CARACAS—Shortly before announcing that Hugo Chávez died, Venezuela's government resorted to one of the late president's favorite ploys to try to unite his supporters: allege a conspiracy by the U.S. to destabilize the country.
| The last time we had a CIA that could do that was when Reagan was president... |
Vice President Nicolás Maduro kicked out two U.S. military attachés for allegedly plotting against Venezuela and even suggested that Washington may have been behind Mr. Chávez's cancer.
"Behind all of [the plots] are the enemies of the fatherland," Mr. Maduro said on state television, flanked by the entire cabinet, state governors and Venezuela's military commanders.
Mr. Maduro said that the U.S. Embassy's Air Force attaché, Col. David Delmonaco, and another unnamed U.S. military official had approached members of the Venezuelan military and tried to recruit them into plans to "destabilize" the oil-rich South American nation. Mr. Maduro didn't offer further details on the alleged plot.
The Obama administration, which has been hoping for closer relations with Venezuela following years of antagonism from Mr. Chávez,
| ...though there's no reason to want such warmer relations and no prospect of having them short of a counter-revolution... |
rejected the allegations.
"We completely reject the Venezuelan government's claim that the United States is involved in any type of conspiracy to destabilize the Venezuelan government. We reject the specific allegations against members of our Embassy," said State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell.
"An assertion that the United States was somehow involved in causing President Chávez's illness is absurd, and we definitively reject it," said Mr. Ventrell.
U.S. officials said it was likely that a number of Venezuelan diplomats would be asked to leave the U.S. in the coming days. |