A TOP-SECRET NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY DOCUMENT, dated 2011, describes how, by “sheer luck,” an analyst was able to access the communications of top officials of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela.
Beyond the issue of spying on a business, the document highlights a significant flaw in mass surveillance programs: how indiscriminate collection can blind rather than illuminate. It also illustrates the technical and bureaucratic ease with which NSA analysts are able to access the digital communications of certain foreign targets.
The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, is a March 23, 2011, article in the NSA’s internal newsletter, SIDtoday. It is written by a signals development analyst who recounts how, in addition to luck, he engaged in a “ton of hard work” to discover that the NSA had obtained access to vast amounts of Petróleos de Venezuela’s internal communications, apparently without anyone at the NSA having previously noticed this surveillance “goldmine.”
That the NSA, unbeknownst to itself, was collecting sensitive communications of top Venezuelan oil officials demonstrates one of the hazards of mass surveillance: The agency collects so much communications data from around the world that it often fails to realize what it has. That is why many surveillance experts contend that mass surveillance makes it harder to detect terrorist plots as compared to an approach of targeted surveillance: An agency that collects billions of communications events daily will fail to understand the significance of what it possesses.
This newest revelation of NSA spying, reported as part of The Intercept’s partnership with teleSUR, comes just weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. government has launched “a series of wide-ranging investigations” into alleged corruption at Petróleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA. That the NSA had obtained access to the electronic communications networks of key PDVSA officials raises the question of whether the agency’s spying has secretly aided the criminal investigations into corruption as well as other government actions targeting the company.
Access to these official PDVSA communications came at a critical moment in U.S.-Venezuela relations, which have been fraught since Hugo Chávez was first elected president in 1998 and particularly since a failed 2002 coup attempt by U.S.-funded groups. Two months after the discovery of this spying access, the U.S. State Department announced the imposition of economic sanctions against PDVSA, accusing the company of trading with Iran in violation of unilateral U.S. restrictions.
At the time, Venezuela was also confronting multibillion-dollar arbitration cases in international tribunals filed by U.S. oil giants Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips. The companies claim the Chávez government illegally expropriated large-scale drilling operations in the Orinoco oil belt and handed them over to PDVSA subsidiaries without just compensation.
A heavy crude treatment plant operated by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, in the oil-rich Orinoco belt, April 16, 2015.
Photo: Carlos Garcia/Reuters /Landov
Spying on PDVSA: Discovering “a goldmine” by “sheer luck”
The NSA analyst who stumbled into this access began his investigation inauspiciously. As he recounts, he opened PDVSA’s website in a browser and wrote down the names of the company’s leaders. He then simply plugged those names into a handful of internal NSA tools and databases such as CADENCE, UTT and PINWALE.
He quickly compiled an enormous cache of valuable leads: over 10,000 employee information forms containing email addresses, phone numbers, and other identifying details — information that could be used to retrieve communications stored in the agency’s huge databases and for future targeting. The analyst also obtained 900 username and password combinations, which he handed off to the NSA’s top hacking team, Tailored Access Operations, to penetrate the company’s network and infect its leadership’s computers with malware.
“By sheer luck, (and a ton of hard work) I discovered an important new access to an existing target and am working with TAO to leverage a new mission capability,” he wrote.
“They’re capturing so much information from their cable taps that even the NSA analysts don’t know what they’ve got.”Prior to this breakthrough, the NSA’s spying efforts against Venezuelan energy operations were producing very little fruit, but not for lack of interest. Petroleum represents “more than half of all government revenues,” wrote the analyst, and thus, “to understand PDVSA is to understand the economic heart of Venezuela.” But a 2010 review showed that collection had gone “stagnant.”
One “telltale sign” that the NSA was failing on this target set, he said, was that “most reporting was coming from warranted collection.” That likely meant that the only surveillance the NSA was able to exploit was coming from communications transiting U.S. soil, which would require a secret warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
To ratchet up warrantless surveillance, the analyst decided to rebuild the collection strategy from scratch, running what he called a “target reboot” in search of “information at the highest possible levels” of PDVSA: “namely, the president and members of the Board of Directors.”
The analyst initially searched for those names in PINWALE, the NSA’s database of digital communications that have been automatically culled from the massive flows of intercepted data using a dictionary of search terms, or “targeting selectors,” including email addresses, IP addresses and user IDs.
This produced few emails from PDVSA’s leaders, but the 10,000 employee contact profiles, included those of PDVSA’s then-president, Rafael Dario Ramírez, and former company vice president Luis Felipe Vierma Pérez. “Now, even my old eyes could see that these things were a goldmine of valid selectors,” the analyst wrote, full of previously unmonitored “work, home, and cell phones, email addresses, LOTS!” In other words, the analyst had uncovered another set of leads to run against larger NSA data sets.
A screenshot from a top-secret NSA document showing the internal contact profile of Rafael Dario Ramírez, then-president of PDVSA.
Later, the analyst gleefully realized that these profiles were not available on the public web. They were all being served to private IP addresses. “WTHeck??? Yep, seems I had been looking at internal PDVSA comms all this time!!!”
Accessing a foreign private network is often technically challenging but bureaucratically simple by NSA standards, requiring low levels of internal review and legal authority. For a target such as an oil company, internal communications are the most valuable intelligence resource possible.
“It’s interesting that the analyst ‘discovered’” access to internal PDVSA communications, Matthew Green, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, wrote in an email to The Intercept after reviewing the document. The word “discovered” suggests that the NSA either “didn’t realize” it was collecting on this important source or there was an internal communications failure. The NSA possesses the equivalent of “a very ugly version of Google with half the world’s information in it” and a plethora of automated tools to exploit it, said Green, but “an analyst has to occasionally step in and manually dig through the data” to find the treasures hiding in plain sight.
“They’re capturing so much information from their cable taps that even the NSA analysts don’t know what they’ve got,” he added.
“PDVSA funds and runs the revolution”
Petroleum has long defined U.S. government and corporate interest in Venezuela, which possesses the largest proven reserves in the world. In a 1974 State Department cable, then-U.S. Ambassador Robert McClintock wrote: “As a principal supplier of oil and iron ore to the U.S., as a major trading partner and host to a large U.S. private investment, Venezuela is fa[r] too important to allow us to drift into an adversary relationship.”
Two years later, Venezuela would nationalize its oil reserves, but U.S. interests continued to be served for decades by a series of U.S.-friendly, U.S.-supported right-wing governments. That all changed when Hugo Chávez swept into the presidency in 1998 on a populist mandate and began to change the decadeslong status quo.
“Along comes Chávez and closes the loopholes in the 1976 nationalization law and alters the nature of the relations between the state and the foreign companies,” Miguel Tinker Salas, historian of Venezuela’s oil industry at Pomona College, told The Intercept.
Washington viewed the Chávez government as an economic and political threat that derived its power from petrodollars. According to a 2009 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, “PDVSA funds and runs the revolution.”
A sign at a gas processing plant east of Caracas, Venezuela, shows former President Hugo Chávez.
Photo: Diego Giudice/Bloomberg News/Getty Images
Prior to the Petrobras revelation, an NSA spokesperson told the Washington Post, “The [defense] department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber” (emphasis in the original).
After the Globo story, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper significantly narrowed that broad claim. In a statement, he acknowledged that the United States does conduct economic espionage: “It is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters, and terrorist financing.”
But Clapper denied such intelligence is used to directly benefit U.S. corporations. “What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line,” Clapper said.
Subsequent to the PDVSA “target reboot,” the U.S. executive branch has undertaken multiple actions — including sanctions against the state-run company in 2011, a money-laundering finding and an executive order, both in March 2015, and multiple reported corruption investigations — putting additional economic and reputational pressure on a company already squeezed by low global oil prices and protracted court battles with U.S. oil majors.
According to Tinker Salas, the Pomona professor, “It is difficult to imagine that the [U.S.] sanctions and the ongoing dispute with Exxon are not connected.”
In the lead-up to next month’s legislative elections, U.S. actions against the Venezuelan government have amounted to a “full-court press,” Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told The Intercept. “In recent months, Washington has been campaigning to de-legitimize the Venezuelan election, with leaks and even indictments from the Justice Department and DEA.”
On November 10, weeks before Venezuela’s national elections, DEA officials arrested two relatives of President Nicolas Maduro, who were indicted for allegedly conspiring to traffic cocaine to the United States.
Anonymous government officials told the New York Times last year that defendants in U.S. courts “have no right to know” if warrantless NSA surveillance collected abroad was used to build the case against them.
President Maduro said last month that he will file a lawsuit in the U.S. to challenge the executive order against his country.
The U.S. Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment from The Intercept.
PDVSA and Venezuelan government officials declined to comment for this story, as did the NSA.
____
Documents published with this article:
Why am I not surprised? During the “oil Strike”of 2002-2003, a US company (very closely associated with parts of the USG) was able to remotely shut down refineries around Lake Maracaibo. Chávez immediately regained control over his main export. The USG have been vigilant about the activities of Venezuela oil company officials since way before the time of Chávez. It should not surprise us that they are still spying on them now.
I would like to think that there are some “honest” people in government that will not accept a bribe. But when one doesn’t have a price, there’s always blackmail…
At this point, the National Security Administration, (a.k.a. the NSA, the pet “Strong Arm” of the Banksters and MegaCorps) possesses enough damning personal and private information to blackmail each and every person on the Supreme Court, each Democrat, each Republican, as well as most members of the MSM. Enough “dirty laundry” to maintain control and keep them ALL in line.
The FACT that the NSA, the National Security Administration, is SPYING on EACH AND EVERY PERSON in the USA was the most CRITICAL TRUTH in all of the evidence Edward Snowden exposed to the citizens of our country.
>>>> Any one entity that possesses that much personal and private information on each and every one of us, that entity, CONTROLS us; our loved ones, our friends …our government and our country. <<<<
Exclusive Interview with Former NSA Technical Director: William Binney…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWPc7FlQjGY
Our real enemies are not those living in a distant land whose names or policies we don’t understand. The real enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable, and historically, it’s ALWAYS profitable.
Our enemies are not thousands of miles away. They are right here in front of us. The Banksters and MegaCorps, as well as their minions, FedGov and the Media, have ruled this country for decades. Now in 2015, they believe they are our masters.
Are they?
We The People, must STOP squabbling among ourselves. That only serves our mutual enemies’, the Elites', objectives.
We've been torn apart and pit against each other with Politics, Religion, Sexuality, Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Age…
This is how they control us. And it's working.
Like The Strike!
https://www.facebook.com/TheStrike2015
welcome to the 90s
“According to Tinker Salas, the Pomona professor, ‘It is difficult to imagine that the [U.S.] sanctions and the ongoing dispute with Exxon are not connected.’”
Indeed, Exxon has a vested interest in advocating for U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. But who or what is Exxon and how does its influence translate into U.S. foreign policy? To begin with, ExxonMobil is the third largest publicly traded company by market capitalization. But, this is only the beginning of the story. Like most Multinational corporations, ExxonMobil employs a global business strategy of engaging in a network of Interlocking directorships for the purpose of “facilitating a community of interest among the elite of the corporate world that supplants the competitive and socially divisive ethos of an earlier stage of capitalism with an ethic of cooperation and a sense of shared values and goals.” The interlocks can be either direct or indirect in nature. A direct interlock is where corporations share common board members. An indirect interlock is established through a third party such as a bank or investment firm. Wikipedia reports:
“The largest corporations tend to have the most interlocks, and also tend to have interlocks with each other, placing them at the center of the network. Major banks, in particular, tend to be at the center of the network and have large numbers of interlocks. With the globalization of financial capital following World War II, multinational interlocks have become progressively more common. As the Cold War escalated, well-connected members of the CIA harnessed these interconnections to launder money through front foundations, as well as more substantial institutions such as the Ford Foundation. A relatively small number of individuals—a few dozen—bind this multinational network together by participating in transnational interlocks and sitting on the boards of multiple global policy groups (such as the Council on Foreign Relations).”
Here is a partial list of ExxonMobil’s Board of Directors (Name, Directorships, Foundation affiliate):
Michael J Boskin; Director of Oracle, Shinsei Bank, and Vodafone Group (CFR)
Peter Brabeck-Letmathe; Director of Nestle an L’oreal (European Round Table of Industrialists)
Ursula M. Burns; Director of Xerox and America Express; (vice-chair of the President’s Export Council)
Jay S. Fishman; Director of Travelers and The Carlyle Group
Henrietta H. Fore; Director of General Mills and Theravance Biopharma; (CFR)
Kenneth C. Frazier; Director of Merck; (CFR)
Douglas R. Oberhelman; Director of Eli Lilly and Company and Ameren Corporation; Cordell Hull Institute
Samuel J. Palmisano; Director of American Express and Chairman of the Board – IBM Corp.; (CFR)
Steven S Reinemund; American Express; Marriott, Walmart, and PepsiCo; The British-American Business Council
Note: CFR = Council on Foreign Relations
Note 2: Director = On Board of Directors
The matter of the NSA et al being overwhelmed by the amount of data they collect is a non issue. It’s interesting – this case with Venezuela but I don’t see the reason for all this effort.
With the amount of data being collected this kind of thing is no doubt inevitable. One must take into account that when you are dealing with domination of the entire planet (except for now China and Russia) and in control of 30-40 trillion dollars in annual commerce these issues are ones that get worked out over time. They don’t weaken your control, there is time to fix them.
The Empire of the Exceptionals is so vast and has so much power these details are of a secondary nature and almost trivial – there are far more important things like the encirclement of China now complete and the process of containment well underway especially in the South China Sea the projection of Imperial hegemony over China is a big deal this is not (to them).
Curious that no mention of 9/11 has been found in this vast rove of secret government documents – or has it?
Care to comment, Glenn?
“PDVSA and Venezuelan government officials declined to comment for this story,” Think about that.
Oops looks like you forgot to finish the quote: “PDVSA and Venezuelan government officials declined to comment for this story, AS DID THE NSA. [emphasis mine]”
And here’s another:
“The U.S. Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment from The Intercept.”
Maybe the fact that there’s an ongoing legal battle between PDVSA/the Venezuelan government and Exxon has something to do with not being able to comment. But what’s the NSA’s excuse?
Think about that.
It’s important to remember that NSA personnel, intelligence personnel and FISA judges all take a “supreme” loyalty oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution – these officials take an indirect loyalty oath – not an oath to the nation directly or the American people directly. This may be the most important “check & balance” designed by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution: subordinates check disloyal superiors by refusing those illegal orders (ex: Snowden, Kiriakou, etc).
Therefore NSA personnel aren’t employed by Exxon-Mobil or any other oligarch. It also raises questions about why the offshore wind industry has been defeated in this country off the Atlantic Coast – was the NSA involved in overturning the democratic will of the voters?
The 4th Amendment is actually built upon privacy laws in Old English law that forbid even the King from entering the home of any peasant. If foreign nations are sharing information about the other nation’s citizens and companies (in order to subvert their constitutions) – that violates centuries of English common law on privacy essentially creating a “ruling class club” where citizens are mere subjects, not self-government.
Congress should mandate “oath of office training” for government officials/contractors. In positions of extreme power mixed with extreme secrecy – isn’t integrity and proper loyalty the most important job requirement? This training is vital.
““What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line,” Clapper said.
— you’ve been caught lying so many times, Clapper. All that is left is to wait for you to inevitably be caught red handed helping microsoft / google / apple and wait for the fall out.
Wait. I’m confused. Isn’t this treasure trove evidence of state sponsored industrial espionage? Isn’t this a bad thing? One of these things is not like the other…
https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use-economic-espionage-benefit-american-corporations/
It’s good to know our glorious Marxist leader Obama is yet again standing up for his leftist ideals by trying to put the screws to any country even marginally trying to boot to the capitalist oligarchy from its shores…
US national security rests on the foundation of access to other countries’ natural resources. So I don’t quite buy the claim that finding a ‘goldmine’ of information from Petróleos de Venezuela was serendipitous. As another recent article points out, even the NY Times can no longer maintain the pretense that signals intelligence thwarts terrorism. Terrorists can hatch their plots face to face in a basement, but oil company executives operate internationally and can’t forego their electronic messaging and smart phones.
Without signals intelligence the US might not have foreseen Saddam Hussein’s plan to sell oil for Euros, or been able to thwart Gaddafi’s plans to promote the gold Dinar. Enormous resources have been poured into SIGINT, but enormous returns have been generated. Global hegemony is hard work.
Indeed, I clearly remember reading a TI article last year on a speech by Admiral Mike Rogers to U.S. business leaders, somewhere, and believing international commercial and industrial espionage advantages that the NSA could provide – was exactly what he was selling. I even comment complimented his battleship-sized pair – for having blatantly whipped it out in public that way. I mean heck, it’s so obviously within U.S. national suckurity interests to destroy every emerging economy possible, rob ’em blind and then also put ’em deeply in debt to this country’s greediest – that he might as well advertise.
The article and the document do not suggest that the targeting of PDVSA was unintentional or accidental. PDVSA already was an NSA collection & reporting target — this analyst set out to improve their targeting. In poking around, he realized that there was a “goldmine” of information in the extant collection that had not been noticed and was not being acted upon.
“Confessions of an Economic Hitman” by John Perkins:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man
Hi Charlene –
I recently acquired a copy of this! haven’t read it yet, but I’m sure it will be excellent.
The United States, and several other western nations, have been engaging in economic espionage, for decades.
It is well known, the idiotic denials from Clapper, and Brennan, and others, are, well, idiotic.
The Five Eyes surveillance alliance, led by the United States, along with England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, are beyond any doubt, infiltrating the security and corporaye computer systems of corporations, worldwide, stealing all manner of technological developments, proprietary se rets, and other secret data, to benefit corporate America.
The actions of our government in recent years, clearly indicate that the government is corporate controlled, and wholly owned by several national and international corporations.
Likewise, the single most destructive act ever perpetrated on a democracy, entirely to cement such corporate control and ownership, was the granting of personhood to all American corporations, by our Supreme Court, thereby rendering the ballot box useless, and continuing it’s existence, only as a perception management tool, to keep the people deluded.
We have fallen a very long way from when truth, liberty, and justice, were our hallmark; it is unlikely the drive to the end game of total subjugation will ever end, or be forced to end.
Americans have been lulled into a deep, deep sleep, and the few who are awake, have become apathetic, content with the modern version of Romes, “Bread and Circuses”, kept in a perpetual economic slavery condition, their will sapped, and completely unwilling to resist.
The only chance America has to break out of this prison, is to elect Bernie Sanders, and pray he is for real, and not just the next charlatan in this decades long perception management game.
According to this article/video, the United States has been a “corporation” since 1871 (“The Act of 1871″):
http://www.federaljack.com/slavery-by-consent-the-united-states-corporation/
Maybe all you lawyers on these pages can flesh this out and tell the rest of us if this is indeed true or is just so much hooey. Thanks.
Hi Charlene,
I am no lawyer, but I have also been interested in that same question. here is one of several websites which I found that attempts to informally take a stab at it:
http://www.supremelaw.org/letters/us-v-usa.htm
Say, Mel, when were the good o’l days? Truth? Liberty? Justice? You need to get out more.
I disagree that our only chance is to vote for Sanders and hope for the best. Isn’t that what we do election after election? How’s that working for you?
Let’s do something really courageous this election and vote AGAINST them. Vote against the Republican and Democratic candidates. Vote against the broken system. Vote against the status quo.
If we try to protest by not voting at all, it’s too easy to write us off as uninformed, lazy and apathetic. We need to show them that we actually went out of our way and made the effort to fill out a ballot…AND WE VOTED AGAINST THEM!
Want your vote to count? Vote third party. Any third party will do. Because remember, you’re not voting for someone, you’re voting against the status quo.
That the U.S uses espionage for economic proposes doesn’t surprise me, we live in problematic times in which competition between world’s players has become increasingly disloyal. Greenwald piece sites the usual suspects, friends of the Venezuelan regime, Mark Weisbrot and Miguel Tinker Salas, (George Ciccariello left out for some reason) and that partnership with Telesur. The piece comes in a time in which the Government is being crushed by public opinion, locally and abroad, for its corruption, nepotism, and human rights violations. It works perfectly as “evidence” for the government’s thesis of “the economic war” and its own endless victimization. I am very disappointed, some nations might need the solidarity and the support of some bright journalists like Mr. Greenwald, but not the Venezuelan.
Too bad that seriously pursued reporting doesn’t reliably serve whatever partisan agenda one might want at any given moment, I take it?
You are missing my point. It is up to the journalist to make that decision, and in the case of Mr. Greenwald, he is just sacrificing his reputation for a militarist dictatorship that doesn’t deserve it.
You didn’t remotely understand anything about this article, which had nothing whatsoever to do with defending the Venezuelan government or even arguing that this spying was wrong. Those were issues not at all included in this.
I also laugh audibly every time someone pronounces that I’ve lost my credibility because I have a different view than them on whatever issue they care about most. I promise you: my “credibility” isn’t determined by how hostile you think I am to the Venezuela government.
And yet you seem to suggest (or your article seems to suggest) that the information obtained by the NSA (PDVSA internal documents) may be the base for the legal cases some U.S. government agencies are pursuing against Venezuela. Or did I get that wrong?
(kind of helps to build the narrative favored by the Venezuelan government of “oh, poor us, the U.S. government have a vendetta against us, because we are socialists!”)
And this article is done as a partnership of sorts with TELESUR, the network funded by the Venezuelan government, so, that has nothing to do with the implications suggested by the article, or by the people quoted on it (like Mr. Tinker Salas, another pro-chavista official), right?
That the US has a policy of regime change in Venezuela is not even debatable. Cablegate is quite conclusive on that. Now, it doesn’t really have to do with Venezuela being “socialist.” Venezuelan “socialism” consists of a safety net for the poor, emphasizing social spending, having some control over corporations, the government owning some enterprises, but still only a minority of them. There’s nothing new or radical about it. What makes Venezuela different is not just that it’s independent of US hegemonic control: it’s explicitly “anti-imperialistic.” If Venezuela were a laissez-faire economy, but still “anti-imperialistic,” the US would still want regime change.
An “anti-imperialistic” government that is sided with Russia (a country that, of course, doesn’t have any imperialistic-like ambitions, oh no).
An “anti-imperialistic” government whose “socialist” elite use (quite frequently) their access to foreign currency (something that not every Venezuelan have) to travel and have quite a good life in “the empire”.
Laughable.
Where have I heard this before?
Oh yes, in the seventeen years of official Venezuelan propaganda I’ve witnessed while living in this “socialist” paradise…
Just because you’re part of the 10% in Venezuela who would love to see the country turned into another capitalist hell-hole playground for the U.S., doesn’t mean you speak for the rest of Venezuelans. You don’t. And speaking of “endless victimizarion”, do you honestly fucking believe that you and your ilk – the bougie capitalism-worshippers of Venezuela – are seen by the world as “victims”? Do you really think people don’t realize that you’re just a bunch of right-wing assholes?
Save your “poor neoliberal me” act for people stupid enough to believe it.
I didn’t see where Gina said anything about her citizenship/politics. but that sounds pretty rude. From everything I’ve read, Chavez and Maduro did leave Venezuela with some big problems. The Bolivarian social programs sounded like a good idea, yet they don’t seem to have produced the kind of benefits – like self-sufficiency without relying on oil revenues – that I would have hoped for from a 10-year program of investment in ordinary citizens.
But who am I kidding? My problem with Venezuela is that they’ve picked up an atrocious reputation for internet censorship (among other things). And censorship is the one sure sign of a villain. Everything else, you can argue some excuse for or another, but freedom of speech is the equator of all the rights of man – it divides reality from fantasy and serves as the lodge-pole of the edifice of liberty. When you see politicians impose censorship, there is no possible interpretation but that they intend to do wrong.
Wow, so the only opposition that exists in Venezuela comes from the very rich? This is so typical, fallacious and base (of the radical left abroad): Chávez “loved” the poor, so if anyone criticize him, or chavismo, he must by definition hate the poor, surely is a “fascist”, right?
Zzzzzz same re-heated speech over and over again, would be nice to see some improvements on it.
Do you realize that even if a government is incompetent and corrupt and so on, that doesn’t mean it’s not also the target of economic warfare? American planners are smart enough to realize that when a government’s support is weakest, that’s the best time to undermine it.
I bet that if the Bolivarian revolution falls out of favor entirely, US policy makers will pat themselves on the back. It wouldn’t be the first this has occurred. Nicaragua prior to 1990 is another example: The US relentlessly undermined the Nicaraguan economy and its security for years — threatening to continue to do so if it didn’t get its way — and then congratulated itself when its candidate won the 1990 election.
Why would the US consider it a goldmine to find the private communications of PDVSA executives, in charge of the Venezuelan state’s primary source of income? Rhetorical question.
I don’t understand the claim that the sanctions and Exxon dispute are connected, or rather that it’s “hard to imagine” that they aren’t. It doesn’t seem implausible to me that they’re unrelated: Dispute with Exxon because of nationalization of Exxon’s assets. Sanctions because Venezuela does business with Iran in violation of other sanctions. They could be related, yes, but I see no reason why they would have to be. I can easily imagine that they’re unrelated.
Furthermore, this claim is made within an insinuation that the U.S. is engaged in economic espionage. I do not understand how inadvertently spying on PDVSA implies that that spying was in the interest of helping Exxon in pre-existing legal disputes. In fact, that the NSA claims internally that the spying wasn’t originally purposeful implies the opposite conclusion, that the NSA was not spying on behalf of Exxon.
I appreciate the story, as I knew none of this beforehand. But I do not follow the conclusions (or accusations) made. I could be missing something. Assistance is welcomed.
“…nationalization of Exoon’s assets”
No, dumbass. Those assets belong to the people of Venezuela. The years in which Exxon was able to pretty much steal Venezuela’s oil doesn’t make it “Exxon’s assets”. Venezuela isn’t playing by the U.S.’s corrupt, greedy rules.
Thanks!
Fantastic reporting. None of it should be a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. The U.S. has been overthrowing & meddling in sovereign governments all over the world and destroying their countries for the last 65+ years. It’ll topple democratically elected, socialist governments where the majority live good, decent lives and install/prop up murderous governments where only the few benefit because they worship capitalism & are willing to sell out their own people to advance the US’s poisonous, greedy interests. Hopefully Venezuela (and other countries that have managed to keep the US from destroying them) will stay independent and keep the U.S.’s imperial, thieving hands off its land and oil. We’ll see.
Great documentary by Oliver Stone, “South of the Border”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvjIwVjJsXc
Documentary? More like a piece of Pro-Chávez propaganda…
In the tradition of “Comandante”, Oliver Stone and the rest of the Red Set applaud yet another autocrat…
Zzzzzzzzz
Anything more, big, on NSA and Petrobras, yet? The offshore oil leases were at a sensitive point and any leaked info on the bids would have caused problems. Among others.
http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21643224-one-many-casualties-petrobras-scandal-misguided-industrial-policy-whose-oil
What a co-incidence!
Weisbrot? Really? Weisbrot is a longtime paid agent of the Venezuelan narco-regime. Intercept partnered with Telesur, known across Latin America as a notorious propaganda machine for the Venezuelan narco-regime? Unsure what the point of this article is supposed to be, but compared to your other work this article is cowflop at best. Shame on you, Mr. Greenwald. Sloppy reporting, sloppy due diligence, quoting paid agents of a narco-regime whose highest-level officials are involved in drug trafficking, jail dozens of people on false political charges and manufactured crimes. I’ve lived and worked in Venezuela over 40 years. Obviously Intercept loves trashing the US. Good for you. There’s lots to trash in DC for sure and usually you’re right on the marl. But this article is palavrao de merda.
@ JBLenoir
Can you substantiate with links your claim that “Weisbrot is a longtime paid agent of the Venezuelan narco-regime”?
Or how about provide links proving “Telsur is known across Latin America as a propaganda machine for Venezuelan narco-regime”?
Can you even prove with links that “Venezuela is a ‘narco-regime'”? And what exactly are the precise criteria that makes a regime a ‘narco-regime’? Is Mexico a narco-regime? Are Bolivia and Columbia narco-regimes? How about Afghanistan’s regime, is it a ‘narco-regime’?
Mira Gringo en Caracas. No vale la pena debatir con imbeciles como los Sres Heard y Alana. Dejalos lucirse en su propia mierda.
Carlos, eat my shit, dude.
@ Carlos Aguilera
Here’s a hint–if you’re going to attempt to insult someone it’s best to do it in a language they comprehend.
Not sure if this is a direct translation of what your wrote:
If it is, all I can say is that’s up to you. But here’s a newsflash–among us morons at least, when you voluntarily make provocative assertions about an individual’s motives or biases, or government’s criminal nature, it’s generally accepted “debate” protocol that you substantiate those assertions with verifiable, you know, hechos or datos y cifras.
Otherwise all us morons will simply ignore you or assume rightly you can’t substantiate your assertions and are therefore not credible or persuasive. Similarly, we might just assume, again rightly, that you’re whining in a foreign language because you don’t have the huevos, intelecto or conocimiento to back up your claims in English.
Now I do apologize for not speaking Spanish (or Portuguese) or whatever language you are trying to insult me in, because I think as Americans we do a very poor job of showing the initiative and simple human courtesy of learning the languages, history and cultures of other human beings on the planet. So I am sincere when I say I apologize for not have the capacity to debate you in your chosen tongue. But if you’re going to come into a largely English speaking blog comments section and whine or attempt to insult someone it probably isn’t going to be very effective in a language other than English. Just sayin mi amigo.
Either way-whatever.
The American designation of narco-regimes is all so fluid, isn’t it. Canada was threatened with inclusion on the list of drug countries, (I think this is the same as ‘narco regime’), some years ago for its lax attitude toward marijuana, especially the growing of it. Our business community broke a leg getting to our political capitals to lobby for radical change in our policies toward marijuana, lest they suffer financially from the systemic impediments to trade that such designation carries. The American good ol boys in law enforcement must have busted a gut at our ‘enthusiasm to comply’. ……How embarrassing!!
@ Stuart Meade
Yeah the American government likes to have the linguistic and legal flexibility to label anybody, any thing or any nation as America’s elites see fit regardless of reality and regardless of the fact most human beings on the planet could give a shit what America or America’s leaders think or do. If it wasn’t for their capacity to economically starve out or bomb the ever living shit out of your land and peoples for not towing the American “line” wherever it happens to be drawn by America on any given day, people probably wouldn’t pay much attention to what America or Americans think or do.
That’s the downside or paradox of being an empire–nobody likes you and ultimately they get fed up with your fucking everybody in sight who isn’t in the inner circle of trust. And that’s when the shit hits the fan and our purported little empire folds or implodes. Hope I’m not around to see it because the civil war that will break out in America among Americas over the scraps of its former empire will make the rest of the globe’s civil wars seem like child’s play given the access to guns and explosives the American people have at their disposal. But at least we’ll probably be too occupied killing each other rather than everybody else on the globe, which I’m sure the rest of the globe will appreciate.
ultimately they get fed up with your fucking everybody in sight who isn’t in the inner circle of trust.
Pretty sure that Merkel is still a little raw from the fucking her inner circle (EEEEEEW!) took a while back. In fact, she was so enamored of it that she’s since acquiesced to the lubricants offered post-coitally to, um, ease the transition (as it were). :-s
I don’t know if Weisbrot is on a payroll or not. What I can say, is that he acts and talks more like a propagandist of chavismo, than as an academic, and that his closeness to the Venezuelan government (he has visited the country several times) compromises any integrity he might had had, if any. He takes anything chavismo is saying face value, and the rigorous criticism he exercises against the foreign press that covers Venezuela, disappears magically when it’s time to apply the same kind of deep analysis to Venezuelan state media.
(Also, he seems to be the only one to believe that Venezuela is not heading to an economic disaster of catastrophic proportions…)
To put it more bluntly (using a comment that was made about him sometime ago): If there were reports of the Venezuelan government burning cats and dogs on the streets, Weisbrot would surely applaud the measure, as an effective remedy against the rabies.
Butt-hurt much? Do facts and evidence make you sad?
For some people the simple task of providing facts to support or prove one’s assertions gives them a bad sadz. : (
For the rest of us it’s simply the way a rational person supports an assertion, tries to effectively persuade or prove and/or establishes credibility on a topic.
Unless of course the topic under debate or discussion is religion in which case it isn’t subject to rational scrutiny but rather faith in the unproveable. Which is mostly why those conversations with believers are generally pointless in the extreme.
That is what faith is. You are saying faith is faith.
Faith is complete confidence or trust in a person or thing; or a belief not based on proof.
If it could be proved it would not be faith.
You have said nothing at all.
@ tombrowns’ schooleddaze’
Uh yeah, I know. That’s why I said those discussions are largely pointless. Which is not to say that “faith” and/or some things that are unproveable are not super duper important and motivate millions of people all over the globe to do or refrain from doing one thing or another. But trying to talk them out of being motivated by their faith is basically a pointless and impossible task. You just hope, at least for us non-believers, that they tend on balance to pursue “good” ends as a function of their “faith” rather than “bad” ends (and of course what those are, bad or good, is subjective for the vast majority of humans).
Thanks for the reply.
I agree matters of such like are not really productive.
Faith in god or faith in no god are mutually exclusive.
Keep on keeping on Mr Heard.
I like your style.
Can you show evidence for the “narco-regime”? All I read about were two family members of a speaker of Parliament or some such getting bundled off to the U.S. because an informant said they talked about cocaine. They didn’t actually have cocaine, so far as I saw, and even if they did, the amount would have been large for a person but tiny for a country.
With Noriega still sitting in jail, the accusation of “narco-regime” sounds to me like a blatant threat of invasion by force and not much more. I imagine that some in the coup business think that driving Chavez into paranoia and a police state was a good idea, but it certainly doesn’t look like what I’d call a victory.
<>
sorry, unfamiliar with this editor. that was supposed to read, “applause!”
I was disappointed to read your reporting quality declined after such high standards on the MSF bombing in Kunduz. This piece uses speculation as a basis for connecting the dots as opposed to sources, even unidentified as in previous excellent Intercept pieces.
The US stumbles upon PDVSA data and presumably uses it to push its oil companies interests and target the Venezuelan government for the upcoming elections. No source or link other than Mr. Tinker Salas and Mark Weisbrot speculating point us to this, even if it’s true. Weisbrot is a die-hard fan of the Venezuelan government. If you read his previous articles, you’ll notice it’s like asking Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh to comment on Bush’s torture program. Even if you wanted to use Weisbrot, as it is your decision to do so, the type of journalism I expect from the Intercept would have pressed for proof. Tinker Salas simply offers “It is difficult to imagine that the [U.S.] sanctions and the ongoing dispute with Exxon are not connected.” That sounds more like a Fox News piece of journalism.
Furthermore:
“In the lead-up to next month’s legislative elections, U.S. actions against the Venezuelan government have amounted to a “full-court press,” Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told The Intercept. “In recent months, Washington has been campaigning to de-legitimize the Venezuelan election, with leaks and even indictments from the Justice Department and DEA.” ”
To “de-legitimize”? You can leave this source in and even that assumption as long as you also did your homework to note that the Venezuelan government has rejected any requests to observe the elections by non other than the Organization of American States (OAS), that while worthless, gives regional member states (many of who are impartial or friendly towards Venezuela’s government) a chance to show the world that the elections are free and fair. Add to that, rejecting the European Union observers, who have taken part if election observation missions in all kinds of scenarios and elections. You could have also included the concerns of the Secretary of the OAS in his recent letter about the upcoming elections: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/10/us-venezuela-election-idUSKCN0SZ33U20151110 surely, this is a good source as Secretary Almagro was even friendly to the Chavez government back then.
I could go on, but I would recommend you don’t feel too good about your reporting when you read the comments that agree with the speculation in the article (again, while it may be true) and yet have so many gaps. I turned to The Intercept recently after reading the ONLY high quality reporting on Afghanistan (ok maybe there are a couple of freelancers who are also as good as you guys) and now I am reconsidering.
Venezuela’s electoral system is essentially fraud-proof. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter called it “the best in the world” just a few years ago. Even Forbes wrote an article through clenched teeth admitting as much: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2013/05/14/venezuelas-election-system-holds-up-as-a-model-for-the-world/
And by the way, OAS is one of the most corrupt, dishonest entities out there. Especially after what it did to Haiti (literally stealing the election from the popular, elected candidate and giving it to thr U.S.’s prefered candidate – with no recount or reelection), the vast majority of the world couldn’t give two shits about it or take it seriously. It’s just another tool for the US to use around the world to serve its own economic and political interests.
1. If the electoral system is fraud-proof, do we just call of observer missions because Jimmy Carter said so? (a US president by the way..I’m linking here to your rationale that the OAS is a US tool..so you trust a former US president?). I think if they are fraud free then there should be no problem showing it again though observer missions.
2. I agree with your Haiti example. Ok. So which observer missions should Venezuela have? None? Let’s say the OAS is what you say it is (which in my first comment I did mention they are worthless), I used the OAS example to point to the Secretary’s letter asking why the Venezuelan government has rejected all but the UNASUR observers. Do they have anything to hide with the fraud-proof system? If you understood how corrupt and broken Venezuela’s institutions are (since before Chavez…way before) you would agree that there should be international oversight.
I definitely think there should be international oversight…just not by OAS or any organization tethered to the U.S. I also think the U.S.’s electoral process should be observed and monitored. As of today, the US has never allowed this – not even by the OAS. Probably because it knows it has one of the most corrupt and undemocratic electoral processes on the planet…
You do know that the US is often hostile to international election monitoring, don’t you? That’s fairly typical. Now, it appears that the Venezuelan government is open to monitoring from the OAS. I wonder if the US will allow OAS monitors to observe and report on its elections.
So if the US doesn’t allow monitors, Venezuela shouldn’t either? Should Venezuelans look to the US as a role model of election monitoring after Gore v. Bush? I don’t understand your point.
The point is that it’s normal for sovereign countries to see foreign monitoring of their elections with suspicion. But when the monitoring has colonialist/paternalistic overtones, that’s more than justified.
“We note that there are some apparent gaps in the electronic information. For
example, at this time, we are not sure we have all e-mails from the embassy’s
classified internal system. According to embassy information technology staff, they did not have enough recording tape to back up their systems fully; instead, they used the same tapes over and over again, and as a result, data from that time period may have been lost.”
Anyone who’s worked in IT admin knows this is a lie
@ Glenn & Andrew
Another great bit of investigative reporting guys!
One question:
Presumably the US State Department can impose economic sanctions against whomever it chooses and for whatever reason it chooses.
But can a country technically “be in violation of US restrictions” if those “restrictions” are “unilateral”? Or did Venezuela somehow (maybe through its UN membership or by UN agreement perhaps) agree to some restriction on its trading with Iran?
Which leads me to this question:
Again, unless PDVSA is a registered US corporate entity how could it be in violation of US anti-“money-laundering” laws or banking regulations, or be the subject of “corruption investigations”?
And finally:
Okay so is the situation this–at one time ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips had ‘legal or contractual’ rights, or rights via some ‘trade agreement’ between US and Venezuela (or other international treaty or agreement among nations), that gives either/both the ability to bring Venezuela or PDVSA before an “international tribunal”?
What I’m getting at is a) what is the legal jurisdictional basis for Exxon-Conoco, or the US, to bring Venezuela or PDVSA before any sort of international tribunal, and b) how can the US enforce “sanctions” against either? In other words what’s to stop Venezuela or PDVSA from simply blowing off an appearance at whatever “international tribunal” they’ve purportedly been required to appear before, and what’s stopping them from trading with whichever nations they choose in any manner they choose so long as that trading partner of Venezuela isn’t subject to some agreement with the US and notwithstanding whatever “sanctions” the US attempts to unilaterally impose on Venezuela or PDVSA?
As far as “economic espionage” being engaged in by the NSA, this should not surprise anyone who has been following the NSA leaks stories. I’d contend that “economic espionage” is the secondary, if not primary, function of the NSA.
I mean let’s do a little thought experiment, if ‘terrorism’ or ‘organized terrorist groups’ dried up tomorrow, exactly what function would the NSA serve to the US? The only viable military ‘enemies’ of the US on the globe are Russia and China, and Pakistan, North Korea, India, Israel and Iran (theoretically), so other than having a theoretical ‘need’ for some foreign surveillance (economic, military/counter-cyberwarfare or diplomatic) on those 6 nations and their nationals–exactly what function would the NSA serve other than possibly “economic espionage” and possibly nuclear non-proliferation type stuff?
Short of that, everyone else on the globe with nuclear weapons is an “ally”. So what purpose would the NSA have in this world other than to engage in “economic espionage” against its “friends” and “allies”?
Makes you think and put into context the why “terrorism” is so important for the NSA and its fellow alphabet agencies. In the absence of “terrorism” it is difficult to comprehend how they could command the gigantic budget they obtain from Congress to spy on everyone everywhere when really in the absence of terrorism there would only be a relative handful of nations on the globe that would actually support (theoretically) the ‘need’ for an agency/bureaucracy like the NSA and its fellow alphabet ‘intelligence’ agencies. It’s an interesting topic in the political science arena–how “institutions” actually drive their own expansion and scope of purpose and capabilities. I’d think the NSA et al is no exception to that general proposition.
Oops I mean “7 nations”.
@rrheard
First, I completely agree with your commendation of Glenn and Andrew for this reporting, and your concurring thoughts and queries.
There needs to be a much more widespread factual understanding of the history that has fostered all of the current chaos and distrust in our world. I commend to all of your interests herein an article published today at http://www.ConsortiumNewswritten by Professor William R. Polk.
As Usual,
EA
Oops…sorry about the typo…here’s the cite https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/17/falling-into-the-isis-trap/
As Usual,
EA
It’s notable how nations that choose to nationalize industries (Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, etc) and wrest them from American/British control in order to give the profits from their own resources to their own people, suddenly become the target of invasions, coups, sanctions etc.
@ JLocke
That’s a great example of exactly what I’m getting at in my comment above yours. Whenever we hear talk of “America’s interests” (as in “protecting our national interests”) come shooting out of some politician or pundits mouth, everyone on the planet should be able to translate that as some hyper-wealthy corporate entity or individual’s “economic/property interest” in some foreign land. Historically that’s what it has always meant. I wish a majority of Americans could grasp that concept, because until they do our “foreign policy” such as it is will never change. Because our foreign policy is primarily driven by America’s petrodollar–economic hegemony extending all over the globe. Once that is challenged or subverted the US is no longer the globe’s “indispensable” nation and no longer its “sole superpower” (not that I believe it is either in the present, just the most dangerous because of its belief in wielding ‘power’ via its militarism and corporatism–see RollerBall for the globe’s ‘future’ (if not present) if something doesn’t change).
H.L. Hunt’s Boys and the Circle K Cowboys
http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/circlek.html
Actually the Cubans offered compensation at the time these properties were nationalized. The compensation, based on the stated value for tax purposes, was declined. It is now illegal for any US entity to accept compensation from Cuba for nationalized property.
The joke is that the U.S. has in the meanwhile enacted civil forfeiture that is pretty similar to Castro’s model – just accuse someone of having illegal purposes and take what they want.
Great work ………………..JD
Great work fellas………………..JD
Here we see Venezuela trying and failing to sneak around and have some attorney-client privilege in its attempt to beg an international tribunal to let it get away with taking back the oil under the country for its people.
And soon, more of the same:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1508/text
The U.S. has just decided to start handing out asteroids to be forever owned by whoever makes a “reasonable” attempt to “explore” them. I assume this will involve some kind of nanosat contact, or maybe just looking at them through a telescope and seeing a glint of metal.
Asteroids will become like Bitcoins, a virtual resource handed out to the people with the equipment to do proof-of-work, circulated as a purely abstract commodity for thousands of years. Like that old railway bridge rusting above heads of motorists in your home town, nobody will actually be able to pry them away from the holding companies that make a living out of holding them, so they won’t be good for anything else … the money is money, either way.
We used to look up to the skies and see the domain of the gods. Now we shall again, replete no doubt with electronic No Trespassing signs, but alas, these gods live among us, and there will be no misreading their contempt.
I suppose it is something that valuable information is being lost in the vast amounts of it collected, but so what? By that I mean this, if you are a vast global empire in control of most of the world, then, well, these things are going to happen, what may seem like a big flaw to us as observers may be only be simply well understood inefficiencies and over sights which would be inevitable anyway. In they had it and used it, it would have been found sooner or later. The big picture is just that big and these small things will be worked through in time – its like the violence in the Middle East, it is well understood it will go on for many more years and lives don’t matter so manage it to your best advantage.
For many years, CITGO, Venezuela’s US based oil and gas station company, donated heating oil to be distributed to low income New Englanders. But no US oil companies donated a drop. With their current economic problems, I haven’t heard if they are still able to continue the donation program, but many low income Yanks benefited for many years. The program expanded to include some Mid-west states, and ironically, Alaska, an oil producing state. But their web site stated that they are not accepting applications for 100-gallon deliveries at this time. Through a year of unemployment in 2012-2013, they called me and I received one delivery. Great people:
http://www.citizensenergy.com/assistance-programs/joe-4-oil
Glad you benefited from this fine program. The USA is rapine while Venezuela cares.
How thoughtful of PDVSA/CITGO. Just as we also donated power stations to some countries in the region, like haiti or nicaragua, while we Venezuelan’s suffer every day from electricity rationing (up to 4 hours per day) because government is too busy buying sympathy abroad, and boy they do succeed at that.
Even if the government wasn’t a narco-regime, even if they didn’t steal 1 dollar from the oil business, you have to agree Venezuela is living the worst crisis in all sectors ever. Economic crisis, our real salary is about 17$ a month. Sure if you buy things in Venezuela your salary buys enough for a living, if you get to find food. And if you do, you’ll buy them from reseller who sell items at higher prices (almost mirroring global prices) because of high demand and low offer. The water crisis, we get water once or twice a week if we are lucky. The education crisis; university teachers refuse to continue teaching as long as there isn’t a proper salary raise to cope with the financial crisis. The crime in venezuela is so severe it has its own wikipedia page. I think 3 in 4 Venezuelans has suffered some type of violence, ranging from petty theft to kidnapping and assassinations. Even if you don’t believe the electrical/economical/educational/food crisis situation, at least believe this: Our constitution states the army serves the people, yet you see them on TV shouting pro-chavez catchwords (or whatever consignas translates to).
I also agree with other commenters that the opinions of pro-chavez people should not be considered fact. Also, TELESUR is paid for by petrodollars. If you don’t believe me, try to find the news about maduro’s nephews drug arrest anywhere on TELESUR news. You won’t find it. They twist the truth, or hide it altogether. Or try to find the same news in one of the (many now) government owned media in Venezuela, good luck!