Eva Golinger

Eva Golinger is a Venezuelan-American attorney and editor of the Correo del Orinoco International, a web- and print-based newspaper which is financed by the Venezuelan government. in a 2011 profile in the New York Times she was described as "one of the most prominent fixtures of Venezuela’s expanding state propaganda complex," and her newspaper as "Venezuela’s equivalent of the Cuban newspaper Granma." [2] “I’m a soldier for this revolution," she told the New York Times.

Golinger is also a weekly host for a television show on RT Network, a television channel financed by the government of Russia. [3]

She is the author of several books on Venezuela's relationship with the United States. She is an outspoken supporter of Venezuela's socialist president Hugo Chávez; As of May 2011 she serves as a foreign policy advisor to the Venezuelan government [4] Chávez has called her La novia de Venezuela ("The Girlfriend of Venezuela"). Golinger is a writer at Venezuelanalysis.com, and according to the National Catholic Reporter in 2004 was "head of the pro-Chávez Venezuela Solidarity Committee in New York". Her website, venezuelafoia.info, aims to shed light on what she calls links between U.S. government agencies and Venezuelan organizations by publishing documents obtained using the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Background

Golinger is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (1994). She initially studied music, before switching to political science and law, and developed an interest in what she says is the role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in regime change around the world. She completed her Juris Doctorate (JD) in international human rights law in 2003 at City University of New York School of Law. In the interim she had spent nearly five years in Mérida from the mid-1990s on, discovering her Venezuelan roots.

Books

Golinger is the author of several books on Venezuela's relationship with the United States, based on research using the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to shed light on what she calls links between U.S. government agencies and Venezuelan organizations, particularly in relation to the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt. Her books are published by the Venezuelan government's information ministry and are both celebrated and launched at ministry events that often include the participation of high level Venezuelan government officials.

Her first book, The Chávez Code (2006), was first officially presented in Havana at a government-sponsored event; its preface was co-authored by Rogelio Polanco, Cuban Ambassador to Venezuela since August 2009. It then arrived in Venezuela. It has been published in six languages, and a film is being made. This book was introduced by the Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel.

An extensive review of her first book carried out by Veneconomy, a political and economic research publication in Venezuela, claims that Golinger manipulated sources and states that the documents she cites in the text of the book do not correspond to the footnotes in the book: "In none of the cases where she makes a specific citation of an official [U.S. government] document is there a quote affirming what she states." Veneconomy claims that Golinger attributes quotations that do not exist. Veneconomy's review said it found dozens of instances of what they considered sloppy work, manipulation of sources, false and chronologically inaccurate claims, and amateur historiography.

A 2009 book, La Mirada del Imperio sobre el 4F, uses U.S. documents obtained through FOIA requests to examine Washington's views of the February 1992 coup d'état attempt led by Hugo Chávez.^{[citation needed]}

In 2009 Golinger co-authored another book (with Jean-Guy Allard) called La Agresión Permanente ("The Permanent Aggression"), published by the Venezuelan Ministry of Information. The book looks at the USA's history of "democracy promotion", focusing on United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the CIA and links between them and other organisations such as the Inter-American Press Association and Human Rights Watch. The book continues the themes Golinger elaborated in Empire's Web (2008).^{[citation needed]}

Chavez and Venezuela activism

The Center for Public Integrity describes Golinger as "a writer at the pro-Chávez Web site, Venezuelanalysis.com" and says she was asked in 2003 by the Venezuela Information Office (VIO) to be the member of a "rapid response team to combat news articles and editorials critical of Chávez". According to Golinger, the "VIO's communications were not significant, and ... 'Long before that office came into existence ... I was writing articles about Venezuela and engaging in efforts to educate on Venezuelan current affairs'."

The New York Times described Golinger's website, Venezuelafoia.info as "pro-Chavez" and noted in 2004 that she uncovered " ... documents [that] form part of an offensive by pro-Chávez activists who aim to show that the United States has, at least tacitly, supported the opposition's unconstitutional efforts to remove the president. Golinger ... obtained reams of documents from the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit agency financed by the United States government, that show that $2.2 million was spent from 2000 to 2003 to train or finance anti-Chávez parties and organizations." According to The New York Times, "The documents do not show that the United States backed the coup, as Mr. Chávez has charged. Instead, the documents show that American officials issued 'repeated warnings that the United States will not support any extraconstitutional moves to oust Chávez.'" The documents also showed however that American officials knew of the coup attempt beforehand, something which they had strenuously denied in the days after the event.

Golinger has stated that she believed Maria Corina Machado, head of a Venezuelan NGO Sumate that received a $53,000 grant from the NED was guilty of treason against Venezuela.^{[citation needed]}

Views on Foreign Leaders

Golinger has traveled extensively with president Chavez on foreign trips including a seven-country tour in 2010. She described Belarus's Aleksandr Lukashenko as “really nice,” and his government as "not a dictatorship." She dined with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and gave him a copy of her book describing him as "gentle" at their meeting. “Chávez presented me as his defender to Ahmadinejad,” she told the New York Times. [5]

Publications

• The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela, Pluto Press, 2006
• Bush Versus Chávez: Washington's War on Venezuela, Monthly Review Press, 2008
• Bush Vs. Chavez: Washington's War on Venezuela, Aakar Books, 2008,
• (Spanish) La Telaraña Imperial: Enciclopedia de Injerencia y Subversión (Empire's Web: Encyclopedia of Interventionism and Subversion), Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2008
• (Spanish) (with Jean-Guy Allard), La Agresión Permanente: USAID, NED y CIA, Caracas: Ministerio del Poder Poder Popular para la Comunicación y la Información, 2009
• (Spanish) La Mirada del Imperio sobre el 4F: Los Documentos Desclasificados de Washington sobre la rebelión militar del 4 de febrero de 1992, Caracas: IDEA Fondo Editorial, 2009

External links

• www.venezuelafoia.info
• www.chavezcode.com