Well, it seems that US media and authorities are finally catching up with some undeniable facts about the diplomats of Hugo Chávez in the United States. The Miami Herald reports today that Martín Sánchez, Venezuela’s consul in San Francisco (previously in Chicago), has come under scrutiny from the US State Department due to his connection to Aporrea.org, a site he created in 2003 that regularly publishes anti-Semitic views and has encouraged supporters of Hugo Chávez to identify, question, and publicly denounce Venezuelan Jews.
But there’s more to Sánchez. As I conveyed to Ed Lasky from the American Thinker, there is no evidence in the Official Gazette of Venezuela (where diplomatic appointments must be published for them to be legal) confirming Martín Sánchez’s designation as Consul in Chicago or San Francisco. So, with what visa is he in the U.S.—a tourist visa or a diplomatic one? If he is a diplomat, and considering there’s no evidence to support his status in Venezuela’s official record, isn’t that a misrepresentation?
This isn’t news to me, as I’ve been reporting on Martín Sánchez’s meteoric rise since November 2004. That was five years ago, so it doesn’t make sense to repeat old news. However, now that U.S. authorities have been alerted by the Anti-Defamation League, it’s worth mentioning another apologist for Hugo Chávez, a colleague of Martín Sánchez at Venezuelanalysis.com, married to Chávez’s consul in New York, and involved in promoting chavista ideology in American academia: Gregory Wilpert, also known as Greg Wilpert. Wilpert was seen very close to Noam Chomsky during his last visit to Venezuela and played a pivotal role in the propaganda letter sent by Chávez-supporting academics to Human Rights Watch. Wilpert, who holds German-American nationality and likely Venezuelan roots, is very active in distributing propaganda in the U.S., yet he is not registered with the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Unit, as he should be.
Wilpert has also been misleading in communications with Human Rights Watch. Ernesto Mora, Media Relations Manager at Brooklyn College, responded to my inquiry about Wilpert’s credentials in August:
Alek, we have received your email requesting more information about Prof. Gregory Wilpert. Professor Wilpert does not work on the Brooklyn College campus but for the Worker Education program.
This was confirmed by Professor and Chair Sally Bermanzhon, who also wrote in August:
Gregory Wilpert was hired in spring 2008 as an adjunct at the Grad Ctr for Worker Education located at 25 Broadway in Manhattan.
So again, as with the scam artist Eva Golinger, we see how chavista agents lie about their credentials and operate with complete freedom and impunity, in clear violation of U.S. law.
Update November 26, 2009: Gregory Wilpert has written to inform me and my readers that he has not misrepresented himself. His ‘clarification’ goes as follows:
Just to let you and your readers know: Saying that I work for Brooklyn College is not a misrepresentation. The Graduate Center for Worker Education is part of Brooklyn College. My department head is Sally Bermazohn, from the Political Science Department at BC. The people you spoke with clarified that the physical location where I teach is not on Brooklyn College’s campus, but I am still an employee of CUNY’s Brooklyn College. The only reason I don’t provide the full name of the place where I teach is that it’s terribly long: Grad Center for Worker Education at Brooklyn College.
Honestly, I don’t know where to start. Gregory Wilpert has yet to admit that he is married to a chavista official (Carol Delgado of Wilpert, Hugo Chávez’s consul in New York). Gregory Wilpert hasn’t admitted that he edits a website started by a chavista official (Martin Sanchez, Hugo Chávez’s consul in San Francisco, formerly in Chicago). Gregory Wilpert hasn’t acknowledged that said website is funded with Venezuelan public money. Gregory Wilpert hasn’t proclaimed that he acts as a propaganda agent for Hugo Chávez on U.S. soil. He still hasn’t conceded that every single one of his opinions regarding Venezuela is compromised by his marital and professional connections.
Gregory Wilpert once wrote to me saying he was doing what he did “because he believed in it.” Faced with my repeated questioning about his true motives, given that he is a German-American, he remained silent about his personal and professional relationships with Chávez’s regime. To me, that’s indicative of complete intellectual dishonesty. Moreover, I still don’t understand why it’s so hard for these bloodthirsty defenders of Chávez to admit their ties to their payer, lest they maintain a facade of independence and individuality to lend credibility to their propaganda. If HRW received a letter from a group of people who, without any official relationship with Chávez, protest against a report exposing serious human rights violations occurring in Venezuela, they would surely address it on its merits, just as they have done. But that was not a letter born out of genuine concern; it was a concerted effort directed by propaganda agents, like Gregory Wilpert, similar to many cases where “irate readers” wrote letters to the editors of media outlets critiquing coverage when in reality it was prompted by emails sent from the Venezuelan Information Office to their “rapid response” team, instructing them to do so.
These individuals are quite vocal in their support but will deny to their last breath, unless evidence emerges, that they have any connection to Hugo Chávez’s regime. This has been the case for Eva Golinger, Michael Shellenberger and his buddy Ted Norhaus, Roy Carson, Eric Wingerter, and all the propagandists from the now defunct Venezuelan Information Office, Ken Livingstone (until evidence arose that he worked as a consultant for Hugo Chávez), Calvin Tucker, Mark Weisbrot, Joe Kennedy, Sean Penn (until he admitted he flew on PDVSA planes), all these deny having anything to do with Chávez, but evidence shows that they all, in one way or another, have benefited from Venezuelan taxpayers’ money, whether through flights, salaries, paid trips, hospitality, funding, donations, energy projects, publications, advertising, etc.
Is there fear in showing friendship, admiration, and support for a man who calls the terrorist Carlos El Chacal a national hero? Is there fear of the maxim “guilty by association” or “tell me who your friends are…”? Do these people fear the conclusions any rational individual would draw upon discovering their fanaticism for a warmongering and militaristic dictator who supports and befriends terrorists and rogues, who has ruined Venezuela and follows in the footsteps of one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships?