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<font size=3>How United States Intervention Against Venezuela Works, part
2 of 3<br>
Use of a Private U.S. Corporate Structure to Disguise a Government
Program<br>
</font><font size=3 color="#666666">Thursday, Sep 08, 2005<br>
</font><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?artno=1549" eudora="autourl">
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?artno=1549<br><br>
</a> <br><br>
<i>By: Philip Agee<br><br>
Part 1:
<a href="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1548">How
United States Intervention Against Venezuela Works </a><br><br>
</i><b>Part 2 of 3<br><br>
C. Venezuela: Some Examples of the Current U.S. Intervention Against the
Bolivarian Revolution<br><br>
</b>In Venezuela the administration of George W. Bush is intervening in
the political process with a combination of activities very similar to
those the U.S. carried out in Nicaragua in the 1980s, but without a
terrorist war on the scale of the Contras, andat least until
mid-2005without an economic embargo. These activities, with a 2005
budget approaching $10 million, masquerade as “civic education,” “support
for the electoral process,” and “strengthening the democratic
system.” In reality, all these programs, carried out almost
silently, support the opposition against President Chávez and his
coalition. <br><br>
The action agencies of this “open support for democracy in Venezuela” are
the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development
(AID), and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) with its four
associated foundations. The largest amount of money, some $7
million in 2005, is channeled by AID’s Office of Transition Initiatives
(OTI) through a private contractor, Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI),
a consulting firm based in Bethesda, Maryland, next to Washington
D.C. Additionally the CIA, as always, has its role in supplying
secret funds and providing clandestine support.<br><br>
The web page of DAI describes the company, established in 1970, as having
250 employees at its headquarters and about 1500 others working in
international projects. It has carried out development projects in
150 countries, mostly in the Third World, “to build fair and effective
government, strengthen local capacity to manage natural resources and
agriculture production, fuel the economic engines that power growth from
micro-finance to enterprise development, and leverage the impact of
private investment in emerging markets. Clients include the U.S.
Agency for International Development, the World Bank, bilateral
development agencies, global corporations, and host country
governments.” Its projects deal with agriculture and natural
resource management, banking and financial services, crisis mitigation
and recuperation, democracy and governance, solutions for global
businesses and mitigation of the effects of AIDS. DAI, as we shall
be see further on, is an ideal corporate structure for inserting CIA
officers and agents under commercial cover in foreign countries.<br><br>
In Washington there is no doubt a high level committee that directs the
operations with a name like the Venezuelan Inter-Agency Working
Group. The representative of the Department of State would normally
chair the committee, and its other members represent AID/OTI, the
Pentagon, CIA, NED, and other interested agencies. Among its
various responsibilities, this committee sets the budgets and decides
what mechanisms will be used to channel the funds. The committee
also has to evaluate the effectiveness of the operations and keep
appropriate committees of Congress informed. <br><br>
The Department of State closely controls the interventionist program in
Venezuela through the U.S. Embassy in Caracas where AID/OTI has an
office. The CIA, as a matter of course, also has an office in the
Embassy under diplomatic cover. Just as in Washington, there will
be a coordinating committee in the Embassy chaired by the Ambassador or
the Deputy Chief of Mission and whose members will include the chief of
the political section, OIT representatives, the CIA station chief, a
representative of the military attachés and perhaps others.<br><br>
Also in Caracas, but apart from the Embassy and having legal status as
private foreign entities, there are offices of two of the foundations
associated with NED. The International Republican Institute has its
office in Altamira, Second Avenue, between Eighth and Ninth Transversals,
Quinta Retana, ground floor; and the National Democratic Institute (NDI)
is at Avenue Francisco de Miranda, Edificio Torre La Primera, 14th floor,
Office 14B, Campo Alegre. Additionally Development Alternatives Inc.
(DAI), the consulting firm, has its office on Guaicaipuro Street, Hener
Tower, 2nd floor, office 2-B, El Rosal. Each of these three
operations centers has U.S.-citizen personnel selected in Washington plus
Venezuelan employees whose employment must receive prior approval in
Washington.<br><br>
The activities of these action agencies in Caracas---IRI, NDI and
DAI---take the form of individual project contracts with activities,
cost, dates of beginning and end, and some, as in the OTI-DAI contract,
with options for extensions. IRI and NDI project descriptions are
submitted by their Washington offices to the Department of State,
AID/OTI, or NED for approval and financing under a contract. The funds
are then distributed to the Caracas offices that pass the money to
Venezuelan beneficiary organizations under sub-contracts, each of which
requires approval by the headquarters of the agency where the funds
originated.<br><br>
The three action agencies with offices in Caracas also have to submit to
their Washington headquarters the résumés of leaders of proposed
beneficiary organizations, undoubtedly so that the CIA may do a
background security check on them, internally and with other security
agencies, as part of the approval process. Additionally, each contract
requires that the executing agency in Caracas submit progress reports
every three or six months plus special reports on important issues.
On the whole, this system of projects, approvals, contracts, and
subcontracts are a concrete, sophisticated mechanism totally controlled
by the U.S. government. The evidence is contained in the hundreds
of official documents, including contracts, obtained since 2003 through
the Freedom of Information Act. A great quantity of documents is
published at
<a href="http://www.venezuelafoia.info/">http://www.venezuelafoia.info</a>
. These documents reveal that NED has been directly financing at
least 17 Venezuelan non-governmental organizations apart from its
financing of many others through its four associated
foundations.<br><br>
The activities directed and financed by the U.S. have been and are very
diverse, but they all have as their objective the development and
strengthening of the political opposition both in political parties and
in NGOs such as the Venezuelan Workers Confederation (CTV). These include
workshops, seminars and conferences, training courses to develop
political parties, promotion of unity through party coalitions, campaigns
to register voters and to assure that the greatest number vote,
establishment of a parallel non-official list of voters, training of
election observers to detect fraud, close monitoring of the National
Electoral Council (CNE) to denounce irregularities, organizing parallel
vote counts, rapid calculation of results (“quick counts”) for possible
announcement before they are announced by the CNE. Apart from these
specific objectives, the activities are designed to attract medium and
long-term new volunteers to the electoral process but always in
opposition to the Bolivarian Revolution. The favored parties
include <i>Acción Democrática </i>(social democrats), <i>COPEI
</i>(christian democrats), <i>Movimiento al Socialism</i>, <i>Projecto
Venezuela</i> and <i>Primero Justicia</i>.<br><br>
Among the many beneficiaries of this intervention was the Coordinadora
Democrática,<a name="_ftnref1"></a>[1] with representatives from
business, labor and political parties, that fulfills a role quite similar
to that of the Nicaraguan Coordinadora Democrática during the 1980s.
Another beneficiary is the organization Súmate that emerged in 2003 at
the end of the failed oil strike to begin the campaign for the recall
referendum. This organization is very similar to Via Cívica in
Nicaragua. Finally, the consulting firm DAI functions just as the
Delphi International Group functioned in Nicaragua, financing the
anti-Chavez propaganda campaign called Venezuela: Initiative to Build
Confidence (VICC). <br><br>
To understand how US political interference functions in Venezuela, it is
well to examine five AID/OTI contracts with the three action agencies
that have offices in Caracas: DAI, IRI and NDI. The following pages
analyze: 1) the OTI contract with DAI set up following the failed coup of
April 2002; 2) two contracts with IRI to intervene in the recall
referendum of August 2004 and possible elections afterwards; and 3) two
contracts with NDI also to intervene in the referendum. The value
of these five contracts in the two years before the referendum was about
US$12 million and the original texts are published in English at
<a href="http://www.venezuelafoia.info/">www.venezuelafoia.info</a> under
USAID Contracts.<br><br>
<b>1. OTI-DAI Contract to establish Venezuela: Initiative to Build
Confidence (VICC)<br><br>
</b>OTI/AID began operations in Venezuela as a key player in the U.S.
government’s program after the failed coup of April 2002. Until
then, political intervention had been mainly in the hands of NED and its
four associated foundations with an annual cost of about $ 1
million. To run operations on the ground, IRI had set up an office
in Caracas in 2000 followed by NDI in 2001, offices that continue
operating to this day. These two institutes financed various
organizations directed by those who signed the Carmona Decree during the
coup that abolished democratic institutions, and they continued to
support the coup plotters after it failed. However, after the coup,
there was an obvious decision taken in Washington to multiply its efforts
in Venezuela with much more money, but now through OTI/AID and a
contracted consulting firm, Development Alternatives Inc. This firm would
act as a branch of OTI/AID under the guise of a private company.<br><br>
In June 2002, OTI/AID started this new program in Venezuela by sending
two officials to the U.S. embassy in Caracas to supervise the
program. The OTI web page indicates that this office is in charge
of interventions in crisis areas where there is a transition from war to
peace or transition from a non-democratic government to a democratic
system. Apparently, AID/OTI considers Venezuela to be a country “in
transition towards democracy” despite the various free and fair elections
since the first election of President Chávez in 1998. The OTI
budget in Venezuela for the first year was $2.2 million, more than double
the annual budget that NED then had for Venezuela.<br><br>
In August 2002, OTI contracted the consulting firm DAI to establish in
Venezuela programs intended to “support democratic institutions and
processes…to ease societal tensions and maintain democratic balance,” and
in October of that year DAI opened its office in Caracas.<br><br>
The budget was USD$5.2 million for the first year and almost USD$4.9
million for the second year of operations. These were quantities
much greater than the annual budgets for NED and its foundations, which
were around $1-2 million. For each year the DAI budget included
$3.5 million for distribution in money or materials among the beneficiary
Venezuelan organizations and the rest was for fixed costs, salaries,
transport investments, communications, computers and other administrative
costs plus DAI’s commission, the amount of which was censored in the
contract released under FOIA. As it happened, this program continued
during the optional second year, and the contract has been prolonged
until September 2005. In all probability, it will be extended again
through the national elections in late 2006.<br><br>
According to the contract, the reasons why OTI decided to establish a
program in Venezuela were:<br><br>
1) “Political tensions have increased dramatically” since April when
“several protesters were killed outside the presidential palace” (no
mention of the coup); <br><br>
2) The U.S. has “a strong interest in ensuring that (democracy) endures
in Venezuela;”<br><br>
3) Venezuelan “institutions” need support to “restore democratic balance”
and “ensure the protection of human rights and the free expression of
ideas, including, at both at the national and local levels, by the media,
civil society, political parties and the government
institutions.”<br><br>
The AID/OTI contract with DAI, dated 30 August 2002, consists of 49 pages
that detail the way in which DAI will have to work in Venezuela. In
the introduction, OTI describes itself as a rapid response force in the
face of social, economic, and political crises as in Kosovo, the
Philippines, Haiti, or Columbia. It describes its programs as
“fast, flexible, innovative, tangible, targeted, catalytic, and overtly
political.” It adds, “OTI is often engaged in the most sensitive
political issues of the U.S. government’s priority and high profile
countries.” Its money comes from the U.S. International Disaster
Assistance Fund, and its programs normally last one or two years at the
end of which OTI generally passes the operations on to another AID
department or they are closed down. The contract makes it clear
that OTI is the equivalent of an international political fire brigade
that is used by the government to bring under control social and
political upheavals that threaten U.S. interests – something similar to
the military’s Special Forces. <br><br>
The types of foreign organizations that OTI supports, according to the
contract, are a list that until the 1980’s and the adoption of Project
Democracy, would have been the CIA’s list for covert actions: local,
regional and national governments; private, voluntary organizations;
international organizations; indigenous groups; cooperatives,
associations and student groups; informal groups; media, private sector
and coalitions of these groups. Its activities include the
promotion of reconciliation; prevention and resolution of conflicts;
promotion of independent media with training in journalism; legal reform;
de-mobilization and re-integration of ex-combatants; promotion of
national messages using television, radio and the press; reactivating key
non-governmental organizations with initial funding; and promoting
governance with electoral support and the development of a strong civil
society.<br><br>
Specifically in Venezuela, the contract requires DAI to work with “labor,
business, political organizations, government, and civil society to
strengthen democratic institutions and processes” as well as “media
institutions through journalistic training.” Furthermore, DAI is
required to work with “NGOs that seek to promote dialogue on an inclusive
social and political agenda for Venezuela and open avenues of dialogue
currently closed due to the polarization of the population.” The
contract stipulates that the programs will be non-partisan and that no
support will be given to organizations that seek to alter the political
order by unconstitutional means. In fact all financing under this program
has gone to the political opposition, including some who signed the
Carmona Decree that abolished democratic institutions during the failed
coup of April 2002.<br><br>
According to the contract, an official at AID headquarters in Washington,
called the Cognizant Technical Officer (CTO) supervises each OTI program,
and his approval is necessary for every important decision. The
CTO, named in the contract as Russell Porter, works in close coordination
with the Department of State and directs the activities of the OTI staff
assigned to the embassy in Caracas who are designated OTI Field
Representatives. These officers supervise the day-to-day activities
financed by OIT and executed by the IRI, NDI, and DAI offices in
Caracas. <br><br>
According to the contract, DAI has full responsibility for executing the
program, including administrative, logistics, acquisitions, and financial
matters. DAI is required to establish the office, buy office
equipment and vehicles, recruit Venezuelan employees, establish
communications and accounting systems, develop and maintain a database
with all the details of their activities, develop a program to distribute
funds via subcontracts and monitor their effectiveness and impact.
The system of disbursing funds requires that DAI propose funding for NGOs
and other Venezuelan organizations to the Senior Field Representative of
the OTI in the Embassy who can authorize payments up to $100,000.
Any proposal greater than that has to be approved by the CTO at AID/OTI’s
Washington office.<br><br>
The contract has several pages of details relating to the
responsibilities of DAI U.S.-citizen personnel both before and after they
arrive in Venezuela. It underlines the speed with which DAI has to
organize equipment and prepare itself to start the program, including
preparation of a list of contacts in Venezuela such as NGOs, government
offices, and international organizations. It is also noteworthy
that the contract demands that distribution of funds should begin as soon
as possible after the team arrives in Caracas. From these
requirements it is obvious that before going to Caracas the DAI team must
have had a good understanding of the previous NED activities and its four
foundations so that they can to begin work immediately in coordination
with the IRI and NDI offices in Caracas.<br><br>
DAI furthermore is required to rent space for offices and obtain
furnished accommodation for its personnel and any OTI personnel assigned
to Caracas. The selection of offices and residences has to comply
with Embassy security requirements and to have prior written approval
from the AID Regional Security Office. The contract states that the
office should be no lower the 3rd floor if it is in an office
building. It must have strong doors and iron bars on the windows if
it is on a ground floor. It must be set back from the street, with
secure, well-lit parking spaces and surrounded with walls or
fences. Additionally the contract established that DAI has to
arrange necessary services such as landline telephones, fax, internet
connection, portable radios, radios in the vehicles, cell phones,
satellite telephones, GPS systems, and an in-house computer
network. It also requires that DAI prepare an evacuation plan for
the U.S.-citizen personnel and OTI officials, and it mentions the
possibility of firing personnel for security violations. On the
whole these detailed requirements bind DAI to quickly establish an
operation of high security, self-sufficient, and capable of leaving
Venezuela from one minute to the next.<br><br>
The most interesting aspect of this contract is the designation of the
U.S. personnel for the DAI Caracas office (5 people) plus one coordinator
based in Washington. These 6 people, referred to as “Key
Personnel”, are named in the contract by OTI, but only by last name and
initial:<i> </i>J. McCarthy, Chief of Party; H. Méndez, L., Blank and G.
Díaz, Program Development Officers; G. Fung, Financial Management
Specialist; and J., Jutkowitz, Local Program Manager in Washington.
The contract does not state one word about who these people are nor where
they come from for this urgent and quickly mounted operation.
Obviously each one had to have extensive knowledge about Venezuela, U.S.
policy there, and fluency in Spanish in order to carry out their duties
from the moment they arrived. Under the contract OTI reserves the
right to substitute any one of the six. Thus DAI, a private
consulting company, cannot choose the project personnel.<i> </i>One
cannot dismiss the possibility that these 6 people are CIA officers
placed under commercial cover with DAI. Furthermore, for each
prospective Venezuelan employee, DAI has to submit his/her resume and
other information for approval by the CTO before hiring. It is
obvious that with this contract OTI is simply renting DAI’s corporate
structure for a wholly governmental operation, while attempting to
disguise it as a private sector program. And in fact all the OTI
requirements in the contract are tasks that are to be carried out by
personnel assigned by OTI, with DAI being only a commercial
cover.<br><br>
As for the possibility that this OTI and DAI activity is really a CIA
operation, it is convenient to recall what I wrote in <i>Inside the
Company: CIA Diary</i> (1975) about the use of commercial cover for CIA
officials in foreign countries. From its beginnings in 1947, the
CIA placed officers overseas to manage operations under non-governmental
cover in order to separate very sensitive activities from the officers
working in embassies with diplomatic cover. Through the years
various U.S. international corporations cooperated by placing CIA
officers in their overseas operations. However, a CIA officer
working in an embassy always had to back up the non-official cover
officer in many ways, and this administrative task typically took up
much, if not too much, time.<br><br>
During the 1960s, an effort was made to establish small, self-sufficient
groups of officers under commercial cover with direct communications with
CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, outside Washington. The goal was
to reduce the demands for so much time from the officers working in the
embassies. That was the case in Mexico City where a group of three
CIA officers established an import business with the code name
LILINK. Even though the CIA officials inside the embassy directed
this non-official cover office, there were secure communications that
reduced the need for personal meetings and other support from the
embassy. The DAI office in Caracas fits perfectly in this pattern,
both to give supposedly private and commercial cover to CIA officers and
to try to disconnect embassy officers from such sensitive intervention in
internal Venezuelan politics.<br><br>
To sum up this contract, after the failed coup of April 2002, the
government of the United States widened its program of intervention in
the Venezuelan political process through the Agency for International
Development (AID) with budgets much greater than those of the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its four associated foundations whose
programs with the opposition nevertheless continued. In August 2002
AID/OTI contracted the consulting firm Development Alternatives, Inc.
(DAI) to develop various programs to support the political opposition
with annual budgets of around $5 million. DAI then established an
office in Caracas, very possibly as a front for and with personnel from
the CIA, while passing as an ordinary subsidiary of a U.S. transnational
corporation. In reality, it is a key office of the U.S. embassy
disguised as a private company.<br><br>
At least 67 projects up to end of 2004 have been financed by the DAI
program called Venezuela: Initiative to Build Confidence. The first
projects started in the fall of 2002 were designed to support the lockout
and sabotage of the oil industry from December 2002 to February
2003. This support included financing the TV ad campaign in favor
of the strike. When the strike failed, DAI focused its projects on
the referendum of August 2004, and among its main beneficiaries was
Súmate, the main NGO that promoted the referendum against Chávez.
Parallel to these activities DAI has financed the development of the
opposition’s political program against the Bolivarian Revolution known as
Plan Consensus. Some of the beneficiaries of this project were
<i>Queremos</i> <i>Elegir</i> (We want to Choose) and <i>Liderazgo y
Vision</i> (Leadership and Vision). Now, since the victories of
President Chávez in the referendum and in the local and state elections
of October 2004, DAI is focusing on the national elections of 2005 and
2006.<br><br>
At the end of 2004, OTI had active operations in 11 countries including
Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan,
Bolivia, and Haiti. It is noteworthy that on the OTI web page that
has a list of the countries where they have programs, all the countries
have a link to pages that describe the programs, except Venezuela which
does not have a link or a description of the program. As for DAI,
at the end of 2004 it had programs in dozens of countries in Africa,
Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Apart from Venezuela, it had
programs in Bolivia, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti,
Honduras, Jamaica, and Mexico among others). These OTI and DAI
programs certainly merit review to see if they operate under the same
conditions as in Venezuela, that is, as possible fronts and covers for
the CIA.<br><br>
<i>Translated from Spanish by Maria Victor<br><br>
</i><u>Next: <br><br>
</u>Part 3:
<a href="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1550"><b>
Analysis of Four USAID Contracts with with Republican and Democratic
Party Foundations in
Venezuela</a></b>
<a href="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1550">
</a><br><br>
<br>
<a name="_ftn1"></a>[1] Editor’s note: the <i>Coordinadora
Democratica</i> fell apart shortly after the August 15, 2004 presidential
recall referendum.<br><br>
<i>Original source / relevant link: <br>
<a href="http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=18132">Rebelión.org</a>
<br><br>
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