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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/elliott-abrams-venezuela-coup/">https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/elliott-abrams-venezuela-coup/</a></font>
<h1 class="Post-title">Elliott Abrams, Trump’s Pick to Bring
“Democracy” to Venezuela, Has Spent His Life Crushing
Democracy</h1>
<div class="PostByline-names"><a class="PostByline-link"
rel="author"
href="https://theintercept.com/staff/jonschwarz/"><span
itemprop="name">Jon Schwarz</span></a><span
class="PostByline-date"><span> - January 30 2019</span></span></div>
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<p><u>On December 11, 1981</u> in El Salvador, a
Salvadoran military unit created and trained by the U.S.
Army began slaughtering everyone they could find in a
remote village called El Mozote. Before murdering the
women and girls, the soldiers raped them repeatedly,
including some as young as 10 years old, and joked that
their favorites were the 12-year-olds. One witness
described a soldier tossing a 3-year-old child into the
air and impaling him with his bayonet. The final death
toll was over 800 people.</p>
<p>The next day, December 12, was the first day on the job
for Elliott Abrams as assistant secretary of state for
human rights and humanitarian affairs in the Reagan
administration. Abrams snapped into action, helping to
lead a cover-up of the massacre. News reports of what
had happened, Abrams told the Senate, were “not
credible,” and the whole thing was being “significantly
misused” as propaganda by anti-government guerillas.</p>
<p>This past Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo <a
href="https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2019/01/288590.htm">named</a> Abrams
as America’s special envoy for Venezuela. According to
Pompeo, Abrams “will have responsibility for all things
related to our efforts to restore democracy” in the
oil-rich nation.</p>
<p>The choice of Abrams sends a clear message to Venezuela
and the world: The Trump administration intends to
brutalize Venezuela, while producing a stream of
unctuous rhetoric about America’s love for democracy and
human rights. Combining these two factors — the
brutality and the unctuousness — is Abrams’s core
competency.</p>
<p>Abrams previously served in a multitude of positions in
the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations,
often with titles declaring their focus on morality.
First, he was assistant secretary of state for
international organization affairs (in 1981); then the
State Department “human rights” position mentioned
above (1981-85); assistant secretary of state for
inter-American affairs (1985-89); senior director for
democracy, human rights, and international operations
for the National Security Council (2001-05); and
finally, Bush’s deputy national security adviser for
global democracy strategy (2005-09).</p>
<p>In these positions, Abrams participated in many of the
most ghastly acts of U.S. foreign policy from the past
40 years, all the while proclaiming how deeply he cared
about the foreigners he and his friends were murdering.
Looking back, it’s uncanny to see how Abrams has almost
always been there when U.S. actions were at their most
sordid.</p>
<p><u>Abrams, a graduate</u> of both Harvard College and
Harvard Law School, joined the Reagan administration in
1981, at age 33. He soon received a promotion due to a
stroke of luck: Reagan wanted to name Ernest Lefever as
assistant secretary of state for human rights and
humanitarian affairs, but Lefever’s nomination ran
aground when two of his own brothers <a
href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=dEMRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2OkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6879%2C452084">revealed</a> that
he believed African-Americans were “inferior,
intellectually speaking.” A disappointed Reagan was
forced to turn to Abrams as a second choice.</p>
<p>A key Reagan administration concern at the time was
Central America — in particular, the four adjoining
nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and
Nicaragua. All had been dominated by tiny, cruel, white
elites since their founding, with a century’s worth of
help from U.S. interventions. In each country, the
ruling families saw their society’s other inhabitants as
human-shaped animals, who could be harnessed or killed
as needed.</p>
<p>But shortly before Reagan took office, Anastasio
Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua and a U.S. ally, had
been overthrown by a socialist revolution. The
Reaganites rationally saw this as a threat to the
governments of Nicaragua’s neighbors. Each country had
large populations who similarly did not enjoy being
worked to death on coffee plantations or watching their
children die of easily treated diseases. Some would take
up arms, and some would simply try to keep their heads
down, but all, from the perspective of the cold warriors
in the White House, were likely “<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/27/opinion/latin-america-in-the-time-of-reagan.html">communists</a>”
taking orders from Moscow. They needed to be taught a
lesson.</p>
<h3>El Salvador</h3>
<p>The extermination of El Mozote was just a drop in the
river of what happened in El Salvador during the 1980s.
About 75,000 Salvadorans died during what’s called a
“civil war,” although almost all the killing was done by
the government and its associated death squads.</p>
<p>The numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. El
Salvador is a small country, about the size of New
Jersey. The equivalent number of deaths in the U.S.
would be almost 5 million. Moreover, the Salvadoran
regime continually engaged in acts of barbarism so
heinous that there is no contemporary equivalent, except
perhaps ISIS. In one instance, a Catholic priest <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=BU9tAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA426&ots=5H9i6kjjPH&dq=%22as%20if%20each%20body%20was%20stroking%20its%20own%20head.%22%20-chomsky&pg=PA426#v=onepage&q=%22tonita%20is%20a%20peasant%22&f=false">reported</a> that
a peasant woman briefly left her three small children in
the care of her mother and sister. When she returned,
she found that all five had been decapitated by the
Salvadoran National Guard. Their bodies were sitting
around a table, with their hands placed on their heads
in front of them, “as though each body was stroking its
own head.” The hand of one, a toddler, apparently kept
slipping off her small head, so it had been nailed onto
it. At the center of the table was a large bowl full of
blood.</p>
<p>Criticism of U.S. policy at the time was not confined
to the left. During this period, Charles Maechling Jr.,
who had led State Department planning for
counterinsurgencies during the 1960s, wrote in the Los
Angeles Times that the U.S. was supporting “Mafia-like
oligarchies” in El Salvador and elsewhere and was
directly complicit in “the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s
extermination squads.”</p>
<p>Abrams was one of the architects of the Reagan
administration’s policy of full-throated support for
the Salvadoran government. He had no qualms about any of
it and no mercy for anyone who escaped the Salvadoran
abattoir. In 1984, sounding exactly like Trump officials
today, he explained that Salvadorans who were in the
U.S. illegally should not receive any kind of special
status. “Some groups argue that illegal aliens who are
sent back to El Salvador meet persecution and often
death,” he <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/13/world/state-dept-fights-bill-favoring-salvadorans.html">told
the House of Representatives</a>. “Obviously, we do
not believe these claims or we would not deport these
people.”</p>
<p>Even when out of office, 10 years after the El Mozote
massacre, Abrams expressed doubt that anything untoward
had occurred there. In 1993, when a United Nations truth
commission found that 95 percent of the acts of violence
that had taken place in El Salvador since 1980 had been
committed by Abrams’s friends in the Salvadoran
government, he <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/elliott-abrams-its-back/">called</a> what
he and his colleagues in the Reagan administration had
done a “fabulous achievement.”</p>
<h3>Guatemala</h3>
<p>The situation in Guatemala during the 1980s was much
the same, as were Abrams’s actions. After the U.S.
engineered the overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically
elected president in 1954, the country had descended
into a nightmare of revolving military dictatorships.
Between 1960 and 1996, in another “civil war,” 200,000
Guatemalans were killed — the equivalent of maybe 8
million people in America. A U.N. commission later found
that the Guatemalan state was responsible for 93 percent
of the human rights violations.</p>
<p>Efraín Ríos Montt, who served as Guatemala’s president
in the early 1980s, was found guilty in 2013, by
Guatemala’s own justice system, of committing genocide
against the country’s indigenous Mayans. During Ríos
Montt’s administration, Abrams called for the lifting of
an embargo on U.S. arms shipments to Guatemala, claiming
that Ríos Montt had “brought considerable progress.” The
U.S. had to support the Guatemalan government, Abrams
argued, because “if we take the attitude ‘don’t come to
us until you’re perfect, we’re going to walk away from
this problem until Guatemala has a <em>perfect </em>human
rights record,’ then we’re going to be leaving in the
lurch people there who are trying to make progress.” One
example of the people making an honest effort, according
to Abrams, was Ríos Montt. Thanks to Ríos Montt, “there
has been a tremendous change, especially in the attitude
of the government toward the Indian population.” (Ríos
Montt’s conviction was later set aside by Guatemala’s
highest civilian court, and he died before a new trial
could finish.)</p>
<h3>Nicaragua</h3>
<p>Abrams would become best known for his enthusiastic
involvement with the Reagan administration’s push to
overthrow Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista
government. He advocated for a full invasion of
Nicaragua in 1983, immediately after the successful U.S.
attack on the teeny island nation of Grenada. When
Congress cut off funds to the Contras, an
anti-Sandinista guerrilla force created by the U.S.,
Abrams successfully persuaded the Sultan of Brunei to
cough up $10 million for the cause. Unfortunately,
Abrams, acting under the code name “Kenilworth,”
provided the Sultan with the wrong Swiss bank account
number, so the money was wired instead to a random lucky
recipient.</p>
<p>Abrams was questioned by Congress about his <a
href="https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_25.htm">Contra-related
activities</a> and lied voluminously. He later pleaded
guilty to two counts of withholding information. One was
about the Sultan and his money, and another was about
Abrams’s knowledge of a Contra resupply C-123 plane that
had been shot down in 1986. In a nice historical rhyme
with his new job in the Trump administration, Abrams had
previously attempted to obtain two C-123s for the
Contras from the military of Venezuela.</p>
<p>Abrams received a sentence of 100 hours of community
service and perceived the whole affair as an injustice
of cosmic proportions. He soon wrote a book in which he
described his inner monologue about his prosecutors,
which went: “You miserable, filthy bastards, you
bloodsuckers!” He was later pardoned by President George
H.W. Bush on the latter’s way out the door after he lost
the 1992 election.</p>
<h3>Panama</h3>
<p>While it’s been forgotten now, before America invaded
Panama to oust Manuel Noriega in 1989, he was a close
ally of the U.S. — despite the fact the Reagan
administration <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/05/12/oliver-north-nra-iran-contra/">knew</a> he
was a large-scale drug trafficker.</p>
<p>In 1985, Hugo Spadafora, a popular figure in Panama and
its one-time vice minister for health, believed he had
obtained proof of Noriega’s involvement in cocaine
smuggling. He was on a bus on his way to Panama City to
release it publicly when he was seized by Noriega’s
thugs.</p>
<p>According to the book “Overthrow” by former New York
Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer, U.S. intelligence
picked up Noriega giving his underlings the go-ahead to
put Spadafora down like “a rabid dog.” They tortured
Spadafora for a long night and then sawed off his head
while he was still alive. When Spadafora’s body was
found, his stomach was full of blood he’d swallowed.</p>
<p>This was so horrific that it got people’s attention.
But Abrams leapt to Noriega’s defense, blocking the U.S.
ambassador to Panama from increasing pressure on the
Panamanian leader. When Spadafora’s brother persuaded
North Carolina’s hyper-conservative GOP Sen. Jesse Helms
to hold hearings on Panama, Abrams told Helms that
Noriega was “being really helpful to us” and was “really
not that big a problem. … The Panamanians have promised
they are going to help us with the Contras. If you have
the hearings, it’ll alienate them.”</p>
<h3>… And That’s Not All</h3>
<p>Abrams also engaged in malfeasance for no discernible
reason, perhaps just to stay in shape. In 1986 a
Colombian journalist named Patricia Lara was invited to
the U.S. to attend a dinner honoring writers who’d
advanced “inter-American understanding and freedom of
information.” When Lara arrived at New York’s
Kennedy airport, she was taken into custody, then put on
a plane back home. Soon afterward, Abrams went on “60
Minutes” to <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/01/opinion/abroad-at-home-is-there-no-decency.html">claim</a>
that Lara was a member of the “ruling committees” of
M-19, a Colombian guerrilla movement. She also,
according to Abrams, was ”an active liaison” between
M-19 ”and the Cuban secret police.”</p>
<p>Given the frequent right-wing paramilitary violence
against Colombian reporters, this painted a target on
Lara’s back. There was no evidence then that Abrams’s
assertions were true — Colombia’s own conservative
government denied it — and none has appeared since.</p>
<p>Abrams’s never-ending, shameless deceptions <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ndpYYUsv2u4C&lpg=PA277&ots=G09t9TxAmb&dq=%E2%80%9CAlthough%20I%20had%20used%20all%20my%20professional%20resources%20I%20had%20misled%20my%20readers.%E2%80%9D&pg=PA277#v=onepage&q=%22grew%20so%20frustrated%22&f=false">wore
down</a> American reporters. “They said that black was
white,” Joanne Omang at the Washington Post later
explained about Abrams and his White House colleague
Robert McFarlane. “Although I had used all my
professional resources I had misled my readers.” Omang
was so exhausted by the experience that she quit her job
trying to describe the real world to try to write
fiction.</p>
<p>Post-conviction Abrams was seen as damaged goods who
couldn’t return to government. This underestimated him.
Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., the one-time chair of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, tangled fiercely with Abrams in
1989 over the proper U.S. policy toward Noriega once it
become clear he was more trouble than he was worth.
Crowe strongly opposed a <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/l-elliott-abrams-remains-reckless-on-panama-519789.html">bright
idea</a> that Abrams had come up with: that the U.S.
should establish a government-in-exile on Panamanian
soil, which would require thousands of U.S. troops to
guard. This was deeply boneheaded, Crowe said, but it
didn’t matter. Crowe presciently <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/23/us/washington-work-crowe-v-abrams-private-feud-over-handling-panama-becomes-public.html">issued
a warning</a> about Abrams: “This snake’s hard to
kill.”</p>
<p>
To the surprise of Washington’s more naive insiders,
Abrams was back in business soon after George W. Bush
entered the White House. It might have been difficult to
get Senate approval for someone who had deceived
Congress, so Bush put him in a slot at the National
Security Council — where no legislative branch approval
was needed. Just like 20 years before, Abrams was handed
a portfolio involving “democracy” and “human rights.”</p>
<h3>Venezuela</h3>
<p>By the beginning of 2002, Venezuela’s president, Hugo
Chavez, had become deeply irritating to the Bush White
House, which was filled with veterans of the battles of
the 1980s. That April, all of a sudden, out of nowhere,
Chavez was pushed out of power in a coup. Whether and
how the U.S. was involved is not yet known, and probably
won’t be for decades until the relevant documents are
declassified. But based on the previous 100 years, it
would be surprising indeed if America didn’t play any
behind-the-scenes role. For what it’s worth, the London
Observer <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela">reported</a> at
the time that “the crucial figure around the coup was
Abrams” and he “gave a nod” to the plotters. In any
case, Chavez had enough popular support that he was able
to regroup and return to office within days.</p>
<h3>Iran</h3>
<p>Abrams apparently did <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/07/AR2007020702408.html">play
a key role</a> in squelching a peace proposal from
Iran in 2003, just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The
plan arrived by fax, and should have gone to Abrams, and
then to Condoleezza Rice, at the time Bush’s national
security adviser. Instead it somehow never made it to
Rice’s desk. When later asked about this, Abrams’s
spokesperson replied that he “had no memory of any such
fax.” (Abrams, like so many people who thrive at the
highest level of politics, has a terrible memory for
anything political. In 1984, he told Ted Koppel that he
couldn’t recall for sure whether the U.S. had
investigated reports of massacres in El Salvador. In
1986, when asked by the Senate Intelligence Committee if
he’d discussed fundraising for the contras with anyone
on the NSC’s staff, he likewise couldn’t remember.)</p>
<h3>Israel and Palestine</h3>
<p>Abrams was also at the center of another attempt to
thwart the outcome of a democratic election, in 2006.
Bush had pushed for legislative elections in the West
Bank and Gaza in order to give Fatah, the highly corrupt
Palestinian organization headed by Yasser Arafat’s
successor, Mahmoud Abbas, some badly needed legitimacy.
To everyone’s surprise, Fatah’s rival Hamas won, giving
it the right to form a government.</p>
<p>This unpleasant outburst of democracy was not
acceptable to the Bush administration, in particular
Rice and Abrams. They hatched a plan to form a Fatah
militia to take over the Gaza Strip, and crush Hamas in
its home territory. As <a
href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/04/gaza200804">reported
by Vanity Fair</a>, this involved a great deal of
torture and executions. But Hamas stole a march on Fatah
with their own ultra-violence. David Wurmser, a
neoconservative who worked for Dick Cheney at the time,
told Vanity Fair, “It looks to me that what happened
wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by
Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen.” Yet
ever since, these events gave been turned upside down in
the U.S. media, with Hamas<em> </em>being presented as
the aggressors.</p>
<p>While the U.S. plan was not a total success, it also
was not a total failure from the perspective of America
and Israel. The Palestinian civil war split the West
Bank and Gaza into two entities, with rival governments
in both. For the past 13 years, there’s been little sign
of the political unity necessary for Palestinians to get
a decent life for themselves.</p>
<p>Abrams then left office with Bush’s exit. But now he’s
back for a third rotation through the corridors of power
– with the same kinds of schemes he’s executed the first
two times.</p>
<p>Looking back at Abrams’s lifetime of lies and savagery,
it’s hard to imagine what he could say to justify it.
But he does have a defense for everything he’s done —
and it’s a good one.</p>
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