Former U.S. Ambassador Roger Noriega hired to push Honduran putsch agenda

[Joanne98]

Lobbying records reveal his firm is targeting State Department and National Security Council


Lanny Davis, a long-time doorman for the Clinton agenda, has an interesting bedfellow in his latest lobbying assignment on behalf of the business interests behind the illegal putsch regime of Honduras.

Davis, a lawyer, neo-liberal Democrat and now a lobbyist employed by the D.C. office of global law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, was recently retained by the Business Council of Latin America (CEAL in its Spanish initials) to hawk for the coup interests in Honduras,

A sister business coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters with common leadership to CEAL, the Asociacion Hondureña de Maquiladores (AHM), however, is looking to the other side of the U.S. political landscape for its lobbying push in Washington, D.C., and has recently retained a George W. Bush-era neoconservative named Roger Noriega.
Though Davis and Noriega, a former high-ranking U.S. diplomat in Latin America, represent different sides of the U.S. bipolar political system, in their manic pursuit of unbridled capitalism and support for the oligarchical interests in Latin America that control the capital (including Tegucigalpa, Honduras), they are very much cut from the same cloth.

But in the case of Noriega, as has often been the case with Bush-era players, it appears some corners might have been cut in his Honduran lobbying assignment that may run counter to the letter of the U.S. statute governing that activity.

Unfortunately, the U.S. law governing lobbying activity might itself fall short of addressing the realities on the ground in Honduras. That law, the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA), requires all agents, or lobbyists, representing “foreign entities” to declare as such on forms they are required to file with the Clerk of the U.S. House and the Secretary of the U.S. Senate.

In the case of Davis, that declaration, and associated disclosures, is included in his filings with respect to the foreign entity CEAL. However, Noriega’s lobbying firm, Vision Americas, for whatever reason, failed to indicate on those forms that the Honduran-based AHM is, in fact, a foreign entity. This shortcoming in Vision Americas’ public LDA filings is in sharp contradiction to the disclosure made by another lobbying firm, The Cormac Group, which also has been retained by AHM to hawk for the business interests now propping up the putsch president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti.

The Cormac Group, which lists as one of the firm’s founding partners John Timmons, a former legislative counsel for Sen. John McCain, does disclose in its LDA filing that AHM is, in fact, a foreign-controlled entity.

A reading of the LDA statute indicates that any agent (lobbyist) representing a foreign entity must disclose that fact through fil ings made under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which is administered by the Department of Justice, if that foreign entity is a government or political party. However, a lobbyist for a foreign commercial entity, such as a business group, is exempt from the FARA requirements if that lobbyist registers under the LDA.

Now, AHM seems to qualify as a commercial entity, which would exempt Noriega, and his lobbying firm, Vision Americas, from the FARA requirements. But given that the business interests in Honduras are, in essence, the puppet masters pulling the strings of “de facto” President Micheletti, and given that the putsch government itself has been deemed as “not legal” by the president of the United States, the definition of an agent of the “government,” for the purposes of LDA and FARA, seems to become a quagmire for lawyers’ play.

In its LDA filing, The Cormac Group states that the “specific lobbying issues” AHM has retained the firm to hype are related to “U.S.-Honduran relations.”

In its filing related to CEAL, Davis’ firm, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, indicates on the LDA registration form, for the same item, that it is lobbying “on behalf of private Honduran business organizations, providing facts relating to the removal of Mr. Zelaya.”

Noriega’s firm, Vision Americas, includes the following explanation on its LDA registration form, again without disclosing that AHM is a “foreign entity”: “Support the efforts of the Honduran private sector to help consolidate the democratic transition in their country.”

Reasonable people may disagree on this, but those explanations advanced by the lobbying firms, given the role business leaders in Honduras are now playing in propping up the illegal coup regime, might be construed as more in line with supporting the interests of the Honduran government than with any specific business agenda.

At a minimum, it would seem the interests of the coup regime and the business players supporting it are inseparable, and the LDA and FARA statutes seem poorly constructed to deal with that situation — which involves U.S. lobbyists hawking for an illegal business-backed government.

The nexus of the Honduran putsch government and business agendas is clearly exposed in the following July 6 press release sent out by The Cormac Group as part of its effort to color the situation in Honduras in the favor of its client, AHM:

Leading members of the Honduran National Congress and private sector and former members of the Honduran Judiciary will hold a press conference in Washington, D.C., to speak on recent events in Honduras. The press conference will be held Tuesday, July 7, 2009, at 3:00 p.m. in the Murrow Room of the National Press Club (529 14th Street, NW).

The delegation will be traveling to Washington for several days of meetings with United States policymakers to clarify any misunderstandings about Honduras' constitutional process and to discuss next steps to ensure the preservation of the country's democratic institutions.
A search of the Justice Department’s online FARA registration database did not produce any matches for The Cormac Group or Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which would seem to indicate they are not registered as being agents of foreign governments or political parties.

However, both Noriega and Vision Americas do show up as being registered under FARA. However, those filing do not list AHM among the credits. Instead, they indicate only that Vision Americas is registered to represent the interests of a Moroccan government entity called the Moroccan American Center for Policy and a Pakistan company called Kestral Holdings Ltd.

But none of this apparent legal ambiguity surrounding lobbying disclosure and the current situation in Honduras gets around the fact that, with respect to specific questions on two separate LDA filings — the initial registration and a follow-up quarterly report — Noriega’s Vision Americas indicated that AHM is not a foreign entity, defined as follows on the LDA form:

14. Is there any foreign entity

a) holds at least 20% equitable ownership in the client …;

b) directly or indirectly, in whole or in major part, plans, supervises, controls, directs, finances or subsidizes activities of the client …;

c) is an affiliate of the client … and has a direct interests in the outcome of the lobbying activity?

To that specific question on the LDA registration form, Vision Americas checked the “No” box.

That check might be deemed an errant mark due to an oversight by the chief of staff at Vision Americas who signed the registration form, dated July 14, if the same mistake was not repeated in a separate LDA quarterly report filed on July 20.

On that latter report, on line 19, the lobbying firm is asked to explain what the “interest of each foreign entity” is in the specific issues — in this case, supporting “the efforts of the Honduran private sector to help consolidate the democratic transition in their country,” which, translated, means helping to consolidate the power of the coup regime.

Of importance in this case is the fact that the quarterly report also reveals that Vision Americas, including Noriega, will be lobbying on behalf of AHM in the area of “foreign relations” not only in the U.S. House and Senate, but also in the State Department and before the National Security Council.

That begs the question: What possible interest would the U.S. National Security Council have in the business interests of an organization representing apparel-goods manufactures and exporters?

The failure of Vision Americas to disclose that AHM is a foreign entity, as well as its failure to describe the “interest” of AHM in lobbying the State Department and National Security Council is significant, because it effectively shields from public view the full agenda of a foreign entity seeking to affect, presumably, U.S. national security. It remains significant even if the failure to disclose was an honest mistake, or can somehow be justified with tortured legal logic.

Narco News contacted the U.S. House Office of the Clerk, which is a repository for the LDA records, seeking some insight into Vision Americas’ filings. A spokesman for the Clerk’s office, who asked not to be identified, concurred that an organization like AHM, for the purposes of LDA, would likely be considered a foreign entity, and it should have been disclosed as such in the public filings.

However, the spokesman added that his office “only receives the forms, but it is not an enforcement agency.”

“In a case like this, a referral would have to be made to an executive branch enforcement agency ” for further investigation, and action, if warranted, he added.

The penalties for violating the LDA are potentially severe, if those violations are deemed to be intentional fraud:

Whoever knowingly fails: (1) to correct a defective filing within 60 days after notice of such a defect by the Secretary of the Senate or the Clerk of the House; or (2) to comply with any other provision of the Act, may be subject to a civil fine of not more than $200,000, and whoever knowingly and corruptly fails to comply with any provision of this Act may be imprisoned for not more than 5 years or fined under title 18, United States Code, or both.

Narco News also attempted to reach Noriega via his Vision Americas’ phone line, leaving a message on his office’s answering service. To date, he has not returned the call.

Roger’s Vision

Roger Noriega may not be a household name in most of America, but he likely will be a subject for the history books for years to come due to his role in undermining democracy and the rule of law in Latin America to the advantage of crony capitalism. His track record dates back to the 1980s when, as part of U.S. Agency for International Development, he played a questionable role in allegedly moving around money in the shadows of the Iran/Contra scandal.

His fingerprints also mark the failed U.S.-backed coup carried out in Venezuela in 2002 and the successful U.S.-sponsored effort to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power in Haiti in 2004. Those efforts were undertaken while Noriega served in increasingly powerful roles within the State Department during the Bush administration.

Noriega, a former Latin American adviser for the arch-conservative and now-deceased Republican Senator Jesse Helms, served as U.S. Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States between 2001 and 2003 before being named Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. In taking that higher post, he replaced Otto Reich, another Iran/Contra retread brought into the Bush administration to carry out an extremist, pro-oligarch agenda in Latin America.

Continued>>>
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/08/former-us-ambassador-roger-noriega-hired-push-honduran-putsch-agenda

[formercia]

1. Same old whores.

Old whores is a term used at CIA.