The Hillary Clinton emails released last week include some telling exchanges about the June 2009 military coup that toppled democratically elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, a leftist who was seen as a threat by the Honduran establishment and U.S. business interests.
At a time when the State Department strategized over how best to keep Zelaya out of power while not explicitly endorsing the coup, Clinton suggested using longtime Clinton confidant Lanny Davis as a back-channel to Roberto Micheletti, the interim president installed after the coup.
During that period, Davis was working as a consultant to a group of Honduran businessmen who had supported the coup.
In an email chain discussing a meeting between Davis and State Department officials, Clinton asked, “Can he help me talk w Micheletti?”
Davis rose to prominence as an adviser to the Clintons during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and has since served as a high-powered “crisis communications” adviser to a variety of people and organizations facing negative attention in the media, from scandal-plagued for-profit college companies to African dictators. His client list has elicited frequent accusations of hypocrisy.
Davis was not the only foreign agent with access to Clinton. As The Guardian and Politico have reported, other emails point to lobbyists with direct access to Clinton’s personal email.
The request to talk to Davis came on October 22, 2009, a crucial turning point for the “de facto” government that had ousted Zelaya.
A week later, Clinton and her top aides reportedly brokered a deal to bring Zelaya back to power through a national unity government. But the deal was no “breakthrough,” as some media outlets reported. Rather, there was a huge loophole, providing the pro-coup Honduran legislature with veto power over Zelaya’s return. The supposed plan fell apart, and the “de facto” government sponsored what many considered a fraudulent election while denying Zelaya’s return.
The election, on November 29, 2009, was beset by violence, with anti-coup organizers murdered before the election and the police violently suppressing an opposition rally in San Pedro Sula and shutting down left-leaning media outlets. Major international observers, including the United Nations and the Carter Center, as well as most major opposition candidates, boycotted the election. As journalist Jesse Freeston documented for the Real News Network, election officials provided wildly disparate estimates for election turnout. The election paved the way for coup-supporters from the National Party to solidify power.
Rather than seeing this as a failure, the Clinton emails released last week further confirm that the State Department had sought the permanent ouster of Zelaya all along.
State Department officials bucked the demands of most Latin American countries and rushed to recognize the election as “free, fair and transparent.”
In an email titled “Notes from the Peanut Gallery,” Thomas Shannon, the lead State Department negotiator for the Honduras talks, gushed over the election results in a message that was sent to Secretary Clinton.
“The turnout (probably a record) and the clear rejection of the Liberal Party shows our approach was the right one,” wrote Shannon, who recommended that the U.S. should “congratulate the Honduran people” and “connect today’s vote to the deep democratic vocation of the Honduran people.” Shannon, then the assistant secretary of state for Western hemisphere affairs, expressed gratitude that Zelaya was out of power, referring to the ousted president as a “failed” leader.
The Shannon emails “show what we knew all along: the U.S. wanted the elections to solidify the changes wrought by the coup,” said Dan Beeton, international communications director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
It was Shannon, notably, who signed the accord to bring Zelaya back to Honduras, and then shocked Latin American leaders by suggesting on CNN days later that the U.S. would recognize the results of the election even if Zelaya was not restored.
Despite claims to media outlets that they were working to restore the democratically elected Honduran government, the U.S. made other efforts to ensure the coup government’s grip on power. In October 2009, the United States blocked a resolution from the Organization of American States requiring Zelaya’s return as a precondition for elections. The U.S. also failed to officially determine that a “military coup” occured, and did not cut off aid to Honduras as is required by law following a coup.
An August 2009 email chain with Harold Koh, then the State Department legal adviser, discussed how to deal with the foreign aid issue, which in Honduras is largely administered through the Millenium Challenge Corporation. The email chain carried the subject line “Honduras Military Coup Decision,” includes an email from Koh noting that Honduras might fall under “specified legal prohibitions on assistance.” Koh wrote that Secretary Clinton, as chair of the MCC board, would have a considerable voice over the determination of Honduras as a coup country. Unfortunately, much of the memo Koh prepared is redacted and Clinton’s response is not revealed in the email chain.
In her 2014 book, Hard Choices, Clinton readily admits that in the days after the coup, she spoke with leaders in the Western hemisphere about “a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.” Mark Weisbrot, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which has monitored the human rights situation in Honduras, refers to this line as a “bold confession.” Zelaya’s return was “anything but moot,” Weisbrot has argued, noting that Latin American leaders and the United Nations General Assembly demanded Zelaya’s return.
(This post is from our blog: Unofficial Sources.)
Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty
Mr. Fang, what did the MCC board do? Inference ought to be sufficient to know what Sec. Clinton did. The redaccton, too, may speak volumes. Lip service Clinton all the way including Monika L. x m.r
“Davis was not the only foreign agent with access to Clinton. As The Guardian and Politico have reported, other emails point to lobbyists with direct access to Clinton’s personal email.”
Lanny Davis is no foreigner, or foreign agent, to the USA. He’s a red, white and blue latter-day filibuster in the grand style of Bill Walker. As in days past there are still ‘friends of America’ willing to sell out their nation and their people for ‘progress’ and a US trained and equipped military and police forces to back them up. Lanny makes his living from them.
There’s nothing new here – big business IS US politics.
Hillary is one dangerous fascist warmonger.
Maybe this is what they mean by “land of the free”. As in, we’re going to rig every election in every foreign country we possibly can, but here in the good ole’ US of A you’re free to vote orthodoxy every time.
If not cutting off aid is required by law, then you can’t blame Hillary Clinton or the Obama administration. Bad laws should be changed via legislation, not simply flouted, since that leads to disrespect for the law. If Clinton followed the law, then I must begrudgingly admit she has done the right thing at least once in her career.
So I was wrong about her.
a reminder: it’s not just Hillary Clinton. She is guilty of war crimes and should be arrested, prosecuted, and hanged, along with the other war criminals, but make no mistake: she’s not alone.
Peace Negotiations or War Preparations? Colombia, Iran, China, Cuba, Ukraine, Yemen and Syria
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=2037
Washington’s Two Track Policy to Latin America: Marines to Central America and Diplomats to Cuba
petras.lahaine.org/?p=2035
Latin America and the Anglo-American Booby-Left
petras.lahaine.org/?p=2028
Obama’s War in our Hemisphere and Venezuela’s National Liberation Struggle
petras.lahaine.org/?p=2025
Yeah, fur-shur theres’ a pack ‘o’ blood thirsty maniacs around her alright. Being the control freak, does she covet leader of some pack now? Dangerous ‘Darth’ Cheeeney was/is scary enough. btw, she may be slicker than willie whom i think she schooled & suggested he learn to cry, though probly not a single tear in her whole cold slithery bod.
Philip Geraldi looks at how the war criminals are prospering in the DC Cess-pit.
http://www.unz.com/article/where-are-they-now/
A sidebar. The UN is reopening the Dag Hammarskjold case; they suspect the Secretary General’s plane was shot down.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/06/un-further-inquiry-dag-hammarskjold-crash
Of, course, reports the Guardian,
Ban is totally compromised. He could never be Secretary General without the support of our corpo-government.
After the coup in Egypt, the Obama Administration sang a few choruses of “Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead”, refused to use the C-word even though it was a military overthrow of a democratically elected government, and didn’t cut off military aid as required by law for countries that have coups.
not too surprising; The Fake Smiling Snakehead Hillary was a Pimped-Out Whore Shill for the Big Money Interests, ‘Move along, nothing 2 see here’, just the business of babylon, as usual..
Hearing Hillary Clinton’s name or seeing her picture makes me dizzy and nauseous. Imagining her as President makes me want to throw up. Feeling sick right now…she is a truly disgusting human being.
What’s got me annoyed is why they’re obsessing about Benghazi, when her record in Honduras, Morocco and Haiti alone should disqualify her. Of course, it may have something to do with the fact that no one at the RNC or Fox can spell “Tegucigalpa”.
Not to mention her role in fomenting war and atrocities in Libya, and Yemen and Ukraine.
TequillaGulpa whaaat, lol? Well i’m torn up about Benghazi cause i wonder bout poor ted stevens; what was that bitchwax sneaking weapons to the contras (i mean).. syrian rebels thu there, via turkey and then the natives got pissed wen they found out and decided 2 blew up her evil little scheme?? Ref: Dandy Randy..
You read my mind….
“she is a truly disgusting human being.”
are you sure she is a human being?
Gushingly beautiful gagography, Alana.
Must ..go..spew…..n o w !
Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland, anti-democracy coup managers, both.
Just in case Hondurans have any illusions about self-determination.
I mean, can you imagine Russian politicians congratulating themselves over the results of a US election, and what that would mean?
Hillary is just such a vile scoundrel …
And let us not forget this, courtesy of the Wikileaks files.
http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-haiti-minimum-wage-the-nation-2011-6
This was, of course, the Obama Administration getting wrathy over the idea that Haitian workers might get a princely 61 cents an hour, instead of 31. Two fun facts from other coverage: 1. This was after the big earthquake, when they could have used a few extra pennies, and 2. she was still Secretary.
Again, let me recommend The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, due out next month, which provides some nice instructions as to how to research their online cable archives. Hillary’s e-mails are interesting reading, and the archive can, added to stories like this one, show how she did business. She doesn’t look terribly progressive trying to impose “free, fair and transparent” local governments around the world.
The neolibcon coup defenders Hillary and Obama seem to know that most Dem voters will remain blissfully ignorant.
I’d like to see some blowback, but to my knowledge Bernie hasn’t used the vast trove of examples like this to set himself apart… and third party candidates and libertarian voices are nowhere. Sure would be nice if TI put some effort there btw.
Another fantastic article doing due diligence on those emails!
But lest anyone forget, wasn’t Hillary Clinton the chair at MCC (Timothy Geithner, deputy chair) when Zelaya was ousted by that business-supported military coup and wasn’t the MCC either financing, or partially financing, said coup?
If I recall correctly, the Wall Streeters didn’t like President Zelaya simply because he wanted to raise the national minimum wage by a few pennies?
Also, Honduras since has been the site of privatized cities, hasn’t it?
According to Wikipedia, She was Secretary January 21, 2009 – February 1, 2013. As to the minimum wage, that may have been the case as it was in Haiti in 2011 (see my post above), but Zelaya’s main sin seems to be he wanted to join a Caribbean trade association that included Venezuela and Cuba. Silly man thought, being President, that he could run his country, not the U.S. Secretary of State.
SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED. VOTE HILLARY 2016.
But there is hope
http://careandwashingofthebrain.blogspot.com/2015/07/hillary-clinton-killed-in-bizarre.html
Thanks for the article. Found an attack dog for Hillary to use against Bernie Sanders.
Lanny
Hillary does have a track record that requires a lot of work to get out what she actually did.
On the other hand, Bernie’s positions have been consistent for 30 years
But here in the “land of the free” (trade mark) a coup here or there on a third world country is no big deal
But for those who pay attention, it is part of the effort of the plutocracy to gain control
Bernie Sanders is a honorable human being and Hillary Clinton is a lying corrupt backstabbing lobby-whore.
No, no, whores perform honest fee-for-service transactions. See, e.g., the Western Sahara/Clinton Trust affair for something dirtier.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/13/is-hillary-clinton-taking-blood-phosphate-money-from-morocco
Any e-mails on this one, Lee?