Making Noise in the Name of Narco News

U.K.-based Latinnews (subscription only)—a largely reliable publication—traces the information behind the Internet rumors to the private security intelligence consulting firm Stratfor. Latinnews reports:

Morales's claims coincided with a number of stories that had begun to circulate on the internet about purported Bolivian and Peruvian military intelligence warning of an impending invasion of Bolivia.

In brief outline this plan consists in delaying the Bolivian elections in order to provoke a wave of popular protests, degenerating into violent confrontations that would justify intervention by a force composed of troops from the US, Chile, Argentina and Paraguay. This information is sourced to a November 2003 report by Stratfor [Strategic Forecasting Inc, a private 'security consulting intelligence agency']. The purported battle plan envisages the entry of US troops from Paraguay and Chilean troops from the east between November 2005 and January 2006.

And just so there is no further confusion, of where such rumors originate, the article adds:

There has also been discussion [by the rumor-peddlers presumably] of an alleged 'Plan B' (Rodríguez resigns, congress is shut down and a pro-US civic-military government is installed). In both cases the assumed intention is to prevent Morales from being elected president.

I tried to dig around on the Stratfor Web site to confirm they were the source of the so-called "Counter-Intelligence Report," but they levy hefty fees for peaking into their tailor-made intelligence reports. So for now, the source of the "Counter-Intelligence" cannot be totally confirmed. What we do know, and did know, is that Narco News is NOT and NEVER WAS the source.

However, much like Luis, Latinnews also noted that the respectable Bolpress news agency was surprisingly picking up the rumors:

Versions [again, of the rumors presumably] picked up by the news agency Bolpress say that the invasion was almost launched in May-June 2005 but that it was called off because the Peruvian military mobilised tanks to the southern border in order to prevent the entry of Chilean troops to Bolivia. The agency cites 'intelligence reports' as saying that civic and business leaders from Santa Cruz are directly involved in the plot and that they favour a variant of 'Plan B'.

Interestingly, the Latinnews article was mainly about Morales making seemingly fantastical claims about preparations for a U.S. invasion. Latinnews writes that "patriotic members of the military" told Morales that anti-aircraft missiles were being smuggled out of the country. Morales alleges this is a first step in laying a foundation for military intervention.

Although Latinnews dismisses Morales for his invasion theory, it does clarify the following:

One element of Morales's claim has been proven (partly) true. The commander of the army, General Marcelo Antezana, has said that 'a batch' of missiles which had been donated by China were indeed shipped abroad for destruction, in compliance with an OAS resolution recommending the destruction of obsolete defence matériel. The general admitted that 'foreign' personnel had taken part in the removal, as part of 'normal international cooperation'. He added that in his view Morales had been the victim of disinformation.

The newspaper La Prensa has challenged details of Antezana's explanation: it says the missiles were not donated but bought from China, together with other military equipment, in 1993, financed by a US$4.5m loan which, the newspaper alleges, was never actually repaid.

I would be inclined to agree with Latinnews about the unlikelihood of supposed U.S. invasion plans—mainly, on grounds that the U.S. has much cheaper, quieter and cleaner ways of carrying out U.S. policy objectives in Latin America and the Caribbean. (See, for example, "Exporting Gas, Importing Democracy," an investigative report by Reed Lindsay in the forthcoming (Nov/Dec issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas.

But "counter-intelligence" reports, arms shipments, "disinformation," a shady corporation called Stratfor? This all certainly raises more questions than it answers. Like: who is bankrolling these hefty fees to produce this aptly named "counter-intelligence."

El virrey desmintió también que la base militar de Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, sea una base estadounidense, que haya marines trabajando ahí y que eso constituya una amenaza para la seguridad de Bolivia o de la región en general. Aunque otros análisis, un poco menos breves y mucho más agudos que el de Greenlee, sugieren lo contrario...

De todos modos, y aunque Greenlee dijo que no hay por qué preocuparse, la verdad, si el embajador de los Estados Unidos diga que no hay amenaza y que su gobierno respaldará la democracia en este país, es justamente eso lo que debe preocuparnos: el virrey que habla quechua seguro debe referirse a democracias como las de Irak, Haití, Afganistán (por no hablar de democracia en los Estados Unidos)...

The Viceroy again denied that the military base at Mariscal Estigarribia, Paragua, was a U.S. base, that there are marines working there, or that it constitutes a threat to Bolivian or regional security. Though other analyses, a little longer and much sharper than Greenlee’s, suggest the opposite…

In any event, and although Greenlee said yesterday that there is nothing to worry about, the truth is that is the U.S. ambassador says that there is not threat and that his government will back democracy in this country, that’s exactly what should worry us. The Quechua-speaking viceroy surely must be referring to democracies such as Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan (not to mention democracy in the United States itself)…

...A detail: we said the stories had been sourced to Stratfor, not that we had done so. I've found it exceedingly difficult to pinpoint the Stratfor item cited by Bolpress, which gave the publication date as 4 November 2003. The closest I could get to that date was 28 October, when Stratfor ran a piece entitled "Bolivian Instability Could Force U.N. Intervention".

The relevant portion was, ' ... if the Bolivian conflict becomes uncontrollable and Mesa is ousted, Brazil may ask the U.N. to take an active role in restoring order. It's also likely that both Mesa and da Silva will urge the U.S. administration to become more actively involved in ending Bolivia's crisis before it infects other South American countries. However, Washington denied aid requests from Sanchez de Lozada barely a year ago, and likely will reject Mesa's pleas for a substantial jump in U.S. economic assistance.'

This is typical Stratfor 'forecasting', but a bit too skimpy to build upon it the invasion stories now circulating. These look like a rehash of rumours which were making the rounds in late 2003, that had Chile poised to invade, and the more recent Paraguayan base story. I was unable to track the original sources of either, but early propagators were Argenpress, Bolpress and Prensa Latina.