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MENARD NOW ADMITS WHAT HE PREVIOUSLY DENIED
RSF, hired by Otto Reich, cashes
checks from Washington
BY
JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Special for Granma International—
THE mask of Robert Ménard, who
eight months ago still denied having any ties to the
United States government, is falling off in chunks
and pieces with every week that passes. The latest
information – after the revelation in Paris of his
association with Otto Reich – comes from California,
where an investigative reporter named Diana Barahona
is trying to break through the wall of secrecy
Ménard has built around his secret friendships.
On April 18, in a forum of the
Paris publication Le Nouvei Observateur,
Robert Ménard made his first confession regarding
what he had always denied after an anonymous
participant quoted an article published on March 11
by the US journalist saying that Reporters Sans
Frontières was receiving money from the so-called
National Endowment for Democracy.
“Absolutely,” Ménard answered
with his usual arrogance, adding, “We receive money
from the NED and this does not create any problems
for us whatsoever.”
In a similar forum on the same
website weeks earlier, Ménard had suddenly admitted
to knowing CIA agent Frank Calzón, which he had
previously denied.
In reality, Ménard had no choice
but to confess.
During Barahona’s investigation,
a NED representative personally confirmed to her
that $39,900 was delivered to Reporters Sans
Frontières on January 14 of this year. At the same
time, RSF's representative in Washington, Lucie
Morillon, had no choice but to confirm to the
reporter that RSF received $125,000 from the Cuba
Solidarity Center, a CIA front group officially
financed by USAID US Agency for International
Development) ... in addition to a secret contract
signed by Otto Reich!
After receiving these
confirmations in the United States itself regarding
these “contributions” received by Ménard from
Washington, the reporter is now officially
requesting that USAID – by virtue of US law on
access to information – provide all documents
referring to that individual and his organization.
In a letter dated April 9 and
addressed to USAID’s Information & Records Division,
Diana Barahona invokes the Freedom of Information
Act to obtain “access to and copies of records of
money given” to Reporters Sans Frontières and its
general secretary, Robert Ménard, a French citizen.
The Long Beach journalist
indicates in her letter that she is “gathering
information on US government financing of Reporters
Without Borders that is of current interest to the
public because many news outlets are using Reporters
Without Borders as a source.”
“Any government financing should
be exposed so that reporters are not unwittingly
using a biased source,” Barahona affirms in her
letter.
It is indicated in this same
document that several members of the print and
electronic media use RSF as a source “without
knowing or telling the public about the conflict of
interest of RSF receiving government grants.”
Diana Barahona is currently
working with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs,
directed by Larry Birne, which has been studying US
policy on Latin America since 1975, to write a
in-depth article on that issue.
That article, according to the
reporter, will show – among many other things – how
Menard took control of
RSF in 1995 when the Helms-Burton bill
was introduced into Congress.
That law authorized the granting
of funds to so-called Cuban “dissidents” via NGOs.
Otto Reich – through his consulting firm – was the
top lobbyist for that law during the time that he
was contracted by Bacardí and was director of the
U.S.-Cuba Business Council.
Diana Barahona is a member of the
Northern California Media Guild and has published
articles on RSF in the Guild Reporter (www.newsguild.org).
MENARD DID
BUSINESS IN 2001 WITH REICH AND CALZON
For his part, on March 27, French
investigative reporter Thierry Meyssan published a
revealing article in which he stated that Robert
Ménard negotiated a contract with Otto Reich and CIA
agent Frank Calzon’s Center for a Free Cuba in 2001.
According to Meyssan, a
journalist for
Red Voltaire (www.redvoltaire.net), the contract
was signed in 2002 when Reich was representing the
US government as special envoy to the Western
Hemisphere.
“In 2002, Reporters Sans
Frontières signed a contract with the Center for a
Free Cuba with unknown terms, and later received an
initial subsidy of $24,970 euros. That subsidy
increased to $59,201 euros in 2003 and its amount
for 2004 is unknown,” the reporter wrote.
“The Center for Free Cuba is an
organization created to overthrow the Cuban
Revolution and restore the Batista regime via its
representatives embedded in the Bush government. It
is presided over by the owner of Bacardí Rums,
directed by former terrorist Frank Calzón and it is
attached to a CIA office, Freedom House,” he wrote.
On various occasions, Ménard
categorically denied known Calzón, until he appeared
together with that individual – one of the CIA’s
most active Cuban-American agents since the 1960s –
in Brussels in March of 2004, at a meeting of
members of the European Parliament.
“WORRYING
QUESTIONS” IN MONTREAL
In addition, in an article titled
“Worrying questions for Reporters Sans Frontières,”
published April 30 in the influential Montreal
(Canada) daily La Presse, journalist Marc
Thibodeau confirms how Ménard confessed during a
public assembly the previous day that RSF receives
part of its funding “from US organizations closely
associated with United States foreign policy.”
“RSF's secretary general, Robert
Ménard, who was visiting Quebec this week, stated
during an acrimonious discussion this Thursday at
the University of Quebec in Montreal that his
organization has access to funds from USAID, a US
government international aid organization, and from
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED),” the
journalist reported.
During a conversation with La
Presse, Ménard stated that the money received
from the NED and USAID for the coming year
represented less than 2% of RSF's budget, “which
totals more than $5 million.”
“More than 90% is raised,
according to the organization, through selling photo
albums,” the reporter writes ironically.
Back in 2003, Granma
International exposed the connivance between
Robert Ménard, his NGO and United States
intelligence services. Little by little, the
information is being confirmed via documents,
publications, revelations by those implicated and
confessions by the RSF secretary/agent. According to
several indications, the best is yet to come. |
