During an intelligence briefing in the House of Representatives on January 18th, CIA chief General Hayden revealed that President Bush has requested his agency “pay more attention” to President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. During the briefing, Republican congressman Darrell Issa requested that sub-secretary of State John Negroponte and CIA Director Hayden speak on how the United States is handling the “Chavez phenomenon”. Issa expressed fear that Venezuela would become a “serious threat in our own hemisphere.”

Negroponte, well aware of the threat Chavez poses to American corporate interests, responded that Venezuela “is probably the second country in the hemisphere (second to Cuba) where we have concentrated the majority of our intelligence and analysis efforts.” He reassured policymakers that they should be afraid, very afraid. Negroponte accused Chavez of spending “millions and millions of dollars to support his extremist ideas in various parts of the world - despite the fact that there is an enormous amount of poverty in his own country.”

Chavez’s “extremist” ideas have provided free oil to struggling US citizens, and favored Venezuelans above the interests of foreign corporations. Negroponte also failed to mention the 7 million dollars taken from US taxpayers every year through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to support anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela, along with fascist capitalist politicians. Despite the US interference in Venezuela’s free elections, Chavez won in December with 63 percent of the vote.

According to the press office of the state-owned oil company PDVSA, Chavez also outlined planned changes to the constitution that would extend laws guaranteeing state control over Venezuela’s oil reserves to the entire hydrocarbon sector.

Immediately affected by the plans are telecommunications company CANTV (privatised in 1991 with the largest shareholder the New York-based Verizon), electricity company Electricidad de Caracas (owned by US company AES Corporation), and projects to mine heavy crude oil in Venezuela’s Orinoco belt - home to the world’s largest untapped reserves.

Venezuelanalysis.com reported on January 15 that the oil giants BP, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Statoil have US $17 billion invested in the region. The PDVSA press office reported that the government’s plans would involve forcing corporations into new joint ventures guaranteeing the state-owned oil company a majority share. The increased oil revenues will enable the government to further increase social spending, which has already fuelled an average of 12% economic growth over three years and resulted in millions of people no longer officially living in poverty.

Negroponte announced in August of last year, the creation of a new CIA Mission Manager to deal exclusively with “the challenges that Cuba and Venezuela pose to American foreign policy.” This new manager for Cuba and Venezuela was established to oversee intelligence activities in the two countries and develop new strategies of intervention. During the past two years, the Venezuelan Government has discovered and expelled four US officials engaged in espionage activities.

Since 2001, around 50 million US taxpayer dollars have been authorized by Congress to be used in ousting Venezuela’s democratically elected and majority supported government. These funds were used for a failed coup in 2002, and a 64-day media war and business lockout that sabotaged the oil industry and the economy of Venezuela. This funding does not include the millions authorized by the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, and the Pentagon for intelligence activities and covert actions. Both Venezuelan and the US have laws prohibiting the foreign funding of political parties and campaigns. Recent elections in Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia have frightened US capitalists as Latin America is finding empowerment in socialism to fight US domination within their countries.

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