax (202) 223-6035, or email
<a href="mailto:coha@coha.org">coha@coha.org</a> <br><br>
<br>
</b></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
</dl><font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3><a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>