McCone

= no sunglasses A Brief History of Washington’s Relationship to TelecomFrom a neoliberal political point of view there are two advantages to a propaganda offensive centered upon telecom corruption.  The first is obvious. If telecom corruption can be tied directly to a leader who is not following Washington’s agenda, it promotes public support for the leader’s removal.  The second is a little less obvious, but equally as important.  It promotes the argument that telecom companies under state control really ought not to be, especially in underdeveloped countries, and would be better off privatized. To make that argument, one must of course ignore the abundant evidence of telecom corruption in the United States, where men like Bernie Ebbers and Joseph Nacchio, who became telecom kingpins thanks to privatization (called “deregulation” in the U.S.) are serving federal prison terms for accounting fraud and insider trading.  The fact is that telecom, as an essential service in the modern world, has always been a kind of money printing press, and the fight over state control vs. private control is all about who gets to control the switch, and what will be done with the profits.
 ITT, which owned the Cuban phone company at the time of the revolution in 1959, was the first foreign owned property to be nationalized in Cuba, in 1961.  In 1973, ITT was so fearful of repeating the experience in Chile that John McCone, a board member and former [allende2]CIA man promised Henry Kissinger a million dollars to prevent Salvador Allende’s election.  According to the U.S. Ambassador to Chile at the time, Edward Korry, ITT did pay $500,000 to a member of the compensation committee for expropriated properties in Chile, until Allende found out about the payments and nixed the compensation entirely.In Venezuela in 2007, privatization was also reversed, and Verizon was paid $572 million for its share in the Venezuelan phone company, Cantv. This sent chills down the spine of every U.S. politician and telecom executive or consultant (like Reich) invested in expanding telecom privatization extra-territorially.  And the chill was bipartisan.  Democrats as well as Republicans had benefited equally from global privatization of the telecom mint.As someone who counted AT&T and Bell Atlantic (Verizon) among his former (acknowledged) clients and a proven antipathy for leftist governments, Reich had plenty of motive.  A front group disguised as a foundation would provide the opportunity.=