The Hillary
Clinton emails released last week include some telling exchanges about the June
2009 military coup that toppled democratically elected Honduran president
Manuel Zelaya, a leftist who was seen as a threat by the Honduran
establishment and U.S. business interests.
At a time when the
State Department strategized over how best to keep Zelaya out of power while
not explicitly endorsing the coup, Clinton suggested using longtime Clinton confidant
Lanny Davis as a back-channel to Roberto Micheletti, the interim president
installed after the coup.
During that
period, Davis was working as a consultant
to a group of Honduran businessmen who had supported the coup.
In an email chain
discussing a meeting between Davis and State Department officials, Clinton
asked, “Can he help me talk w Micheletti?”
Davis rose to
prominence as an adviser to the Clintons during the Monica Lewinsky
scandal, and has since served as a high-powered “crisis communications” adviser
to a variety of people and organizations facing negative attention in the
media, from scandal-plagued for-profit college companies to African dictators. His client list has elicited frequent accusations
of hypocrisy.
Davis was not the
only foreign agent with access to Clinton. As The Guardian and Politico have reported, other emails point
to lobbyists with direct access to Clinton’s personal email.
The request to
talk to Davis came on October 22, 2009, a crucial turning point for the “de
facto” government that had ousted Zelaya.
A week
later, Clinton and her top aides reportedly brokered a deal to bring
Zelaya back to power through a national unity government. But the deal was
no “breakthrough,” as some media outlets reported.
Rather, there was a huge loophole, providing the pro-coup Honduran legislature
with veto power over Zelaya’s return. The supposed plan fell apart, and the “de
facto” government sponsored what many considered a fraudulent election while
denying Zelaya’s return.
The election, on
November 29, 2009, was beset by violence, with anti-coup organizers murdered before the election and
the police violently suppressing an opposition rally in San Pedro Sula and
shutting
down left-leaning media outlets. Major international observers,
including the United Nations and the Carter Center, as well as most major
opposition candidates, boycotted the election. As journalist Jesse
Freeston documented for the Real News Network, election
officials provided wildly disparate estimates for election turnout. The
election paved the way for coup-supporters from the National Party to solidify
power.
Rather than seeing
this as a failure, the Clinton emails released last week further confirm
that the State Department had sought the permanent ouster of Zelaya all
along.
State Department
officials bucked the demands of most Latin American countries and rushed to recognize the election as “free, fair and
transparent.”
In an email titled
“Notes from the Peanut Gallery,” Thomas Shannon, the lead State Department
negotiator for the Honduras talks, gushed over the election results in a
message that was sent to Secretary Clinton.
“The turnout
(probably a record) and the clear rejection of the Liberal Party shows our
approach was the right one,” wrote Shannon, who recommended that the U.S.
should “congratulate the Honduran people” and “connect today’s vote to the deep
democratic vocation of the Honduran people.” Shannon, then the assistant
secretary of state for Western hemisphere affairs, expressed gratitude that
Zelaya was out of power, referring to the ousted president as a “failed”
leader.
The Shannon emails
“show what we knew all along: the U.S. wanted the elections to solidify
the changes wrought by the coup,” said Dan Beeton, international communications
director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
It was Shannon,
notably, who signed the accord to bring Zelaya back to
Honduras, and then shocked Latin American leaders by suggesting on CNN days
later that the U.S. would recognize the results of the election even if Zelaya
was not restored.
Despite claims to
media outlets that they were working to restore the democratically elected
Honduran government, the U.S. made other efforts to ensure the coup government’s grip
on power. In October 2009, the United States blocked a resolution from
the Organization of American States requiring Zelaya’s return as a
precondition for elections. The U.S. also failed to officially determine
that a “military coup” occured, and did not cut off aid to Honduras as is
required by law following a coup.
An August 2009 email chain with Harold Koh, then the State
Department legal adviser, discussed how to deal with the foreign aid issue,
which in Honduras is largely administered through the Millenium Challenge
Corporation. The email chain carried the subject line “Honduras Military Coup
Decision,” includes an email from Koh noting that Honduras might fall
under “specified legal prohibitions on assistance.” Koh wrote that
Secretary Clinton, as chair of the MCC board, would have a considerable voice
over the determination of Honduras as a coup country. Unfortunately, much of
the memo Koh prepared is redacted and Clinton’s response is not revealed in the
email chain.
In her 2014
book, Hard Choices, Clinton readily admits that in the days after
the coup, she spoke with leaders in the Western hemisphere about “a plan to
restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held
quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya
moot.” Mark Weisbrot, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, which has monitored the human rights situation in Honduras, refers to
this line as a “bold confession.” Zelaya’s return was “anything but moot,”
Weisbrot has argued, noting that Latin American leaders
and the United Nations General Assembly demanded Zelaya’s return.
(This post is from
our blog Unofficial Sources.)
Photo: Ethan
Miller/Getty
Email the author: lee.fang@theintercept.com
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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