The US Role in the Venezuelan Coup

by Bill Vann

The following article is excerpted with permission from the World Socialist Web Site

An official investigation by the Venezuelan government has revealed that two high-ranking US military officers joined the Venezuelan military commanders who backed the coup at Fort Tiuna, the largest military base in Caracas, where President Hugo Chavez was forcibly taken after being captured by soldiers supporting the overthrow of his government.

"Several Venezuelan officers implicated in the coup mentioned they were aware of this officer's [US Army Col. Ronald MacCammon's] presence during the events," a source close to the investigation told the French news agency AFP. "They were assured that the movement had the full support of the United States and for this reason they participated."

Washington denied these reports, making the improbable claim that two US officers had merely made a "drive-by" inspection of the coup headquarters. "They never got out of their vehicle," a State Department official insisted.

But Lt. Col. James Rodgers, the US military attache in Caracas, had an office on the fifth floor of the main building of Fort Tiuna. The US was the only country whose military attache enjoyed this privilege. Chavez had ordered that the office be removed, but the Venezuelan military had never carried out his instructions.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, announced it would carry out its own investigation. "We just want to be sure that nobody was acting on their own," a Defense Department spokesman said.

There is no indication that the AFL-CIO is conducting a similar probe, though there is no question that its operatives in Caracas were just as intimately involved in the attempted overthrow of an elected government. A spokesman for the labor federation did not return a call seeking comment.

The AFL-CIO involvement took place through the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), which has provided aid and "technical advisors" to the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV). CTV President Carlos Ortega was one of the main participants in the coup attempt, joining with the head of the main big business association. After the coup collapsed, the CTV's Ortega remained in hiding for weeks.

The overthrow of Chavez was prepared over the previous two months by a series of strikes and protests organized by the CTV with the backing of Venezuelan business, culminating in a joint labor-employer general strike on the day of the coup.

During the same period, the ACILS had expanded its operations in Venezuela in conjunction with non-governmental organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, an agency founded in 1983 by the Reagan administration with the aim of providing a legal framework for operations that had previously been carried out covertly by the CIA. Among the founding directors of the agency were Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state and national security adviser, as well as then-AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker, two of the labor bureaucrats with the closest ties to the State Department.

Over the past two years, the NED has quadrupled its funding for Venezuelan operations to nearly $1 million. Out of this, $154,377 was given to the ACILS for its activities with the CTV, which included help in organizing support in internal elections that were forced on the labor bureaucracy by the Chavez government. The AFL-CIO, which has enjoyed the closest relations with the corrupt bureaucracy of the CTV, worked to ensure that its top officials retained power.

While the New York Times cited an unnamed State Department official as saying further funding had been placed on hold to ensure that it was not used "to underwrite an unconstitutional overthrow of the government of Venezuela," the Bush administration quickly denied the report, indicating that another million dollars is already in the pipeline for the next fiscal year.

With his ringing endorsement of the coup, George Folsom, the president of the International Republican Institute (another beneficiary of the NED's Venezuelan largesse) undercut denials by the Bush administration and the NED of US involvement. "The Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country," Folsom said in a statement. "Venezuelans were provoked into action as a result of systematic repression by the government of Hugo Chavez." This claim is unsupported by the facts. Whatever its faults, the Chavez government has no political prisoners and has tolerated a business-controlled media that openly collaborated in the coup attempt.

The sordid episode in Venezuela makes clear that the AFL-CIO continues its counterrevolutionary services to the US government abroad, even as it oversees an endless series of betrayals, defeats, concessions and layoffs for unionized workers at home.