Menard: CIA agent and Liar
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD — Special for Granma International —
Without Frontiers • Under the pretext of fighting for press freedom, Reporters Without Frontiers has been transformed into a tool of Washington and its Interests Section in Havana • In order to try and undermine the Cuban Revolution, Robert Menard, leader of this organization, is purchases the services of pseudo-reporters to fuel the fascist, annexationist and Batista-loving Miami press
PLAGIARIZING the name of credible international organizations was not that difficult for neo-reactionary Robert Menard - pseudo-journalist, fraudster and CIA agent – in order to make a space for himself in the communications world. Nor was it difficult to find funds for his projects of misinformation: the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are offering the bread and butter.
One of Robert Menard’s protégés, journalist Néstor Baguer, was president of the Association of Independent Cuban Journalists...until it became known, during the trial of those mercenaries of misinformation, that he was State Security agent Octavio. Menard also lent his support to Aleida Godínez, journalist with Lux magazine, an alleged trade union publication from the electricity industry, printed in Miami and distributed by USIS. Above, Néstor Baguer in a "journalists" meeting held in the U.S. Interests Section.
Following the arrest in Cuba of those individuals who actively collaborated with the U.S. Special Interests Section and its plans to destabilize the Cuban Revolution, Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Frontiers-RWF-), Menard’s NGO (that’s not that non-governmental) in support of "independent journalists" (who are not exactly journalists or independent), has thrown itself into an hysterical anti-Cuba campaign worthy of counterrevolutionaries in Miami.
For several years now, Menard and the RWF organization have managed to penetrate the editorial offices of several French and international media agencies, disguised as imperialist-style human rights activists, demanding the right to interfere in the internal affairs of individual nations and justifying the military interventions of their bosses.
A recent, sensationalist publicity stunt by RWF was to make a scandalous parallel of the human rights situation in Baghdad - where U.S. fascism has just carried out a massacre - with Cuba, where the Revolution exercises the right to defend itself from brazen foreign intervention.
In a press conference on April 9, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque recalled that there is an abundance of financial sources which groups like Menard’s – obsessed with Cuba and supposedly "humanitarian" - have access to.
The balance sheet is, quite simply, indecent.
RAINING BUCKS
In 2002, the International Republican Institute in the United States received the sum of $1,674,462 USD in order to "help create bases of international support to provide material, moral and ideological aid to activists in Cuba."
On December 27, Adolfo Franco (a member of the so-called Miami Connection and one of more than 20 Cuban-Americans to have penetrated the upper echelons of the Bush administration), the USAID administrator for the Latin American and Caribbean region (get this!) openly stated before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee that the US foreign aid agency had invested $22 million USD in materials, propaganda and other items for Cuba, including 7,000 radios "to listen to Radio Martí."
It is worth mentioning that the very same Radio Martí receives $25 million USD from Voice of America funds, of which it is a simple subsidiary... In the same way every year, from the many sources created by the government in Washington to supply mercenaries, tens and tens of millions of dollars rain on those who collaborate with imperialism, as much in Paris or Havana as in Miami.
The self-same James Cason - a CIA agent and head of USIS – who was commissioned by George W. Bush’s government to intensify the subversive campaign against Cuba, announced on Miami television that he would meet at every possible opportunity with the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), an organization created, sustained and directed by the CIA, servant of the NED and USAID, and identified by terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, currently imprisoned in Panama, as his principal financial source.
Cason also acknowledged his immoral and active relationship with the paramilitary version of CANF, the Cuban Liberty Council, an organization run by terrorist couple Ninoska Lucrecia Pérez Castellon and Roberto Martí Pérez, the proven organizer and financier of multiple acts of terrorism committed against Cuba.
In his eagerness to "liberate Cuba" and "support press freedom", and with the anti-communist venom he has been unable to hide, Menard has not only hired out his organization but has transformed it into a misinformation agency and a mechanism for distributing funds to counterrevolutionaries, one that also provides false material for all the neo-fascistic and Batista-supporting media channels in South Florida: a French version of CIA-operative Frank Calson’s Freedom House, which also devotes itself to distributing payment funds.
"WE GAVE THEM $50 USD A MONTH"
Some years ago, Menard implicitly confessed to his participation in the distribution of money to an important number of "collaborators" who were carrying out work for the USIS.
"We gave around 20 journalists $50 USD per month each to survive," Menard confirmed to Hernando Calvo Ospina and Katiijn Declercq, authors of ¿Disidentes o mercenarios? (Dissidents or Mercenaries).
In fact, the way in which these funds - of "undetermined" origin – were distributed by Menard and his organization correspond with the methods used by various organizations in the United States openly connected to the NED and USAID and reveal the relationship between RWF and the CIA; like the destination of the supposed "information" circulated by the counterrevolutionary "agencies".
This material, systematically directed at undermining and damaging the Revolution’s image, is destined for publications characterized by their alignment to Washington. In such a way that RWF is not just fulfilling its mission to locate, recruit, direct and financially support a series of mercenaries, but also to fuel media channels controlled by a stew of Batista-loving personalities such as El Diario de las Américas, El Nuevo Herald, Radio Mambí and Radio Martí, each of them with clear neo-fascist, annexationist tendencies.
By behaving in this way, Menard is aligning his supposedly humanitarian organization with the vision of Cuba held by the "Pontiff" of Radio Martí, Alberto Pérez-Roura. This individual is the head of a loathsome channel that constantly expresses its support for the bloodiest terrorism, represented by Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles.
A clear collaborator with the blockade in respect of information, Menard has always abstained from condemning the tremendously repressive policies of numerous "regimes" associated with the United States. Nor does he attack the empire that generates them, preferring instead to get his funds from those in the European Union and various business people suspiciously interested in the cause of information.
Significantly, Menard’s organization is one of three similar organizations provided with large budgets and saturating the global market of the defense of press freedom in its monopolistic version. Curiously enough, the other two are U.S. organizations: CPJ of New York and Miami’s Inter American Press.
Some months ago, Menard let his mask slip in Venezuela, by rushing to the aid of the putschist press, that of multimillionaire Gustavo Cisneros and others like him, whilst ignoring the fate of journalists from the community press, those in favor of the immense popular support enjoyed by President Hugo Chávez.
In the same way, he has always ignored the brutal attacks on and detentions of reporters connected to the anti-globalization campaigns (most notably those from the Indymedia network) and the large-scale protests that have taken place since 1999 against the World Trade Organization in Washington.
A self-proclaimed freedom fighter, he has embarked on his new crusade whilst George W. Bush sets off on his, with admirable simultaneity.
In the same way that George W. Bush and his regime use the issue of human rights as their defense in crushing them - either through the Patriot Act or cluster bombs - Robert Menard uses it to finish off with information. Dreaming of one America...without frontiers.