Eva Golinger - Confidante of Tyrants: The Story of the American Woman Trusted by the US’s Biggest Enemies

This book is dedicated to the memory of my sweet friend Evio di Marzo, killed in Caracas, Venezuela, on 28 May 2018. May his kind, generous and creative spirit guide us on the path to justice.

About the author

Eva Golinger is an attorney specializing in international human rights and immigration law based in New York. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and holds a J.D. from CUNY Law School. She is winner of the International Journalism Award in Mexico and multiple book awards in Venezuela. She is author of six non-fiction books including The Chvez Code, which was based on extensive research using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to declassify CIA and other US government documents on Washingtons role in the 2002 coup dtat against Hugo Chvez. Her work has been covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, The Chicago Tribune, Reuters, AP, NPR, CNN, BBC, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and other major media around the world. She lived in Venezuela for many years and counseled several Presidents, Foreign Ministers and senior officials in Latin America and was an Advisor to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez for nearly a decade. Follow her on Twitter @evagolinger.

Confidante of Tyrants

The inside story of the American woman trusted by the USs biggest enemies

First published in 2018 by

New Internationalist

The Old Music Hall

106-108 Cowley Road

Oxford OX4 1JE

newint.org

Eva Golinger

The right of Eva Golinger to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing of the Publisher.

Editor: Chris Brazier

Design: Juha Sorsa

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN ebook 978-1-78026-468-4

Contents

T he United States has a shameful history of interfering in the internal affairs of nearly every country in Latin America. Initially pursuing Manifest Destiny and later the fight against communism, the US has meddled with, manipulated and overthrown sovereign governments.

In many instances, the CIA funded and aided the local opposition, helping to engineer coups and install regimes friendly to US investment. At the notorious School of the Americas in Panama, US experts taught Latin American dictators and military leaders torture techniques to help them control their populations.

Forcible regime change violates the Charter of the Organization of American States, which says: Every State has the right to choose, without external interference, its political, economic, and social system and to organize itself in the way best suited to it, and has the duty to abstain from intervening in the affairs of another State.

Yet, building on Barack Obamas punishing sanctions against Venezuela, the Trump administration is threatening military invasion and regime change. Venezuela has the worlds largest oil reserves and the United States is the principal consumer of its black gold. This would not be the first time the US attempted to facilitate a coup in Venezuela. In 2002, the George W Bush administration aided and abetted a coup attempt. Successive US regimes have considered socialist Venezuela a threat to global capitalism.

As Smon Bolvar, Venezuelas second president, said in the 19th century, the United States continues to plague [the] America[s] with misery in the name of liberty.

Since Hugo Chvez was elected president in 1998, the US government has tried covertly and overtly to undermine his Bolivarian Revolution, channeling millions of dollars to opposition groups working for regime change. Chvez was beloved in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. He used Venezuelas vast oil resources to eradicate poverty and illiteracy, and to provide free and universal healthcare and education.

When Chvez died in 2013, his chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro, was elected president. Although Maduro vowed to continue Chvezs Bolivarian Revolution, mismanagement, corruption and autocratic leadership, combined with illegal US financial sanctions, contributed to economic hardship for the Venezuelan people. Oil prices fell in 2016, causing Venezuelas economy to collapse with hyperinflation two years later.

It was against this backdrop that Maduro was re-elected to a six-year term in 2018. Voter turnout was 46 per cent, the lowest since Chvezs first election in 1998 (turnout in the 2016 US presidential election was 58 per cent). The oppositions boycott of the election and the US governments support of the boycott and pre-emptive refusal to recognize the results led to Maduros victory over opponent Henri Falcon.

Eva Golinger was a close confidante of Chvez. She came to his attention after her investigative efforts confirmed the CIAs direct involvement in the foiled 2002 coup. Dubbed the Girlfriend of Venezuela, Golinger traveled with Chavez on what he called his Axis of Evil tour, rubbing elbows with Fidel Castro and other world leaders whom the US despised. Golingers riveting memoir provides a rare window into the Bolivarian Revolution, warts and all.

Marjorie Cohn is Professor Emerita, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and was formerly President of the National Lawyers Guild.

T he phone rang just as I was folding up my winter jacket and shoving it into my already bulging suitcase. Comrade, said the deep voice on the other end of the line. I tensed up, knowing that what was coming next, whatever it was, meant I would most likely have to delay my flight to New York that afternoon.

Hola, I answered, adding a half-hearted at your service. It was Nicolas Maduro, then Venezuelas towering Foreign Minister and by towering I mean really tall. He was six foot three inches, more than a foot taller than me, with a big black bushy mustache and smiling eyes, his cheek scarred by police brutality during an anti-government protest in the late 1970s.

The President has a very special request for you. He asked me to call you personally. We had only been back in Caracas for about a month after an intense two-week trip abroad which Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez had termed the Axis of Evil Tour. Visiting hotspots like Libya, Syria, Iran, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Cuba was a strangely common situation for me these days, ever since I had become a close friend and confidante of Chvez.

Yes, Chvez. A figure larger than life, loved and hated by millions, who had proclaimed me the Girlfriend of Venezuela and one of the bravest women hed ever known. Look at her face, he said about me once on live television. She looks so tender, like an angel, but when she opens her mouth shes on fire, more valiant than anyone.

Back in 2003 when I was a newly minted lawyer living in New York City, I started what I thought was a shot-in-the-dark investigation into a possible CIA role in the failed 2002 coup dtat against Chvez. I figured I would write a few articles, maybe even a book if I found something really compelling, but I never thought that my whole life would change and I would be propelled into a world of espionage, intrigue and global power. Nor could I have foreseen that my investigations would become a point of reference for Fidel Castro as well as Chvez, and would make me a thorn in the side of the Pentagon, which once referred to me as a troublemaker not the only time in my life that I have been called that.