This could come right out of The Devil's Chessboard because it is a
blatatant attempt on the part of the US to control Venezuela.
Excerpt: "The U.S. National Security Agency accessed the internal
communications of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Petroleos de
Venezuela and acquired sensitive data it planned to exploit in order to spy
on the company's top officials, according to a highly classified NSA
document that reveals the operation was carried out in concert with the U.S.
embassy in Caracas."
NSA spied on state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela. (photo: Jorge
Silva/Reuters)
ALSO SEE: Venezuela's Maduro to Revise
Relations With US After NSA Spying
Snowden Leak Reveals Obama Government Ordered NSA, CIA to Spy on
Venezuela's State Oil Company
By teleSUR
19 November 15
U.S. intelligence agents posing as diplomats in Caracas helped an NSA
analyst try to crack open PDVSAs computer network.
The U.S. National Security Agency accessed the internal communications of
Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela and acquired
sensitive data it planned to exploit in order to spy on the companys top
officials, according to a highly classified NSA document that reveals the
operation was carried out in concert with the U.S. embassy in Caracas.
The March 2011 document, labeled, top secret, and provided by former NSA
contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden, is being reported on in an
exclusive partnership between teleSUR and The Intercept.
Drafted by an NSA signals development analyst, the document explains that
PDVSAs network, already compromised by U.S. intelligence, was further
infiltrated after an NSA review in late 2010 during President Barack
Obamas first term, which would suggest he ordered or at least authorized
the operation showed telltale signs that things were getting stagnant on
the Venezuelan Energy target set. Most intelligence was coming from
warranted collection, which likely refers to communications that were
intercepted as they passed across U.S. soil. According to the analyst, what
little was coming from other collectors, or warrantless surveillance, was
pretty sparse.
Beyond efforts to infiltrate Venezuelas most important company, the leaked
NSA document highlights the existence of a secretive joint operation between
the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency operating out of the U.S.
embassy in Caracas. A fortress-like building just a few kilometers from
PDVSA headquarters, the embassy sits on the top of a hill that gives those
inside a commanding view of the Venezuelan capital.
Last year, Der Spiegel published top-secret documents detailing the
state-of-the-art surveillance equipment that the NSA and CIA deploy to
embassies around the world. That intelligence on PDVSA had grown stagnant
was concerning to the U.S. intelligence community for a number of reasons,
which its powerful surveillance capabilities could help address.
Venezuela has some of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the
world, the NSA document states, with revenue from oil and gas accounting
for roughly one third of GDP and more than half of all government
revenues.
To understand PDVSA, the NSA analyst explains, is to understand the
economic heart of Venezuela.
Increasing surveillance on the leadership of PDVSA, the most important
company in a South American nation seen as hostile to U.S. corporate
interests, was a priority for the undisclosed NSA division to which the
analyst reported. Plainly speaking, the analyst writes, they wanted PDVSA
information at the highest possible levels of the corporation namely, the
president and members of the Board of Directors.
Given a task, the analyst got to work and, with the help of sheer luck,
found his task easier than expected.
It began simply enough: with a visit to PDVSAs website, where I clicked on
'Leadership' and wrote down the names of the principals who would become my
target list. From there, the analyst dumped the names into PINWALE, the
NSAs primary database of previously intercepted digital communications,
automatically culled using a dictionary of search terms called selectors.
It was an almost immediate success.
In addition to email traffic, the analyst came across over 10,000 employee
contact profiles full of email addresses, phone numbers, and other useful
targeting information, including the usernames and passwords for over 900
PDVSA employees. One profile the analyst found was for Rafael Ramirez,
PDVSA's president from 2004 to 2014 and Venezuela's current envoy to the
United Nations. A similar entry turned up for Luis Vierma, the companys
former vice president of exploration and production.
Now, even my old eyes could see that these things were a goldmine, the
analyst wrote. The entries were full of work, home, and cell phones, email
addresses, LOTS! This type of information, referred to internally as
selectors, can then be tasked across the NSAs wide array of
surveillance tools so that any relevant communications will be saved.
According to the analyst, the man to whom he reported was thrilled! But
it is what happened next that really made our day.
As I was analyzing the metadata, the analyst explains, I clicked on the
'From IP' and noticed something peculiar, all of the employee profile,
over 10,000 of them, came from the same IP!!! That, the analyst
determined, meant I had been looking at internal PDVSA comms all this
time!!! I fired off a few emails to F6 here and in Caracas, and they
confirmed it!
Metadata is a broad term that can include the phone numbers a target has
dialed, the duration of the call and from where it was placed, as well as
the Wi-Fi networks used to access the Internet, the websites visited and the
times accessed. That information can then be used to identify the user.
F6 is the NSA code name for a joint operation with the CIA known as the
Special Collection Service, based in Beltsville, Maryland and with agents
posing as diplomats in dozens of U.S. embassies around the world, including
Caracas, Bogota and Brasilia.
In 2013, Der Spiegel reported that it was this unit of the U.S. intelligence
bureaucracy that had installed, within the U.S. embassy in Berlin,
sophisticated listening devices with which they can intercept virtually
every popular method of communication: cellular signals, wireless networks
and satellite communication. The article suggested this is likely how the
U.S. tapped into German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone.
SCS at the U.S. embassy in Caracas played an active role throughout the
espionage activities described in the NSA document. I have been
coordinating with Caracas, the NSA analyst states, who have been surveying
their environment and sticking the results into XKEYSCORE.
XKEYSCORE, as reported by The Intercept, processes a continuous flow of
Internet traffic from fiber optic cables that make up the backbone of the
world's communication network, storing the data for 72 hours on a rolling
buffer and sweep[ing] up countless people's Internet searches, emails,
documents, usernames and passwords.
The NSAs combined databases are, essentially, a very ugly version of
Google with half the worlds information in it, explained Matthew Green, a
professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, in an email.
Theyre capturing so much information from their cable taps, that even the
NSA analysts dont know what theyve got, he added, an analyst has to
occasionally step in and manually dig through the data to see if the
information they want has already been collected.
That is exactly what the NSA analyst did in the case of PDVSA, which turned
up even more leads to expand their collection efforts.
I have been lucky enough to find several juicy pdf documents in there, the
NSA analyst wrote, one of which has just been made a report.
That report, dated January 2011, suggests a familiarity with the finances of
PDVSA beyond that which was public knowledge, noting a decline in the theft
and loss of oil.
In addition, I have discovered a string that carries user ID's and their
passwords, and have recovered over 900 unique user/password combinations
the analyst wrote, which he forwarded to the NSAs elite hacking team,
Targeted Access Operations, along with other useful information and a
targeting request to see if we can pwn this network and especially, the
boxes of PDVSA's leadership.
Pwn, in this context, means to successfully hack and gain full access to a
computer or network. Pwning a computer, or box, would allow the hacker
to monitor a users every keystroke.
A History of US Interest in Venezuelan Affairs
PDVSA has long been a target of U.S. intelligence agencies and the subject
of intense scrutiny from U.S. diplomats. A February 17, 2009, cable, sent
from the U.S. ambassador in Caracas to Washington and obtained by WikiLeaks,
shows that PDVSA employees, were probed during visa interviews about their
company's internal operations. The embassy was particularly interested in
the PDVSAs strategy concerning litigation over Venezuela's 2007
nationalization of the Cerro Negro oil project and billions of dollars in
assets owned by U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil.
According to a PDVSA employee interviewed following his visa renewal, PDVSA
is aggressively preparing its international arbitration case against
ExxonMobil, the cable notes.
A year before, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters
that the U.S. government fully support the efforts of ExxonMobil to get a
just and fair compensation package for their assets. But, he added, We are
not involved in that dispute.
ExxonMobil is also at the center of a border dispute between Guyana and
Venezuela. In May 2015, the company announced it had made a significant oil
discovery in an offshore location claimed by both countries. The U.S.
ambassador to Guyana has offered support for that countrys claim.
More recently, the U.S. government has begun leaking information to media
about allegations against top Venezuelan officials.
In October, The Wall Street Journal reported in a piece, U.S. Investigates
Venezuelan Oil Giant, that agents from the Department of Homeland
Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and other agencies had recently met to discuss various
PDVSA-related probes. The wide-ranging investigations reportedly have to
do with whether former PDVSA President Rafael Ramirez and other executives
accepted bribes.
Leaked news of the investigations came less than two months before Dec. 6
parliamentary elections in Venezuela. Ramirez, for his part, has rejected
the accusations, which he claims are part of a new campaign that wants to
claim from us the recovery and revolutionary transformation of PDVSA.
Thanks to Chavez, he added, Venezuelas oil belongs to the people.
In its piece on the accusations against him, The Wall Street Journal notes
that during Ramirezs time in office PDVSA became an arm of the late
President Hugo Chavezs socialist revolution, with money made from the sale
of petroleum used to pay for housing, appliances and food for the poor.
IN DEPTH: The War on Venezuelas Democracy
The former PDVSA president is not the only Venezuelan official to be accused
of corruption by the U.S. government. In May 2015, the U.S. Department of
Justice accused Diosdado Cabello, president of the Venezuelan National
Assembly, of being involved in cocaine trafficking and money laundering.
Former Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami, the former director of military
intelligence, Hugo Carvajal, and Nestor Reverol, head of the National Guard,
have also faced similar accusations from the U.S. government.
None of these accusations against high-ranking Venezuelan officials has led
to any indictments.
The timing of the charges, made in the court of public opinion rather than a
courthouse, has led some to believe theres another motive.
These people despise us, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said in
October. He and his supporters argue the goal of the U.S. governments
selective leaks is to undermine his party ahead of the upcoming elections,
helping install a right-wing opposition seen as friendlier to U.S.
interests. They believe that we belong to them.
Loose Standards for NSA Intelligence Sharing
Ulterior motives or not, by the NSAs own admission the intelligence it
gathers on foreign targets may be disseminated widely among U.S. officials
who may have more than justice on their minds.
According to a guide issued by the NSA on January 12, 2015, the
communications of non-U.S. persons may be captured in bulk and retained if
they are said to contain information concerning a plot against the United
States or evidence of, Transnational criminal threats, including illicit
finance and sanctions evasion. Any intelligence that is gathered may then
be passed on to other agencies, such as the DEA, if it is related to a
crime that has been, is being, or is about to be committed.
Spying for the sole purpose of protecting the interests of a corporation is
ostensibly not allowed, though there are exceptions that do allow for what
might be termed economic espionage.
The collection of foreign private commercial information or trade secrets
is authorized only to protect nation the national security of the United
States or its partners and allies, the agency states. It is not supposed to
collect such information to afford a competitive advantage to U.S.
companies and U.S. business sectors commercially. However, Certain
economic purposes, such as identifying trade or sanctions violations or
government influence or direction, shall not constitute competitive
advantage.
In May 2011, two months after the leaked document was published in NSAs
internal newsletter, the U.S. State Department announced it was imposing
sanctions on PDVSA a state-owned enterprise, or one that could be said to
be subject to government influence or direction for business it
conducted with the Islamic Republic of Iran between December 2010 and March
2011. The department did not say how it obtained information about the
transactions, allegedly worth US$50 million.
Intelligence gathered with one stated purpose can also serve another, and
the NSAs already liberal rules on the sharing of what it gathers can also
be bent in times of perceived emergency.
If, due to unanticipated or extraordinary circumstances, NSA determines
that it must take action in apparent departure from these procedures to
protect the national security of the United States, such action may be
taken after either consulting other branches of the intelligence
bureaucracy. If there is insufficient time for approval, however, it may
unilaterally take action.
Beyond the obvious importance of oil, leaked diplomatic cables show PDVSA
was also on the U.S. radar because of its importance to Venezuelas
left-wing government. In 2009, another diplomatic cable obtained by
WikiLeaks shows the U.S. embassy in Caracas viewed PDVSA as crucial to the
political operations of long-time foe and former President Hugo Chavez. In
April 2002, Chavez was briefly overthrown in a coup that, according to The
New York Times, as many as 200 officials in the George W. Bush
administration briefed by the CIA knew about days before it was carried
out.
The Venezuelan government was not informed of the plot.
Since the December 2002-February 2003 oil sector strike, PDVSA has put
itself at the service of President Chavez's Bolivarian revolution, funding
everything from domestic programs to Chavez's geopolitical endeavors, the
2009 cable states.
Why might that be a problem, from the U.S. government's perspective? Another
missive from the U.S. embassy in Caracas, this one sent in 2010, sheds some
light: Chavez appears determined to shape the hemisphere according to his
vision of 'socialism in the 21st century,' it states, a vision that is
almost the mirror image of what the United States seeks.
There was a time when not so long ago when the U.S. had an ally in
Venezuela, one that shared its vision for the hemisphere and invited a
U.S. firm run by former U.S. intelligence officials to directly administer
its information technology operations.
Amid a push for privatization under former Venezuelan President Rafael
Caldera, in January 1997 PDVSA decided to outsource its IT system to a joint
a company called Information, Business and Technology, or INTESA the
product of a joint venture between the oil company, which owned a 40 percent
share of the new corporation, and the major U.S.-based defense contractor
Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, which controlled 60
percent.
SAIC has close, long-standing ties to the U.S. intelligence community. At
the time of its dealings with Venezuela, the companys director was retired
Admiral Bobby Inman. Before coming to SAIC, Inman served as the U.S.
Director of Naval Intelligence and Vice Director of the U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency. Inman also served as deputy director of the CIA and,
from 1977 to 1981, as director of the NSA.
In his book, Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies
of the Chavez Government, author Gregory Wilpert notes that Inman was far
from the only former intelligence official working for SAIC in a leadership
role. Joining him were two former U.S. Secretaries of Defense, William Perry
and Melvin Laird, a former director of the CIA, John Deutsch, and a former
head of both the CIA and the Defense Department, Robert Gates. The company
that those men controlled, INTESA, was given the job of managing all of
PDVSAs data processing needs.
In 2002, Venezuela, now led by a government seeking to roll back the
privatizations of its predecessor, chose not to renew SAICs contract for
another five years, a decision the company protested to the U.S. Overseas
Private Investment Corporation, which insures the overseas investments of
U.S. corporations. In 2004, the U.S. agency ruled that by canceling its
contract with SAIC the Venezuelan government had expropriated the
companys investment.
However, before that ruling, and before its operations were reincorporated
by PDVSA, the company that SAIC controlled, INTESA, played a key role in an
opposition-led strike aimed at shutting down the Venezuelan oil industry. In
December 2002, eight months after the failed coup attempt and the same month
its contract was set to expire, INTESA, the Venezuelan Ministry of
Communication and Information alleges, exercised its ability to control our
computers by paralyzing the charge, discharge, and storage of crude at
different terminals within the national grid. The government alleges
INTESA, which possessed the codes needed to access those terminals, refused
to allow non-striking PDVSA employees access to the companys control
systems.
The result, Wilpert noted, was that PDVSA could not transfer its data
processing to new systems, nor could it process its orders for invoices for
oil shipments. PDVSA ended up having to process such things manually because
passwords and the general computing infrastructure were unavailable, causing
the strike to be much more damaging to the company than it would have been
if the data processing had been in PDVSAs hands.
PDVSAs IT operations would become a strictly internal affair soon
thereafter, though one never truly free from the prying eyes of hostile
outsiders.
Pdvsa spying / Espionaje a Pdvsa from teleSUR TV
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NSA spied on state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela. (photo: Jorge
Silva/Reuters)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/NSA-Spies-on-Venezuelas-Oil-Company-Sn
owden-Leak-Reveals-20151118-0010.htmlhttp://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/N
SA-Spies-on-Venezuelas-Oil-Company-Snowden-Leak-Reveals-20151118-0010.html
ALSO SEE: Venezuela's Maduro to Revise
Relations With US After NSA Spying
Snowden Leak Reveals Obama Government Ordered NSA, CIA to Spy on Venezuela's
State Oil Company
By teleSUR
19 November 15
U.S. intelligence agents posing as diplomats in Caracas helped an NSA
analyst try to crack open PDVSAs computer network.
he U.S. National Security Agency accessed the internal communications of
Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela and acquired
sensitive data it planned to exploit in order to spy on the companys top
officials, according to a highly classified NSA document that reveals the
operation was carried out in concert with the U.S. embassy in Caracas.
The March 2011 document, labeled, top secret, and provided by former NSA
contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden, is being reported on in an
exclusive partnership between teleSUR and The Intercept.
Drafted by an NSA signals development analyst, the document explains that
PDVSAs network, already compromised by U.S. intelligence, was further
infiltrated after an NSA review in late 2010 during President Barack
Obamas first term, which would suggest he ordered or at least authorized
the operation showed telltale signs that things were getting stagnant on
the Venezuelan Energy target set. Most intelligence was coming from
warranted collection, which likely refers to communications that were
intercepted as they passed across U.S. soil. According to the analyst, what
little was coming from other collectors, or warrantless surveillance, was
pretty sparse.
video0
Beyond efforts to infiltrate Venezuelas most important company, the leaked
NSA document highlights the existence of a secretive joint operation between
the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency operating out of the U.S.
embassy in Caracas. A fortress-like building just a few kilometers from
PDVSA headquarters, the embassy sits on the top of a hill that gives those
inside a commanding view of the Venezuelan capital.
Last year, Der Spiegel published top-secret documents detailing the
state-of-the-art surveillance equipment that the NSA and CIA deploy to
embassies around the world. That intelligence on PDVSA had grown stagnant
was concerning to the U.S. intelligence community for a number of reasons,
which its powerful surveillance capabilities could help address.
Venezuela has some of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the
world, the NSA document states, with revenue from oil and gas accounting
for roughly one third of GDP and more than half of all government
revenues.
To understand PDVSA, the NSA analyst explains, is to understand the
economic heart of Venezuela.
Increasing surveillance on the leadership of PDVSA, the most important
company in a South American nation seen as hostile to U.S. corporate
interests, was a priority for the undisclosed NSA division to which the
analyst reported. Plainly speaking, the analyst writes, they wanted PDVSA
information at the highest possible levels of the corporation namely, the
president and members of the Board of Directors.
Given a task, the analyst got to work and, with the help of sheer luck,
found his task easier than expected.
It began simply enough: with a visit to PDVSAs website, where I clicked on
'Leadership' and wrote down the names of the principals who would become my
target list. From there, the analyst dumped the names into PINWALE, the
NSAs primary database of previously intercepted digital communications,
automatically culled using a dictionary of search terms called selectors.
It was an almost immediate success.
In addition to email traffic, the analyst came across over 10,000 employee
contact profiles full of email addresses, phone numbers, and other useful
targeting information, including the usernames and passwords for over 900
PDVSA employees. One profile the analyst found was for Rafael Ramirez,
PDVSA's president from 2004 to 2014 and Venezuela's current envoy to the
United Nations. A similar entry turned up for Luis Vierma, the companys
former vice president of exploration and production.
Now, even my old eyes could see that these things were a goldmine, the
analyst wrote. The entries were full of work, home, and cell phones, email
addresses, LOTS! This type of information, referred to internally as
selectors, can then be tasked across the NSAs wide array of
surveillance tools so that any relevant communications will be saved.
According to the analyst, the man to whom he reported was thrilled! But
it is what happened next that really made our day.
As I was analyzing the metadata, the analyst explains, I clicked on the
'From IP' and noticed something peculiar, all of the employee profile,
over 10,000 of them, came from the same IP!!! That, the analyst
determined, meant I had been looking at internal PDVSA comms all this
time!!! I fired off a few emails to F6 here and in Caracas, and they
confirmed it!
Metadata is a broad term that can include the phone numbers a target has
dialed, the duration of the call and from where it was placed, as well as
the Wi-Fi networks used to access the Internet, the websites visited and the
times accessed. That information can then be used to identify the user.
F6 is the NSA code name for a joint operation with the CIA known as the
Special Collection Service, based in Beltsville, Maryland and with agents
posing as diplomats in dozens of U.S. embassies around the world, including
Caracas, Bogota and Brasilia.
In 2013, Der Spiegel reported that it was this unit of the U.S. intelligence
bureaucracy that had installed, within the U.S. embassy in Berlin,
sophisticated listening devices with which they can intercept virtually
every popular method of communication: cellular signals, wireless networks
and satellite communication. The article suggested this is likely how the
U.S. tapped into German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone.
SCS at the U.S. embassy in Caracas played an active role throughout the
espionage activities described in the NSA document. I have been
coordinating with Caracas, the NSA analyst states, who have been surveying
their environment and sticking the results into XKEYSCORE.
XKEYSCORE, as reported by The Intercept, processes a continuous flow of
Internet traffic from fiber optic cables that make up the backbone of the
world's communication network, storing the data for 72 hours on a rolling
buffer and sweep[ing] up countless people's Internet searches, emails,
documents, usernames and passwords.
The NSAs combined databases are, essentially, a very ugly version of
Google with half the worlds information in it, explained Matthew Green, a
professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, in an email.
Theyre capturing so much information from their cable taps, that even the
NSA analysts dont know what theyve got, he added, an analyst has to
occasionally step in and manually dig through the data to see if the
information they want has already been collected.
That is exactly what the NSA analyst did in the case of PDVSA, which turned
up even more leads to expand their collection efforts.
I have been lucky enough to find several juicy pdf documents in there, the
NSA analyst wrote, one of which has just been made a report.
That report, dated January 2011, suggests a familiarity with the finances of
PDVSA beyond that which was public knowledge, noting a decline in the theft
and loss of oil.
In addition, I have discovered a string that carries user ID's and their
passwords, and have recovered over 900 unique user/password combinations
the analyst wrote, which he forwarded to the NSAs elite hacking team,
Targeted Access Operations, along with other useful information and a
targeting request to see if we can pwn this network and especially, the
boxes of PDVSA's leadership.
Pwn, in this context, means to successfully hack and gain full access to a
computer or network. Pwning a computer, or box, would allow the hacker
to monitor a users every keystroke.
A History of US Interest in Venezuelan Affairs
PDVSA has long been a target of U.S. intelligence agencies and the subject
of intense scrutiny from U.S. diplomats. A February 17, 2009, cable, sent
from the U.S. ambassador in Caracas to Washington and obtained by WikiLeaks,
shows that PDVSA employees, were probed during visa interviews about their
company's internal operations. The embassy was particularly interested in
the PDVSAs strategy concerning litigation over Venezuela's 2007
nationalization of the Cerro Negro oil project and billions of dollars in
assets owned by U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil.
According to a PDVSA employee interviewed following his visa renewal, PDVSA
is aggressively preparing its international arbitration case against
ExxonMobil, the cable notes.
A year before, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters
that the U.S. government fully support the efforts of ExxonMobil to get a
just and fair compensation package for their assets. But, he added, We are
not involved in that dispute.
ExxonMobil is also at the center of a border dispute between Guyana and
Venezuela. In May 2015, the company announced it had made a significant oil
discovery in an offshore location claimed by both countries. The U.S.
ambassador to Guyana has offered support for that countrys claim.
More recently, the U.S. government has begun leaking information to media
about allegations against top Venezuelan officials.
In October, The Wall Street Journal reported in a piece, U.S. Investigates
Venezuelan Oil Giant, that agents from the Department of Homeland
Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and other agencies had recently met to discuss various
PDVSA-related probes. The wide-ranging investigations reportedly have to
do with whether former PDVSA President Rafael Ramirez and other executives
accepted bribes.
Leaked news of the investigations came less than two months before Dec. 6
parliamentary elections in Venezuela. Ramirez, for his part, has rejected
the accusations, which he claims are part of a new campaign that wants to
claim from us the recovery and revolutionary transformation of PDVSA.
Thanks to Chavez, he added, Venezuelas oil belongs to the people.
In its piece on the accusations against him, The Wall Street Journal notes
that during Ramirezs time in office PDVSA became an arm of the late
President Hugo Chavezs socialist revolution, with money made from the sale
of petroleum used to pay for housing, appliances and food for the poor.
IN DEPTH: The War on Venezuelas Democracy
The former PDVSA president is not the only Venezuelan official to be accused
of corruption by the U.S. government. In May 2015, the U.S. Department of
Justice accused Diosdado Cabello, president of the Venezuelan National
Assembly, of being involved in cocaine trafficking and money laundering.
Former Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami, the former director of military
intelligence, Hugo Carvajal, and Nestor Reverol, head of the National Guard,
have also faced similar accusations from the U.S. government.
None of these accusations against high-ranking Venezuelan officials has led
to any indictments.
The timing of the charges, made in the court of public opinion rather than a
courthouse, has led some to believe theres another motive.
These people despise us, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said in
October. He and his supporters argue the goal of the U.S. governments
selective leaks is to undermine his party ahead of the upcoming elections,
helping install a right-wing opposition seen as friendlier to U.S.
interests. They believe that we belong to them.
Loose Standards for NSA Intelligence Sharing
Ulterior motives or not, by the NSAs own admission the intelligence it
gathers on foreign targets may be disseminated widely among U.S. officials
who may have more than justice on their minds.
According to a guide issued by the NSA on January 12, 2015, the
communications of non-U.S. persons may be captured in bulk and retained if
they are said to contain information concerning a plot against the United
States or evidence of, Transnational criminal threats, including illicit
finance and sanctions evasion. Any intelligence that is gathered may then
be passed on to other agencies, such as the DEA, if it is related to a
crime that has been, is being, or is about to be committed.
Spying for the sole purpose of protecting the interests of a corporation is
ostensibly not allowed, though there are exceptions that do allow for what
might be termed economic espionage.
The collection of foreign private commercial information or trade secrets
is authorized only to protect nation the national security of the United
States or its partners and allies, the agency states. It is not supposed to
collect such information to afford a competitive advantage to U.S.
companies and U.S. business sectors commercially. However, Certain
economic purposes, such as identifying trade or sanctions violations or
government influence or direction, shall not constitute competitive
advantage.
In May 2011, two months after the leaked document was published in NSAs
internal newsletter, the U.S. State Department announced it was imposing
sanctions on PDVSA a state-owned enterprise, or one that could be said to
be subject to government influence or direction for business it
conducted with the Islamic Republic of Iran between December 2010 and March
2011. The department did not say how it obtained information about the
transactions, allegedly worth US$50 million.
Intelligence gathered with one stated purpose can also serve another, and
the NSAs already liberal rules on the sharing of what it gathers can also
be bent in times of perceived emergency.
If, due to unanticipated or extraordinary circumstances, NSA determines
that it must take action in apparent departure from these procedures to
protect the national security of the United States, such action may be
taken after either consulting other branches of the intelligence
bureaucracy. If there is insufficient time for approval, however, it may
unilaterally take action.
Beyond the obvious importance of oil, leaked diplomatic cables show PDVSA
was also on the U.S. radar because of its importance to Venezuelas
left-wing government. In 2009, another diplomatic cable obtained by
WikiLeaks shows the U.S. embassy in Caracas viewed PDVSA as crucial to the
political operations of long-time foe and former President Hugo Chavez. In
April 2002, Chavez was briefly overthrown in a coup that, according to The
New York Times, as many as 200 officials in the George W. Bush
administration briefed by the CIA knew about days before it was carried
out.
The Venezuelan government was not informed of the plot.
Since the December 2002-February 2003 oil sector strike, PDVSA has put
itself at the service of President Chavez's Bolivarian revolution, funding
everything from domestic programs to Chavez's geopolitical endeavors, the
2009 cable states.
Why might that be a problem, from the U.S. government's perspective? Another
missive from the U.S. embassy in Caracas, this one sent in 2010, sheds some
light: Chavez appears determined to shape the hemisphere according to his
vision of 'socialism in the 21st century,' it states, a vision that is
almost the mirror image of what the United States seeks.
There was a time when not so long ago when the U.S. had an ally in
Venezuela, one that shared its vision for the hemisphere and invited a
U.S. firm run by former U.S. intelligence officials to directly administer
its information technology operations.
Amid a push for privatization under former Venezuelan President Rafael
Caldera, in January 1997 PDVSA decided to outsource its IT system to a joint
a company called Information, Business and Technology, or INTESA the
product of a joint venture between the oil company, which owned a 40 percent
share of the new corporation, and the major U.S.-based defense contractor
Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, which controlled 60
percent.
SAIC has close, long-standing ties to the U.S. intelligence community. At
the time of its dealings with Venezuela, the companys director was retired
Admiral Bobby Inman. Before coming to SAIC, Inman served as the U.S.
Director of Naval Intelligence and Vice Director of the U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency. Inman also served as deputy director of the CIA and,
from 1977 to 1981, as director of the NSA.
In his book, Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies
of the Chavez Government, author Gregory Wilpert notes that Inman was far
from the only former intelligence official working for SAIC in a leadership
role. Joining him were two former U.S. Secretaries of Defense, William Perry
and Melvin Laird, a former director of the CIA, John Deutsch, and a former
head of both the CIA and the Defense Department, Robert Gates. The company
that those men controlled, INTESA, was given the job of managing all of
PDVSAs data processing needs.
In 2002, Venezuela, now led by a government seeking to roll back the
privatizations of its predecessor, chose not to renew SAICs contract for
another five years, a decision the company protested to the U.S. Overseas
Private Investment Corporation, which insures the overseas investments of
U.S. corporations. In 2004, the U.S. agency ruled that by canceling its
contract with SAIC the Venezuelan government had expropriated the
companys investment.
However, before that ruling, and before its operations were reincorporated
by PDVSA, the company that SAIC controlled, INTESA, played a key role in an
opposition-led strike aimed at shutting down the Venezuelan oil industry. In
December 2002, eight months after the failed coup attempt and the same month
its contract was set to expire, INTESA, the Venezuelan Ministry of
Communication and Information alleges, exercised its ability to control our
computers by paralyzing the charge, discharge, and storage of crude at
different terminals within the national grid. The government alleges
INTESA, which possessed the codes needed to access those terminals, refused
to allow non-striking PDVSA employees access to the companys control
systems.
The result, Wilpert noted, was that PDVSA could not transfer its data
processing to new systems, nor could it process its orders for invoices for
oil shipments. PDVSA ended up having to process such things manually because
passwords and the general computing infrastructure were unavailable, causing
the strike to be much more damaging to the company than it would have been
if the data processing had been in PDVSAs hands.
PDVSAs IT operations would become a strictly internal affair soon
thereafter, though one never truly free from the prying eyes of hostile
outsiders.
Pdvsa spying / Espionaje a Pdvsa from teleSUR TV
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
