How US Intervention Against Venezuela Works- Philip Agee

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How United States Intervention Against Venezuela Works, part 2 of 3
Use of a Private U.S. Corporate Structure to Disguise a Government Program

Thursday, Sep 08, 2005

By: Philip Agee

Part 1: How United States Intervention Against Venezuela Works

Part 2 of 3

C. Venezuela: Some Examples of the Current U.S. Intervention Against the Bolivarian Revolution

The activities of these action agencies in Caracas---IRI, NDI and DAI---take the form of individual project contracts with activities, cost, dates of beginning and end, and some, as in the OTI-DAI contract, with options for extensions. IRI and NDI project descriptions are submitted by their Washington offices to the Department of State, AID/OTI, or NED for approval and financing under a contract. The funds are then distributed to the Caracas offices that pass the money to Venezuelan beneficiary organizations under sub-contracts, each of which requires approval by the headquarters of the agency where the funds originated.

The three action agencies with offices in Caracas also have to submit to their Washington headquarters the résumés of leaders of proposed beneficiary organizations, undoubtedly so that the CIA may do a background security check on them, internally and with other security agencies, as part of the approval process. Additionally, each contract requires that the executing agency in Caracas submit progress reports every three or six months plus special reports on important issues.  On the whole, this system of projects, approvals, contracts, and subcontracts are a concrete, sophisticated mechanism totally controlled by the U.S. government.  The evidence is contained in the hundreds of official documents, including contracts, obtained since 2003 through the Freedom of Information Act.  A great quantity of documents is published at http://www.venezuelafoia.info.  These documents reveal that NED has been directly financing at least 17 Venezuelan non-governmental organizations apart from its financing of many others through its four associated foundations.

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The most interesting aspect of this contract is the designation of the U.S. personnel for the DAI Caracas office (5 people) plus one coordinator based in Washington.  These 6 people, referred to as “Key Personnel”, are named in the contract by OTI, but only by last name and initial: J. McCarthy, Chief of Party; H. Méndez, L., Blank and G. Díaz, Program Development Officers; G. Fung, Financial Management Specialist; and J., Jutkowitz, Local Program Manager in Washington.  The contract does not state one word about who these people are nor where they come from for this urgent and quickly mounted operation.  Obviously each one had to have extensive knowledge about Venezuela, U.S. policy there, and fluency in Spanish in order to carry out their duties from the moment they arrived.  Under the contract OTI reserves the right to substitute any one of the six.  Thus DAI, a private consulting company, cannot choose the project personnel.  One cannot dismiss the possibility that these 6 people are CIA officers placed under commercial cover with DAI.  Furthermore, for each prospective Venezuelan employee, DAI has to submit his/her resume and other information for approval by the CTO before hiring.  It is obvious that with this contract OTI is simply renting DAI’s corporate structure for a wholly governmental operation, while attempting to disguise it as a private sector program.  And in fact all the OTI requirements in the contract are tasks that are to be carried out by personnel assigned by OTI, with DAI being only a commercial cover.

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As for the possibility that this OTI and DAI activity is really a CIA operation, it is convenient to recall what I wrote in Inside the Company: CIA Diary (1975) about the use of commercial cover for CIA officials in foreign countries.  From its beginnings in 1947, the CIA placed officers overseas to manage operations under non-governmental cover in order to separate very sensitive activities from the officers working in embassies with diplomatic cover.  Through the years various U.S. international corporations cooperated by placing CIA officers in their overseas operations.  However, a CIA officer working in an embassy always had to back up the non-official cover officer in many ways, and this administrative task typically took up much, if not too much, time.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1549