US Secretly Targeted Evo Morales Of Bolivia | PopularResistance.Org
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US Secretly Targeted Evo Morales Of Bolivia
WENDERSON ARAUJO VIA GETTY IMAGES
WENDERSON ARAUJO VIA GETTY IMAGES
The United States has secretly indicted top officials connected to the
government of Bolivian President Evo Morales for their alleged involvement
in a cocaine trafficking scheme. The indictments, secured in a U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration sting called Operation Naked King, have not
been previously reported.
Morales, a former leader of Bolivias coca growers union, has long been at
loggerheads with the DEA. In 2008, Morales expelled the agency from the
country and embarked on his own strategy of combatting drug trafficking,
acknowledging the traditional uses of coca in Bolivian culture and
working cooperatively with coca growers to regulate some legal activity and
to promote alternative development elsewhere. Morales plan has been
effective at reducing cultivation, according to the United Nations.
But that doesnt mean the DEA accepted its eviction quietly. In fact, the
agency went after members of Morales administration in an apparent effort
to undermine his leadership.
The sealed indictments, revealed last week in a
lawsuit filed by long-time DEA informant Carlos Toro, target Walter Álvarez,
a top Bolivian air force official; the late Raul García, father of Vice
President Álvaro García Linera; Faustino Giménez, an Argentine citizen and
Bolivian resident who is said to be close to the vice president; and Katy
Alcoreza, described as an intelligence agent for Morales. Toro said in the
court document that he played an integral role in securing the indictments
as part of the DEAs undercover investigation into the alleged Bolivian
cocaine trafficking ring, which the agency ran out of its office in
Asuncion, Paraguay.
We could find ourselves faced with a narcostate that supports the
uncontrolled cultivation of coca.U.S. General James T. Hill
Toro filed suit against the federal government in the U.S. Court of Federal
Claims in September, asking for $5 million in unpaid compensation for his
more than 25 years of work for the DEA. A one-time senior official with the
Medellin cartel, he went public about his career in a
series of interviews with The Huffington Post, and subsequently with CBS
News. He has been involved in the investigation, arrest or prosecution of
major figures, from Colombian drug trafficker Carlos Lehder to Panamanian
dictator Manuel Noriega, to top members of Mexican cartels.
Spokespeople for the State Department, Department of Justice and DEA
declined to comment. However, previous media reports in the region have
accused top officials in the Morales administration of being involved in
international cocaine trafficking. Rene Sanabria and Oscar Nina, both former
top anti-drug officials in the Morales administration, have been
arrested for drug trafficking. Nina was arrested this March and Sanabria was
arrested in Panama and extradited to the U.S. in 2011; his defenders suspect
the arrest was politically motivated.
This week, the Obama administration announced that its planning to
officially decertify Bolivia a bureaucratic move which amounts to an
accusation by U.S. officials that Bolivia is not sufficiently cooperative in
combating drug trafficking.
Morales
on Tuesday addressed the decision to withhold U.S. funds for drug control
purposes, calling it a political maneuver by a nation committed to
ineffective anti-drug tactics.
I think it is a political action exerted by the State Department of the
United States, he said during a press conference at the government palace,
according to an English translation of a
report in Bolivias La Razon. But if we are honest, U.S. policy is a
failure in the fight against drug trafficking in the world.
ANDEAN INFORMATION NETWORK
Morales went on to tout Bolivias recent successes in reducing coca
production, and cited Colombia which has,
according to the United Nations, seen a significant increase in coca
cultivation over the past year, despite U.S. support as an example of
U.S.-backed failure.
I could mention many countries in the world where there is this problem and
how it has grown with U.S. presence, the president said. Theyre using the
fight against drug trafficking for clear political purposes.
While the White House identified Colombia as a major illicit drug producer,
it wrote that the nation has demonstrate[d] highly effective leadership in
countering illegal drug trafficking and transnational crime, calling the
country a strong partner on counternarcotics. As evidence, the
administration pointed to high levels of recent crop eradication and drug
seizures.
Morales and the DEA have a long history of animosity. Morales, a member of
the Aymara indigenous group and a one-time coca grower, first rose to power
in Bolivia as the head of a federation of coca growers unions. The union
gained much of its strength by organizing in response to human rights abuses
carried out by the DEA-backed anti-drug group known as UMOPAR, starting in
the 1980s. In 2005, Morales led nationwide protests that toppled the
government of former Bolivian President Carlos Mesa.
Morales became president himself in 2006, and has twice been re-elected by
wide margins. When he was first campaigning, Bolivians in the coca-growing
region of the Chapare, where the president got his start, recalled his rise
as a response to the U.S.-led drug war. Jaimie Rojas, then a 74-year-old
newspaper vendor in Villa Tunari, a town in the Chapare, had known Morales
since he was in his early 20s. He was able to unite the people and have
them all turn back UMOPAR, he said of Morales
in a 2005 interview.
The war made the American governments intentions clear to the people of
Chapare. Behind the war on drugs there are other interests. Interests in
natural resources, and in dismantling the unions in the Chapare,
said Feliciano Mamani, a leader in Morales political party and a coca
grower.
Many indigenous Bolivians, including Morales, defend coca production as a
traditional right. After all, Bolivians have used coca leaves in a variety
of ways for thousands of years. But coca is also the essential ingredient in
cocaine, and the nations close relationship with the plant has made it the
worlds third-largest producer of the drug, behind Peru and Colombia.
They accuse me of everything. They say Evo is a drug trafficker, that Evo is
a narcoterrorist.Bolivian President Evo Morales
The U.S. government and the DEA made no secret of their displeasure when
their longtime nemesis, Morales, was elected. If radicals continue to
hijack the indigenous movement, we could find ourselves faced with a
narcostate that supports the uncontrolled cultivation of coca,
General James T. Hill, a U.S. army commander with the Southern Command, told
the House Armed Services Committee in March 2004, referring to Morales
movement.
I dont think theres an attractive or viable future by becoming a
narcostate, John Walters, then the Bush administrations drug czar,
told The New York Times the next year, when it appeared Morales was on his
way to victory.
Morales used the accusations to his political benefit. They accuse me of
everything, Morales said at a campaign rally, according to the
same Times article. They say Evo is a drug trafficker, that Evo is a
narcoterrorist. They dont know how to defend their position, so they attack
us.
<span class='image-component__caption' itemprop="caption">Bolivian
President Evo Morales, pictured here, expelled both the U.S. ambassador and
the DEA from his country in 2008.</span>
CREDIT: AIZAR RALDES VIA GETTY IMAGESBolivian President Evo Morales,
pictured here, expelled both the U.S. ambassador and the DEA from his
country in 2008.
There is a running joke in Bolivia and other Latin American countries that
goes like this:
block quote
Q: Why has there never been a military coup in the United States?
A: Because theres no U.S. embassy in the U.S.
block quote end
In September 2008, Morales made sure there wouldnt be one in Bolivia,
either, and
kicked U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg out of the country.
Then, that November, Morales expelled the DEA,
arguing that the agency had committed human rights violations, covered up
murders and was routinely using its investigative powers to target
politicians and movement leaders who were challenging Washingtons
neoliberal agenda. Morales had made a campaign promise to nationalize the
countrys natural gas resources and use the proceeds to develop the economy
from the bottom up.
Responding to Goldbergs dismissal, a State Department spokesman said at the
time, The only overthrow we seek is that of poverty
No country has ever
improved the well-being of its citizens by antagonizing neighbors and
refraining from fruitful integration with the worlds democracies.
Yet under Morales, Bolivia has boomed with much of the benefit accruing to
the very poor in a stunning success story.
By 2014,
the Times was writing about Bolivias renaissance:
block quote
Tucked away in the shadow of its more populous and more prosperous
neighbors, tiny, impoverished Bolivia, once a perennial economic basket
case, has suddenly become a different kind of exception this time in a
good way.
block quote end
Its economy grew an estimated 6.5 percent last year, among the strongest
rates in the region. Inflation has been kept in check. The budget is
balanced, and once-crippling government debt has been slashed. And the
country has a rainy-day fund of foreign reserves so large for its relatively
small economy that it could be the envy of nearly every other country in the
world. The Times article notes that extreme poverty under Morales has
plummeted, despite or, more likely, because of his refusal to follow the
path the U.S. has urged.
The countrys triumph comes as it faces a foe greater than neoliberalism,
however. La Paz, which sits some 13,000 feet above sea level, depends on the
snowmelt from the surrounding mountains for its survival. As a result of
climate change, the snowpack is disappearing.
In the face of U.S. denunciations that Bolivia would become a narcostate
under Morales, the country has instead managed to reduce coca leaf
cultivation, especially over the past five years. According to the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, total production of dried coca leaf
fell 11 percent from 2013 to 2014, and has fallen by an
average of nearly 10 percent each year since 2011. Interdiction efforts
targeting coca cultivation have also dropped precipitously since the DEAs
dismissal in 2008, though confiscations of cocaine continued to rise until
2013, when they dropped off significantly. In 2014, confiscations of
processed cocaine hydrochloride returned to previous levels, though
interdiction of coca leaves and cocaine base remained low.
[Drug trafficking] must be fought we are convinced of that and we are
doing so more effectively and more wisely, Morales
told Al Jazeera in a 2014 interview. When the United States was in control
of counternarcotics, the US governments used drug trafficking for purely
geopolitical purposes
. The US uses drug trafficking and terrorism for
political control
. We have nationalised the fight against drug
trafficking.
In 2009, Hillary Clinton warned of Morales and the late Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávezs
fear mongering in written testimony during her secretary of state
confirmation hearings. Yet Morales fears, it turns out, werent rooted in
mere paranoia. The DEA was, in fact, out to get him.
The revelation of Operation Naked King goes to show that Bolivian leaders
paranoia was well justified, said Kathryn Ledebur, who runs the Andean
Information Network based in Bolivia. US authorities frequently dismiss
Bolivian government denunciations about the DEA and US intervention as
absurd speculation, but these revelations show what is common knowledge on
the ground there has long been an alarming lack of oversight of DEA
operations in Latin America, including recurring mission creep and a
violation of agreements with host countries, she wrote in an email.
Even before Moraless election, high-ranking US officials warned his
policies on coca and drug control and rejection of American policy dictates
would plunge Bolivia into drug trafficking chaos. Yet, without the DEA or US
funding, Bolivia has consistently improved its track record, with the lowest
coca crop in the region and credible interdiction policies. Theres a lot of
cognitive dissonance for US drug warriors, and in this case, it appears some
worked to make their predictions appear true.
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US Secretly Targeted Evo Morales Of Bolivia
WENDERSON ARAUJO VIA GETTY IMAGES
WENDERSON ARAUJO VIA GETTY IMAGES
The United States has secretly indicted top officials connected to the
government of Bolivian President Evo Morales for their alleged involvement
in a cocaine trafficking scheme. The indictments, secured in a U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration sting called Operation Naked King, have not
been previously reported.
Morales, a former leader of Bolivias coca growers union, has long been at
loggerheads with the DEA. In 2008, Morales expelled the agency from the
country and embarked on his own strategy of combatting drug trafficking,
acknowledging the traditional uses of coca in Bolivian culture and
working cooperatively with coca growers to regulate some legal activity and
to promote alternative development elsewhere. Morales plan has been
effective at reducing cultivation, according to the United Nations.
But that doesnt mean the DEA accepted its eviction quietly. In fact, the
agency went after members of Morales administration in an apparent effort
to undermine his leadership.
The sealed indictments, revealed last week in a
lawsuit filed by long-time DEA informant Carlos Toro, target Walter Álvarez,
a top Bolivian air force official; the late Raul García, father of Vice
President Álvaro García Linera; Faustino Giménez, an Argentine citizen and
Bolivian resident who is said to be close to the vice president; and Katy
Alcoreza, described as an intelligence agent for Morales. Toro said in the
court document that he played an integral role in securing the indictments
as part of the DEAs undercover investigation into the alleged Bolivian
cocaine trafficking ring, which the agency ran out of its office in
Asuncion, Paraguay.
We could find ourselves faced with a narcostate that supports the
uncontrolled cultivation of coca.U.S. General James T. Hill
Toro filed suit against the federal government in the U.S. Court of Federal
Claims in September, asking for $5 million in unpaid compensation for his
more than 25 years of work for the DEA. A one-time senior official with the
Medellin cartel, he went public about his career in a
series of interviews with The Huffington Post, and subsequently with CBS
News. He has been involved in the investigation, arrest or prosecution of
major figures, from Colombian drug trafficker Carlos Lehder to Panamanian
dictator Manuel Noriega, to top members of Mexican cartels.
Spokespeople for the State Department, Department of Justice and DEA
declined to comment. However, previous media reports in the region have
accused top officials in the Morales administration of being involved in
international cocaine trafficking. Rene Sanabria and Oscar Nina, both former
top anti-drug officials in the Morales administration, have been
arrested for drug trafficking. Nina was arrested this March and Sanabria was
arrested in Panama and extradited to the U.S. in 2011; his defenders suspect
the arrest was politically motivated.
This week, the Obama administration announced that its planning to
officially decertify Bolivia a bureaucratic move which amounts to an
accusation by U.S. officials that Bolivia is not sufficiently cooperative in
combating drug trafficking.
Morales
on Tuesday addressed the decision to withhold U.S. funds for drug control
purposes, calling it a political maneuver by a nation committed to
ineffective anti-drug tactics.
I think it is a political action exerted by the State Department of the
United States, he said during a press conference at the government palace,
according to an English translation of a
report in Bolivias La Razon. But if we are honest, U.S. policy is a
failure in the fight against drug trafficking in the world.
ANDEAN INFORMATION NETWORK
Morales went on to tout Bolivias recent successes in reducing coca
production, and cited Colombia which has,
according to the United Nations, seen a significant increase in coca
cultivation over the past year, despite U.S. support as an example of
U.S.-backed failure.
I could mention many countries in the world where there is this problem and
how it has grown with U.S. presence, the president said. Theyre using the
fight against drug trafficking for clear political purposes.
While the White House identified Colombia as a major illicit drug producer,
it wrote that the nation has demonstrate[d] highly effective leadership in
countering illegal drug trafficking and transnational crime, calling the
country a strong partner on counternarcotics. As evidence, the
administration pointed to high levels of recent crop eradication and drug
seizures.
Morales and the DEA have a long history of animosity. Morales, a member of
the Aymara indigenous group and a one-time coca grower, first rose to power
in Bolivia as the head of a federation of coca growers unions. The union
gained much of its strength by organizing in response to human rights abuses
carried out by the DEA-backed anti-drug group known as UMOPAR, starting in
the 1980s. In 2005, Morales led nationwide protests that toppled the
government of former Bolivian President Carlos Mesa.
Morales became president himself in 2006, and has twice been re-elected by
wide margins. When he was first campaigning, Bolivians in the coca-growing
region of the Chapare, where the president got his start, recalled his rise
as a response to the U.S.-led drug war. Jaimie Rojas, then a 74-year-old
newspaper vendor in Villa Tunari, a town in the Chapare, had known Morales
since he was in his early 20s. He was able to unite the people and have
them all turn back UMOPAR, he said of Morales
in a 2005 interview.
The war made the American governments intentions clear to the people of
Chapare. Behind the war on drugs there are other interests. Interests in
natural resources, and in dismantling the unions in the Chapare,
said Feliciano Mamani, a leader in Morales political party and a coca
grower.
Many indigenous Bolivians, including Morales, defend coca production as a
traditional right. After all, Bolivians have used coca leaves in a variety
of ways for thousands of years. But coca is also the essential ingredient in
cocaine, and the nations close relationship with the plant has made it the
worlds third-largest producer of the drug, behind Peru and Colombia.
They accuse me of everything. They say Evo is a drug trafficker, that Evo is
a narcoterrorist.Bolivian President Evo Morales
The U.S. government and the DEA made no secret of their displeasure when
their longtime nemesis, Morales, was elected. If radicals continue to
hijack the indigenous movement, we could find ourselves faced with a
narcostate that supports the uncontrolled cultivation of coca,
General James T. Hill, a U.S. army commander with the Southern Command, told
the House Armed Services Committee in March 2004, referring to Morales
movement.
I dont think theres an attractive or viable future by becoming a
narcostate, John Walters, then the Bush administrations drug czar,
told The New York Times the next year, when it appeared Morales was on his
way to victory.
Morales used the accusations to his political benefit. They accuse me of
everything, Morales said at a campaign rally, according to the
same Times article. They say Evo is a drug trafficker, that Evo is a
narcoterrorist. They dont know how to defend their position, so they attack
us.
<span class='image-component__caption' itemprop="caption">Bolivian
President Evo Morales, pictured here, expelled both the U.S. ambassador and
the DEA from his country in 2008.</span>
CREDIT: AIZAR RALDES VIA GETTY IMAGESBolivian President Evo Morales,
pictured here, expelled both the U.S. ambassador and the DEA from his
country in 2008.
There is a running joke in Bolivia and other Latin American countries that
goes like this:
block quote
Q: Why has there never been a military coup in the United States?
A: Because theres no U.S. embassy in the U.S.
block quote end
In September 2008, Morales made sure there wouldnt be one in Bolivia,
either, and
kicked U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg out of the country.
Then, that November, Morales expelled the DEA,
arguing that the agency had committed human rights violations, covered up
murders and was routinely using its investigative powers to target
politicians and movement leaders who were challenging Washingtons
neoliberal agenda. Morales had made a campaign promise to nationalize the
countrys natural gas resources and use the proceeds to develop the economy
from the bottom up.
Responding to Goldbergs dismissal, a State Department spokesman said at the
time, The only overthrow we seek is that of poverty
No country has ever
improved the well-being of its citizens by antagonizing neighbors and
refraining from fruitful integration with the worlds democracies.
Yet under Morales, Bolivia has boomed with much of the benefit accruing to
the very poor in a stunning success story.
By 2014,
the Times was writing about Bolivias renaissance:
block quote
Tucked away in the shadow of its more populous and more prosperous
neighbors, tiny, impoverished Bolivia, once a perennial economic basket
case, has suddenly become a different kind of exception this time in a
good way.
block quote end
Its economy grew an estimated 6.5 percent last year, among the strongest
rates in the region. Inflation has been kept in check. The budget is
balanced, and once-crippling government debt has been slashed. And the
country has a rainy-day fund of foreign reserves so large for its relatively
small economy that it could be the envy of nearly every other country in the
world. The Times article notes that extreme poverty under Morales has
plummeted, despite or, more likely, because of his refusal to follow the
path the U.S. has urged.
The countrys triumph comes as it faces a foe greater than neoliberalism,
however. La Paz, which sits some 13,000 feet above sea level, depends on the
snowmelt from the surrounding mountains for its survival. As a result of
climate change, the snowpack is disappearing.
In the face of U.S. denunciations that Bolivia would become a narcostate
under Morales, the country has instead managed to reduce coca leaf
cultivation, especially over the past five years. According to the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, total production of dried coca leaf
fell 11 percent from 2013 to 2014, and has fallen by an
average of nearly 10 percent each year since 2011. Interdiction efforts
targeting coca cultivation have also dropped precipitously since the DEAs
dismissal in 2008, though confiscations of cocaine continued to rise until
2013, when they dropped off significantly. In 2014, confiscations of
processed cocaine hydrochloride returned to previous levels, though
interdiction of coca leaves and cocaine base remained low.
[Drug trafficking] must be fought we are convinced of that and we are
doing so more effectively and more wisely, Morales
told Al Jazeera in a 2014 interview. When the United States was in control
of counternarcotics, the US governments used drug trafficking for purely
geopolitical purposes
. The US uses drug trafficking and terrorism for
political control
. We have nationalised the fight against drug
trafficking.
In 2009, Hillary Clinton warned of Morales and the late Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávezs
fear mongering in written testimony during her secretary of state
confirmation hearings. Yet Morales fears, it turns out, werent rooted in
mere paranoia. The DEA was, in fact, out to get him.
The revelation of Operation Naked King goes to show that Bolivian leaders
paranoia was well justified, said Kathryn Ledebur, who runs the Andean
Information Network based in Bolivia. US authorities frequently dismiss
Bolivian government denunciations about the DEA and US intervention as
absurd speculation, but these revelations show what is common knowledge on
the ground there has long been an alarming lack of oversight of DEA
operations in Latin America, including recurring mission creep and a
violation of agreements with host countries, she wrote in an email.
Even before Moraless election, high-ranking US officials warned his
policies on coca and drug control and rejection of American policy dictates
would plunge Bolivia into drug trafficking chaos. Yet, without the DEA or US
funding, Bolivia has consistently improved its track record, with the lowest
coca crop in the region and credible interdiction policies. Theres a lot of
cognitive dissonance for US drug warriors, and in this case, it appears some
worked to make their predictions appear true.
US Secret
