U.S. Expansionism

POLITICS
Transcript: Otto Reich
The full transcript of our discussion on whether the US should get out of Latin America.
08 Apr 2015 13:21 GMT | Politics, Latin America, US & Canada, Venezuela, Cuba
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Read the full transcript of Head to Head  -

Should the US get out of Latin America? below:
Part one

Mehdi Hasan VO: For over a century the US has intervened, invaded, or supported coups. In almost every country in the Americas and treated its southern neighbours with contempt. But a new wave of democratically elected left wing leaders are no longer putting up with it.
My guest tonight was at the heart of US Latin American policy. Under the last three Republican presidents and advocates a much stronger hand against Cuba, and Venezuela
I’m Mehdi Hasan and I've come here to the Oxford Union to go head to head with Otto Reich. I'll be asking why many in Latin American see him as the personification of US imperialism and whether his country is guilty of bullying its neighbours?
Tonight I'll also be joined by: Dr Julia Buxton, a specialist on Venezuela and the War on Drugs at the Central European University; John Dew, former British Ambassador to Cuba and Colombia, and a former political attache in Venezuela; and Dr Francisco Dominguez, Head of the Latin American Studies Centre at Middlesex University and Secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Otto Reich.
Mehdi Hasan VO: George W. Bush's top official for Latin America, he was also linked to the Iran-Contra affair under President Reagan.
Mehdi Hasan: Otto Reich what would you say to those who argue that for far too long the United States has treated Latin America rather dismissively, rather high-handedly, as its backyard you hear that phrase often. In fact Secretary of State John Kerry used the phrase backyard just last year. What would you say to people who say that is the attitude of America, of the United States of America, it looks down on the rest of the region?
Otto Reich: Well I'd say he should not have used the term backyard, I've never used it. I haven't heard people in a Republican administration, I don't want to get too partisan, but…
Mehdi Hasan: He's a Democrat obviously and you were a Republican, or are a Republican.
Otto Reich: Your question leads to a misunderstanding, on the part of both Latin Americans and the United States. They think that the term backyard, which I do not think should be used is pejorative. The backyard in American society is where the family gets together for its most intimate moments.
Mehdi Hasan: That's good spin.
Otto Reich: Well, it happens to be true.  I use the term neighbourhood.  I think Latin America is our neighbourhood.  If something happens in our neighbourhood it affects us and vice versa.
Mehdi Hasan: And, and are you the neighbourhood watch?  Are you in charge of that neighbourhood?
Otto Reich: We have been, unfortunately, because as a, as in many neighbourhoods, there are some very bad people in the world,  and there's been some very bad people in Latin America, and I've been involved in cases where Latin Americans have asked us to intervene in their countries.
Mehdi Hasan: The United States has clearly done a lot of good things in Latin America, let's be clear about that. At the same time, surely you would accept that the US also, has a pretty blood-stained record. Supporting coups, dictators, across the region, Samosa in Nicaragua, Pinochet in Chile, Stroessner in Paraguay, Batista in Cuba, death squads in Honduras, genocidal military dictators in Guatemala. So you'd surely not deny any of that, the blood-stained historical record in that neighbourhood?
Otto Reich: If you look at the historical record, there's no question that the United States, that many United States governments made a lot of mistakes and supported the wrong people.  You mentioned just about the entire panoply of mistakes.
Mehdi Hasan: Mistakes? Is that what you would call them? These people committed horrific crimes.
Otto Reich: Mistakes from the perspective of where we stand today.  Yes, in retrospect, they were mistakes. We're also the country that got rid of several of the people that you mentioned.
Mehdi Hasan: That doesn't make the initial crime any better, does it?
Otto Reich: Well, I'm not sure there was a crime.
Mehdi Hasan: If you take Guatemala, for example, General Rios Montt, who was the dictator there who went to jail for genocide. Ronald Reagan, your former boss, went to visit him in 1982, and after coming out of the meeting he said he's a man of great integrity, he's committed to democracy, he’s getting, quote, "a bum rap" from human rights groups.  A UN Truth Commission said he couldn’t have done that without US military aid and support. Genocide, 200,000 people died!
Otto Reich: Ok, I was in the Reagan administration in 2000 sorry, in 1982.  I don't recall that visit.
Mehdi Hasan: The fact that you don't recall the visit doesn't mean it didn't happen, with respect. So the UN Truth Commission Report that involved US testimony and Guatemalan testimony and experts from outside, which said that Guatemalan military would not have been able to carry out their genocide in the Eighties had it not been for US support, you don't agree with that?
Otto Reich: There was no US support.
Mehdi Hasan: There was no US support for Rios Montt, and Reagan never said he was getting a bum rap?
Otto Reich: I don't recall President Reagan ever making that statement.  I do recall this.  When Reagan came in in 1981, over 60 percent of the population of Latin America lived under military dictatorships, when he left in 1989, over 60 percent of the population lived in democracies.
Mehdi Hasan: And of all of those places, hundreds of thousands of people died, killed by military forces, paramilitaries armed by the US, supported by the US, trained by the US, funded by the US.
Otto Reich: Not true.
Mehdi Hasan: Ok, let's talk about Venezuela, you were President Reagan's ambassador there in the late 1980s.
Otto Reich: That's right.
Mehdi Hasan: You were President George W Bush's Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, basically for Latin America, you were in that post in 2002 when Hugo Chavez was removed from office in a coup. Was the United States Government, were you, Otto, involved in any shape or form in that coup, because a lot of people believe you were?
Otto Reich: We were not involved, let me say that right from the outset. This was not a coup organised by the United States, this was the reaction by the military high command to an illegal order that Chavez gave to fire on the people of Venezuela, and it was not a coup. I mean, this was a mutiny.  When Chavez gave that order to fire on the people, the military high command all went on national television and said I did not take the oath to defend this county by firing, I'm not going to do that by firing on the people of Venezuela.
Mehdi Hasan: You say, You say it wasn't a coup.
Otto Reich: They went to the presidential palace and told Chavez, you're finished.  Now if you want to call that a coup, that's fine!  I call it a mutiny.
Mehdi Hasan: When you say I, do I want to call it a coup…
Otto Reich: You just did.
Mehdi Hasan: A week before the coup, the CIA called it a coup.  The CIA, in 2002, circulated a document a week before the coup, the mutiny, which was then only revealed in 2004
Otto Reich: How could the CIA have called it a coup a week before?
Mehdi Hasan: Well there you go. This is a CIA briefing.  It goes out to several members of the Bush administration, I'm not sure if you were on the list, guess what the memo is called from the CIA?  "Conditions are ripening for a coup attempt.  Dissident military factions, including some disgruntled senior officers are stepping up efforts to organise a coup against President Chavez, possibly as early as this month.
Otto Reich: Oh yeah, conditions were definitely pointing in that direction, and what caused…
Mehdi Hasan: Did you get this memo?
Otto Reich: No, I did not.  I did not.  I left the White House, after the State Department I went to the White House and left in 2004.  But I would not have been on this…
Mehdi Hasan: This is from April 2002.  This is from a week before the coup.  You were the Assistant Secretary of State…
Otto Reich: Oh yeah, no, I thought you said it was 2004.
Mehdi Hasan: It was only released in 2004, we only got to see that you guys weren't telling the full truth in 2004. Listen to this bit, this is good.  "To provoke military action, the plotters may try to exploit unrest stemming from opposition demonstrations later this month."  It's exactly what you just described.
Otto Reich: Of course everybody knew the conditions were there, but the detonator was Chavez's illegal order to fire on the people.  And it was illegal by his own constitution.
Mehdi Hasan: And you were happy to see him go.
Otto Reich: I was happy to see him go, yes.
Mehdi Hasan: You're not a fan of a man who won four elections in Venezuela.
Otto Reich: I’m not sure that he won four elections in Venezuela, but I was happy to see him go…even if…
Mehdi Hasan: What did he do with them, then?
Otto Reich: Do you think that these elections in Venezuela have been free and fair and transparent?
Mehdi Hasan: Some might say they were freer and fairer than the one that got your boss elected in 2000 in Florida!
Otto Reich: Well, they can say it, that's fine.  If they can show me, if they can show me a Supreme Court, as in the United States, that wasn’t appointed by Chavez, but in the case of the Supreme Court of Venezuela, they were all appointed by Chavez at some point then I would say well they may have a point.
Mehdi Hasan: In 2004, for example, thanks to good old WikiLeaks, we discover that the US Ambassador, his strategy, which he laid down to his team, penetrating Chavez's political base, dividing Chavismo, isolating Chavez internationally.  If a foreign ambassador arrived in Washington DC and had that as their set of goals about the US government, how would you feel about that?
Otto Reich: Oh, the US media does that.  They don't need a foreign ambassador to do that.
Mehdi Hasan: But you take my point.
Otto Reich: There's no question that we, we helped train, for example, private volunteering, NGOs, non-governmental organisations, in community organising. Because in Venezuela there was practically no history of civic involvement and civic organisation, but we didn't…  This is nothing.  Whatever we did, was nothing compared to what we did in Eastern Europe, that helped bring down those dictatorships, and I was very happy to see them go, and I would, I would have been very happy to see Chavez go at that moment, especially since we had nothing to do with it.
Mehdi Hasan: You don't believe Chavez was a totalitarian dictator, do you?
Otto Reich: No, I've actually said, and a lot of my Venezuelan friends have been upset, it's still not even a dictatorship today.  It is very much an authoritarian regime.  It has totally eliminated the free press, by either intimidating it or buying it. There's no more of the old Fidel Castro supporting guerrilla movements.  Now what they do, as in Chavez, Morales, Correa in Ecuador, etcetera, they win an election and that's the last free election that is held in that country. The military the police…
Mehdi Hasan: Hugo Chavez lost a referendum and abided by it!
Otto Reich: Which one?
Mehdi Hasan: In 2007, I believe on constitutional reform, extending the term limit.
Otto Reich: Exactly, he, but the one that he…
Mehdi Hasan: And he abided by the results.
Otto Reich: The one he really lost, the one he really lost, and then he changed the results was in 2004, August 15 of 2004.
Mehdi Hasan: We've got to move on, just very quickly, many would say that the reason the US had a problem with Chavez, and other left-wing leaders is because they don't follow a US political or economic agenda.  In Venezuela, Chavez did a lot to help the poor, to help people who were struggling under previous governments, didn't maybe help the rich so much didn't help the elites. Why don't you applaud Chavez for reducing poverty by half, absolutely poverty by 70 percent? [TALKING OVER] increasing the number of do…
Otto Reich: [INTERUPTING] Because he didn't. Number one, because he didn't.
Mehdi Hasan: Those are the World Bank's figures! That well known Communist organisation!
Otto Reich: Wait a second, where does the World Bank get its statistics?
Mehdi Hasan: You tell me.
Otto Reich: From the countries themselves.
Mehdi Hasan: Oh, so it's all, it's all manufactured statistics.
Otto Reich: Absolutely.  I will tell you he did reach out to the poor of Venezuela that had been ignored by the elites, but Chavez at the same time was interfering in the internal affairs of his neighbours, providing weapons to the FARC in Colombia, and you know there's a lot of evidence of that, real evidence.
Mehdi Hasan: Well, that’s disputed evidence, but one last question on Venezuela, because we have to move on.  You once called Hugo Chavez a president of, quote, "limited intellectual powers".  Do you see the irony of someone who once worked for George Bush mocking the intellect of other world leaders? [LAUGHTER APPLAUSE]
Otto Reich: It is true, he did graduate from Harvard and Yale so he kind of.., I mean Bush, not Chavez.
Mehdi Hasan: I'm sure Daddy didn't help at all. Let's bring in our panel here I want to come first to Professor Julia Buxton, who's a specialist on Latin America at the Central European University in Budapest.  Otto doesn't think Venezuela was very democratic under Chavez, that he didn't win four elections freely or fairly.  I believe you were an international observer at some of those elections, do you agree with Otto's take on that?


Further Reading: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2015/03/transcript-otto-reich-150330135026297.html