IMPORTANT: Former Clinton Advisers Up to Armpits in Managing Micheletti Machine

This article shows that there are more US advisers working for the Pinochettis than we may have thought. It smells like a Paul Begala, James Carville production. If you recall the documentary film about their shenanigans in the campaign of Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada in Bolivia,"Our Brand," you'll know why they might be involved this time in Honduras.

After the NYT article, there is a short article on the documentary "Our Brand."

Stay tuned.


Honduran Rivals See U.S. Intervention as Crucial in Resolving Political Crisis

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By GINGER THOMPSON
Published: July 12, 2009

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica — When President Óscar Arias of Costa Rica set out to find a negotiated solution to the Honduran political crisis, he hailed it as an opportunity for Central Americans to show they could resolve their own problems, and he established some simple ground rules.

The ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and the man who leads the de facto government that replaced him, Roberto Micheletti, were each to show up at his house with just four of their closest Honduran advisers.

On Thursday morning, Mr. Micheletti showed up with six, adding an American public relations specialist who has done work for former President Bill Clinton and the American’s interpreter, and an official close to the talks said the team rarely made a move without consulting him.

Then on Friday, with the negotiations seemingly going nowhere, Mr. Arias reached out for American support of his own, telling Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that pressure from the United States was crucial to ending the stalemate.

In the two weeks since the coup against Mr. Zelaya, the Obama administration has taken great pains to distance itself from the crisis as part of an effort to make the United States just one of many players in a region that it has long dominated. And Latin American leaders have publicly expressed support for what they describe as Washington’s new spirit of collaboration.

Privately, and not so privately, however, it has become clear that leaders on all sides of this crisis see the United States as the key to getting what they want.

In recent days, Mr. Zelaya and his allies, who include some of the most vocal critics of United States policy in the region, have repeatedly called on Washington to increase its pressure on Mr. Micheletti by recalling its ambassador — the United States is one of the few countries in the region that continues to keep its envoy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital — and by imposing tougher sanctions.

Even Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, made a rare call to Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon Jr. on Friday to directly make an appeal he had issued earlier on television.

“Do something,” Mr. Chávez had said to reporters. “Obama, do something.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Micheletti has embarked on a public relations offensive, with his supporters hiring high-profile lawyers with strong Washington connections to lobby against such sanctions. One powerful Latin American business council hired Lanny J. Davis, who has served as President Clinton’s personal lawyer and who campaigned for Mrs. Clinton for president.

And last week, Mr. Micheletti brought the adviser from another firm with Clinton ties to the talks in Costa Rica. The adviser, Bennett Ratcliff of San Diego, refused to give details about his role at the talks.

“Every proposal that Micheletti’s group presented was written or approved by the American,” said another official close to the talks, referring to Mr. Ratcliff.

With or without the presence of foreigners, Mr. Arias faces long odds against success. Mr. Zelaya and Mr. Micheletti refused to meet face to face and left the talks before the end of the first day. And while there was less hostility between the two delegations on Day 2, an official close to the talks said Mr. Arias was unable to get the groups to agree on a date for the next round of talks or even to shake hands in front of the throngs of reporters gathered outside his home.

“He told them, the Palestinians and Israelis were enemies for generations, and their leaders shook hands,” an official said, referring to Mr. Arias. “You all were friends until two weeks ago. And yet you cannot make one symbolic gesture?”

But people who are familiar with the talks — diplomats, lawyers and government officials who attended the meetings or monitored them from offices in Costa Rica, the United States and Honduras — said the sessions produced at least one important breakthrough: leaders on both sides of the divide moved beyond their blustery statements so that mediators could identify the real obstacles to a peaceful compromise.

Among the most intractable of those obstacles, said three officials close to the talks, was Mr. Micheletti. While Mr. Zelaya indicated that he was willing to accept a compromise that would return him to office with significantly limited powers, the officials said, it appeared that Mr. Micheletti believed he could run out the clock and hold on to the presidency until his country’s presidential elections in November.

The officials said Mr. Arias told Mrs. Clinton that the United States had to make clear to Mr. Micheletti that elections held by an illegitimate government would themselves not be considered legitimate.

However, one official said that the United States wanted to be careful “not to take a huge public role.” He said the United States indicated that it would quietly make clear to Mr. Micheletti that the $16.5 million it has already suspended in military aid could be expanded to include $180 million in other economic development assistance that is still under review.

Mr. Micheletti’s supporters are pushing back in part by paying hundreds of dollars an hour to well-connected Washington lawyers who have initiated a charm offensive from Washington. On Friday, Mr. Davis was testifying on Capitol Hill in support of Mr. Micheletti’s de facto government.

And on Saturday, Mr. Davis called reporters close to midnight to notify them that Mr. Micheletti had fired Enrique Ortez, whom he had appointed as his foreign minister, for having outraged American officials by referring in a television interview to President Obama as “that little black guy who doesn’t even know where Tegucigalpa is located.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/world/americas/13honduras.html



"Designing an election campaign in Bolivia, 3 March 2006
8/10
Author: jotix100 from New York

How to remake the image of a once unpopular president, who is now a candidate and how to market him and sell him to voters, is the basis of this excellent documentary. Rachel Boynton chronicles in vivid detail about the experience in this wonderful documentary.

The idea of importing a team of American image consultants that have been notorious in the United States for their work in helping elect president Bill Clinton, not once, but twice, seems to be a novel idea for politics in South America. How will this team, headed by James Carville fare in helping to elect Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a man who was an unpopular president in that country, seems to have made some sense to this candidate for his successful bid for a second term. After all, Mr. Sanchez de Lozada governed the country from 1993 to 1997, so why try to have the campaign run by Mr. Carville and his gang of experts?

Ms. Boynton takes us, the viewers behind the scenes to meetings that one would imagine would have been closed to her camera crew. We see people like Jeremy Rossner and the advertising pundit Tad Devine shooting ideas about how to present the candidate for a possible victory. American style campaign tactics seem to be the selling point to the candidate and his team. After all, the stakes are high and the man running for office doesn't want to take any chances. There are a lot of candid moments in the film which seem to indicate the director got a free hand about what to capture in film.

Rachel Boynton shows a knack for capturing all the insanity of the situation and the people preparing a man to be accepted by his people with an American team behind him. "
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492714/

It looks like DC advisers from several administrations are crawling all over Honduras. Since most of the advisers seem to have ties to Pres. Clinton's administration, maybe we should be taking a look at how the coup might help the either or both Clintons personally.

At the press conference with the Pinochettis in DC that I attended, I saw two holdovers from previous administrations:

The first is Lanny Davis, who was White House Counsel to Pres. Clinton. Since the White House days, Davis has spun to the right; he serves as treasurer for a Joe Lieberman PAC and is a special advisor to The Israel Project.

Also, fussing obsessively with the cloth for the press conference table,was Jose Cardenas formerly with the Cuban American National Foundation and appointed by Bush to the USAID where he served as acting chief of the Bureau of Latin America and Caribbean. He was the master of figuring out how to push destabilization grants to NGO's outside of the United States so no one could track who the US was collaborating with to overthrow the Government of Cuba.

Here's a more detailed bio -- he's perfect to work on a coup in Honduras:

"Biography of José R. Cárdenas
Acting Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean

José R. Cárdenas is Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Latin America and Caribbean Bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development. He joined the Bush Administration in February 2004 and served more than two years as a Senior Advisor in the Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau of the U.S. Department of State. In August 2006, he joined the National Security Council, serving as a Director in the Western Hemisphere Directorate until November 2007. At various times, his portfolios at the NSC included Brazil and the Southern Cone, Central America and the Caribbean Basin, and the Andean Region. Prior to joining the Bush Administration, he served in senior positions with the Organization of American States and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He began his career advocating on behalf of a free Cuba with the Cuban American National Foundation, which he joined as a staff assistant before working his way up to Director of its Washington operations. He lives in Vienna, Virginia, with his wife and four children."
http://www.usaid.gov/about_usaid/bios/bio_jcardenas.html

I had a feeling when I saw Bill Clinton getting huge speaking fees for pushing free trade in Colombia that it wasn't a one time event.

They have blood on their hands.

How could a party which championed civil rights in this country, which created ALL the legislation which produced fairer treatment of workers, work safty standards, child labor laws, etc., etc. EVER link arms with the same people who have been using the working men and women in Latin America like tissues?

It's far worse than that because these same Latin American nazis are also racists of the most virulent strain. There's not ONE good quality among the entire mob of them.

Well, Latin Americans will NOT back down. They've been down already, and they know how they got there: at the hands of the right-wing plundering, t orturing, murderous greedy oligarchs who appear to be bosom buddies now with Obama's State Department.

Al GiordanoPosted: July 14, 2009 12:37 AM
Lobbyist Lanny Davis Seeks a Rematch with Obama over Honduras Coup

Dear Mr. President:

Remember, during the 2008 presidential primaries, the constant screeching national media presence from lawyer-lobbyist Lanny Davis? Yeah, him. The guy who night after night went on every cable TV channel to scream that Obama wasn't electable, that Obama couldn't win swing states, that Obama couldn't win white voters, that Obama had to explain his position on race, that Obama couldn't answer the 3 a.m. phone call...

He's baaaack.

And now he's representing the Honduran coup d'etat.

Yup, one of those very same bottom-feeding lobbyists who you banned from your administration is now out to prove that you really are the "inexperienced" rube he said you were.

And (as your Spanish-speaking US citizen it is my duty to inform you) the way that much of Latin America sees it, your administration - and particularly your Secretary of State - are being successfully played by.. cough... cough... Lanny Davis!

Who can forget Lanny's January 17, 2008 "Open Letter" to you, asking: "What Exactly in the Clinton-Era Nineties Did You Not Like?"

Well, other than lobbyists wagging the dog of Washington (in general) and Lanny Davis (in particular), I'll bet that heavy-handed US policy over the previous 28 years (including the 1990s) toward Latin America didn't leave a good taste in your mouth either, Mr. President. It certainly didn't down here.

When Lanny Davis bellies up to the roulette wheel and shouts "bet on red" you know it's the hour to put all your chips down on black. The guy is a walking, talking piece of inverted litmus paper with a bow tie, like on February 28, 2008, when he lectured, "Recent Polling Data Shows Serious Concerns About Senator Obama's "Electability" over Senator McCain vs. Senator Clinton's."

Or when, on March 2, 2008, Lanny Davis claimed:

One in five white Democrats (20%) would defect to Senator McCain if Senator Obama were the nominee.

Mr. President, you won 85 percent of that group last November.

In that same tome, Lanny wrote:

When the phone rings in the middle of the night at the White House, isn't it valid for voters to ask whether Senator Obama tends towards indecisiveness, given his past record of ducking votes, voting "present," or saying "I don't know" when asked how he would have voted on the war -- all the while criticizing Senator Clinton's "judgment" for voting for the resolution at the time?

See what he's trying to do with the Honduras coup, Mr. President? Lanny Davis' Honduras gambit is an attempt to prove that he was right all along: that you are "indecisive," and that you'll "duck" your civic duty to put the hammer down on the coup through the tools at your immediate disposal: full-on economic sanctions and by unleashing your law enforcement agencies on the gang of money launderers, narco-traffickers, ex-Cuban terrorists and others that have conspired and acted to turn Honduras into the rebirth of the 1950s Batista project in Cuba: a veritable mobster-state and safe haven for all of them.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-giordano/lobbyist-lanny-davis-seek_b_231152.html

Who's behind Lanny Davis' putsch paycheck?
Posted by Bill Conroy - July 14, 2009 at 9:13 pm

Following the money trail in the Honduran coup


Going to bat for an illegal coup used to be the job of shadowy CIA operatives back in the good ol' days of the Cold War.

But that is bygone era. Today’s junta-enablers no longer have to work in secret. In fact, illegal usurpers can now shop openly in Washington for a hired gun of their choosing to grease the wheels of Congress and commerce to assure their coup d'état remains a fait accompli.

Enter Lanny Davis — a long-time friend and Yale Law School chum of Hillary Clinton and former White House Counsel to Bill Clinton .

Davis also is a lawyer and lobbyist now employed by the D.C. office of global law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. In that capacity, Davis was recently retained by the Business Council of Latin America (CEAL) to hawk for the coup in Honduras — or as is the preferred description among the pushers of simulation, the administration of “de facto” Honduran President Roberto Micheletti
Davis is now scampering about the Hill setting up meetings with Congressional insiders and throwing money around on advertising and other such frills to build a case for supporting the new militarily elected Honduran regime.

Davis may be many things, but one thing he is not is cheap. So the question is begged: Whose paying for this charade?
The best way to get a peek under those covers most certainly should be to take a look at who is in bed with CEAL, Davis’ current contract employer.

Well, here’s the scoop on the pecuniary bedfellows:

Camilo Alejandro Atala Faraj, president of the Honduras chapter of CEAL, also happens to be a vice president of a major banking institution in Honduras, Banco Financiera Comercial Hondurena S.A
The president of the lender is an individual named Jorge Alejandro Faraj Rishmagui, and at least three other bank managers have last names indicating they are likely related to the Faraj clan.

Current information on the bank is a bit hard to come by, at least in English, but it seems the lender did make a filing with the U.S. Federal Reserve System in 2005, that states, in part, the following:

Order Approving Establishment of a Representative Office

Banco Financiera Comercial Hondurena, S.A. (“Bank”), Tegucigalpa, Honduras, a foreign bank within the meaning of the International Banking Act (“IBA”), has applied under section 10(a) of the IBA (12 U.S.C. § 3107(a)) to establish a representative office in Mi ami, Florida. The Foreign Bank Supervision Enhancement Act of 1991, which amended the IBA, provides that a foreign bank must obtain the approval of the Board to establish a representative office in the United States.

The Bank, with total consolidated assets of approximately $612 million, is the fourth largest commercial bank in Honduras and provides wholesale and retail banking services through a network of domestic branches.

In the United States, Bank has licenses to operate nonbank subsidiaries in Florida, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, and Virginia that engage in money remittance services.

So, it seems Banco Ficohsa has both Honduran and U.S. interests to protect in throwing its lot in with the new usurper regime.

And interestingly, one of the criticisms of the Zelaya government is that it has not been sufficiently pro-business — tending toward friendly relations with that pesky populist Hugo Chavez.

The Honduran banking community is not all that large, at least by U.S. standards, with only a couple dozen banks operating in the country — and only a small slate of foreign-owned banks, one of which happens to be Citigroup. That famous brand name bank, of course, was once home to Robert Rubin, who served as its director, executive committee chair and briefly as chairman — after a stint as Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton and before that as a suit at Goldman Sachs.

Citigroup, under its subsidiary Citibank Overseas Investment Corp., operates Banco Citibank de Honduras S.A. Now, given the cozy size of Honduras’ banking industry, it’s likely Citigroup and Banco Ficohsa officials have shared some wine and cheese over discussions of global politics and free trade, but there is no indication at this point that any Citigroup money is in the pot to pay Davis’ lobbying expenses on behalf of CEAL.

Another player in CEAl, listed as the vice president of the Honduran Chapter, is Jesus Canahuati, who is an executive vice president with a Honduran company called Elasticos Centroamericanos y Textiles, which is part of a Honduran conglomerate called Grupo Lovable.

Founded by an entrepreneur named Juan Canahuati in the 1960s, Grupo Lovable now ranks as one of Honduras’ largest employers and has operations in textiles, water and sewage treatment, industrial parks and even an electric plant. Canahuati is credited as being one of the nation’s visionaries in pushing for free-trade and opening up Honduras to U.S. investment.

And yet another player in CEAL, listed as its “coordinator,” is an individual named Miguel Mauricio Facusse Saenz, who lists his corporate affiliation as being with Corporación Dinant S.A., which is a subsidiary of another Honduran mega-business called the Grupo Dinant Cos. — which produces snacks, agricultural products and food products.

Just this past June, the Inter-American Investment Corp. (IIC) provided Grupo Dinant with a loan package worth up to $7 million. The IIC is part of the Inter-American Development Bank, which is based in Washington, D.C., and is charged with fostering economic and social development in Latin America. Luis Alberto Moreno, a Colombian diplomat, currently heads the bank.

But it appears the IIC isn’t the only entity that has lent Grupo Dinant money. A short news item carried by Summa News indicates that a syndicate of banks, including Banco Financiera Comercial Hondurena, last spring provided Grupo Dinant subsidiary Corporación Dinant with a $77 million loan.

So, it seems the business interests behind CEAL are flush with cash, enough of it anyway to line Davis’ pockets for the foreseeable future as he seeks to legitimize the bloody Honduran coup in the eyes of Congress and, apparently, for the benefit of commerce.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/07/whos-behind-lanny-davis-putsch-paycheck