The CIA has Attempted to Assassinate 50 Foreign Leaders Including Chavez-gctid167792

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The CIA has Attempted to Assassinate 50 Foreign Leaders Including Chavez

By William Blum and John Robles
Global Research, March 15, 2013
Voice of Russia and Stop NATO

Region: Latin America & Caribbean
Theme: Intelligence


The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was warned by Fidel Castro to be careful of a very specific attack, namely a quick jab from an infected needle. Such a warning coming from a leader who has reportedly been the target of CIA assassination plots more than 600 times in over 50 years, was sure to be heeded.
Was the illness of Hugo Chavez a completely deniable assassination by the CIA? William Blum spoke with the VOR’s John Robles and discussed this issue and more.
Robles: I’ve read your Anti-Empire report regarding Hugo Chavez. Can you give us your comments on speculation that he was assassinated by the CIA?
Blum: I cannot prove it of course, but I believe he was. It would be totally in keeping with the entire history of the CIA and its attitude towards people like Hugo Chavez.
The CIA has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders and successfully at least half the time. And very few of them were as despised by the US government as Chavez was, I would say. So, there would be no reason at all to expect that the CIA would not at least plan on killing, and the nature of his ailment is very odd.
He went from a cancer, which would not go away despite several sessions of chemotherapy and what have you. Then it went to serious lung infections, which would not go away no matter what they did. And then it went to, suddenly, a massive heart attack. All in the same man with no apparent cause, he was only 58-years-old, and as far as we know he was a very healthy until this happened, it is all very odd.
And given the great motivation that the US Government and the persons in the CIA has put for killing a man like Hugo Chavez, I’m pretty sure that the CIA played a role in this.
Robles: Do you know or have you heard of any credible new technology or new programs that could deliver such a cancer?
Blum: The means would be a needle with a quick, sharp jab and what you need is getting one person close enough to Chavez to do that.
Chavez was always in the public eye, he was always embracing people. There must have been countless occasions in the past few years when he was vulnerable to a quick jab by a needle that would be the method of transmitting the ailments.
Robles: Did he ever complain that he had been poked by something in public? Were there any reports of anything like that happening that you had heard about?
Blum: He did mention that Fidel Castro warned him about just that. He said: “A quick jab with a needle, and they’ll do…I don’t know what!” Actually he was told by Fidel.
Robles: A quick jab with a needle. Do you think that happened with Fidel because he had become very ill?
Blum: Well, Fidel…According to Cuban intelligence, there were more than 600 attempts on the life of Fidel Castro by the CIA. There is an entire book on that subject by Cuban intelligence.
And many of the methods were pretty bizarre, including an exploding cigar, but over the course of 50 years the Cubans claim there were more than 600 attempts on his life and it may have taken just one with Chavez.
Robles: Have you heard anything from your sources or from where you get some of your information? Have you heard anything detailing any connection between these two US Air Force attaches that were expelled from the country and the death of Hugo Chavez?
Blum: No. I would assume that there is a connection but I don’t know if the Venezuelan government has actually said so.
Getting back to Chavez’s case, we have to keep in mind that four other South American leaders, prominent people on the left, all came down with cancer within the past year or two.
Robles: I think it was seven, wasn’t it, altogether?
Blum: The four that I named in my report…You can add the ones that you know just for my information… were Cristina Fernandez…
Robles: De Kirchner, right…
Blum: of Argentina, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, the former Brazilian head of state Lula da Silva. Who would you add into that list?
Robles: Well, and then of course Hugo Chavez himself…
Blum: Castro is one of them…
Robles: I would add Castro to the list and Kirchner’s husband who died of a mysterious heart attack as well.
Blum: Right.
Robles: We might add that as a mysterious illness, not exactly a cancer but…
Blum: Right! If the CIA was involved it doesn’t have to be cancer necessarily of course.
Robles: Oh, sure, it could be anything. Have you heard anything about cancer strains or any kind of killing weapons like this, any kind of biological weapons that would give maybe cancer-like symptoms, not exactly a certain type of cancer?
Blum: I very well may have read of such over the years. I have read so much about the CIA, but at the moment I can’t think of anything to supply you with that information. Although we do know, it is well known, that for decades the CIA was looking for a method of killing somebody which would not leave a trace. The CIA itself has used those words. For the entire period of the Cold War that was a major stated project of the CIA. But where that stands today, I have no idea.
Robles: Yes, of course that is all very secret and no one is going to talk about it, but perhaps there are some echoes or some whispers? Maybe somebody has come out and said something? What other reasons would you give to back up the argument that he was assassinated?
Blum: I will mention there is no one in the entire universe who was more hated, no leader more hated than Chavez was by the US government. In the eyes of the US power that be, Chavez was worse than Fidel Castro and Salvador Allende.
Robles: Why was he so hated?
Blum: Because he was the most outspoken leader in the world when it came to criticizing US foreign policy. He never pulled his punches for a moment, he made a claim that it was all crimes against humanity and the US leaders were war criminals, and he said so explicitly. It is unusual for a head of state to be talking that way. And at the UN he attacked Bush in front of the whole world.
Robles: Oh yes, I remember he said that the Devil had been there the day before or something, and it still smelled like sulfur.
Blum: Yes, Bush had spoken to the UN before Chavez from the same platform. And Chavez said there was a smell of sulfur in the air because of that.
Robles: That’s usually the domain of the United States, I mean… Isn’t it? I mean Bush was calling everybody the axis of evil, and all this stuff, branding everyone evil. Wasn’t that kind of a shock to see the same thing done to an American leader?
Blum: Yeah, it is a shock for anyone under any circumstances to be so outspoken in the criticism of the US foreign policy. It is a point in Chavez’s favor that he could have the honesty and the courage to say such things, which very much needed to be said.
Robles: So, you supported the way he stood up?
Blum: Well, in general yes. I think there certainly were times when he may have overdone it, even for me. I mean, he felt obliged to comment on everything under the sun, and I thought several times that he could have held off on saying certain things, they were not serving any good purpose. But that’s a minor criticism of his overall marvelous record.
Robles: You say he had a marvelous record. What do you think were his major achievements in your opinion?
Blum: What he’s brought to the poor people of Venezuela in the way of education and healthcare, and housing, and what have you. And what he brought to the rest of the South America, he formed various anti-US empire blocs which stood in the way of expansion of the US influence.
He and others formed a new…A counter to the OAS, the Organization of American States, which for decades has been dominated and corrupted by the US and Canada. And they formed a new organization in South America excluding the US and Canada. So it was that simple.
Robles: Do you think his achievements will continue or do you think the US will be successful in rolling back everything he did? Which of course I assume they would want to.
Blum: Yes, they would want to. But if Maduro who was chosen and backed by Chavez, wins, and he is expected to win in the election next month, then most of it will continue, I assume.
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The original source of this article is Voice of Russia and Stop NATO
Copyright © William Blum and John Robles, Voice of Russia and Stop NATO, 2013

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One 'cute' tweet from the CIA can't hide that it's the greatest terrorist organisation on earthOwen Jones 08 June 2014. Posted in News
The CIA's record of torture, murder and subverting democratic governments speaks for itself. However savvy its Twitter campaign, that must not be forgotten.

Hamid Karzai -- later hand-picked by US to be Afghanistan's president -- with Special Forces and CIA paramilitary in late 2001.

In the latest CIA coup, America's leading spooks have sent the Twittersphere into a frenzy with their chucklesome debut on social media: "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet."
How droll! More than a quarter of a million people have retweeted what has been described as "the best first tweet possible". No wonder: it's one of the world's most secretive organisations being self-deprecating, light-hearted, even – dare I say it? – cute.
Here's a story that isn't quite so cute. My parents were among many South Yorkshire families who took in refugees fleeing Augusto Pinochet's Chile in the 1970s. Sylvia was a Chilean woman with two kids. Her husband had been murdered, she had been tortured and – traumatised – she would end her life by jumping from a Sheffield tower block.
Here was just one victim of a junta installed on 11 September 1973 with CIA support after Henry Kissinger declared: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a county go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people." Dissidents had electrodes attached to their genitals. Thounited snakesnds were killed, including those crammed into Santiago's National Stadium; among then was Victor Jara – Latin America's answer to Bob Dylan. This was the other 9/11, and the CIA's fingerprints were all over it.
But, judging from the reaction to the new-look CIA, the punters are taking a different view. "A good example of how even the most serious of organisations can use a light touch successfully on social media,"applauded the Liberal Democrat activist Mark Pack. "The CIA have managed, with one tweet, to do what millions of PR dollars could not," suggested another Twitter user.
Of course, the CIA is far from alone in trying to lighten up its image: PR offensives are all the rage among tyrants, too. Are you a bloodstained despot who wants to polish your sullied reputation? Your first port of call is surely Bell Pottinger, run by Thatcher's publicity guru, Lord Bell. The dictatorships of Bahrain and Belarus, the Syrian dictator's wife, Pinochet himself – all have had their reputations spruced up by the firm. Its services include cleaning up those embarrassing Wikipedia articles and Google search results.
Kazakhstan's pro-western dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev – who locks up dissidents and massacres striking oil workers – is a pro at PR campaigns, hiring Tony Blair at vast expense. The Burmese junta hasn't hired Blair, but its "new Burma" rebrand is very New Labour. Equatorial Guinea's dictator ropes in Hollywood stars, pop stars and other celebs to distract from torture, arbitrary detention and execution.
The CIA might try and LOL away its record, but given the world is still dealing with the consequences of its many disastrous postwar interventions, it shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. "Terrorism" is normally used when referring to acts of violence committed by non-white people hostile to the west. But if we're understanding the term to mean acts of terror committed for political ends, then the CIA is surely the greatest terrorist organisation on earth.
Last year, days after the Assad regime's heinous gas attacks had killed hundreds, it was revealed that the CIA had helped Saddam Hussein with his own chemical weapons slaughter in 1988. Fearful of an imminent military breakthrough by Iran, the agency passed on Iranian troop positions to the Iraqi tyrant, "fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin". As a former US military attache to Baghdad put it: "The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn't have to. We already knew."
The CIA's catastrophic involvement in Iraq goes back much further. In 1963 Saddam's Ba'ath party violently deposed the leftist administration of Abd al-Karim Qasim, slaughtering thounited snakesnds of communists with the help of lists provided courtesy of the CIA. "We came to power on a CIA train," boasted Al Saleh Sa'adi, the new regime's interior minister. Today, Iraq lies shattered and bloodied.
Handing out lists of dissidents to tyrants was a CIA speciality. In 1965, Indonesia was home to the world's largest non-ruling communist party. Fearful that the country was slipping into the communist axis, the CIA supplied the coup leader General Suharto and his goons with names of leftists. Up to a million were slaughtered with guns and machetes; the countryside was littered with rotting corpses, and rivers were tinged red with blood. It was "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century", according to an internal CIA report.
Iran is possibly the definitive example of CIA operations blowing up in the face of the US. In 1953 the agency – along with Britain's MI6 –orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected social reformer Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq after he attempted to nationalise the country's oil industry. The coup "was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy", as the CIA put it recently. Mossadeq was replaced by the repressive Shah: no wonder, then, that after the overthrow of this CIA stooge the new regime was so virulently anti-western. The entire region still lives with the aftermath.
And Afghanistan still suffers the consequences of the CIA's lavish support for mujahideen fighters engaged in armed struggle with the Soviets in the 1980s.
The charge sheet is frighteningly long. The CIA's Phoenix programme in Vietnam killed tens of thounited snakesnds between 1965 and 1972. CIA-backed coups in Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia; CIA-backed death squads in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador; the murder of Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first democratically elected leader, in 1961 – the tragic preamble to decades of war and dictatorship that has killed millions. Neither can all this be dismissed as the unfortunate acts of a bygone era. The CIA has questions to answer about its involvement in the abortive 2002 coup against Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.
The agency's first tweet provoked the New York Review of Books to launch a Twitter war, exposing the CIA's recent record. The CIA had interfered with a recent Senate investigation into torture, the magazine pointed out, in CIA secret prisons established by President Bush. CIA operatives were given clearance to deprive suspects of sleep, slam them against walls, and use waterboarding and other forms of torture.
It's in the CIA's interests to craft a cuddly new image: as a team of glamorous, James Bond-style spooks who can take a joke. Given the abject failure of much of the western media to scrutinise its actions – at least until it's too late – it may believe it can get away with it. But its record of torture, murder and subverting democratic governments speaks for itself. However savvy its Twitter campaign, that must not be forgotten.
Source: The Guardian