Hmmm…I like the sound of that: Argentine Briefcase Caper. ABC for short. Gotta know your ABCs, so you can spell out what’s really going on, as this Argentine journalist did:
“The operation (in which Guido Antonini Wilson carried a briefcase with $800,000 illegally into Argentina) was a CIA operation,” says Argentine journalist Luis Bilbao, director of the magazine America XXI.
During an interview on the VTV show En Confianza, Bilbao emphasized that in his investigation of the case, the first hypothesis he pursued about the event was that this operation was planned by the CIA.
“As soon as I began to follow my initial hunch, I knew that the operation was a CIA plan. I don’t have the slightest doubt about it.”
Another theory, one that also involves the CIA, is that Antonini Wilson might be a CIA agent, and that in the Argentine government there could be functionaries who also belong to the US agency, commented the journalist.
He added that there are many obscure facts that permit us to see the direct intervention of the CIA in the case, such as the way in which the events occurred, as well as the already noted friendship between Wilson and the former Venezuelan president Carlos Andres Perez, whose name appears among those listed by the CIA as a collaborator.
Regarding this point, Bilbao recalled that “everybody knows” that Carlos Andres Perez was a CIA asset in the 1970s, as confirmed by ex-CIA agent Philip Agee in his book, which listed “all the names of politicians and directors in Latin America who were with the CIA–and among them was that of Carlos Andres Perez.”
The Argentine journalist denounced the briefcase operation and its consequences as a CIA conspiracy, one which sought deliberately to destroy the stability of the Venezuelan government and, as a secondary consequence, though no less important, that of the Argentine administration.
Regarding the supposed declarations of Moises Maionica in which he pleaded guilty in the case, Bilbao emphasized that these statments were very confused, since Maionica, after declaring himself innocent, “is now ‘admitting his guilt’ a month later”.
Bilbao argued that surely the CIA was behind Maionica’s supposed admission of guilt, and that it was very possible that during this past month, they may have tortured him, at least psychologically, in order to make him take back his initial declarations.
He also said that this is a case that must be studied in depth.
Translation mine. Links added.
Personally, I find it more than likely that Carlos Andres Perez is linked to the CIA–if not as an agent or asset, then certainly as a collaborator who happily permitted them to operate in Venezuela. Recall that Luis Posada Carriles was working with the Venezuelan political police agency, DISIP, at the time Perez was first president of Venezuela (he was later non-consecutively re-elected, in 1988.) Posada was, in fact, the CIA’s connection to the DISIP. Considering the DISIP’s role in repression of political protests during the first Perez presidency, it is not at all inconceivable that both men were working hand in glove with the CIA in suppressing popular democratic movements in Venezuela. I have yet to read Philip Agee’s infamous tell-all book, but I don’t suppose I’d find many surprises in it. In fact, in light of things I’ve learned about the CIA in just the past four years, I suspect I might find it rather quaint.
And, given the CIA’s rather lengthy history of consorting with mafiosi to keep its own hands clean (the recently published “family jewels”, which by no means tell the whole story, hint at this in the case of a mobster named Johnny Roselli, whom they hired to try to poison Fidel Castro), it’s not a big stretch to imagine how useful they’d have found a thuggish type like Guido Antonini Wilson. The latter has a taste for expensive cars that ownership of one hotel alone, even a pricey one in the Florida Keys, would not be lucrative enough to indulge (and I would know, as my family has owned more than one hotel.) Add to that his venom-spitting hatred of Chavez and his “rrrrrrrrrregimen”, and you have a ripe plum for the CIA to pick as its latest mob hitman. He would, at the very least, grant them some plausible deniability as the real authors of the crime.
However, they fucked up in one major way, one they will have much more trouble explaining away: He is not only not in any way connected with the Chavez government, he loathes it openly. Which is where those other five supposedly come in. Presumably they are all agents of the Venezuelan government, even though one of them is Uruguayan, and their job was to “silence” Antonini, whatever that might mean.
But if you think this all sounds hinky, you’re right. According to the Miami Herald (that legendary reliable source!),
Maionica received a call from the director of the Venezuelan intelligence agency known as DISIP to join the conspiracy after the cash was seized from Antonini by customs officials in Argentina.
On Aug. 23, Maionica met with two other accused conspirators, Franklin Duran and Carlos Kaufman, and Antonini at Jackson’s Steakhouse in Fort Lauderdale.
Antonini, who reached out to the FBI after he was released in Argentina, was wearing a wire.
”During the meeting, Duran told Antonini that foreign government authorities would pursue Antonini if Antonini said that the seized funds did not belong to him,” according to the court record, which accompanied Maionica’s plea agreement.
”During the meeting Maionica further advised Antonini that Petróleos de Venezuela would pay for all the expenses and financial penalties that Antonini might incur as a result of the seizure of the $800,000,” the document said.
Can you spot the howler, boys and girls? That PDVSA cash that Maionica allegedly promised Antonini never materialized! And furthermore, the gringo $800,000 has never been traced to PDVSA, either. If that were the case, surely the FBI and the Florida courts would lose no time publicizing the fact, right?
And of course, there’s the small but crucial detail: Why would a Chavez-controlled PDVSA have anything to do, cash-wise, with a man who is on record as hating Chavez’s government and guts?
Don’t look to the lamestream media to answer any of those questions anytime soon, kids.
