in Venezuela.
Philip Agee: Well, it is true that Eva Golinger has obtained a treasure trove of documents; she has done a wonderful job under the Freedom of Information act. She has thousands of pages, hundreds and hundreds of documents and some of them are really very interesting. I would say, first of all, that the amount of money that was being put into Venezuela up until the failed military coup attempt of April 2002 was about one million per year. That was National Endowment for Democracy money being channeled through the so-called core foundations of NED, which are the foundations of the AFLCIO, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Democratic and Republican parties; there are four of these foundations. In the wake of this failed coup against Chavez, a decision was taken in Washington to expand dramatically the amount of money and the types of operations that have undertaken to that point. In June of 2002, the decision was taken – and you have to see this as some kind committee decision of all the agencies involved in this intervention in Venezuela, which would be as a minimum the Department of State, the Dept. of Defense, the CIA, the USAID, and probably two or three others… They decided in June that USAID would contract a private consulting firm as they had in Nicaragua which would carry our the major investment of money in Venezuela as they had in Nicaragua. In Nicaragua this private consulting firm, which was the key to the successful election operation against the Sandinista Front, and was called the Delphi International Group. This time it is an organization in Bethesda, Maryland, right next to Washington, which is called
Development Alternatives Inc. The contract with this consulting firm was signed at the end of August 2002, and they were required to move a team of people in here immediately, hit the ground running, and start spending five million dollars for the year Sept 2002 to Sept 2003 – that is five times the amount of money put in through NED. The contract calls for a second year option of another $5m (in fact it is slightly more), and these two years provide $3.5m to be given out by this Development Alternatives Inc., this consultant firm… $3.5 million dollars to Venezuelan organizations leading up to and beyond the general strike (which was from early December to early February), which caused great damage to the Venezuelan economy. But some of that money went into the TV ads that were run constantly during the strike; regular programming on all of the Venezuelan television channels, save one which is the government channel; all the others suspended their regular programming and they played commercial after commercial after commercial, and interviews of course, all promoting the strike trying to bring down the Chavez government. Some of this propaganda was financed through the five million dollars which had been given in September to
Development Alternatives, Inc. When the strike failed, then the next event would be the recall referendum which was set for last August 15th. And throughout the period arranging for the voter lists, the signings, and this complicated process leading to the vote on August 15th,
Development Alternatives Inc. continued to pour out millions of dollars in aid to the opposition to Chavez with the purpose of ending his presidency through the ballot box. That also failed.
Meanwhile the NED programs continued through the four core foundations, two of which have offices here in Caracas, i.e., the Republican foundation: The International Republican Institute (IRI) and the Democratic party foundation: National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). So there are in fact three supposedly private offices opened here in Caracas through which all these millions of dollars are being funneled out to the Venezuelan opposition. And it turns out in the one contract between USAID and
Development Alternatives Inc., USAID named the staff in the Caracas office, and there was a provision in the contract that not one of those people could be replaced unless they were named by USAID. So you have these three offices here, that are nothing more than extensions of the United States embassy, under the control of the embassy, of the State Department, of USAID in Washington, and posing as private firms (two foundations and one commercial consulting firm) while as a matter of fact they are no more than extensions, mechanisms and instruments of the US embassy.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Agee_on_NED_interview
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