In Washington, meanwhile, Democratic critics are calling the coup a US foreign-policy disaster and planning a full investigation.
The inquiry could become the Bush administration's first foreign-policy scandal. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is seeking classified cables and other documents detailing contacts between top US officials and Venezuelans involved in the failed attempt to overthrow Chavez.
Those contacts, NEWSWEEK has learned, are more extensive than the White House has publicly acknowledged.
In the months before the coup, several dissatisfied Venezuelans visited Washington for closed-door talks with US officials. In December, for example, just weeks after US intelligence officials picked up warnings that dissident Venezuelan military officers were plotting against Chavez, Venezuela's top commander called on Rogelio Pardo-Maurer, the Pentagon officer in charge of special operations and low-intensity conflict in Latin America. "I viewed him as being in the same situation as Col. [Augusto] Pinochet in 1971," says Pardo-Maurer, who sympathized with the visitor's complaints about Chavez but wagged his finger "in a friendly way" and warned in Spanish: "No golpes" -- no coups.
Nevertheless, US officials appear to have been caught off guard by the coup's timing. And that raises another embarrassing point: why weren't they better informed?
"This is a huge intelligence failure, and the ultimate responsibility for that lies with the CIA," says Jack Sweeney, a Venezuela expert who writes for the risk-assessment firm Stratfor.com. "They not only failed to detect that the coup was being hijacked, they failed to realize that it could be reversed."
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The inquiry could become the Bush administration's first foreign-policy scandal. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is seeking classified cables and other documents detailing contacts between top US officials and Venezuelans involved in the failed attempt to overthrow Chavez.
Those contacts, NEWSWEEK has learned, are more extensive than the White House has publicly acknowledged.
In the months before the coup, several dissatisfied Venezuelans visited Washington for closed-door talks with US officials. In December, for example, just weeks after US intelligence officials picked up warnings that dissident Venezuelan military officers were plotting against Chavez, Venezuela's top commander called on Rogelio Pardo-Maurer, the Pentagon officer in charge of special operations and low-intensity conflict in Latin America. "I viewed him as being in the same situation as Col. [Augusto] Pinochet in 1971," says Pardo-Maurer, who sympathized with the visitor's complaints about Chavez but wagged his finger "in a friendly way" and warned in Spanish: "No golpes" -- no coups.
Nevertheless, US officials appear to have been caught off guard by the coup's timing. And that raises another embarrassing point: why weren't they better informed?
"This is a huge intelligence failure, and the ultimate responsibility for that lies with the CIA," says Jack Sweeney, a Venezuela expert who writes for the risk-assessment firm Stratfor.com. "They not only failed to detect that the coup was being hijacked, they failed to realize that it could be reversed."
Hmmmm....maybe John Kerry will eventually get the real picture and change his stance on Venezuela?
And another hmmmm....I wonder if this has anything to do with the timing of Otto Reich's resignation.
But they just can't help themselves...
Now the media baron is facing something even scarier: an angry Hugo Chavez. Last week the President publicly raged against Venezuela's privately owned news media. "This coup d'etat would not have been possible without the help of the news media, especially television," Chavez asserted. "If the news media and television in particular want to continue encouraging this and we allow this to happen, this will bring on a civil war." He promised to launch a thorough investigation of the role played by Venevision and other "laboratories of lies," as he called the media.
That news is bad enough for Cisneros ... it may bode even worse for ordinary Venezuelans. The failed coup has given Chavez a perfect excuse to stifle the media -- and anyone else who dares to question him.
That news is bad enough for Cisneros ... it may bode even worse for ordinary Venezuelans. The failed coup has given Chavez a perfect excuse to stifle the media -- and anyone else who dares to question him.
Always the dictator spin. I'm not suggesting that's an impossibility, but it certainly has not happened in any way to this point, and so to keep throwing that out is simply an attempt to mislead. The failed coup was two years ago. If he'd intended on "stifling the media", he sure is taking his sweet time.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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