Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The State Department's response (below) currently resides in the media archives of the Department's USINFO website. Notably, it was not issued as a free-standing statement, but as a couple of paragraphs appended to an earlier statement responding to persistent rumors of U.S. military involvement in Paraguay.

Alleged Bush ranch in Paraguay

In October 2006, newspapers in Paraguay, the Cuban news service Prensa Latina and others circulated allegations falsely claiming, variously, that:
*    Former President George H.W. Bush owns 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) in the Chaco region of Paraguay, or
*    Current President George W. Bush owns 40,000 hectares (98,842 acres) in the same region, or
*    Timothy Towell, former U.S. ambassador to Paraguay from 1988 to 1991, administers the 70,000 hectare ranch on behalf of former President Bush.
These supposed land acquisitions were often claimed to be associated with alleged U.S. designs on the Guarani aquifer or the Mariscal Estigarribia air base.
There is no truth to any of these allegations:
*    The White House has stated that the rumors about President Bush are not true.
*    The office of former President George H.W. Bush has confirmed that the allegations about former President Bush are not true.
*    Ambassador Towell has confirmed that he does not administer any land in Paraguay on behalf of either former President George H.W. Bush or current President George W. Bush.

(excerpt from "United States Has No Plans for Military Base in Paraguay," U.S. State Dept.)

United Nations Map of Paraguay
Because the denial is part of another document bearing an unrelated title, the response to the land purchase rumor was discovered only after a concerted web search by the author.  This begs the question, why would someone make an official denial so hard to find?

To begin with, State Department denials lack credibility because the U.S. government often makes assertions and denials that are later proved false. (Consider the claims regarding Iraq weapons of mass destruction.) Thus, one cannot with confidence accept or reject the official explanation.  

Secondly, the issuance of a Bush family denial  indirectly through the State Department is consistent with a Washington tradition of issuing denials through a subordinate or third party in order to create plausible deniability, thus later to claim that facts were somehow miscommunicated.  But, there is no obvious reason to do this secretly if one really wanted to silence a rumor.

The most logical explanation (but, certainly not the only one) is that the Bush administration is involved in some activity involving Paraguay that it is anxious to keep quiet, and therefore published the denial for the benefit of a select audience, mainstream news media, to keep curious reporters at bay.

Interestingly, the land purchase denial was published by the State Department's USINFO Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation Team. CNN described the team as "a crew of two toiling in anonymity at the State Department, writing reports they are prohibited by law from disseminating to the U.S. public."

In coordination with the CIA, FBI and others, the team helps U.S. embassies identify and rebut other nations' disinformation, most often fabrications about the United States planted in foreign newspapers or television shows and, these days, on the Internet. ... In 1996, State laid off the last man in the counterdisinformation office, Todd Leventhal. He was rehired in October [2002]; now he has a researcher and a part-time writer, too. (CNN)

Per a State Department webpage, Leventhal's official title is "Chief of the Counter-Misinformation Team."

State Department denials notwithstanding, reports of a U.S. military presence in Paraguay were recognized by Project Censored in 2006 as one of the 25 most under-reported stories of the year.  Here is what the State Department claims on its website.

The United States does not have a military base in Paraguay and has no plans to establish one.  The United States has not asked the Paraguayan government for a military base, nor does it intend to station soldiers in Paraguay.  As explained below, limited, short-term deployments of U.S. military personnel are scheduled to take place for a series of joint exercises with the Paraguayan military between July 2005 and December 2006. Most personnel deployed will not remain in Paraguay for more than 45 days.

And yet, South American officials viewed the exercises as threatening, a preliminary to U.S. invasion. In the same document, State Department officials also deny U.S. construction of the Mariscal Estigarribia Airport.

The "U.S. base" allegations usually cite the Dr. Luis Maria Argana International Airport in Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, as the facility around which U.S. plans allegedly center.  The claims are that Americans constructed the airport, and built a long runway in order to facilitate U.S. military flights.  Both claims are false.

This does not, however, eliminate the possibility that the U.S. instigated or financed the project.

[Update, Jan. 10 - The State Department says U.S. military B-52's could not land at the airstrip because it allegedly is 40 meters wide and B52's require a strip 46 meters wide. However, an examination of the airport on Google Maps indicates that the airport is closer to 50 meters wide. Even allowing for errors inherent in trying to scale imagery of an area with variable elevations, the strip possibly could accomodate a B-52.]

State further denies that Paraguay offered certain immunity to U.S. troops.

Media and Internet reports have contended that the Paraguayan government granted "total immunity" or full diplomatic immunity to the U.S. troops being deployed for the exercises, in violation of Paraguay's obligations under the Rome Treaty.  This is not the case.

And, yet, the United States suspended aid to Paraguay and other South American countries for failing to provide immunity.

As of July, more than 90 countries were members of the two-year-old International Criminal Court in The Hague, the first permanent world body designed to prosecute war crimes and genocide. Of those, 30 member nations have concluded bilateral non-surrender agreements with the United States, exempting American soldiers from prosecution. Some of those that have refused to sign, however, have seen their foreign aid dry up. (Newsday)

The State Department describes as "myth" reports that the U.S. plans to "intervene" in regions of Paraguay including the tri-border region and Ciudad del Este.

Other allegations in the "U.S. base" myth are that the U.S. plans to intervene in Cuidad del Este - a Paraguayan city of about 200,000 people located in the tri-border area of Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil - and/or seeks to control the Guarani Aquifer, a large fresh-water reserve which lies beneath those countries.  In reality, the United States has no designs of any kind on Cuidad del Este, except to support programs to create jobs in the formal sector there.  The United States has no interest in the Guarani Aquifer, which the U.S. government recognizes as an important resource for the inhabitants of the region.

But, there are several reasons to question the above claim. If  U.S. involvement is primarily for commercial development, then why was Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, heading up talks with Paraguay in August, 2005?

Yesterday, in an extensive interview, the vice president of the Republic, Luis Castiglioni, admitted indirectly that an agreement with Washington had already been reached, and that the arrangements had been confirmed during last week's visit to the country by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "We have showed our firm intention to make the region much safer, much more stable, and much stronger democratically. They [Washington] have made the decision to fortify relations with us because they say this government could be a good example of stability, development and prosperity for the region.
.....
We have agreed to build a more secure Paraguay and a more secure continent, and if the United States cooperates with us, we will have more internal security, more security on our borders, in our airspace, and will contribute greatly to our region and to a safer continent," he insisted. (El Diario, via WatchingAmerica.com)

The emphasis on security and the involvement of Secretary Rumsfeld strongly suggest some sort of planned military involvement.  Were the U.S. truly concerned only about improved governance and commercial development, one would expect the meeting with Castiglioni to have been headed by the Secretary of State, perhaps including a representative of the Department of Commerce.

The administration itself gave credibility to claims of planned US intervention in the triple- border area and Ciudad del Este when it gave notice in December that it was freezing U.S. assets of individuals and businesses in those areas, allegedly because the funds would be used to support Hezbollah activities.  

The United States on Wednesday froze the U.S. assets of nine people and two businesses in the border area of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay who Washington said helped funnel millions of dollars to Lebanon's Hezbollah.
.....
The Treasury Department said the nine people named on Wednesday funneled cash to Assad Ahmad Barakat, who it called a "specially designated global terrorist." The Treasury Department has previously described Barakat as a "key terrorist financier in South America" for Hezbollah.

Among the nine, the Treasury Department said that Muhammad Yusif Abdallah is a senior Hezbollah official in the region who owns a shopping center in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, where several businesses are owned by Hezbollah members. The Galeria Page mall serves as a source of fund-raising for Hezbollah, the Treasury Department said. (Reuters)

Paraguay denied the accusations, no doubt fearing the Bush administration might use the alleged terror connection as an excuse to invade.  And, well they might worry, because days after 9/11, administration officials circulated a memo recommending military action in Paraguay as part of the "war on terror."

The memo's content, NEWSWEEK has learned, was in part the product of ideas from a two-man secret Pentagon intelligence unit appointed by Feith after 9/11: veteran defense analyst Michael Maloof and Mideast expert David Wurmser, now a top foreign-policy aide to Dick Cheney. Maloof and Wurmser saw links between international terror groups that the CIA and other intelligence agencies dismissed. They argued that an attack on terrorists in South America--for example, a remote region on the border of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil where intelligence reports said Iranian-backed Hizbullah had a presence--would have ripple effects on other terrorist operations. The proposals were floated to top foreign-policy advisers. But White House officials stress they were regarded warily and never adopted. (Newsweek)

Clearly, the Bush administration is not coming clean about its plans for Paraguay, whatever they may be. This does not rule out the possibility of a terrorist presence in that country, nor does it confirm rumors of a Bush estancia and plans for a U.S. invasion. But, after numerous examples of U.S. dishonesty, Iraq being the latest, Paraguayans and Americans alike have cause to be skeptical of our government's professed intentions.

Trust, the most essential element of any relationship, relies on integrity. As the new Congress convenes, now would be a good time to urge our representatives to begin making integrity a pillar of U.S. foreign relations, not a rolling stone for officials impatient with diplomacy.