I met with the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, a few days after his kidnapping. I will tell you about that and about the visit of current President Nicolás Maduro to my office in New York. But first you have to know three things about Venezuela, to understand why Donald Trump has ordered a covert operation to overthrow his government.

• 1.Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on the planet.
• 2.Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on the planet.
• 3.Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on the planet.

Look it up: According to OPEC’s own site, Venezuela’s 303 billion barrels in proven reserves are four times Saudi Arabia’s reserves.

(By the way, Donald, when you announce a “covert” operation, it is no longer covered. But never mind.)

For years I was a BBC Television correspondent covering Venezuela and the United States’ attempts to overthrow its elected government. Trump didn’t invent anything. This is at least the fourth attempt to overthrow and assassinate a US-backed Venezuelan president.

The first attempt was in March 2002, when I was told that Chávez would be overthrown by a military coup. In fact, in April of that year, he was kidnapped by renegade officers who had a fantasy, shared by the US State Department, that the public hated Chávez and would celebrate his overthrow.

But it became another Bay of Pigs after tens of thousands of angry Venezuelans surrounded the Miraflores Palace as coup leaders “inaugurated” the Exxon Oil lawyer as “president.” George W. Bush’s ambassador to Venezuela attends this crazy inauguration of the fake president.

But then the conspirators, along with the Exxon man and the US ambassador, fled the Presidential Palace after the coup plotters, fearing for their lives, returned Chávez, by helicopter, safely to his Oval Office.

(Download the film of my BBC reports, The assassination of Hugo Chávezproduced with Oscar-nominated cinematographer Richard Rowley. If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation, we would greatly appreciate it.)

Days later I met with Chavez, who told my BBC audience that while he was in the helicopter, he was clutching his rosary because he expected to be pushed into the sea.

Instead, the frightened coup leaders returned him safely to his office. Chávez then chose to let his kidnappers escape without punishment.

In 2004, Chávez sent Maduro, the future president, to meet with me in my office in New York to review evidence that Wackenhut Corporation (now called GEO, a major operator of ICE detention centers) had planned to assassinate Chávez.

Venezuelan intelligence had secretly recorded contractors at the US embassy in Caracas speaking in eerie language: “What took shape here is a type of disguised intelligence… that is attached to the third ring of security, which is the invisible ring.” (“Invisible Ring”? Has anyone at the State Department read too many John le Carré novels?)

The State Department during the George W. Bush administration also attempted to purge voters from Venezuela’s (and Argentina’s and Mexico’s) election records using the same company, Choicepoint, that purged voter records in Florida in 2000 to give Bush his Baloney election “victory.”

Third attempt: During Trump I, the United States attempted to intimidate Venezuelans into electing a white man named Juan Guaidó (who lived in the United States), whom Trump hoped would defeat Maduro in an election. But the black and Indian population of Venezuela, after they finally elected one of their own, Chavez, were not going to return to the white minority rule that had crushed them for 400 years. Guaidó didn’t even run for president, but the US government declared him the real president and gave this scammer all the US assets of CITGO, the Venezuelan oil company.

Today we are on the fourth attempt to overthrow the government of Venezuela through kidnapping (again?!) or assassination.

This time it is different, because President Maduro actually lost his third re-election attempt for the presidency, but simply refused to leave office. (Hey, you’d think Trump would admire that.)

There is no doubt that Maduro has become a dictator. But if the United States believes it can invade Venezuela or appoint a replacement for Maduro, they don’t know Venezuelans. They are patriots and they are all armed. How many Americans will Trump send to their deaths to get hold of Venezuelan crude oil?

Democracy

The saddest thing is that Maduro has corrupted and destroyed the solid democracy that Chávez brought to Venezuela. In 2006, I joined Chávez’s opponent, Julio Borges, a decent guy, on the campaign trail. Borges would get only two or three supporters in a city. Then I joined Chavez who, in the same town, would appear and attract thousands.

Chávez was tremendously popular because, as an opposition journalist mockingly told me, “Chávez gives you bread and bricks!” – that is, it gave the public food, housing and health care by using the nation’s enormous oil revenues for public services. Under the old regime, oil wealth was diverted into the pockets of wealthy Venezuelans in Miami.

I have little sympathy for Maduro, who, like Trump, took office by manipulating votes. But the invasion or assassination of any of the heads of state should scare and horrify us all.

Why not Saudi Arabia?

Trump and our National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, have said that Maduro must go because he has threatened democracy in Venezuela and is trafficking fentanyl to the United States.

Think about it. If Trump wants to save democracy, why attack Venezuela and not the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi or the Emirates? Let us not forget that the “royalty” of the Arabian Peninsula is nothing more than dictators in bathrobes.

Why Venezuela and not the potentates of the Arabian Peninsula?

Let me count the ways: Qatar has bought $2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies from Trump that will go into the pockets of the Trump family. And there’s that little gift from Qatar of a 747 plane to Donald, not the US government. And there is the $2 billion that the Saudis have easily given to Jared Kushner.

A ‘narcoterrorist’?

Trump has accused Maduro of running a cartel that dumps fentanyl in the United States, an accusation as credible as Trump’s claim against that other supposed narcoterrorist nation, Canada.

I am no admirer of my former friend Maduro, now a brutal authoritarian and vote thief, a Venezuelan Putin. But the drug dealer? No drug trafficker in his right mind would carry drugs from Caracas to Miami. In fact, according to the latest UN World Drug Report, Venezuela is neither a major drug producer nor a key corridor for trafficking to the United States.

Trump’s troops have massacred more than two dozen people allegedly trafficking drugs from Caracas to Miami. While Trinidad’s president is a Trump ally, that government claimed that the two dead who could be identified, Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, were simply traveling from work, like many workers, across the seven-mile strait between the countries. Even our Secretary of State, “Little Marco,” said the ship was simply headed to Trinidad and then changed his statement to “Miami” after Trump announced its supposed destination.

And did you notice? Every time a US prosecutor intercepts a drug shipment, he proudly displays the drugs, cash and names of traffickers obtained in the haul. However, after these small passenger ships were attacked, not sunk, we were never shown the drugs or evidence.

Indeed there was a drug ship, a submersible, attacked by the United States. But the American media generally failed to mention that, unlike the murdered fishermen and travelers from Venezuela, the only actual drug shipment came from Colombia and was captured in the Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean.

So where do the drugs come from, if not from Venezuela or Canada? According to a New Yorker One of the world’s largest and most violent cocaine cartels, the Kinahan Organized Crime Group, has run out of (you guessed it) Abu Dhabi, according to the investigation.

Act of war

There is no doubt why most Venezuelans want Maduro gone. The economy is on its deathbed. Because? Because a US blockade, basically a siege on Venezuela, has caused the almost total collapse of Venezuela’s source of wealth: its oil industry. By preventing the entry of oil equipment and imposing an oil embargo, the nation is being strangled. An embargo is a globally recognized act of war that Americans (let alone Venezuelans) never authorized.

Greg Palast meets with Nicolás Maduro. Photo: Palast Research Fund 2004.

The idea that Maduro ruined the economy is nonsense through and through. Imagine if the United States laid siege to Texas, not allowing the entry of goods and blocking the exit of oil.

However, the public, hoping that the embargo would be lifted, voted to oust Maduro. He must go. But through Venezuelan votes, not American bullets.

And let me tell you, as an energy economist, the Venezuelan oil embargo, which reduced the country’s exports by 74 percent, from 2.4 million barrels a day to 735,000, has easily added almost a dollar to the price Americans pay at the pump for gasoline.

Chávez told me that he knew the limit of how far he could pressure the United States and its oil companies. “I’m a good chess player,” he told me. Unripe. For example, Maduro rejected British Petroleum’s request to take over oil fields once operated by the French national oil company. Britain subsequently seized $10 billion of Venezuela’s gold reserves held in the British Treasury.

As you will see at the premiere of my film. The assassination of Hugo Chávezthe crazy idea of ​​assassinating the president of Venezuela was first raised on television by none other than televangelist Pat Robertson, who, insiders told me, was furious that he was rejected in his application to the Chavez government for a diamond mining concession.

To his television audience, Robertson said: “You know, I don’t know this doctrine of murder, but if [Chávez] He thinks we’re trying to murder him, I think we should really go ahead and do it. “It’s much cheaper than starting a war.”

That’s true, I guess. But why start a war?

Oil and diamonds. How much blood are they worth?

May I suggest that we return democracy to Venezuela with votes, not bullets?