Rohter Update
Whoa, stop the presses... and here I thought Larry Rohter -- who the local political satire show Casseta e Planeta refers to as "Harry Potter" -- was just a bon-vivant colonial scalawag. Turns out he's a CIA shill.
Just out of curiosity I did a little googling and discovered a whole world of anti-Rohter conspiracy theory out there. One anonysmous e-mail (in Portuguese) that made the rounds in the wake of the Drunken Lula article has Rohter making 5 visits to the US State Department in the last few years, as well as bragging about his exploits among Amazonian pre-teens, among other heinous crimes. And apparently he's been on the rabid anti-drug war set's radar for years now.
Fun for the whole family, this kind of thing. But I did come across one item that seems at least minimally credible: an essay by ex-DEA agent and "expert witness" Mike Levine. I don't know the story on Levine, never heard of him before, and he's got some pretty crazy stories to tell about CIA drug running, but if what he says is true, it's pretty clear that Rohter really does have some connection with the US government.
Levine claims that while he was undercover for the DEA in South America, he read an article by Rohter and Steve Strasser's on Bolivian drug lords in Newsweek. Something snapped in him and he decided to blow the whistle on CIA involvement in drug running in South America. He writes:
I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote the kind of letter that I never in life imagined myself writing. After fully identifying myself I detailed, in three type-written pages written on official US embassy stationary, enough evidence of my charges to feed a wolf pack of investigative journalists along with my willingness to be a quotable source. I addressed it directly to Strasser and Rohter care of Newsweek. And sent it registered mail return receipt requested. Within a couple of weeks I received the receipt (which I still have) and waited anxiously to hear from them. Two sleepless weeks later I was still sitting in my embassy office staring at the phone. Three weeks later, it rang.
It was DEA’s Internal Security. They were calling me to notify me that I was under investigation. I had been falsely accused of everything from black-marketing and having sex with a married. female DEA agent during an undercover assignment to “playing loud rock music on my radio and disturbing other embassy personnel,” an investigation that would wreak havoc with my entire life for the next four years.
Obviously, if Rohter were just a journalist, he would have no reason to notify the DEA. In fact, he'd have every reason to run with the career-making story.
Well, I'm out of my depth here, I have no idea if this kind of thing is at all credible. But some kind of connection with Intelligence, State, or even Justice would explain Rohter's consistent efforts to deflate threatening figures like Chavez and Lula, as well as his consistent derogatory use of terminology like "leftist" and "union leader". Of course it may just be personal.
The bigger question is why the Times would -- year after year, editor after editor -- keep a guy like this on, whatever his political connections. Could Mike Levine be right?
Gotta love that old-time conspiracy theory...
Just out of curiosity I did a little googling and discovered a whole world of anti-Rohter conspiracy theory out there. One anonysmous e-mail (in Portuguese) that made the rounds in the wake of the Drunken Lula article has Rohter making 5 visits to the US State Department in the last few years, as well as bragging about his exploits among Amazonian pre-teens, among other heinous crimes. And apparently he's been on the rabid anti-drug war set's radar for years now.
Fun for the whole family, this kind of thing. But I did come across one item that seems at least minimally credible: an essay by ex-DEA agent and "expert witness" Mike Levine. I don't know the story on Levine, never heard of him before, and he's got some pretty crazy stories to tell about CIA drug running, but if what he says is true, it's pretty clear that Rohter really does have some connection with the US government.
Levine claims that while he was undercover for the DEA in South America, he read an article by Rohter and Steve Strasser's on Bolivian drug lords in Newsweek. Something snapped in him and he decided to blow the whistle on CIA involvement in drug running in South America. He writes:
I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote the kind of letter that I never in life imagined myself writing. After fully identifying myself I detailed, in three type-written pages written on official US embassy stationary, enough evidence of my charges to feed a wolf pack of investigative journalists along with my willingness to be a quotable source. I addressed it directly to Strasser and Rohter care of Newsweek. And sent it registered mail return receipt requested. Within a couple of weeks I received the receipt (which I still have) and waited anxiously to hear from them. Two sleepless weeks later I was still sitting in my embassy office staring at the phone. Three weeks later, it rang.
It was DEA’s Internal Security. They were calling me to notify me that I was under investigation. I had been falsely accused of everything from black-marketing and having sex with a married. female DEA agent during an undercover assignment to “playing loud rock music on my radio and disturbing other embassy personnel,” an investigation that would wreak havoc with my entire life for the next four years.
Obviously, if Rohter were just a journalist, he would have no reason to notify the DEA. In fact, he'd have every reason to run with the career-making story.
Well, I'm out of my depth here, I have no idea if this kind of thing is at all credible. But some kind of connection with Intelligence, State, or even Justice would explain Rohter's consistent efforts to deflate threatening figures like Chavez and Lula, as well as his consistent derogatory use of terminology like "leftist" and "union leader". Of course it may just be personal.
The bigger question is why the Times would -- year after year, editor after editor -- keep a guy like this on, whatever his political connections. Could Mike Levine be right?
Gotta love that old-time conspiracy theory...
posted by Benjamin Lessing at 10:22 PM
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