Venezuela Rejects “Aggressive” Accusations by US Official Brownfield on Drug Trafficking
By EWAN ROBERTSON - VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM - 11/12/2011
Mérida, 11th November (Venezuelanalysis.com)-- The Venezuelan government recently condemned accusations made by US official William Brownfield regarding drugs transit in Venezuela as “A new aggression from Washington against the Venezuelan people, based on lies and defamation,” while pointing to Venezuela’s internationally acclaimed record on combating trafficking.
“In one of his accustomed media antics, the Sub-Secretary Brownfield formulated the type of baseless accusation that resulted in his repudiation by the Venezuelan people during his stay here in our country,” stated the official communication released on Wednesday, referring to Brownfield’s service as US ambassador to Venezuela between 2004 and 2007.
“It is this type of aggression and unfounded accusation that constitute the main obstacle for the existence of normal bilateral relations with the US,” the statement concluded.
Brownfield, the current US Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, declared that in the last five years, “We’ve seen an explosion, I repeat an explosion, of illicit drug transit from Venezuela to outer markets,” in a press conference from US Southern Command headquarters in Miami last Tuesday.
“I think the main reason...is the lack of cooperation from Venezuelan agencies with the rest of the international community to confront and control illegal drug trafficking,” he continued, adding that US relations with Venezuela are generally “complicated” and “limited.”
Venezuela’s National Assembly yesterday also adopted an accord that refuted the declarations, with socialist legislator Orángel López opining that Brownfield’s attack was aimed at destabilising the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
He added that US foreign policy sought to provoke a crisis of governability in Venezuela with the hope of justifying military intervention.
During his service as US ambassador, Brownfield was accused of attempting to destabilise the Chavez government, with Venezuelan foreign minister Nicolas Maduro commenting on his departure in 2007 that he “came to Venezuela with only one mission: to destabilise the government…to aid in its overthrow.”
In April 2006 Chavez threatened to expel Brownfield from the country for “provoking the Venezuelan people.”
Recently declassified US diplomatic cables released by whistle-blowing website Wikileaks reveal that while in his post, Brownfield saw his role as countering the growing influence of the Chavez government in Latin America.
In 2006, he supported US military naval manoeuvres in the Caribbean, hoping that Chavez would “take the bait” and denounce US aggression, thus appearing “at best silly and at worst clinically paranoid”, adding that the situation “is a win-win for us”.
Of Brownfield’s comments this week, Chavez stated “he is a ridiculous figure, when he was here, they threw tomatoes at him,” in reference to an incident on 7 April 2006 in Caracas when demonstrators threw tomatoes, eggs and rubbish at Brownfield’s diplomatic caravan.
Venezuela’s “successful” and “effective” anti-trafficking policies
Venezuelan authorities also stressed that Venezuela has developed “the widest policy of international cooperation in the fight against narco-trafficking with governments authentically interested in defeating this evil and not in destabilising our political system or controlling our security policies” and designated the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as “an international drug trafficking cartel”.
The DEA was ordered by Chavez to leave Venezuela in 2005 after it was alleged that some members of the agency were infiltrating government intelligence and trying to destabilise the country.
Venezuelan Justice and Interior Relations Minister Tareck El Aissami yesterday stressed Venezuela’s “successful” and “effective” policies in combating narco-trafficking, commenting it was “ridiculous” of Brownfield to try and disqualify Venezuela’s efforts in that area.
“It would be good if this spokesperson for the empire studied the UN’s world drug report, when it is the US that is the principal producer of marijuana and the leading consumer of every type of drug”, he continued.
According to the 2011 UN World Drug Report, Venezuela has one of the highest seizure rates of illegal substances in the world. It is also the leading country in South America for seizures of crack, and 3rd after Colombia and Ecuador for seizures of base and powder cocaine.
Venezuela has been classified by the UN as free of illegal cultivation for 6 consecutive years.
El Aissami further pointed out that since the DEA left over 60 high level narco-traffickers had been captured and deported from Venezuela. http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6627(Creative Commons License)
(my emphases)
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William Brownfield, when he was ambassador to Colombia (appointed by Bush, kept on by Obama) is the one who arranged for death squad witnesses to be spirited out of Colombia, in a "midnight" extradition, in collusion with the Bush Cartel's mafioso 'president' of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe. These witnesses were "buried" in the U.S. federal prison system by complete sealing of their cases (an unusual procedure) in U.S. federal court in Washington, DC, putting them out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors, over the vociferous objections of the prosecutors. One rightfully wonders what they knew about Bush Junta criminal activities in Colombia.
Brownfield also secretly negotiated and secretly signed (with Uribe) a U.S./Colombia military agreement that, among other things, included total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia. About a year later, Hillary Clinton's State Department "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" in Colombia "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan." One wonders what criminal activities of the U.S. military and its 'contractors' in Colombia are being covered up by the Obama administration. This military agreement was subsequently declared illegal by Colombia's supreme court.
According to testimony in investigations of Uribe's vast, illegal, domestic spying operation--run out of Colombia's main intelligence agency, DAS--it has been alleged by a witness that an American (unnamed) was a direct liaison between DAS and Ambassador Brownfield. Uribe's DAS operation is suspected of drawing up "hit lists" of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, peasant farmer organizers and others for the rightwing death squads that are closely associated with the Colombia military (which has received $7 BILLION of U.S. taxpayer money in "military aid"). Thousands of innocent people--people merely exercising their civil rights--were targeted and murdered by the death squads and the Colombian military, and FIVE MILLION peasant farmers were brutally displaced from their lands with state terror.
It is also probable that Brownfield orchestrated the U.S. bombing/raid on Ecuador in March 2008, from the U.S. embassy "war room" in Bogota, in which 25 people were summarily murdered in their sleep at a temporary FARC hostage release camp, just inside Ecuador's border--an incident that not only nearly started a war between the U.S./Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela, but also ended all hope for peace in Colombia's 70 year civil war. Among those murdered was FARC commander Raul Reyes, who was planning to release hostage Ingrid Betancourt and others, in a bid for peace. Her family had been notified, and French, Swiss and Spanish envoys were in Ecuador, on their way to this camp, to receive her. The U.S. (Bushwhacks) prevented this by dropping 500 lb. U.S. "smart bombs" on the camp in the middle of the night. Colombian military forces (possibly accompanied by U.S. forces) then raided over the border to shoot any survivors in the back, and also to carry out a probable Rumseld plan to claim that they had seized Reyes' laptop computer and that it contained evidence that Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, and Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, were helping the FARC to obtain a "dirty bomb," were giving money to, or accepting money from, the FARC, and other wild and incoherent accusations, which have since been thoroughly debunked.
Brownfield is an agent of the Bush Cartel, in my opinion, in what I believe to be one of their main goals in Colombia--consolidation of the cocaine trade into fewer hands and direction of that trillion+ dollar revenue stream into their pockets, and into the coffers of U.S. banksters and other pals. A secondary goal of U.S. military presence and U.S. military aid was to cleanse Colombia of labor union leaders and other advocates of the poor, as prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich." A third goal has to do with the beneficiaries of the huge and brutal land theft that was perpetrated. These beneficiaries include U.S. corporate monsters such as Exxon Mobil, Drummond Coal, Monsanto and Chiquita, as well as Uribe's criminal cronies in the cocaine and rightwing death squad industries. But the main goal was to control the cocaine revenue stream including mass murder and mayhem against tens of thousands of tiny family farms which might grow a few coca leaves along with food--to drive them off the land in favor of the big, protected drug networks.
The Obama administration role in the Bush crime wave in Colombia is to cover it up, as they have done regarding all the massive, horrendous crimes of the Bush Junta. The lead operative of that coverup is Leon Panetta--a Bush Sr crony (member of Bush Sr's "Iraq Study Group" and probably "old CIA" ) whose first visible act as CIA Director was to go to Bogota, likely to make a deal with Uribe (help in avoiding prosecution and in refurbishing his image--so he can regain control of the Colombian government--in exchange for keeping his lip zipped). Subsequently, Uribe was given cushy academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard (where he no doubt taught American law students about how we "need to look forward not backward" on the crimes of the rich and powerful) and appointment to a prestigious international legal commission. Also, it is quite likely that the CIA had a hand in DAS Director Maria Hurtado receiving instant, overnight asylum in the U.S. client state of Panama, when she fled Colombia to avoid being questioned by Colombian prosecutors about Uribe's spy operation.
But before Panetta there was Brownfield, as the chief operative of Bush Junta crimes in Latin America, and most particularly in Colombia. For his dastardly deeds in Colombia, William Brownfield was promoted to "US Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs," as the article notes. What bloody irony!
And the cocaine just keeps on flowing out of Colombia, as Uribe awaits Diebold/ES&S's decision next year, as to whether or not to install Bush Junta II, so he can once again use U.S. taxpayer billions to terrorize the people of Colombia.
And we are supposed to believe this joker, Brownfield (Bushwhack ambassador to Venezuela during the U.S. backed coup against the Chavez government; thence to Colombia) about all the drug trafficking in Venezuela?
Really, you gotta laugh! Sometimes that's all you can do.
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