corrente

Republican Pat Roberts has a few words.

From the Lawrence, Kansas Journal World here:

U.S. policy toward Cuba is dominated by one man, a scandal-plagued Cold War relic who has no business being President Bush's chief adviser on Latin America.

That's what U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, has to say about Otto Reich.

"He's known as a hard-liner, not only with regards to Cuba, but Colombia, Venezuela and other areas in the hemisphere," Roberts told the Journal-World. "I just don't think Mr. Reich is the man for the job. Mr. Reich, I think, is still back in the Cuban Missile Crisis era."

[Reich] first gained national attention in 1983 working at the State Department, reporting directly to Oliver North. Reich was in charge of the propaganda effort aimed at winning support for Reagan's policies supporting the Contras in Nicaragua. His office was shut down after the U.S. Comptroller General concluded it had "engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities," using tax dollars for illegal public relations and lobbying.

"Virtually every country in Central and South America and Mexico has complained officially or unofficially" about Reich, [investigateive reporter Anne Louise] Bardach said. "The guy is very, very far right, and Latin America has had a very decided shift. All of Latin America is lurching to the left, and who do you have handling Latin America for the administration? Otto Reich. You've got to say to yourself: What is this administration thinking of except a few votes in Dade and Broward counties?"

Say, Otto wouldn't be up to his old tricks, would be? So much for Cuba.

Now for Haiti—and Venezuela. Newsday reports:

The departure of Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a victory for a Bush administration hard-liner who has been long dedicated to Aristide's ouster, U.S. foreign policy analysts say.

That official is Roger Noriega, assistant U.S. secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, whose influence over U.S. policy toward Haiti has increased during the past decade as he climbed the diplomatic ladder in Washington.

"Roger Noriega has been dedicated to ousting Aristide for many, many years, and now he's in a singularly powerful position to accomplish it," Robert White, a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and Paraguay, said last week.

Working hand in hand with Noriega on Haiti has been National Security Council envoy Otto Reich, who, like Noriega, is ardently opposed to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, say analysts such as Birns. Washington diplomats have seen Aristide as a leftist who is often fierce in his denunciations of the business class and slow to make recommended changes such as privatizing state-run industries.

"On a day-to-day basis, Roger Noriega [has been] making policy, but with a very strong role played by Otto Reich," Birns said.

Reich is a controversial Cuban-American criticized by some who have lingering concerns about his contacts with opposition figures who plotted a short-lived coup against Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez, two years ago. Reich also is linked to the Iran-contra scandal of two decades ago that was part of President Ronald Reagan's policy of defeating Marxists in Central America.

In their various foreign policy postings during the past several years, Noriega and Reich became behind-the-scenes leaders of "a relatively small group of people" who developed strategies toward Haiti, Maguire said.

Reich and Noriega had no comment. State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said Noriega "likes to stick to the business of the department," and requests for comments from Reich made by fax to Fred Jones, a National Security Council official, were not answered.

Right. The business of the department being, if the past is any judge, the arts of disinformation and the overthrow of Latin American governments who aren't "business-friendly."

Is it any wonder that some are looking more closely at the SCLM's narrative of Aristide's departure?

UPDATE OTOH, as Pandagon points out, it sure is weird that, if the Marines kidnapped Aristide, they didn't take his cell phone away. OYAH, it's seems reasonably clear that howeverM Aristide left, it wasn't under the friendliest circumstances. (Heck, we could have asked those do-gooder Canadians to do it; after all, they're on the spot). So why would the Marines, under any circumstances, leave Aristide with a cell-phone and the chance to call his lawyer?