Operation Pliers

Pliers

Venezuela claims that a confidential memorandum (concerning Operation Pliers) from the US embassy to the CIA revealed and circulated by the Venezuelan government on November 26, 2007 provides details on the activity of a CIA unit engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming national referendum and to coordinate the civil and military overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Venezuela. Operation Pliers, also known as Operación Tenaza or Operation Pincers is the name of this alleged U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to incite insurrection following the 2 December 2007 referendum on constitutional changes in Venezuela. The Venezuelan government published details of the alleged plans shortly before election day, and threatened to cut off oil supplies to the U.S. if there was violence after the referendum. The US rejected the document as a fake and called the allegations ridiculous.

The plan was reported by the Venezuelan state news agency Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias in late November 2007, shortly before voting day. The plan was said to be elaborated in a document alleged to be an internal memo from the US Embassy in Caracas uncovered by Venezuelan counter-intelligence.

The mysterious Michael Middleton Steere?

The document purports to be a communication from a CIA officer named Michael Middleton Steere, employed at the US embassy in Caracas, to CIA Director General Michael Hayden in Washington, D.C.. The document, dated November 20, details measures taken and planned to destabilize Venezuela during and after the referendum. According to the Venezuelan government, the memo, entitled "Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer," was sent by Michael Middleton Steere addressed to the Director of CIA, Michael Hayden, and outlines covert Operation Pincer (OP) (Operación Tenaza).

Operation Pincer entails a two-pronged strategy of impeding the upcoming national referendum of December 2, 2007 on important changes to the Venezuelan constitution urged by the government of President Hugo Chavez, rejecting the outcome, and at the same time calling for a 'no' vote. In the run up to the referendum, OP includes running phony polls, attacking electoral officials and running propaganda through the private media accusing the government of fraud and calling for a 'no' vote. Contradictions, the report emphasizes, are of no matter.

The US Embassy memo calls for the mobilization of students at private university, backed by top administrators, to attack key government buildings including the Presidential Palace, Supreme Court and the National Electoral Council. The US Embassy provided $8 million dollars in propaganda alone, according to the Embassy memo, to shape the university students' views; the right-wing opposition and the business elite through free air time on the private right-wing media, have organized a majority of the upper middle class students from the private universities, backed by the Catholic Church hierarchy. Small Trotskyist sects and their trade unionists join the ex-Maoists in opposing the constitutional amendments.

According to these claims, the ultimate objective of Operation Pincer as outlined in the memo is to seize a territorial or institutional base with "massive support" of the defeated electoral minority within three or four days, presumably after the elections, backed by an uprising by oppositionist military officers principally in the National Guard. The Embassy operative concede that the military plotters have run into serious problems as key intelligence operatives were detected, stores of arms were decommissioned and several plotters are under tight surveillance. Apart from the deep involvement of the US, the primary organization of the Venezuelan business elite (FEDECAMARAS), as well as all the major private television, radio and newspaper outlets have been engaged in a campaign of fear and intimidation campaign against the referendum and any results thereof. There was a great deal of accusation that the memo was not authentic.

Hypotheses

Of course there is the possibility that the memo really was a fake. None of the denials had any convincing evidence, possibly because they did not have the memo to examine for evidence of forgery (paper or ink type, etc), and the usual difficulty in proving a negative.

Indulging in some speculation, there are only 3, unrelated, results on Google Books returned for the search phrase "Venezuela 2007 Operation Pincer" and "Venezuela 2007 Operation Pliers" put together, which is a markedly curious event in itself. It is conceivable that leftists were completely disheartened by the denial campaign, but right-wingers ignore an opportunity to discredit and debunk? This is very much in the manner of Wikipedia removing fringe stories rather than reporting on them and letting the reader decide, or even reporting on fringe stories because they are interesting.

And finally, there is the possibility that the memo was itself Black propaganda (WP) of an unusual sort; the source being exactly as it appeared, while the content itself was bogus. Black propaganda is usually both. It would be differing from mere Disinformation in that it was released with the expectation of being debunked, and the debunking itself a propaganda campaign against the recipients. Operation names are often double meanings, such as Operation Just Cause (Just 'cause we can), and the dual effect of bringing both disinformation and disrepute would also fit the name.

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Response

The U.S. responded by calling the allegations "ridiculous" and the document "a fake". Independent analysts doubted the authenticity of the document, declaring that the lack of an original document in English is "quite suspect," and noting that "the timing of its release is strange."