Special Reports
The Latin American policies of Richard Milhous Obama
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Aug 19, 2009, 00:23

(WMR) -- The Obama administration is not only maintaining the Bush administration�s policies, which seek to promote confrontation with the progressive bloc of Latin American nations, but is actually hearkening back to the past imperialistic policies of the administration of Richard Nixon.

During the Nixon administration, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was also national security adviser, oversaw the bloody overthrow of Chilean Socialist President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973 (which in Chile is a much more important �9/11� than what occurred in the United States in 2001 -- although both can be considered rightist putsch coups d�etat). After penning an agreement with Colombia�s narco-fascist government that will see the establishment of seven new U.S. air and naval bases in Colombia, the Obama administration now stands ready to see the election of a right-wing candidate to succeed Chilean Socialist President Michelle Bachelet in December�s presidential election.

All the usual U.S. electoral contrivances appear to be at work in Chile. Chiefly among them is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded International Republican Institute (IRI), which champions right-wing political parties in Latin America and was at the center of coups and attempted coups in Haiti, Honduras, Venezuela, and Bolivia and elections in Panama, Nicaragua, Peru, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Guatemala, Mexico, and other countries on behalf of right-wing presidential candidates. On the board of the IRI are such right-wing notables as John McCain, L. Paul �Jerry� Bremer, neocon operative Randy Scheunemann, and Representative David Dreier (R-CA).

Operating alongside the IRI to influence the Chilean election are the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a virtual arm of the CIA, and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDIIA), on whose board and advisory board serve such problematic individuals as Madeleine Albright, Geraldine Ferraro, former Representative Martin Frost (D-TX), former Representative Stephen Solarz (D-NY), and former Representative Richard Gephardt (D-MO).

The NED funds both the IRI and NDIIA from U.S. taxpayers� money.

After helping to stir up labor and public service problems in Chile, particularly involving the privatization of mass transit in Santiago, the U.S.-led contrivance of governmental and non-governmental organizations, including those connected to George Soros�s Open Society Institute, are clearly favoring the Harvard-educated billionaire right-wing candidate of the Alliance for Chile (APC), Sebastian Pinera, over his center-left main challenger former President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle. It is a mirror image of U.S. support for rightist presidential candidates in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and other Latin American countries.

Pinera has been linked to a 1982 CIA bank operation in Chile involving the liquidated Talca Bank and money laundering involving Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. During his reign, Pinochet hid millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts, including many in the United States, particularly in Washington, DC�s Riggs Bank, a bank that was closely connected to the Bush family before being acquired by PNC Bank. 

The time frame for the Pinera revelations is important since it comes one year before President Barack Obama went to work for a CIA front in Manhattan called Business International Corporation (BIC) and was involved in writing specialized economic reports for the CIA front company for countries that included Chile. Although his role in the firm has been downplayed, Obama at 22 years old had his own office and secretary. And at 22 years old, Obama was meeting influential Japanese bankers and German bond traders. In fact, BIC had a close relationship with former West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, as well as former British Prime Minister Edward Heath, while Obama worked for BIC.

On January 14 of this year, Gannett News Service carried the following item about Obama�s employment for BIC: �1983-84: Works for Business International Corp., a firm helping American business abroad.� Gannett failed to do its homework on the firm�s links to the CIA.

Australian author John Pilger recently stated that BIC specialized in infiltrating foreign labor unions with the goal of promoting disruptions in targeted economies. Pilger stated that BIC, as a CIA front, engaged in such actions in Australia. More recently, the CIA has used labor disruptions in pre-coup attempts in Venezuela and Bolivia. Labor strife was also used by the CIA to cause problems for Bachelet�s government in Chile, as well as the husband and wife Kirchner presidencies in Argentina.

Although BIC had its headquarters in New York, near the United Nations, in 1984, while Obama worked for the firm, it leased an office in downtown Washington at 815 15th St. NW, near what would eventually become Obama�s home, the White House. While Obama was with BIC, the firm closely monitored the burgeoning foreign debts of Latin American nations, thanks primarily to high U.S. interest rates. The Sandinista government in Nicaragua was also high on BIC�s watch list, something that may be coloring Obama�s reaction to the military coup against Zelaya in Honduras and the opposition to that coup from Sandinista President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. As a CIA employee from 1983 and 1984, Obama would have been indoctrinated into the entire U.S. propaganda effort aimed at convincing the American people that there was a �communist threat� to the United States in Central America.

The tilting of the Obama administration to Pinera will be sure to raise eyebrows all over Latin America, which has, after the support of the Obama administration for the military coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, taken a jaundiced view of the intentions of Obama in Latin America.

The use of Colombia as an American �aircraft� carrier in Latin America is also reminding Latin Americans, especially Chileans, of the actions of the Nixon administration. Recent declassified Nixon administration documents now indicate that the Nixon administration used Brazil as a base for overthrowing Allende in Chile. The use of Colombia by the Obama administration has many Latin American countries recalling the worst excesses of the Nixon administration in their region. According to documents obtained by the National Security Archive, a Nixon conversation with Brazil�s President Emilio Medici in 1971 stated, �The president [Nixon] said that it was very important that Brazil and the United States work closely in this field. . . . If money were required or other discreet aid, we might be able to make it available.� Medici, Brazil�s military dictator, told Nixon that Brazilian military officers were working with Chilean officers to overthrow Allende. Nixon designated Kissinger, who now serves as Obama�s special envoy to Moscow, as his back channel liaison to Medici to discuss the overthrow of Allende and the use of a sex scandal involving an affair and a love child with Miss Peru to embarrass left-wing Peruvian President Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru.

Given the present policies of the Obama administration towards Latin America, Colombia�s President Alvaro Uribe seems to have replaced Emilio Medici as America�s willing �dirty tricks� operative in Latin America. In fact, when it comes to Latin America, Barry Obama is beginning to look more and more like �Tricky Dick� Nixon every day.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

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