For years, I was BBC Television’s correspondent covering Venezuela and US attempts to overthrow their elected government. Trump invented nothing. This is at least the fourth US-backed attempt at overthrow and assassination of a Venezuelan president.
The first attempt was in March 2002 when I was tipped off that Chavez would be overthrown in a military coup. Indeed, in April of that year, he was kidnapped by renegade officers who had the fantasy, shared by the US State Department, that the public hated Chavez and would celebrate his overthrow.
But it turned into another Bay of Pigs after tens of thousands of angry Venezuelans surrounded Miraflores Palace while the coup leaders “inaugurated” Exxon Oil’s lawyer as “President.” George W. Bush’s Ambassador to Venezuela attended this wacky inauguration of the faux president.
But then, the plotters, with Exxon’s man and the US Ambassador, fled the Presidential Palace after the coup leaders, fearing for their lives, returned Chavez, by helicopter, safely to his Oval Office.
I met days later with Chavez, who told my BBC audience that, while he was in the helicopter, he clutched his rosary because he expected to be pushed out into the sea.
Instead, he was returned safely by the frightened coup leaders back to his office. Chavez then chose to let his kidnappers escape without punishment.
In 2004, Maduro, the future president, was sent by Chavez to meet with me at my office in New York to review the evidence that Wackenhut Corporation (now called GEO, a major operator of ICE detention centers) had planned to assassinate Chavez.
Venezuelan intelligence had secretly taped US Embassy contractors in Caracas talking in spook-speak: “That which took shape here is a disguised kind of intelligence… which is annexed to the third security ring, which is the invisible ring.” (“Invisible Ring”? Someone at the State Department has read too many John le Carré novels.)
Second try: The State Department under George W. Bush also tried to purge voters from Venezuela’s election files (and those in Argentina and Mexico) using the very same company, Choicepoint Inc., that purged voter files in Florida in 2000 to hand Bush his baloney election “victory.”
Third try: During Trump I, the US attempted to bully Venezuelans into electing a white guy named Juan Guaidó (who lived in the US) whom Trump hoped would defeat Maduro in an election. But the Black and Indian population of Venezuela, after they finally elected one of their own, Chavez, were not going back to white minority rule which had crushed them for 400 years. Guaidó never even ran for President, but the US government, nevertheless, declared him the true President and gave this grifter all the US assets of CITGO, the Venezuelan oil company.
Today, we are at the fourth attempt to overthrow Venezuela’s government by kidnap (again?!) or assassination. To understand why Trump has ordered a covert operation to overthrow their government, you need to understand three things about Venezuela.
Get the full story, read my Substack report: I met Chávez and Maduro. I know drugs are not the reason Trump wants war with Venezuela
