ecuador coup attempt: cia fingerprints, corruption

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http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20101001_1

October 1, 2010

Obama administration fingerprints on Ecuador coup attempt

by courtesy of Wayne Madsen

Using the standard CIA playbook on toppling democratically-elected governments in Latin America, the Obama administration, which was not happy with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa's moves to increase state control over oil companies in the nation and his decision to oust the United States military from its airbase at Manta, appears to have suffered a major defeat in the failed coup attempt in Ecuador by police officers and Air Force personnel who were backed by rightist elements in the National Assembly and business community. Correa was re-elected with an overwhelming majority last year after he gave the U.S. military its walking papers from the Manta airbase. The Pentagon and CIA have been working to topple Correa ever since by pumping money into opposition political parties and other groups through NGOs funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy.

In a statement from Correa after his rescue from the Police Hospital in Quito by a military special operations team, the president warned of a larger conspiracy launched against him by his political opposition, saying the "attempt at destabilization is the result of a strategy that has been brewing for quite some time. A barrage of messages and misinformation have been given to the National Police, which today has been realized through violent actions from a conspiracy attempt."

Correa's predecessor, the pro-U.S. Lucio Gutierrez, who is wedded to foreign oil company interests in the country, was accused by the government of covertly supporting the police and Air Force mutineers.

Although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a weak statement saying the United States backed Correa, it came one day after Clinton heaped praise on former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the person who helped to craft the September 11, 1973 coup in Chile and the assassination of its progressive president Salvador Allende. In fact, Clinton and Obama had given military and political support to the right-wing junta that ousted democratically-elected progressive President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in June 2009 and has fought against allowing the ousted democratically-elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to return to his country from exile in South Africa after the CIA-engineered coup against him in 2004.

Clinton's tepid response to the attempted coup against Correa was in marked contrast to the strong denunciations of the attempted coup and messages of support for Correa that came from Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba, and Spain.

And the fact that Correa, like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who was briefly ousted in an April 2002 coup organized by the CIA, was held as a virtual hostage at the Police Hospital in Quito for the greater part of a day provided a grim reminder of an old CIA tactic in staging coups in Latin America. Chavez was briefly held hostage on a Venezuelan island in the Caribbean while a U.S.-registered plane stood by to fly him into exile. In an emergency Latin American summit meeting in Argentina, Chavez saw the U.S. behind the events in Ecuador. He said, "The Yankee extreme right is trying right now, through arms and violence, to retake control of the continent." Chavez's own experience with a CIA backed coup and the June 2009 coup, supported by the Pentagon, CIA, and Mossad against his ally Zelaya in Honduras, makes him an expert on CIA and Mossad tactics in the region. Informed sources have told WMR that Correa and Chavez are currently comparing notes on the coups launched against them.

Ecuadorian intelligence will be looking closely at the wereabouts of key CIA personnel stationed at the CIA station at the US embassy in Quito and a smaller CIA station within the US Agency for International Development (USAID) mission in Guayaquil. In the 2002 coup attempt against Chavez, the US embassy's top CIA and DIA officers were discovered to be helping to direct the coup from Venezuelan military installations.

Clinton's State Department has been casting Ecuador in a bad light throughout the past two years, calling the country "difficult to do business in," the only real priority that the Obama administration cares about due to its total subservience to Wall Street and the fat cat bankers. The State Department's "Investment Climate Statement" for Ecuador states: "Ecuador can be a difficult place in which to do business. . . There are restrictions or limitations on private investment in many sectors that apply equally to domestic and foreign investors . . . A 2006 hydrocarbons law imposed new conditions in the petroleum sector that have been problematic for many companies, complicated by a 2007 decree that imposed additional restrictions. A 2008 mining mandate stalled mining activity, and a new Mining Law is expected in early 2009. Negotiations for a free trade agreement between the United State and Ecuador, which would have included investment provisions, stopped in April 2006. The current Government of Ecuador has not expressed interest in restarting negotiations." Correa's financial policies, as well as his foreign policy that saw him order out the American base at Manta and establish close ties with Venezuela, Iran, and other countries inimical to American and Israeli hegemony, placed a huge CIA and Mossad target on Correa's back. In June, Ecuador sponsored a resolution at the Organization of American State (OAS) summit in Lima condemning Israel's attack on the Turkish aid flotilla transporting humanitarian aid to Gaza. Ten nations voted with Ecuador in support of the resolution.

The uprising among Ecuadorian Air Force ranks, with Air Force personnel taking over and shutting down Quito's international airport, will have Ecuadorian counter-intellligence personnel looking closely at the possible role of Israeli technicians and trainers who support the Air Force's 26 Israeli-made Kfir combat planes. Israel also reportedly sold Python-3 air-to-air missiles to the Ecuadorian Air Force in 1997.

Mossad also has its hooks into the Ecuadorian National Police, where the main coup plotters received support. Mossad is chiefly tasked with spying on Ecuador's large Ecuadorian-Arab community. The activities of the Mossad station at the Israeli embassy in Quito before and during the coup attempt will also draw the attention of counter-intelligence officers. Last year, Tel Aviv-based On Track Innovations received a contract to provide an electronic biometric-based electronic identification card system to Ecuador's Central Registry Office.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article167150.html

Quito’s Police: CIA breeding ground

Jean Guy Allard

The uprising by putschist elements of the Ecuadoran police against President Rafael Correa confirms an alarming report about the infiltration of the Ecuadoran police by U.S. intelligence services released in 2008, which indicated that many members of the police corps developed a “dependency” on the U.S. Embassy.

2 October 2010
Havana (Cuba)

Translated by Machetera
Source: Jean Guy Allard / Granma Internacional (Cuba)
through Voltaire network

Rebellious elements within Ecuadorian police seize Quito International Airport, 30 September 2010.

“I applied and was accepted at the Escuela superior de policía de Quito, and studied there from September 1992 to August 1995.”
Guy Philippe, speaking to Peter Hallward about his background prior to leading an armed insurgency that contributed to the removal of Haiti’s elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide.

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The report made clear that the Ecuadoran Police “maintain informal economic dependence on the United States, to pay for informants, training, equipment and operations.”

The systematic use of corruption techniques by the CIA in order to acquire the “goodwill” of police officers was described and denounced on many occasions by the ex-CIA agent Philip Agee who, before leaving the agency’s ranks, was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Quito.

In his official report, distributed at the end of October 2008, the Ecuadoran Defense Minister Javier Ponce revealed how U.S. diplomats dedicated themselves to the corruption of the police as well as officers from the armed forces.

In confirmation, the leadership of the Ecuadoran police then announced that it would sanction any of its agents who collaborated with the United States, while the U.S. Embassy claimed “transparency” in its support of Ecuador.

“We work with the Ecuadoran government, with the military, with the Police, on objectives that are very important for security,” said the U.S. Ambassador in Quito, Heather Hodges.

However, the diplomat told journalists that she would not comment “on intelligence matters.”

For her part, the public affairs officer, Marta Youth, categorically refused to comment on the Ecuadoran government’s denunciations, which included complaints about CIA participation in an operation with Colombia that led to a military attack by the Colombian military against FARC guerrillas on Ecuadoran territory on March 1st of that year.

The head of Army intelligence, Mario Pazmiño, had been removed for concealing information related to the attack on the FARC.

In recent months, U.S. officials have appeared in Ecuador under the pretext of extending relations between Ecuador and the United States. Arturo Valenzuela, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, repeatedly visited President Correa, leading up to a visit from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Valenzuela was accompanied by Todd Stern, “Climate Change Envoy,” also known for his CIA ties.

haiti: us troops to prevent return of aristide

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http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20100115_1

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20100115&articleId=17000

U.S. troops in Haiti to prevent Aristide's return

by Wayne Madsen

January 15-17, 2010

President Obama, in keeping with his CIA lineage, has permitted the Pentagon under Robert Gates to take charge of the humanitarian relief efforts in Haiti. As Cuban and Venezuelan field hospitals were already rendering first aid and trauma care to Haitians injured in the mega-quake, Obama was gathered at a White House photo op with Vice President Joe Biden and other Cabinet officers to state that U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft would fly over Haiti to assess the situation from the air. A U.S. P-3 Orion spy plane from Comalapa air base in El Salvador was dispatched to conduct the surveillance operation, an act that was already being accomplished by earth satellites, the images of which were available on Google Maps.

As Obama was garnering praise from such sycophantic White House outlets as the largely-discredited Washington Post, an 37-person Icelandic search-and-rescue team was pulling trapped earthquake victims from the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince. Iceland, a nation bankrupted by Obama's banker pals on Wall Street and in the City of London, was able to react in a way that the slumbering and oafish dying super-power, the United States, could not -- with action aimed at providing immediate assistance to the Haitian people.

Obama's generals and admirals, who are mostly more concerned about their appearance than in taking charge and moving out, were still scratching their heads about where to land the U.S. Marines and 82nd Airborne. In fact, military aircraft carrying weapons and other war supplied crowded the airport aprons at Port-au-Prince airport that could be used by planes from other countries carrying much-needed food, water, and medical supplies. Argentine doctors already on the scene in Haiti complained that they were running out of simple sewing kits being used as stitches for the injured who had undergone surgery.

When U.S. Special Operations forces hit the ground at Port-au-Prince airport they pointed their weapons at desperate Haitians at the airport perimeter who wanted help not a gun pointed in their faces. Russia, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and Guatemala were rushing in food and water for Haiti.

Meanwhile, Obama was phoning former President George W. Bush to ask for his a former President Bill Clinton to launch a fund drive for Haitian earthquake relief. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was partly behind engineering the 2004 coup that deposed democratically-elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, attended a Haitian relief fundraiser at a Washington hotel called "W." The symbology could not have been worse -- it was Bush who showed the world that he was totally disinterested in the 2004 Asian earthquake and tsunami and hurricane Katrina in 2005 that decimated New Orleans and surrounding areas.

Apparently, the so-called media-savvy Obama failed to realize the revolting nature of asking Bush to do anything related to Haiti when people remembered his lack of action over Katrina. Bodies of African-Americans floating in the streets of New Orleans became juxtaposed with the bodies of Afro-Haitians piling up in the streets of Port-au-Prince. But, of course, Obama is the "Max Headroom" of America's political leadership -- a talking head -- whose rhetorical flourishes speak louder than principles or concrete action.

Aristide, from an exile in South Africa imposed by the United States, France, and Canada, vowed to return to Haiti to be with his people in their time of stress and despair. Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, served the people of the Haitian slum of La Saline and he understands best the plight of his people. On the other hand, Rene Preval, the U.S. stooge who was placed in power twice by the CIA and the U.S. Southern Command to replace Aristide, once in a fraudulent election [Preval won in 1995 with 88 percent of the vote in a 25 percent voter turnout] and the other in a coup, could only complain to CNN's Sanjay Gupta about not having any place to sleep for the night, "I cannot live in the palace. I cannot live in my own house, because the two collapsed."

Preval has been reaping all sorts of "free trade" deals that caused Haiti's agrarian population to stream into Port-au-Prince to work in the sweat shops heralded as "progress" by the likes of George Soros and his gang of thieves on Wall Street. Because of Port-au-Prince's swelled population of sweat shop workers, the death count from the earthquake will be much higher as the result of collapsed tenements that housed more people than they were designed for.

Dr. Gupta, who was Obama's first choice to be Surgeon-General of the United States, was more interested in using dying Haitians in makeshift hospitals as stage props for CNN's ratings than in rendering medical assistance to the injured. Imagine, being one of the few doctors available to the severely injured and breaking away to go on camera and tell some old fool like Larry King or some Israeli agent of influence like Wolf Blitzer about how awful the situation is in Haiti.

However, Gates and his military brass will ensure that Aristide will not show up to threaten Preval's continuing disastrous leadership of Haiti. It was Gates, who was George H. W. Bush's nominee to be CIA director, who helped plan the military coup that ousted Aristide the first time in September 1991. Gates, at the time, was Bush's deputy national security adviser.

Clinton helped Aristide regain his presidency from the CIA-backed coup leader General Raoul Cedras in 1994. But Clinton's disastrous flip-flopping on Haitian refugees from the Cedras dictatorship plunged his new administration into a major crisis. It is certain that when Haiti's earthquake struck, people like Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel were conducting focus group polls to find out how U.S. assistance to Haiti would be received by the public. Although a clear majority of Americans favor helping the beleaguered people of Haiti, and many feel that Obama's assistance has been extremely slow, Emanuel only seems to be concerned about the handful of Americans, including Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, who have uttered racist language in reacting to the Haitian tragedy, are worth listening to. But Emanuel does not view things through the enlightened lenses of America's founders but through the religious myopic eyesight of Talmudic interpreters.

Haiti under Aristide and Preval, was forced by Clinton to agree to horribly one-sided "free trade" deals that saw Haiti's workers press ganged into toiling away in Port-au-Prince sweat shops to produce clothing for America's major retailers like Disney. Haiti had no choice -- Clinton imposed devastating economic sanctions against Aristide to force his compliance with the diktats of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Clinton sweetened the pie for his Arkansas rice growing cronies by ensuring that Haiti went from being an exporter of nutritional rice to an importer of expensive bleached and genetically-modified "junk rice" primarily from Arkansas.

When Aristide regained the presidency in 2000, he took immediate steps to improve the lot of the Haitian workers -- he raised the minimum wage to two dollars a day. Bush decided it was time for the CIA and the Southern Command to remove Aristide, which they did with the help of France and Canada. Aristide was exiled to the Central African Republic and then South Africa.

Preval regained office in 2006 after a phony election engineered with the help of the National Endowment for Democracy's International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), two CIA contrivances acting under the aegis of the U.S. Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively. Soros has adopted Haitian politicians like former Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis who continue to advocate disastrous "free trade" policies and provides them with funding and travel expenses through his Open Society Institute (OSI).

UN "peacekeeping" forces in Haiti have ensured that Aristide and his Lavalas Party does not regain power. One of the methods the UN uses is periodically raiding pro-Aristide slums and killing Lavalas activists in their homes. Bill Clinton was rewarded last year for his guile and deceit committed against Haiti by being named by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as the UN's Special Envoy for Haiti.

When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya also raised the minimum wage in his country, the CIA and Southern Command arranged for a military coup to remove him. Obama has now decided to place the Southern Command, headquartered in the right-wing Latin American exilee rat's nest of Miami, to coordinate humanitarian relief in Haiti along with the head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) a CIA pass-through headed by Rajiv Singh, a one-time political hack for Pennsylvania's corrupt Democratic Governor Ed Rendell.

The perfidy that is America's relationship with Haiti extends to Bill Clinton's wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She has appointed her chief of staff Cheryl Mills to oversee America's role in Haiti. Mills has stated: "We actually see our role as ensuring that the leadership of Haiti is able to provide the leadership that the Haitian people properly expect them to provide." That represents an endorsement of the hapless leadership of Preval and a thumbs down to any return for Aristide.

Note: The editor's book, "Jaded Tasks" is named for the covert Pentagon and CIA coperation that removed Aristide in 2004: Operation Jaded Task. Aristide was presented a signed copy of the book in South Africa with a note that states I hope he is rightfully restored to the presidency in Haiti. Haiti needs Aristide more now than it has ever needed him in the past. People like Obama, Gates, Emanuel, the Clintons, Mills, and Southern Command commander General Douglas Fraser need to step out of the way and allow the legitimate president of Haiti to lead his people out of the rubble of their country, "moving from misery to poverty with dignity," as he said from Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg awaiting permission for a return to his native country.