<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="container content-width3" style="--font-size:20px;">
<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14669">https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14669</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Media Continue to Push Misinformation
About Venezuela and Drug Trafficking</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Lucas Koerner and Ricardo
Vaz - September 26, 2019</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="content">
<div class="moz-reader-content line-height4 reader-show-element"
dir="ltr">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div>
<div>
<p>In recent years, Western corporate journalists have
turned to systematically citing unnamed sources and
secret documents from the US national security state.
Indeed, one would be forgiven for thinking it was
standard operating procedure.</p>
<p>The <strong>Wall Street Journal</strong> (<a
href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelas-hugo-chavez-worked-to-flood-u-s-with-cocaine-u-s-prosecutors-say-11568557780">9/15/19</a>)
takes this “deep state” fan fiction genre to new
heights with its latest on Venezuela, titled
“Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez Worked to Flood US with
Cocaine, US Prosecutors Say.”</p>
<p>As advertised, the <strong>Journal</strong>’s <a
href="https://fair.org/?s=Juan+Forero">Juan Forero</a> echoes
allegations against the Venezuelan government by US
officials, which are contained in undisclosed
“documents obtained by the <strong>Wall Street Journal</strong>.”</p>
<p>There is only one slight problem with this news: It’s
not new, and is based entirely on the word of US
prosecutors and defector-turned-witness testimony.</p>
<h3><strong>A stale, evidence-free tale</strong></h3>
<p>Like the conspiracy theory of <a
href="https://fair.org/home/nyt-parrots-us-propaganda-on-hezbollah-in-venezuela/">Hezbollah</a> activity
in Venezuela, which Nicholas Casey recently dusted off
for the <strong>New York Times </strong>(<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-hezbollah-drugs.html">5/2/19</a>),
allegations of Chavista drug trafficking count among
the corporate media’s favorite Venezuela soundbites.</p>
<p>Back in 2008, President Bush’s Treasury Department <a
href="https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/hp1132.aspx">accused</a> top
Venezuelan officials of “materially assisting the
narcotics trafficking activities of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).”</p>
<p>At the time, the <strong>New York Times</strong> (<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/world/americas/12iht-13venez.16104234.html">9/12/08</a>)
and other outlets repeated the allegations, while
ignoring then–OAS Secretary General Miguel Insulza’s <a
href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2008/04/11/oas-chief-us-congress-no-venezuela-terrorist-link?amp">testimony</a> before
the US Congress that there is “no evidence” tying
Venezuela to the FARC.</p>
<p>The <strong>Guardian </strong>(<a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/03/venezuela.colombia">2/12/08</a>),
ever willing to serve Washington’s foreign policy
interests, also debuted its own bombshell
“investigation” in 2008, headlined “Revealed: Chávez
Role in Cocaine Trail to Europe.” All these
spectacular claims rely on the testimony of anonymous
intelligence officials and alleged FARC deserters, to
whom readers are expected to give the benefit of the
doubt.</p>
<p>Fast forward to 2015, the <strong>Journal</strong>’s
Forero and Jose de Cordoba (<a
href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelan-officials-suspected-of-turning-country-into-global-cocaine-hub-1431977784">5/18/15</a>)
quoted unnamed Justice Department officials accusing
Venezuela’s ruling Socialist Party’s No. 2, Diosdado
Cabello, of heading a drug cartel. No evidence was
presented to support the claims, and the Justice
Department has, four years later, yet to unseal an
indictment against Cabello.</p>
<p>Forero’s latest article rehashes the same allegations
regarding the mythical “Cartel of the Suns,” but
extends them to taint late President Hugo Chávez, who
is purported to have “wielded cocaine trafficking as a
weapon.”</p>
<h3><strong>Relying on traitors’ testimony</strong></h3>
<p>Most of Forero’s report is an uncritical recitation
of the claims contained in the “documents.”
Unsurprisingly, all of the sources mentioned are
Venezuelan government defectors, who have a clear
incentive to fabricate information in order to secure
their status in the United States and protect
themselves against possible prosecution.</p>
<p>Since 2015, the <strong>Journal</strong> has reported
the Justice Department’s “star witness” to be former
Chávez bodyguard Leamsy Salazar, who defected to the
US in 2014. Over the subsequent years, Salazar has
proven himself a steady source of wild,
unsubstantiated <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11385">allegations</a> involving
Cabello and other top Bolivarian officials that have
been repeated by corporate journalists.</p>
<p>On this occasion, we are expected to take at face
value Salazar’s claims of having seen “what appeared
to be cocaine” shipped on Venezuelan speed boats,
overhearing Chávez order weapons for the FARC over the
phone, and witnessing the late president promise to
divert funds from state oil company PDVSA to the
guerrilla group.</p>
<p>Forero does not cite additional, independently
verifiable evidence that might support these
allegations, which suggests that the Justice
Department doesn’t have any.</p>
<p>This procedure is repeated with other state
witnesses, including former Venezuelan Supreme Court
Justice Eladio Aponte, who “fled to the US in 2012 and
has been a witness on drug cases, said a person
familiar with his role in the investigations.”</p>
<p>Here Forero commits a particularly glaring omission.
Aponte only fled Venezuela with DEA help after he was <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-judge-idUSBRE83O1ET20120425">identified</a> as
the business partner of Venezuelan drug lord Walid
Makled. As we <a
href="https://fair.org/home/nyt-parrots-us-propaganda-on-hezbollah-in-venezuela/">examined</a> in
the case of the drug-trafficking accusations against
current Industry Minister Tareck El Aissami, US
officials and corporate journalists have frequently
drawn unproven links between Makled and high-ranking
Caracas officials, despite the former being handed a
14-year sentence by a Venezuelan court in 2015.</p>
<p>In lieu of incorporating other perspectives that
might challenge the US prosecutors’ claims, Forero
opts to consult “experts” more than willing to echo
them. He quotes <a
href="https://twitter.com/MundarayZair">Zair
Mundaray</a>, a former prosecutor who fled to
Colombia in 2017. Mundaray served as No. 2 in the
public prosecutor’s office under former Attorney
General Luisa Ortega Diaz.</p>
<p>Forero again suppresses crucial details, namely that
Ortega was herself <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13314">accused</a> of
running an extortion ring from her office, prompting
her successor to open various high-profile <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13326">graft
probes</a> in 2017–18. Nor does Forero mention that
Mundaray is currently serving as “legal advisor” to
self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaidó’s
“embassy” in Colombia, giving him all the more
motivation to proffer damning “information” about
Chávez and Chavistas to US prosecutors and
journalists.</p>
<p>In another case, the <strong>Journal</strong> correspondent
cites an anonymous US ex-official to confirm what
other unnamed US officials have alleged in an
undisclosed “document”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A former senior US official who was shown the
documents filed in Spain said it was the first time
he had seen American authorities alleging that Mr.
Chávez’s sponsorship of drug trafficking constituted
a formal strategy to debilitate the US “That said,
it makes sense for a regime that has long seen
itself in an asymmetric war with us,” said the
former official.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Very far from “speaking truth to power,” corporate
media have almost completely surrendered the floor to
anonymous US officials, allowing the official
narrative to go unchallenged.</p>
<h3><strong>Poisoning the well</strong></h3>
<p>The <strong>Journal</strong> report, while not
original in content, has the novelty of patching
together half-baked claims into a Machiavellian plan
hatched by Chávez himself. With Washington and Western
media previously going after high-ranking figures such
as Cabello and El Aissami, this time the target is the
legendary leader of the Bolivarian Revolution. The
story reads as a substitute script for the new season
of <a
href="https://fair.org/home/reuters-cant-find-us-critics-to-question-amazons-anti-venezuela-propaganda/"><strong>Amazon</strong>’s <strong>Jack
Ryan</strong></a>, which came under fire for its
fantastical plot premise of Venezuela requiring US
intervention after acquiring a nuclear weapon—no doubt
the fantasy of recently fired National Security
Advisor John Bolton.</p>
<p>Crucially missing is the historic fact that it was
the CIA, not Chávez, that flooded US inner cities with
crack cocaine in the 1980s as part of the <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/iran-contra-was-the-prototype-for-post-vietnam-imperial-adventure/">Iran/Contra</a> operation,
of which current US special envoy to Venezuela <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/elliott-abrams-venezuela-coup/">Elliott
Abrams</a> is a veteran. The only thing Venezuela’s
former president shipped to poor urban communities
was <a
href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/free-venezuelan-oil-keeping-thousands-of-poor-u-s-families-warm-is-back-after-hiatus">free
heating oil</a> every winter.</p>
<p>Reading Forero, one almost loses sight of US
authorities’ active complicity, both at home and
abroad, in the drug trade. Cocaine is consumed first
and foremost in the United States, and its profits
have been <a
href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/megabanks-are-laundering_b_645885">laundered</a> by
the US-dominated financial system. Meanwhile, the
DEA’s ever-growing multi-billion dollar budget has
done nothing to fight the booming drug trade (assuming
that is the goal). In fact, US-allied Colombia is the
world’s largest cocaine producer and the source of 90
percent of the cocaine seized in the US, according to
the <a
href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-colombia-relations-new-opportunities-to-reinforce-and-strengthen-our-bilateral-relationship/">State
Department</a>. Furthermore, the drugs are
transported to the US mainly through Central America
and Mexico, all countries with a heavy presence of US
agencies.</p>
<p>The “Communist narco-terrorist” conspiracy theory
invented by the US national security state and its
far-right Colombian allies serves to conflate
Colombia’s drug and guerrilla problems, with the FARC
a convenient scapegoat. For one thing, the FARC was
involved in the drug trade only at its lowest levels,
levying <a
href="https://www.dw.com/es/las-farc-admiten-cobrar-tributos-por-el-cultivo-de-coca/a-17262114-0">taxes</a> on
coca sales. Moreover, since the 2016 peace accords and
FARC demobilization, coca crops in Colombia have
reached <a
href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45578492">record
levels</a> year after year, confirming that the
guerrillas played no major role in the illicit trade.</p>
<p>“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States
is one of the wonders of the Western world,” Gore
Vidal <a
href="https://www.latimes.com/la-bk-gore-vidal-1989-08-04-story.html">remarked</a>.
“No First World country has ever managed to eliminate
so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less
dissent.”</p>
<p>Even Forero outdoes himself by this standard,
producing what is for all intents and purposes a press
release for the US Justice Department.</p>
<p>The goal is never to prove anything or present
substantive debate, but to further poison the well of
US public opinion against Venezuela, legitimating
regime change as US state policy. Rather than victims
of <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14446">murderous
US sanctions</a>, Venezuelans are depicted as the
purveyors of an anti-American drug war. In fact, the
most egregious dealers of death and deceit in the
hemisphere are, as always, US policymakers and their
stenographers in the corporate media.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>