Burying Your Lede

An increasing number of observers are reaching the conclusion that the Bush administration covertly backed the recent attempted military coup in Venezuela. As Josh Marshall points out, there is "something odd and perplexing about the drifting accounts being provided by administration officials. Every day there's a new detail. Each new detail is provided to exonerate administration officials but as often as not they tend rather to inculpate them." Marshall scrutizines the spin in a recent Washington Post article about the coup and notes some telling facts buried near the bottom of the article, such as the observation by a "U.S. diplomat" that two of the coup plotters recently got $100,000 apiece from a bank account in Miami. "This really gives new meaning to the phrase 'burying your lede,' " Marshall says. "The article just drops it there and provides no explanation or discussion. But this seems like something well worth discussing, doesn't it? Two members of the Venezuelan military who later participated in the coup each got $100,000 from a bank account in the United States 'for denouncing Chavez.' That's a bit of money. Whose was it? And how does this American diplomat know about it?"