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http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,706802,00.html
American navy 'helped Venezuelan coup'
Duncan Campbell in Los
Angeles
Monday April 29, 2002
The Guardian
The United States had been considering a coup to
overthrow the elected
Venezuelan president, Hugo
Chavez, since last June, a former US intelligence
officer claimed yesterday.
It is also alleged that the US navy aided the abortive
coup which took
place in Venezuela on April 11 with
intelligence from its vessels in the
Caribbean.
Evidence is also emerging of US financial backing for
key
participants in the coup.
Both sides in Venezuela have blamed the other for the
violence
surrounding the coup.
Wayne Madsen, a former intelligence officer with the
US navy, told the
Guardian yesterday that American
military attaches had been in touch with
members of
the Venezuelan military to examine the possibility of
a coup.
"I first heard of Lieutenant Colonel James Rogers [the
assistant military
attache now based at the US embassy
in Caracas] going down there last June
to set the
ground," Mr Madsen, an intelligence analyst, said
yesterday.
"Some of our counter-narcotics agents were
also involved."
He said that the navy was in the area for operations
unconnected to the
coup, but that he understood they
had assisted with signals intelligence as
the coup was
played out.
Mr Madsen also said that the navy helped with
communications jamming
support to the Venezuelan
military, focusing on communications to and from
the
diplomatic missions in Caracas belonging to Cuba,
Libya, Iran and
Iraq - the four countries which had
expressed support for Mr Chavez.
Navy vessels on a training exercise in the area were
supposedly put on
stand-by in case evacuation of US
citizens in Venezuela was required.
In Caracas, a congressman has accused the US
ambassador to Venezuela,
Charles Shapiro, and two US
embassy military attaches of involvement in the
coup.
Roger Rondon claimed that the military officers, whom
he named as (James)
Rogers and (Ronald) MacCammon, had
been at the Fuerte Tiuna military
headquarters with
the coup leaders during the night of April 11-12.
|And
referring to Mr Shapiro, Mr Rondon said: "We saw
him leaving Miraflores
palace, all smiles and
embraces, with the dictator Pedro Carmona Estanga
[who
was installed by the military for a day] ... [His]
satisfaction was
obvious. Shapiro's participation in
the coup d'itat in Venezuela is
evident."
The US embassy dismissed the allegations as
"ridiculous". Mr Shapiro
admitted meeting Mr Carmona
the day after the coup, but said he urged him to
restore the national assembly, which had been
dissolved.
Mr Carmona told the Guardian that no such advice was
given, although he
agreed that a meeting took place.
A US embassy spokesman said there were no US military
personnel from the
embassy at Fuerte Tiuna during the
crucial periods from April 11 to 13, al
though two
members of the embassy's defence attache's office, one
of
them Lt Col Rogers, drove around the base on the
afternoon of April 11 to
check reports that it was
closed.
Mr Rondon has also claimed that two foreign gunmen,
one American and the
other Salvadorean, were detained
by security police during the anti-Chavez
protest on
April 11 in which around 19 people were killed, many
by
unidentified snipers firing from rooftops.
"They haven't appeared anywhere. We presume these two
gentlemen were
given some kind of safe-conduct and
could have left the country," he said.
The members of the military who coordinated the coup
have claimed that
they did so because they feared that
Mr Chavez was intending to attack the
civilian
protesters who opposed him.
Mr Chavez's opponents claim pro-Chavez gunmen shot
protesters while his
supporters say the shots were
fired by agents provocateurs .
In the past year, the United States has channeled
hundreds of thousands
of dollars in grants to US and
Venezuelan groups opposed to Mr Chavez,
including the
labour group whose protests sparked off the coup. The
funds were provided by the National Endowment for
Democracy, a nonprofit
agency created and financed by
the US Congress.
The state department's human rights bureau is now
examining whether one
or more recipients of the money
may have actively plotted against Mr Chavez.
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