<snip>
Fortunately for NED, the conference was part of a series that never happened. The program was canceled as Venezuela was hit by national strikes that would lead to the massive business-and-labor demonstration against Chavez on April 11, in which at least eighteen people were killed by unidentified gunmen. The murders provided Chavez's military foes cause, or cover, to move against him early the next morning. (A recent Human Rights Watch report concluded, "Both sides bear responsibility for the shootings.") But imagine if the NED-backed conference had occurred and Carmona had appeared there--days before becoming a front man for the coup-makers. That was a close call for NED. Instead, the episode may be no more than a mild what-if embarrassment for NED, which is supposed to finance pro-democracy activism around the world. It shows, though, how democracy-promotion can slip, perhaps unintentionally, toward supporting the opposite--especially in a highly polarized political environment like the one in Venezuela.
Created by President Ronald Reagan and Congress in 1983, NED was designed to run a parallel foreign policy for the United States, backing and assisting entities that Washington might not be able to officially endorse--say, an opposition party challenging a government with which the United States maintained diplomatic relations. In a way, NED took public some of the covert political activity the CIA had previously mounted. The endowment--which devotes much of its budget to funding the foreign policy arms of the Democratic and Republican parties, the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO (its core grantees)--has been involved in both questionable and praiseworthy projects. It awarded a large grant to a student group linked to an outlawed extreme-right paramilitary outfit in France, helped finance the development of conservative parties in countries where democracy was doing just fine and played a heavy-handed role in Nicaragua's 1990 elections. In the late 1980s it aided the pro-democracy opposition in Chile and antiapartheid organizations in South Africa. But even if its programs have indeed enhanced democracy on occasion, NED overall has long been problematic, as it has handed taxpayer dollars to private groups (such as the two major parties) to finance their overseas initiatives and has conducted controversial programs that could be viewed abroad as actions of the US government. What might the reaction be here, if the British government funded an effort to improve the Democratic Party's get-out-the-vote operation in Florida?
<snip>
Consider some NED activities there. When Consorcio Justicia began to assemble the pro-democracy conferences, it approached the two main opponents of Chavez--Carmona and his Fedecamaras, as well as the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), the leading anti-Chavez labor union--according to documents obtained from NED under a Freedom of Information Act request. Christopher Sabatini, NED's senior program officer for Latin America, says, "The idea was that the conferences (which were to include Chavistas) would be able to define a consensus-based policy agenda" for the entire country. But certainly NED's core grantees were trying to beef up Venezuelan organizations challenging Chavez. The AFL-CIO, for example, was working (seemingly laudably) to bolster and democratize the CTV, which Chavez had been trying to intimidate and infiltrate. The International Republican Institute was training several parties that opposed Chavez. At one session, Mike Collins, a former GOP press secretary, taught party leaders how to mount photo-ops; at another he suggested to Caracas Mayor Alfredo Peña, a prominent Chavez foe, how he "could soften his aggressive image in order to appeal to a wider range of voters," according to an IRI report. (Human Rights Watch found that at least two members of the police force controlled by Peña--now Chavez's primary rival--fired weapons during the April 11 melee.) The question, then, is, since it was not explicit US policy to call for Chavez's ouster--though his departure from office was desired by the Bush Administration, which detested his oil sales to Cuba and close ties to Iraq, Iran and Libya--should US taxpayer dollars have gone to groups working to unseat Chavez, even through legitimate means?
<snip>
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020805&s=corn==
The AFL-CIO’s role in the Venezuelan coupBy Bill Vann
3 May 2002
key role in funding and advising those who organized the recent abortive military coup attempt in Venezuela. The AFL-CIO’s role in the US-backed plot underscores the fact that even as the union apparatus becomes increasingly irrelevant as a significant factor in American politics and the lives of US workers, it continues to conspire against the democratic rights and class interests of workers internationally.
The revelations of AFL-CIO involvement concern the role in Venezuela of the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), an AFL-CIO-run agency that is largely funded by the US government.
Evidence of US involvement in the April 11-12 coup attempt has continued to mount in recent weeks. An official investigation by the Venezuelan government has revealed that two high-ranking US 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.
According to this account, Lt. Col. James Rodgers, the US military attaché in Caracas, had advised the generals who turned against Chavez and stayed with them for 48 hours, until the coup collapsed in the face of mass demonstrations and rioting, and fractures within the Venezuelan military establishment. The second officer, US Army Col. Ronald MacCammon, was also present throughout the coup, Venezuelan officials reported.
“Several Venezuelan officers implicated in the coup mentioned they were aware of this officer’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.”
<snip>
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/vene-m03.shtml
Read the whole thing and not just my snippets. If you're really interested, click here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=AFL-CIO+Chavez+venezuela
The more you know, the nastier it all gets.
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