Hugo Chavez: America's Highest Risk?

September 29, 2006

CBNNews.com- Hugo Chavez has cast George Bush as the devil for years. At pro-Chavez rallies in Caracas, Bush is arch villain, and Chavez is the savior. This man is said to actually believe he is the reincarnation of the Latin American Liberator Simon Bolivar.

Chavez says a lot of things, so if you want to know about him, it's important to watch not what he says, but what he does. And what Chavez is doing has Washington alarmed.

Chavez spent his summer visiting some of the world's worst dictatorships and anti-American regimes, including Iran, Syria, and Belarus. He honored Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies the holocaust and has called for the destruction of Israel. In Moscow, Chavez signed a $3 billion arms deal with Russia for assault rifles, fighter jets, and attack helicopters.

This month Colombia's former defense minister and new representative to the Organization of American States, Camilo Ospina, said that Venezuela is secretly mining Uranium at two locations. The Colombian government immediately disavowed the comment. And CBN News has been unable to verify numerous reports from Venezuelan sources that Chavez is prospecting or mining Uranium with the help of Iran. But we do know that Chavez last year saw fit to put a convicted terrorist, Carlos Lanz, in charge of the Venezuelan State Aluminum monopoly, Alcasa, which some suspect is also a front for Uranium mining.

"There's a contract between Iran and Venezuela for the export of Aluminum. However, my engineering sources tell me there's enough aluminum in Iran to last the next 60 years. And the contract is thought to be a front for the smuggling of other commodities or items, most probably Uranium," said Kenneth Rijock, a former money launderer from Miami who is now a financial consultant.

"Basically, what I did for 10 years is I moved cash for organized crime," said Rijock.

Rijock has been scrutinizing the dealings of the Chavez government, and he's found some strange things.

"One of the things I do as a financial crime consultant is I look at statistics," he said. "One of Venezuela's strangest and most frightening statistics is there are 2,002 people living in Venezuela, most of them living on the border with Colombia, all born on March 15, 1974, all who's last name is Gonzales, and all who have consecutive national identity numbers. Now, without the connivance of the government, there's no way such a fraud could be perpetrated on the system."

Who are these persons given false identities? Chavez is known to aid and harbor the Colombian terrorist FARC and ELN groups, and has made Venezuela a haven for Arab and Islamic terrorists. General Marco Ferreira, the former head of the Venezuelan passport and ID-card agency told us he was ordered to provide false IDs to named members and associates of foreign terrorist groups, and he showed us the documents to prove it.

Ferreira said, "The weakness of our national identification system means that many people from the Middle East enter Venezuela and are issued papers that say they are Venezuelan."

Ferreira finally quit after being repeatedly pressured by the Venezuelan government to issue illegal documents.

"When your show airs the Venezuelan government will say it's a lie. But they can't say it's a lie because of all the evidence," he said.

Fugitive Venezuelan General Nestor Gonzalez, who is hiding inside Venezuela after attempts against his life by the Chavez government, gave to CBN News a map of alleged terrorist and narcotrafficking camps all over Venezuela. And in a video interview, smuggled out of the country, Gonzalez, a former military instructor of Chavez, warned that the failure of the U.S. to see Chavez as a real threat was reminiscent of how Europe ignored the rise of Hitler in the 1930s.

Chavez' next project is to win one of the rotating seats on the U.N. Security Council, which would allow him to take his war against America to a new level. And some say he is trying to divide American opposition to his regime by giving away free or low cost fuel to poor Americans.

But oil could also be his undoing.

One Venezuelan oil analyst said the Chavez regime cannot survive if oil prices stay below $60 a barrel. Chavez has been using oil money to pay off friends and spread his so-called Bolivarian revolution throughout Latin America.

Venezuelan opposition figure Patricia Andrade, who has been denounced as a CIA agent by the Chavez government, and who has endured death threats, phone taps, and computer hacking by Chavez agents in south Florida, said the U.S., by ignoring Chavez, is asleep.

"They are blind," she said. "They don't know the risk about Hugo Chavez. The United States needs to open their eyes about the highest risk they have in the backyard. That is Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez won't stop until he destroys the United States."