Eva Golinger: Did the NSA kill Chávez?

The author of “The Chávez Code,” Eva Golinger argues in an article published January 2, in the pro-government paper Correo del Orinoco, that the National Security Agency could have assassinated President Chávez. Golinger offers the usual conspiracy theorist construction in the form of a “we know they have the capacity to do it, they had the will to do it, then they probably did it” argument, without adding much new evidence to the case.

More interesting are comments by readers in the Correo del Orinoco web page. Being a public, pro-government paper (part of SIBCI), most of the comments accept as a fact that Chávez was assassinated by the Empire. 

Here are some of those comments:

antinvacion said:

Of course they killed our Chávez, of course the US government [killed him] using one of its terrorist appendix, as has been proved in multiple occasions: the Pentagon, the CIA, etc. That is its modus operandi. There are many examples: JFK, Allende, Gadafi, and a really long list.

Prometeo said:

The Roman imperialist and their Jewish lackeys assassinated Christ, and that is how Christianity was originated, which undermined the Roman Empire until it extinguished it, and this produced a great Jewish diaspora with persecutions and tribulations: the innocents and the sinners paid alike.

Now the Imperialist Yankees possibly killed Chavez, and chavismo will become stronger.

Brothers in the struggle, Venezuelans with patriotic conscience, the rest of the story will be written by us.

humberto perez said:

I have no doubt that the cancer suffered by our beloved comandante is very strange, there is no family history [of cancer] and they [the doctors] were not able to control it with anything, it’s impossible to get cancer in a natural way. I firmly believe that this illness was induced by a secret weapon.

The gringos will one day reveal the whole truth.

Javid imitola said:

They have had this as a secret for more than one hundred years. The deaths of my COMANDATE chávez, the death of BOLIVAR, the White House, as it calls itself, has billions of hidden crimes. They think we are stupid [pendejos].

Of the 17 comments published by January 2, 22:26, only one expresses reserves about the theory:

Juana margarita britos said:

The truth is I would like to read more about this research, it´s not all that clear to me.

National Assembly deputy asks for investigation into Chávez’s death

National Assembly representative for PSUV María León has announced that she will be collecting one million signatures to ask the Fiscalía (General Attorney) to conduct an investigation into the causes of death of President Chávez.

Deputy María León is part of a women’s Colectivo called “Chávez’s Guardians [guardianas]” which will be leading the signatures collection drive.

León has little doubt of the result of the investigation she is asking for and accused the “North American Empire” of being responsible for the death of Chávez because: “wherever a leader of the category of our President emerges, they act.”

She did however express some concern about the negative effects of the constant claims not supported by evidence made by the government: “They all say something different and point accusing fingers. I say: let’s ask for an investigation. If everyone has a different version of what happened, we only increase people’s anxiety.”

Political religion and conspiracy theories. Marking the 6th month of the departure of the Supreme Leader

The “Cuartel de la Montaña,” which houses the remains of Hugo Chávez, has become the new epicenter of Venezuela’s political religion, temporarily displacing the National Pantheon and the recently constructed mausoleum for the remains of Simón Bolívar.

Yesterday (August 5) was the 6 month anniversary of the passing of Chávez. Monthly ceremonies are held to mark the event. Yesterday’s ceremony was attended by President Maduro and most of his cabinet and was broadcast on national cadena. An ecumenical praying session and a Catholic mass were celebrated.

In his discourse closing the event, President Maduro summarized several every conspiracy theories held by the government.

Notably, he began his exposition framing the notion of fatherland (patria) on anti-imperialism. He explained that the fundamental characteristic of the Venezuelan fatherland was its anti-imperialist condition: 

“In our case the fatherland is anti-imperialist or it is no fatherland at all, because our fatherland was born from breaking the bonds that held it to ancient empires, and now the fatherland has been reborn to face the attempts of modern empires to dominate us.”

Maduro continued his discourse linking the Empire with the ultra-right (opposition):

“They [the opposition] are obsessed. The ultra-right, the international right and the Imperial factors have an obsession with Venezuela, and now that obsession is centered on me, and this is why there are so many plans, so many crazy things.”

(…)

“How many things did they say about Chávez? How many times did they try to morally and physically assassinate him? (…) 

We are waiting for the right historical moment and, better sooner than later, we will conform a scientific commission to investigate, as our Comandante deserves, all the antecedents and the origin of the estrange, abrupt, and surprising illness he suffered, which took hold of his body at the height of his strength and creative and physical energies.”

(…)

“The historical enemies of the fatherland were certain that, with the physical departure of our Comandante and the huge void he left behind, the Revolution would not resist for a single day.”

Blaming the opposition for the recent electric power cuts he declared:

“They [the opposition] want to blackout our souls [hacer un apagón del alma] so that we stop believing in the creative powers of our people, they want to blackout the hopes of the peoples of the world, not only of the Venezuelan people, they want to produce a general blackout of the dignity of independence.”

Maduro ended his intervention in religious terms, asking Venezuelans to live by the example set by the Eternal Comandante:

“What is the best way to be Chávez, to be loyal to his gigantic figure beyond the tears and the pain? What is the best way to authentically connect to what he was, with his dreams and hopes? What is the best way to correspond him for everything he did for the people and for the history of this reborn fatherland? (…) Those who love the Supreme Leader must revise themselves and ask themselves, such as I do every day: What do I do for Chávez? How much do I do for Chávez? How do I do it? And, where do I do it?”

[Translating President Maduro’s peculiar rhetoric is difficult. Help is welcome.]

Maduro accuses Washington of “economic war” against Venezuela

Yesterday (August 29), President Nicolás Maduro accused the United States of planning, since the end of July this year, an economic war against Venezuela “in order to generate chaos in the country.”

Here is a translation of Maduro’s words:

“In the White House, President Barack Obama -and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt because perhaps he is not aware of this information-  in the White House, there was a meeting at the end of July of the chief of the Bureau on Venezuela of the Department of State, two representatives from the Pentagon that deal with issues on Venezuela and Latin America, three representatives of the Department of State, two representatives of the National Security Agency, one representative of the CIA, and a person from the White House close to him [Obama]”

“They updated the economic war against Venezuela during that three hours meeting. Two persons from the Department of the Treasury reported on the economic war against Venezuela. We have knowledge of this.They were making calculations of a date for the economic collapse of Venezuela, then for a date for a social explosion and then, according to these macabre minds, a chaos in Venezuela as we have seen in Egypt.”

“They said that they are preparing a transition government for Venezuela to be installed following the chaos.”

“I received this information from people that love Venezuela, people that want peace. Those people are not socialists or anything like that. They come from the United States, from Washington DC, they come from there. It was a person that used to provide Comandante Chávez with key information, and this persons saved Chávez´s life several times, from attempts to kill him, and evil things that. This person alerted him of the possibility that he could be inoculated with a disease many years ago. And the same persons sent us this information, with a lot of precautionary measures, because the paper with the information has travelled around the globe until it finally made it to our hands last night.”

March and April 2013. Inoculated Cancer and Foreign Mercenaries

(Shorter versions of this chronology were previously published in the blog Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights  here)

These first couple of posts will bring the chronology up to date. Here I start from March 2013, right after Chávez´s passing, and close in mid-April (Presidential elections were held on April 14). The main theme of this period was the famous “inoculated cancer” theory by Maduro, according to which Chávez would have been a victim of poisoning. But also notable was the revelation by the Government of a “mercenaries plot” of central American assassins that would attempt to murder Maduro, Capriles, Cabello, and also sabotage the economy, wreck the electric grid, create food shortages , increase homicide rates, and commit random crimes against the population. 

March 5, Maduro expels two US attachés for “searching for active military personal in order to propose conspiratorial plans to them” (Aporrea)

March 5, Maduro, in the last public announcement before the passing of the President, suggests that Chávez was “inoculated” with cancer by foreign enemies. He afterwards insisted many times on this theory, originally proposed by Chávez himself when he was first diagnosed of cancer. On March 21 Maduro promised that after winning the elections, he would name a scientific commission in charge of investigating the issue.He also declares that “there are already a lot of articles on the internet on this. You only have to look them up. The Empire has created these types of experimental viruses since the 40s. They are methods of biological, bacteriological warfare.”

March 6, Maduro assures that there is a conspiracy led by Otto Reich and Roger Noriega to assassinate, not him, but the opposition candidate Capriles, with the purpose of destabilizing the government. On March 17, on a TV interview with José Vicente Rangel, Maduro insists on the existence of the plot. He announces that he has proofs of this plot and that he will make them public, but those proofs have never surfaced. Otto Reich denies the accusations.

March 20, Maduro Claims that the United States government has “ordered” the Venezuelan opposition to withdraw from the elections, generate “situations of violence”, and cry foul once the electoral results are public.

April 6, in an interview with Telesur, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua declares that “we have filtered, through our intelligence agencies, conversations from groups of the right referring to the inclusion of mercenaries from Central America in the destabilization activities in the country.”

April 5, in a meeting with supporters in Cojedes Maduro declares that the opposition “took down the electricity of all the poor areas of Aragua on Wednesday night. There is no technical justification for this, so we have dismissed the Corpoelec [State electricity company] of Aragua and he is under investigation, and all the public officials that plot against the people will go to prison.” Maduro also accuses the opposition of planning a total energy black out in the country.

April 7, during a public meeting in Guayana, Maduro denounces a plot of to kill him “generate chaos, and sabotage the electric grid”. He directly accused Armando Briquet, a top manager of the opposition campaign, of being the link between Capriles and “mercenaries sent by the right from El Salvador” that, according to Maduro, are already in Venezuela to carry out the plot. In these new plot denunciations, Maduro assures that at first he though Capriles was not directly responsible for the wide ranging conspiracies, and that he was only being duped by “sectors of the right” (indeed in the previous version of the “mercenaries plot” Capriles was considered the potential victim of assassination attempts). Now he claims to have been forced by his sources to realize that Capriles, through Briquet, is directly behind the plots.

April 8, Minister of Penitentiary Services, Iris Valera, denounces “a destabilization plan by a well-known NGO lead by someone called Humberto Prado.”  This NGO would promote violence in Venezuela´s prisons in order to “rarefy” the electoral environment of the next days.

April 8, an opposition group of students protesting for “clean elections” in Chacao is violently attacked by motorbikes wearing pro-government paraphernalia. Six students are injured. Maduro immediately orders an investigation but offers his own theory of the events: “I have been informed of violent events in the Chacao Municipality, strange violent events involving a small violent group, financed by the government of the United States.”