Avoid anti-democrats, U.S. official tells Bolivia (Otto REICH)

Herr Reich dictating to Bolivia:

<clips>

MIAMI, Oct. 28 — As a new Bolivian president settles in after peasant protests toppled the previous one, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday that the Andean nation must not allow an anti-democracy movement to take root.

Otto Reich, White House special envoy for Western Hemisphere Initiatives, said South America's poorest country had long suffered political, economic, security and narcotics problems and its latest political crisis would not destabilize the continent.

But he added: ''There are people in Bolivia who do not believe in democracy and they cannot be allowed to take over Bolivia because they will end democracy.'' He did not elaborate.

Washington has been largely silent since Sanchez de Lozada fled to the United States two weeks ago after nearly 80 people died in a month-long uprising led by indigenous leaders.


<http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters10-28-132138.asp?reg=AMERICAS>

Wasn't he a Reagan official in central/south america who helped terrorists overthrow govts unfriendly to us and helped govts wipe out opponents?

Similar background to Negroponte (US representative to UN)?

US war on terror being run by us terrorists?????

declassified docs from the Iran/Contra years.

<clips>

Mr. Reich’s tenure at the Office of Public Diplomacy generated major controversy during the exposure of the Iran-contra scandal and left an extensive document trail, some of the highlights of which are included in this Briefing Book. For example:

* The Comptroller-General of the U.S., a Republican appointee, found that some of the efforts of Mr. Reich’s public diplomacy office were “prohibited, covert propaganda activities,” “beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities….” The same September 30, 1987 letter concluded that Mr. Reich’s office had violated “a restriction on the State Department’s annual appropriations prohibiting the use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress.” The letter also said, “We do not believe, however, that available evidence will support a conclusion that the applicable antilobbying statute has been violated.”

* The General Accounting Office in an October 30, 1987 letter and report found that Mr. Reich’s office “generally did not follow federal regulations governing contractual procedures” in its contracting “with numerous individuals and several companies.” The GAO quoted Mr. Reich as saying “he was generally unfamiliar with the details related to the office’s contracting procedures. Instead he relied on his staff as well as State’s procurement office to ensure that federal regulations were adhered to.”

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/

---

More recently, Herr REICH was involved in the Venezuelan coup attempt on democratically elected Hugo Chavez.

<clips>

The Propaganda of Otto Reich

By Tom Turnipseed

The Bush administration is engaging in damage control for their questionable involvement in the failed 2 day coup against the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Alarmingly, the ominous Otto Reich is emerging as a key player in the administration's role in the failed coup attempt to replace Chavez with an oligarchy of business, military and wealthy elites. Scrambling to distance themselves from the botched overthrow of the democratically elected Chavez government, the Bush administration admitted that Mr. Reich called the coup leader, Mr. Carmona, and asked him not to dissolve the National Assembly because it would be a "stupid thing to do". The next day the administration revised their story and said Reich only asked our ambassador to relay that message to Carmona.

The New York Times noted that the disclosure raised questions as to whether Mr. Reich and other administration officials were stage-managing the takeover by Mr. Carmona. Although the Bush administration admits their desire to replace the Chavez government because of its opposition to U.S. policies and friendship with countries like Cuba and Iran, they now insist that they were not involved in the armed coup. The administration also admits talking with various Venezuelan officials prior to the coup including General Lucas Romero Rincon, head of the Venezuelan military, who met with Pentagon official Rogelio Pardo-Maurer, a former close associate of the U. S. supported Contra forces in Nicaragua.

Mr. Reich's propensity to pernicious propaganda has once again emerged from events surrounding the coup. According to the New York Times, Reich told congressional aides that the administration had received reports that "foreign paramilitary forces"-suspected to be Cuban-were involved in the bloody suppression of anti-Chavez demonstrators, in which at least 14 people were killed in Venezuela. Reich, a former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela and lobbyist with ties to Mobil Oil in Venezuela, further told the Congressional staffers that Mr. Chavez had meddled with the historically independent state oil company, provided haven to Colombian guerillas, and bailed out Cuba with preferential rates on oil.

Reich is a right-wing Cuban-American obsessed with overthrowing Fidel Castro's regime and is also a big political supporter of President Bush's brother and Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who needs strong support from Cubans in Florida in his re-election bid this year. Reich, along with fellow Reagan administration cohorts, Elliott Abrams and John Negroponte, were discredited for their covert activities and false assertions when the United States intervened in Central America in the 1980's and '90s, but have been re-instated in prominent positions in the second Bush administration. They abhor Latin-American governments that are elected by the poor and working class people, like the Chavez government in Venezuela and the deposed Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

http://www.counterpunch.org/turnip0418.html

---

It is also interesting to note that REICH sits on the board of the infamous School of the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC).

<clips>

Otto Reich Named to Board for US Army's School of the Americas

Otto Reich has been named to the Board of Visitors at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA). The WHISC's charter requires a Board of Visitors to monitor the school, to ensure that the curriculum emphasize "human rights, the rule of law, due process, civilian control of the military, and the role of the military in a democratic society". Reich has a history of aiding coups and known terrorists.

In December 2000 Congress authorized the WHISC to replace the SOA. The SOA/WHISC is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers. Its graduates are consistently involved in documented human rights abuses and atrocities. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution.

The renaming of the school was widely viewed as an attempt to diffuse public criticism and to disassociate the school from its reputation. SOA Watch maintains that the underlying purpose of the school, to control the economic and political systems of Latin America by aiding and influencing Latin American militaries, remains the same.

"It's a new name, but the same shame,"said Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch, "They prove this point by putting Otto Reich on this rubber stamp board.

http://www.counterpunch.org/reich0503.html

Propagandist extraordinaire.

http://www.fair.org/articles/otto-reich.html

at telling other people what to do and how to live.

look at what he and his radical wing of his party are doing to this democracy. Elections - if they don't go the way you want... get a court to rule in your favor or do 'em over.

Latin America ... and, I'm sure they've got his number pegged ...

... he has such an appropriate surname ...

The Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee had already made it clear that they would oppose Reich's appointment, not least because of the Bosch factor. So President Bush made a "recess appointment" at the beginning of January, which meant that he could side-step the Senate confirmation and avoid the damaging questions which Reich would be asked.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/FoT.html

Otto Reich is a rightwing Cuban American whose key policy objective is the overthrow of Fidel Castro's regime and whose support base is the Cuban-American community in Florida. President Bush's brother, Jeb, is depending on this community's votes and backing as he runs for re-election as governor of the state later this year.

Otto Reich came to prominence during the Reagan administration when he was appointed head of the office of public diplomacy within the state department. According to the national security archives, Reich used this role to pursue his own agenda to such an extent that in 1987 the Comptroller-General of the US, a Republican appointee, found that some of the efforts of his office were "prohibited, covert propaganda activities ... beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities". A letter of September 30 1987 concluded that Reich's office had violated "a restriction on the state department's annual appropriations prohibiting the use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorised by Congress".

He staffed his unit with CIA and Pentagon "psychological warfare" specialists and discredited journalists whose work the Reagan administration did not like. His office wrote bogus editorial pieces under the names of Nicaraguan contras and got them published in the mainstream media. He reported directly to Oliver North.

Reich also served as US ambassador to Venezuela and was alleged to have used his influence to try and get a US visa for a convicted terrorist, Orlando Bosch, jailed in Venezuela in 1976 for the bombing of a Cubana airliner with 73 people on board. Bosch had already been convicted of a terrorist attack in Miami on a Polish merchant vessel bound for Cuba and jailed in the US.

<clips>

Latin America's Archives of Terror

In 1974 Celestina Pérez de Almada died of a heart attack after spending day after day listening to the screams of her husband being tortured. This brutal soundtrack came to her courtesy of the torturers themselves--a "2 for the price of 1" form of torture favored by Alfredo Stroessner during his 35-year dictatorship.

Her husband, Martin Almada, was among the lucky few who escaped the horror with his life, and a dogged commitment to bring the criminals of Latin America's dirty war to justice. In 1992 he brought to light massive archives that document Paraguay's role in the U.S.-sponsored Operation Condor, a regional network of repression against opposition to the military dictatorships in the Southern Cone. The documents led to the recent embargo on $85,000 of Stroessner's assets--estimated at $500 million--and were also used to build the international case against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. These reams of papers are not for the weak-stomached. Paraguayans call them "The Archives of Terror."

...As Latin Americans seek to come to terms with the most painful and ugly parts of their nations' past, the United States must do the same. Researchers combing through the horrors find that the names of U.S. officials keep cropping up in key places and moments. U.S. government archives contain important information that could put hated criminals behind bars and help close the open wounds of families of the disappeared. They should be released.

It will take a willingness to confront responsibilities. In Guatemala, the string of genocidal dictators began with the U.S.-abetted, cold war coup to overthrow democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. U.S. congressional hearings have documented the U.S. government's role in the Chilean coup d'etat that brought Pinochet to power. Operation Condor was funded and orchestrated in large part by the U.S. government and owes its intellectual underpinnings to Henry Kissinger, the epitome of cunning and heartless foreign policy.

http://www.counterpunch.org/carlsen10252003.html

Have to include it in this thread, as it symbolizes the kind of government our own Republican President Nixon, with Henry Kissinger put in place in Chile, after violently removing the duly elected Salvador Allende.

One article I read said that in the '70's, this ship was sitting in a U.S. east coast harbor, and was being heavily protested by American demonstrators, while our own FBI was out taking photos and getting I.D.'s established on THE PROTESTORS! Ugly picture, isn't it?

It just returned home in October, after a world-wide "good will trip," while being protested everywhere it ported.


Esmeralda, "the white lady"

Pinochet's torture ship heads into protest storm

Blair urged to ban training vessel from Britain until Chile admits its use as floating jail after 1973 coup

Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Friday June 6, 2003
The Guardian

The Chilean navy's infamous torture ship, the Esmeralda, is to visit Britain twice this summer after the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, refused petitions for it to be banned. Mr Straw acted despite Chile's refusal to admit to or apologise for the vessel's horrific past.
The elegant, four-masted ship, known as "the white lady", will sail into Dartmouth harbour on June 27 despite the protests of the family of a British Roman Catholic priest, Michael Woodward, who died after being tortured on the vessel following General Augusto Pinochet's coup in 1973.

(snip) Chile's continued refusal to admit that the ship was used as a centre for the systematic rape, maiming and killing of opponents of Gen Pinochet's regime has seen its recent trips to Latin American countries greeted by angry protests. (snip/...)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pinochet/Story/0,11993,971563,00.html

(snip) Background

Following the military coup on 11 September 1973, the military junta which seized power immediately embarked on a program of systematic and large-scale repression, exerting absolute control over the resources of the State and using these to commit human rights violations. Constitutional guarantees were suspended through more than 3,500 decree laws and four “constitutional laws” passed over several years. Congress was dissolved and a country-wide state of siege declared, under which hundreds of people were detained and countless more extrajudicially executed, a state policy of "disappearance" put in place and torture was used systematically.
With the return to civilian rule in 1990, two bodies were created in different periods to gather information leading to the clarification of the truth about “disappearances”, extrajudicial executions and deaths resulting from torture by state agents. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (know as the Rettig Commission) (Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación) was set up by the administration of President Patricio Aylwin, and published its report in March 1991. The National Reparation and Reconciliation Corporation, (Corporación Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación) was established in 1992 as a successor to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Rettig Commission) and published its final report, when its mandate came to an end in 1996. The combined findings of the two commissions officially documented 3,197 cases of victims of “disappearances”, extrajudicial execution and death resulting from torture. This figure did not include the victims of torture who survived their ordeal.
The report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Rettig Report) registers a number of navy vessels used as detention and torture centres by the Chilean navy at the time of the coup lead by General Augusto Pinochet. The Chilean naval training ship "Esmeralda" is listed together with the "Lebu" and the "Maipo". According to the Rettig Report, in the "Esmeralda", a special group of Navy officials "installed a unit for the interrogation of detainees. Such interrogation included, as a general rule, ill-treatment and torture". (1)


In September 1999, following denials on national television by Navy Commander-in-Chief-(Comandante en Jefe de la Armada) Admiral Jorge Patricio Arancibia Reyes, that naval ships or installations were used as torture centres, two former prisoners, Antonio Leal, a deputy for the Party for Democracy in 1973, and Ivan Aldoney Vargas, publicly stated that political prisoners were tortured on board the "Esmeralda" and other naval vessels and installations. In a September 1999 press conference Antonio Leal described the type of torture carried out on the "Esmeralda" including the use of electric prods, high-voltage electric charges applied to the testicles, hanging by the feet and dumping in a bucket of water or excrement (Santiago Times, 7 September 1999).


There is no evidence that torture was committed on the “Esmeralda” after 1973; nevertheless, the ship is seen as a symbol of the cruel fate of political prisoners in Chilean recent history, especially of the indiscriminate use of torture by government officials.
Over the years, as part of Amnesty International’s work against the gross human rights violations committed in Chile during the military government (1973 -1990), Amnesty International has documented and published a number of testimonies of victims tortured on the "Esmeralda". (2) (snip/...)
http://www.chile-esmeralda.com/documents/amnesty_international.htm

(snip) In 1973, in the aftermath of a bloody coup against the democratically elected government, the Chilean Navy made a special contribution to the new military junta led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. They allowed La Esmeralda, a four-masted Chilean naval ship, to be used as a prison and torture chamber. According to testimony collected by Amnesty International and the Organization of American States, at least 110 political prisoners - 70 men and 40 women - were interrogated aboard the ship for more than two weeks without charges or trial. The former mayor of Valparaiso, where the ship was stationed, described being tied to one of the ship's masts and subjected repeatedly to electric shock. I couldn't sleep for six days because they woke me up every six minutes, night and day, he told Amnesty International. We could hear how the others were tortured right where we were. According to a Chilean lawyer held on board, military officials stripped and savagely beat the prisoners and shot them with high-pressure jets of water that produced an unbearable pain in the head, ears, eyes, and lungs At least one of those tortured on board La Esmeralda, a British-Chilean priest named Michael Woodward, died as a result. His body was thrown into an unmarked mass grave.

In the past, La Esmeralda has received angry receptions when it came to the United States:

In 1974, the Longshoreman's Union and other protesters succeeded in turning La Esmeralda away from the San Francisco port.

In 1976, when the ship traveled to Baltimore as part of Operation Sail's American Bicentennial celebration, local human rights activists greeted it with strong protests.

Undeterred, La Esmeralda returned in 1986 for the Bicentennial celebration of the Statue of Liberty. This time, the US Senate passed a resolution condemning the ship's participation and called on Operation Sail to withdraw the invitation. Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said that the Statue of Liberty would weep at the sight of La Esmeralda entering the gateway of freedom at New York Harbor.

(snip/...)

http://www.tni.org/pinochet/tniips/180600.htm

the real message.

Bolivia and all Latin America should avoid the likes of Otto Reich and G. W. Bush.

A couple of letters to the editor that call the WP on their lack of FACTS.

---

Fighting Back in Bolivia

Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A24

The Oct. 23 editorial "Bolivia's Backlash" stated that opposition leader Evo Morales had received only 21 percent of the vote in the 2002 presidential election. But the editorial failed to mention that Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada received only 22 percent of the vote and was made president not by popular demand but by an act of congress -- hardly an overwhelming popular mandate.

Furthermore, while the coalition that ousted Mr. Sanchez de Lozada may not have a clear, rational alternative to the reforms that were being forced on them, they had every reason to doubt that the export of one of Bolivia's natural resources would not benefit their people. None of the natural resources that Bolivia has exported (silver, tin) has provided most Bolivians with the prosperity they were promised.

The opposition may not have an alternative, but that does not mean it has no reason to protest.

MARTIN AUSTERMUHLE

Washington

---

The Post's editorial lauding ousted Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada missed the point of the national protests that drove him into exile.

A leader is not exactly "moderate and modernizing" when his army kills more than 100 people in less than a year (including a nurse slain by sharpshooters while tending the wounded) or when his last act is to raid the national treasury, granting millions in "bonuses" to his friends on his way out the door. Latin America has suffered too many such leaders, propped up by the U.S. government and misguided U.S. opinion.

The Post suggests that Bolivians opposed a lucrative gas export deal to California out of xenophobia or stupidity. In fact, the Bolivian people had legitimate doubts that any of the riches from such a deal would ever trickle down below President Sanchez de Lozada and his wealthy cronies. His bloody, treasury-raiding exit only suggests that the Bolivian people had good reason for those suspicions.

JIM SHULTZ

Executive Director

The Democracy Center

Cochabamba, Bolivia

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32410-2003Oct28.html

Bush deliberately appointed Reich during the February Senate recess, and so he will assume his post without the confirmation hearings that are customary for a job of this importance.

www.counterpunch.org/ottoreich1.html

a load outcry of negativity. There were loads of editorials at the time that came out against REICH. After the recess appointment ended, SmirkBoy appointed him to that position he holds today--something created just for him. In reality Herr REICH probably runw everything behind the scenes especially anything that has to do with Cuba or Venezuela. At least that's my opinion. :-)

---

Interesting note on Al Giordano's blog yesterday:

Roger Discovers América

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega in Mexico City Yesterday:

"The hemisphere is in turmoil."

Duh.

Meanwhile, sounds like Bolivia's new president Carlos Mesa - who as VP said he opposed violence and repression against social movements - is soiling his own honeymoon, and thus shortening his presidential career in its infancy. Bullets into an unarmed crowd, Carlitos? Whose dumb idea was that? Ambassador David Greenlee's?

Read Comments: Cracks in the Empire

http://www.bigleftoutside.com/