This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

C O N F I D E N T I A L  CARACAS 001331 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
NSC FOR CBARTON 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/21/2014 
TAGS: KPAO PGOV PINR PM PTER VE
SUBJECT: MEDIA AND GOV MAKE HAY OUT OF GENERAL HILL 
STATEMENTS 
 
 
Classified By: Victoria A. Alvarado, IO; Reasons 1.4 (B) and (D) 
 
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Summary 
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¶1.  (C)  Leading Venezuelan national dailies, "El Universal" 
and "El Nacional," printed articles April 3 and 4 that 
distort parts of General James Hill's March 24 and April 1 
statements on Venezuela to the U.S. House and Senate Armed 
Forces Committees.  Both newspapers' articles were based on 
an article that ran in the Bogota newspaper "El Tiempo."  The 
Venezuelan version had General Hill saying things about 
Venezuela and President Chavez, which in fact, he did not 
say.  President Chavez then decried USG interference in 
Venezuela's sovereignty and Vice President Rangel issued a 
scathing statement condemning Hill's alleged statements.  IO 
met with the papers April 12 to clarify General Hill's 
remarks.  The next day "El Universal" published a 
clarification of the article, noting the inaccuracies of the 
article.  The media appears to have embellished Hill's 
statements to discredit Chavez.  The fact that the Venezuelan 
Embassy has a copy of Hill's actual remarks and the GOV did 
not check the veracity of the articles with us suggest that 
GOV officials took advantage of the media's distorted 
statements to condemn U.S.G. intentions towards Venezuela. 
End Summary. 
 
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Private Print Media Take the Low Road 
------------------------------------ 
 
¶2.  (C)  Leading Venezuelan liberal pro-opposition daily "El 
Nacional" (circulation around 120,000) and leading 
conservative daily "El Universal" (circulation about 130,000) 
printed on April 3 and 4, respectively, articles that clearly 
distorted parts of General Hill's March 24 and April 1 
statements before the U.S. House and Senate Armed Forces 
Committees.  Both articles referred to an April 2 article on 
Hill's hearings that appeared in Bogota paper "El Tiempo." 
However, the two Venezuelan dailies modified parts of the "El 
Tiempo" article, making it appear that General Hill had made 
certain comments about Venezuela and President Chavez that 
were not attributed as such in "El Tiempo." 
 
¶3.  (C)  The "El Nacional" headline read, "General Hill 
Accused Chavez of Decimating Citizens' Rights."  The El 
Universal" headline blared, "General Hill Accused Chavez of 
Being a Radical Populist."  Both headlines were inaccurate; 
General Hill did not/not make specific reference to Venezuela 
or its president when he commented on the loss in citizens' 
rights or the phenomenon of radical populism in some of the 
region's nations.  (Comment:  Though one could conclude that 
Venezuela and Chavez, along with some other countries and 
their leaders were on General Hill's mind when he made these 
remarks, these two pro-opposition papers appeared to have 
embellished Hill's words to fit the papers' and the 
opposition's apparent interests to discredit Chavez and drive 
an even bigger contentious wedge between the U.S. and 
Venezuelan governments.  End Comment.) 
 
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What Hill Said 
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¶4.  (U)  March 24 House Hearing: 
 
--The security picture in Latin America and the Caribbean has 
grown more complex over the past year.  Colombia's 
considerable progress in the battle against narcoterrorism is 
offset by negative developments elsewhere in the region, 
particularly in Haiti, Bolivia, and Venezuela. 
 
--These traditional threats are now complemented by an 
emerging threat best described as radical populism, in which 
the democratic process is undermined to decrease rather than 
protect individual rights.  Some leaders in the region are 
tapping in deep-seated frustrations of the failure of 
democratic reforms to deliver expected goods and services. 
By tapping into these frustrations, which run concurrently 
with frustrations caused by social and economic inequality, 
the leaders are at the same time able to reinforce their 
radical positions by inflaming anti-U.S. sentiment.  (Note: 
This segment of General Hill's remarks does not/not make 
direct reference to either Venezuela or President Chavez. 
End Note.) 
 
--Venezuela remains an oil-rich nation that provides some 13 
percent of oil imported into the United States.  The domestic 
 
 
political situation continues to be exceedingly complex, and 
the prospects of the presidential recall referendum are still 
in considerable doubt.  Venezuelan society is deeply 
polarized and will continue to be so, as long as the 
government of Venezuela continues along an authoritarian 
path.  Well-organized street protests numbering in the 
hundreds of thousands occurred on a frequent basis over the 
past year.  (Note: El Universal and El Nacional reported 
accurately on this segment. End Note.) 
 
¶5.  (U)  April 1 Senate Hearing: 
 
--The security picture in Latin American and the Caribbean 
has indeed grown more complex over the past year, as events 
in Haiti, Bolivia, and Venezuela amply illustrate. 
Deep-seated frustrations over the failure of democratic and 
free-market reforms to improve the standard of living for all 
citizens are significantly challenging many of the region's 
governments.  This frustration is exacerbated by endemic 
corruption and by the insidious impact of society of the 
threats I addressed last year -narcoterrorism, urban gangs 
and other illegal armed groups, arms and human trafficking, 
and support to international terrorism. 
 
--Question (Senator Bill Nelson):  Does this committee need 
to take note of any of the terrorist and narcotrafficking 
that is going on in Colombia that might be seeping into 
Venezuela? 
 
--Response (General Hill):  The borders of all the countries 
that border Colombia are porous.  The most porous of those 
borders is the Venezuelan border.  An the Colombians have let 
it be known in strong terms at the presidential level and at 
the military level that the Venezuelans need to do more on 
the other side of the border, and they need to. 
 
--Question (Senator Bill Nelson):  Are we seeing any of the 
kidnapping that has been in Colombia start moving over into 
Venezuela?  Response (General Hill):  Sir, there's always 
been not only FARC but ELN and AUC presence in the Venezuelan 
side of the border, and they go back and forth with 
essentially impunity into Colombia.  And kidnapping does, in 
fact, take place on both sides of the border. 
 
--Question (Senator Bill Nelson):  In these upcoming 
elections in the Dominican Republic that we're worried about 
some questions of honesty in the elections, do you have a 
force structure that you can call on if chaos were to erupt 
there, or, for example, in Venezuela, where the interests of 
Americans were suddenly threatened, that you would be able to 
get your hands of the assets to respond to that? 
 
--Response (General Hill):  We very quickly put in a Marine 
fast team into the embassy in Haiti, in a matter of hours, to 
bolster the Marine force defending the embassy in Haiti.  We 
were able to put in marines and follow-on forces from the 
French and the Chileans within a matter of 24 hours into 
Haiti.  There's no doubt in my mind that we can respond in 
may area in the United States administration wants to do 
that.  (Note/Comment:  Neither the GOV nor the Venezuelan 
media appear to have picked up on this potentially explosive 
question and response.  The Chavez government could easily 
distort General Hill's response and claim that Hill's message 
confirms Chavez's accusations that the U.S. is considering a 
military intervention in Venezuela.   It is possible the GOV 
is keeping it under its sleeve for a more opportune moment. 
End Note/Comment.) 
 
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GOV Lashes Back 
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¶6.  (U)  Though President Chavez did not enter into the 
details of General Hill's most recent statements, he 
lambasted Hill during his April 4 "Alo Presidente" program 
for once again interfering in the internal affairs of 
sovereign Venezuela in a manner that was not only improper, 
but also demonstrated Hill's ignorance of Venezuela.  The 
same day, Vice President Rangel, who appears to have "bought" 
the opposition-leaning papers' versions of what Hill said, 
issued a scathing statement condemning Hill's alleged 
statements.  Rangel's main points: 
 
--Hill has a militarized vision of the region, drawn from the 
School of the Americas' - the bastion of the U.S. national 
security doctrine and a center that forms military dictators 
and torturers - concept of Latin America. 
 
--Hill told the U.S. Senate that Chavez "uses his position 
 
 
and support to gradually decimate the rights of Venezuelan 
citizens.  This degrades democracy."  (Note: Hill did not 
refer specifically to Venezuela or Chavez when he made this 
comment.  End Note.) 
 
--Hill's lack of knowledge of the region led him to confuse 
the region's struggle for social change with what Hill terms 
"a radical populism that is becoming a danger to hemispheric 
security." 
 
--According to Hill, the popular outcry for a better form of 
life and the search for solutions to the crisis, which is 
caused by unjust political, social, and economics systems, is 
an attempt against hemispheric security.  This is the old 
language of the cold war; the characterization as subversive 
any social change the U.S. cannot handle. 
 
--The capricious definition of populism, which is nothing 
other than profound social change, a new economic model, and 
popular participation, leads to the typical demonizing of 
neo-liberal ideology, whose anachronistic leaders are the 
heart of the power in Washington. 
 
--The GOV does not have an authoritarian bone in its body and 
these remarks constitute an unacceptable insolence on the 
part of a foreign military chief against Hugo Chavez, an 
impeccably, democratically elected leader, which contrasts 
with the origin of President Bush's mandate. 
 
--The GOV's actions do not degrade democracy; rather the 
irrational opposition's systematic acts of terror and attacks 
against the Constitution indeed degrade democracy.  Further, 
the U.S. President's aggressive international policies and 
absolute disdain for the United Nations are the object of 
outright world rejection. 
 
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Embassy Action 
-------------- 
 
¶7.  (C)  On April 6, IO wrote to the editors of the papers, 
clarifying what Hill had indeed said and urging the editors 
to confirm with the U.S. Embassy USG officials' statements. 
IO then met with "El Nacional" editor Patricia Spadero and 
"El Universal" Vice President Alcides Rojas April 12 to 
convey our concern over the papers' misrepresentation of a 
USG official's statements and to note that this 
misrepresentation could serve to boost the GOV's assertions 
that the pro-opposition media distort the truth to dupe the 
populace.  Both papers agreed that parts of their articles 
were inaccurate.  Rojas pointed out, however, that the 
coversheet list of "El Tiempo" articles that Reuters wire 
service had sent to El Universal had titled the article in 
question, "Populismo Venezolano Amenaza la Region:  Estados 
Unidos," ("Venezuelan Populism Threatens the Region"), while 
the title of the article itself was "Populism Amenaza la 
Region: Estados Unidos," with no specific mention of 
Venezuela or any other country. 
 
¶8.  (U)  On April 12, El Universal published a clarification 
of its previous article on General Hill, recognizing that 
parts of the article were inaccurate.  Also on April 12, an 
official from Venezuelan Embassy's press section called our 
press office to inquire whether the U.S. Embassy had issued a 
clarification that "El Universal" had used.  In response to 
our press assistant's reply that we had not issued a 
statement and her offer to send the Venezuelan Embassy 
General Hill's remarks, the Venezuelan press officer said 
that the Embassy already had a copy. 
 
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Comment 
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¶9.  (C)  The pro-opposition media fell into the temptation of 
discrediting President Chavez by manipulating the words of a 
senior USG official.  Similarly, the GOV, rather than 
attempting to verify the accuracy of the papers' articles on 
General Hill's remarks with the U.S. Embassy, GOV officials 
deliberately took advantage of the papers' distorted 
statements to once again condemn U.S. government intentions 
towards Venezuela.  The fact that the Venezuelan Embassy 
alleges it has General Hill's words, supports this 
assessment.  In Venezuela's polarized society, where the 
political stakes are rising by the day, we can expect more of 
this behavior. 
SHAPIRO