Switch HONDURAS 1954 with GUATEMALA 2009

[Octafish]

4. FOIA rendered largely moot when it comes to CIA.

The facts, on the other hand, are not.

Hillary Clinton’s Honduran Disgrace

By Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive, March 5, 2010

Hillary Clinton continues with her hawkish ways, making Obama’s foreign policy less distinguishable from Bush’s every day.

She just met with Honduran President Pepe Lobo, she’s notified Congress that the Obama administration is restoring aid to Honduras, and she’s urging Latin American nations to recognize the Lobo government in Tegucigalpa.

The democratic opposition in Honduras boycotted lobo’s election, since he’s allied with the forces that overthrew Manuel Zelaya last June.

But for the longest time, Hillary Clinton stubbornly refused to call the June takeover a “coup,” even though her boss, the president of the United States, immediately denounced it as such.

SNIP..

“Other countries of the region say that they want to wait a while,” she said on her Latin American trip. “I don’t know what they’re waiting for.”

CONTINUED...

http://progressive.org/wx030510.html

That's what she said. Her email provides further insight:

The Hillary Clinton Emails and the Honduras Coup

by Alexander Main
CEPR Blog, September 24, 2015

EXCERPT...

A number of Clinton emails show how, starting shortly after the coup, HRC and her team shifted the deliberations on Honduras from the Organization of American States (OAS) – where Zelaya could benefit from the strong support of left-wing allies throughout the region – to the San José negotiation process in Costa Rica. There, representatives of the coup regime were placed on an equal footing with representatives of Zelaya’s constitutional government, and Costa Rican president Oscar Arias (a close U.S. ally) as mediator. Unsurprisingly, the negotiation process only succeeded in one thing: keeping Zelaya out of office for the rest of his constitutional mandate.

From the outset, U.S. interests and policy goals in Honduras were clearly identified in the emails that darted back and forth between Clinton and her advisors. On the day of the coup (June 28, 2009), Tom Shannon, the outgoing Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, provided an update for Clinton and her close staff that noted that he was “calling the new SouthCom Commander to ensure a coordinated U.S. approach [since] we have big military equities in Honduras through Joint Task Force Bravo at Soto Cano airbase.” A later email, with talking points for a phone call between Clinton and the Spanish foreign minister, indicated that Clinton’s team was already focused on making sure that Honduras’ upcoming national elections would take place on schedule (in November of 2009):

We hope Spain will work with us and the OAS to ensure a restoration of democratic order that will allow Honduras to carry through with its electoral timetable (presidential vote scheduled for November).

This talking point would prove to be mostly false. In later emails we see how the OAS is removed from the U.S. agenda, and the “restoration of democratic order” takes a back seat to the State Department’s goal of going forward with Honduras’ November elections no matter what.

A little over a week after the coup, Shannon sent an email to Clinton, via her aide Huma Abedin, with background notes for a July 6 phone call to then President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. In it he discusses a burgeoning plan to bypass the OAS – where many governments were growing increasingly impatient with the U.S. appearing to want to bolster the coup regime – and organize direct talks between the coup regime and the exiled Zelaya government in Costa Rica, where they would be closely supervised by president Arias and U.S. State Department officials. The coup regime agreed to the Arias mediation, while vehemently rejecting OAS mediation. Zelaya understandably balked at the idea at first. In his message, Shannon outlines a plan for getting Uribe to lobby Zelaya to accept Arias’ offer of mediation of direct talks:

(Uribe like many other leaders with an interest in Central America, is worried that Honduras is slipping towards confrontation and violence. He probably does not think (OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel) Insulza is up to the task. (Secretary of State Clinton) should be aware that Arias is prepared to offer his services. I spoke with the Costa Rican (foreign minister), who said the de facto government has reached out to Arias, and that the Costa Ricans will be looking for a way to make the offer to Zelaya. Uribe knows Zelaya and has some influence. Uribe might want to talk with Arias and offer to help move Zelaya in the right direction. (Although Uribe and Zelaya come from different ends of the political spectrum, they are both ranchers and love horses, and this has created some comradeship.)

In addition to this lobbying by proxy, Zelaya was surely under direct pressure from Clinton, who he met with on July 7 in Washington. Following the meeting, Clinton announced to the press that Zelaya had accepted to have Arias mediate but that the U.S. also continued “to support regional efforts through the OAS to bring about a peaceful resolution that is consistent with the terms of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.”

The emails provide strong evidence that the State Department had in fact no intention of pursuing a resolution to the crisis at the OAS. In the weeks that followed, a regional tug-of-war took place, with various OAS member governments trying to keep Honduras on the agenda at the OAS, and get members to agree to stronger measures against the coup regime, and the U.S. only showing interest in the Costa Rica mediation.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/09/24/hillary-clinton-emails-and-honduras-coup

You don't have to be a genius at CounterPunch to know who benefits from the coup.