BobHarris.com - Venezuela coup: CIA knew

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Venezuela coup: CIA knew

Tag it now -

Thursday, 25 November 2004

From Newsday, caught by alert reader Maria:

The U.S. government knew of an imminent plot to oust Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez, in the weeks prior to a 2002 military coup that briefly unseated him, newly released CIA documents show, despite White House claims to the contrary a week after the putsch.

Not at all proof of involvement, but, um, consistent with how much El Commandante hates Chavez:

Julia Sweig, deputy director of Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank in Washington, said: "The fact that we didn't call Chávez and say, 'This is brewing,' reflects the incredible antipathy toward Chávez at that time" on the part of the Bush administration.

Incidentally, the National Security Archive, which obtained the documents, is a tremendous resource. The new stuff isn't up on the site yet, but hop over there and you could lose a couple of hours easily, something I highly recommend. For example, the current briefing book about the 1974 amendments to the Freedom of Information Act -- and opposition from Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Scalia -- is both fascinating stuff from our own history, much of it new, and (sadly)... no surprise at all. The more things change, etc...