http://www.cooperativeresearch.org The Center for Grassroots Oversight aims to provide the public with a means to collaborate on investigations at the grassroots level. en-us http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a1985mcdermott#a1985mcdermott http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a1985mcdermott#a1985mcdermott US banker Douglas McDermott says of the US-backed Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, "You have the freedom here to do what you want with your money, and to me, that is worth all the political freedom in the world." mtuck 2011-04-18T10:02:24+02:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a082205robertsonassassinate#a082205robertsonassassinate http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a082205robertsonassassinate#a082205robertsonassassinate Right-wing Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, a former Republican candidate for president, tells his viewing audience that the US should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Robertson makes his statement on ''The 700 Club'', the flagship broadcast of his Christian Broadcast Network. The US should assassinate Chavez to prevent Venezuela from becoming "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism." Robertson says: "We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator [referring to Iraq's Saddam Hussein]. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with. ... You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop." mtuck 2010-10-24T18:31:10+02:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a121484gateswar#a121484gateswar http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a121484gateswar#a121484gateswar Deputy Director of Intelligence Robert Gates sends what he calls a "straight talk" memo to his boss, CIA Director William Casey. Gates recommends the US openly deploy military forces to cripple Nicaragua's "Marxist-Leninist" Sandinista government and elevate the Contras into power. Among his "politically more difficult" recommendations, Gates pushes for "the use of air strikes to destroy a considerable portion of Nicaragua's military buildup." Gates's recommendations, which would be tantamount to the US declaring war on Nicaragua, will in large part not be followed. mtuck 2010-10-24T18:21:27+02:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a0970korryallende#a0970korryallende http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a0970korryallende#a0970korryallende During the Chilean election campaign, when it becomes clear that leftist candidate Salvador Allende will win , the US ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, says: "Not a [US] nut or bolt will be allowed to reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we will do all within our power to condemn Chile and Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." Weeks later, President Nixon declares his intention to "smash" that "son of a b_tch Allende" . mtuck 2010-10-15T17:06:34+02:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a1961trujillodearborn#a1961trujillodearborn http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a1961trujillodearborn#a1961trujillodearborn US Consul Henry Dearborn, the senior American diplomat to the Dominican Republic, says about that nation's brutal dictator Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo shortly after his assassination : "He had his torture chambers, he had his political assassinations. But he kept law and order, cleaned the place up, made it sanitary, built public works, and he didn't bother the United States. So that didn't bother us." mtuck 2010-10-15T17:02:41+02:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=RightistsAssertControl#RightistsAssertControl http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=RightistsAssertControl#RightistsAssertControl Almost immediately after a military coup in El Salvador is successful, reformist heads of the military junta are forced out and reactionaries are let in. Two rightists, Colonel José Guillermo García and CIA asset Colonel Nicolás Carranza, are given the positions of minister and vice-minister of defense, respectively. mtuck 2010-10-02T15:07:58+02:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a092091wilsonrope#a092091wilsonrope http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a092091wilsonrope#a092091wilsonrope As tensions escalate between the US and Iraq, Iraqi officials circulate a note to all the embassies in Baghdad, directing them to register all of the civilians in their care with the authorities. Failure to comply can result in execution, the note implies. Such registration can only be done in person at Iraqi governmental offices; Deputy Chief of Mission Joseph Wilson, the ranking US diplomat in Baghdad, knows that bringing American citizens in for registration may well result in those Americans being taken hostage. He is housing some 60 Americans at the ambassador's residence for their protection. He will later write: "It was clearly a way for the Iraqis to replenish their stock of hostages. The choice, theoretically, was either to turn over Americans or to defy the note and risk execution." Instead of making the choice, Wilson uses the order to publicly defy the Iraqis. He schedules a press conference and has a Marine make him a hangman's noose. Wearing the noose, he tells reporters that if Saddam Hussein "wants to execute me for keeping Americans from being taken hostage, I will bring my own f_cking rope." The press conference, like all of the embassy press conferences, is off the record, but journalists release the story anyway. A garbled, erroneous version from a French news outlet has the Iraqis planning to hang Wilson by sundown. Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, angered and embarrassed by the press coverage, attempts to dress down Wilson that evening, but Wilson refuses to back down. Instead, the Iraqis withdraw the request. Soon after, President Bush sends Wilson a cable lauding his courage and his outspokeness . Conservative columnist Robert Novak co-writes a piece about Wilson that says, "He shows the stuff of heroism." Novak will later reveal the covert CIA status of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as an act of political retaliation . mtuck 2009-11-15T14:21:51+01:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a1999internallook#a1999internallook http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a1999internallook#a1999internallook A large military, computer-based exercise called "Internal Look 90," conducted by US Central Command (CENTCOM), anticipates the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2. The exercise reflects the change in the threat perception by the US military. Since his appointment as commander of CENTCOM in November 1988, General Norman Schwarzkopf has been concerned that the main threat to the Gulf region is no longer a Soviet attack, but an attempt by Iraq to control the region's energy resources using its large military following the end of the Iraq-Iran war. "With a huge, well-equipped military at loose ends, Schwarzkopf realized that the Iraqis had replaced the Soviets as the most serious threat to the Persian Gulf," according to the official account of the war published as the book ''Certain Victory: The US Army in the Gulf War''. Therefore, CENTCOM's main command post exercise, Internal Look, which is held every two years, is no longer focused on the Soviet Union, but on the possibility of an Iraqi invasion of the Arabian Peninsula. In July 1990, Internal Look 90 simulates an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia. This scenario will prove prescient: "As the exercise unfolded, the real-world movements of Iraq's air and ground forces eerily paralleled the scripted scenario of the war game. So closely did actual intelligence reports resemble the fictional exercise messages, the latter had to be prominently stamped 'Exercise Only,'" according to the website GlobalSecurity.org. newmex 2009-02-05T17:32:16+01:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a112990bushpraisewilson#a112990bushpraisewilson http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a112990bushpraisewilson#a112990bushpraisewilson President Bush sends US Acting Ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson a telegram lauding his heroism in standing up to Saddam Hussein . Bush writes in part: "It is relatively easy to speak out from the safety and comfort of Washington; what you are doing day in and day out under the most trying conditions is truly inspiring. Keep fighting the good fight; you and your stalwart colleagues are always in our thoughts and prayers." mtuck 2008-12-03T23:42:05+01:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=RomeroOverthrown#RomeroOverthrown http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=RomeroOverthrown#RomeroOverthrown A group of reformist civilian and military officials in El Salvador organize a coup to overthrow the regime of General Carlos Humberto Romero. The group is made up of a mix of reformists with a genuine interest in political and economic reform and anticommunist hardliners concerned that the Romero regime was incapable of preventing a leftist uprising from taking over the country as had happened earlier in the year in Nicaragua. Two army colonels, Adolfo Arnoldo Majano and Jaime Abdul Gutierrez, serve as the figureheads of the new regime. They promise land reform, greater political tolerance, democratic elections, an end to corruption, and a stop to the harsh repression by security forces. AJB 2008-11-27T21:36:59+01:00