Otto Reich Loses His Job

In November of last year the Bush administration suffered a setback in its campaign to destroy democracy in Latin America when it was forced to withdraw Otto Reich from his position as U.S. Undersecretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs, after the Senate repeatedly refused to confirm his appointment. Prior to his appointment last March, President George Bush had been trying to get Reich into the State Department since the spring of 2001. The difficulty had arisen because of Reich's past, which included involvement with the Contras in Nicaragua during Reagan's administration in the 1980s, and involvement with Orlando Bosch, the Cuban-American responsible for the terrorist bombing of a Cubana Airlines jet in 1976 which killed 73 people.

Reich is a Cuban-born American whose family fled Cuba after the revolution. He has strong ties to the reactionary Miami Cuban community, which has been working overtime to overthrow of the Cuban government through all kinds of means, including terrorist acts and assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. Reich's passion against Castro is matched only by his strong commitment to the overthrow of progressive governments in Latin America; it is for both these purposes, it seems, that Bush worked so hard to have him appointed to the Latin American desk at the State Department.

During his nine-month tenure with the State Department, Reich carried out the following activities, among others:

- He made unfounded accusations that Cuba had interfered in the attempted right-wing coup against President Chavez in Venezuela in April. He engineered the lie that four Cuban planes had landed in Venezuela in the middle of the coup attempt. These lies were quickly refuted;

- He met with Pedro Carmona, the leader of the coup, on the day the latter seized power, leading to allegations that Reich (along with others) was stage-managing Carmona's takeover;

- In May, Reich joined the Board of Supervisors of the infamous Pentagon-run Western Hemispheric Institution for Cooperation and Security, formerly called the School of the Americas, and dubbed by many as the School of Assassins;

- Reich and his advisor, Phillip Chicola, lobbied Congress to support a move to allow U.S. aid to the anti-drug campaign in Columbia to be used to fight leftist guerillas there;

- In October, Reich gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation in which he rehashed the lies that Cuba was developing biological weapons and that it was sponsoring state terrorism.

It is considered unlikely that Reich will be nominated again for a State Department appointment. Nonetheless, he is still on the government payroll.