Department of the Fourth Estate

Marcela Sanchez reports, "The Bush administration is stepping up the pressure on [Venezuelan] President Hugo Chavez. State Department officials say they are talking with U.S. editorial writers, hoping to send a clear message to Chavez through the press: let the recall referendum happen or face the consequences." An anonymous senior State Department official told Washington Post editors and reporters that Chavez supporters' challenges to the presidential recall effort are "a consolidation of a dictatorship." Sanchez writes that future U.S. action "will be shaped by ... the anti-Castro focus of top policy makers and commercial and big business interests. ... The demise of the referendum would obviously be bad news for Venezuela. But any U.S. unilateral intervention would be worse news."