To save the image of USAID, Obama selects an expert in deception
To save the image of USAID, Obama selects an expert in deception
Jean-Guy Allard
BY nominating Mark Feierstein as assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. President Barack Obama, who wanted to improve the image of this discredited organization, has shot himself in the foot. The former federal employee is a specialist in disinformation with the sulfuric smell of imperial intelligence.
Feierstein’s shady character was exposed on June 5 by Bolivian President Evo Morales, who stated that he would expel USAID from his country if it continues giving covert support to organizations attempting to destabilize the government. And with reason.
In 2002, Feierstein, an American citizen, acted as campaign strategist for the electoral campaign of Gonzalo "Goni" Sánchez de Lozada, ex- president of Bolivia, and his National Revolutionary Movement (MNR).
It was "Goñi" who ordered the bloody massacre which resulted in 67 deaths and 400 injuries during the so-called gas war of October 2003.
Forced to resign, the president and murderer fled to the United States, where he received the protection of George W. Bush and his mafia, who had organized his rise to the presidency with the help of Feierstein’s troops.
For some time the Bolivian Government has been asking the U.S. government for Sanchez de Lozada’s extradition to stand trial for genocide. An application that, as is, as is usual for the criminal friends that they keep, has been ignored by Bush as well as his successor, Obama.
The U.S. Greenberg Quinland Rosner company "offers opinion polls (surveys and focus group studies), television and radio announcements and strategic advice on campaign tactics, such as debates, planning, training and research," according to its website.
Specialists participating in this work include Israeli political advisor Tal Silberstein.
According to an assessment by the specialist magazine Covert Action on Greenberg Quinlan Rosner’s activity in Bolivia, the U.S. company’s role was to persuade the public that the country would be submerged in chaos if they failed to elect a Bush-approved candidate.
When Obama appointed Feierstein as USAID representative for Latin American and the Caribbean, the latter was still vice president of Greenberg Quinland Rosner, the political marketing and survey firm that secured the election of "Goni" in 2002.
His record, nevertheless, has been soiled with other stains even harder to clean despite his expertise in laundering the political careers of other people.
DIRECTED NED DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN IN NICARAGUA
In the 90s, Feierstein was project manager in Nicaragua for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a USAID subsidiary. The purpose of the project was to overthrow the Sandinistas.
Later he was director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the National Democratic Institute (NDI), another tool of imperial interference subsidized by USAID, which works alongside the International Republican Institute (IRI) on various destabilization operations.
The Clinton administration trusted him to the point of appointing him special advisor to the U.S. ambassador within the Organization of American States (OAS), a task associated with the State Department which demands very specific references.
From this strategic position where continental geopolitics are discussed, he moved on to USAID, where he worked at the Elections and Political Processes (EPP) office, another opinion manipulating mechanism.
A graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Feierstein is also known as a journalist, writing occasional opinion columns in The New York Times, with an undeniable subtlety at the end of which the enemies of U.S. hegemonic power seem destined for defeat.
In Venezuela, Feierstein conducted many opinion polls, always financed by some agency or another of the State Department, with clear propaganda objectives. In one of his apparently brilliant analyses, he did point out that Chávez was extremely popular among his followers who, nevertheless, "feel uncomfortable with him."
In the Latin American section of the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner website, there are references to the company’s "contributions" to "victorious campaigns," such as that of President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras.
Nevertheless, analyzing the coup d’état in Honduras, Feierstein pretended to lament it in a peculiar way: The international community’s rejection of the coup reflects the majority Honduran opinion, he stated. Mel Zelaya should not have been removed from power "by force."
Feierstein, his firm’s publicity affirms, has supervised research into public opinion in more than 30 countries, in which he has acquired great understanding of people’s points of view all over the world on a variety of issues. Of this there is no doubt.
"We are going to expel the U.S. ambassador, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration)," stated Evo Morales on exposing the U.S. agency and its new capo for Latin America and the Caribbean. "If the USAID continues working in this way, my hand will not falter in signing an expulsion order, because we are dignified and sovereign, and we are not going to allow any interference," he added.
Feierstein will occupy the post which was vacated November 2007 by the corrupt official Adolfo Franco, who was forced to resign from the organization when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) discovered systemic fraud in the accounts of groups linked with the Cuban mafia, which were subsidized by USAID.
Back then, Franco was replaced by José R. Cardenas (aka "Pepe), ex-director of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), and the man who was subsequently contracted (July 2009) by the Honduran dictatorship of Roberto Micheletti to "improve its image" in Washington.
For his part, President Obama proclaimed his hope that Feierstein’s nomination would be ratified, congratulating him on having chosen to dedicate his talent to serving the American people at an important moment for the country. The president elected for "change," affirmed that he hoped to work with him in the coming months and years. Havana. June 10, 2010 http://www.granma.cu/ingles/international-i/10junio-23usaid.html
