While advocating for intervention in Venezuela through mainstream media, former US ambassador Jimmy Story is actively seeking clients for consulting agencies managed by well-known ex-CIA operatives.
By Jack POULSON and Max BLUMENTHAL
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Editor’s note: James “Jimmy” Story, the former US ambassador to Venezuela, transitioned from being the de facto manager of the Washington-backed opposition attempting a coup in Venezuela to a leading proponent of the Trump-Rubio regime change agenda in mainstream outlets.
On December 7, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria highlighted Story’s calls for overthrowing Venezuela’s government in a discussion alongside Iran-Contra convict Elliot Abrams, while the New York Times offered him a platform to assert that “Washington should approach dismantling the Maduro regime as we would any criminal enterprise.” Story’s appearance on Piers Morgan, however, was disrupted when Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal effectively challenged his neocolonial rhetoric.
While promoting US military action against Venezuela publicly, Story also profits from his coup-related expertise by recruiting clients for consulting firms run in partnership with high-ranking former CIA agents involved in Venezuelan destabilization efforts.
One such company is Dinámica Americas, where Story acts as a senior advisor guiding “companies, philanthropies, non-profits, and multilateral and other organizations” through changing circumstances across the Americas. Juan Cruz, the former CIA director for Latin America exposed by The Grayzone for orchestrating opposition groups ahead of the thwarted Operation Gideon invasion, is among Story’s colleagues at Dinámica.
At Frontier Advisors, a risk consultancy he co-founded, Story partners with David Kol, CEO of Zodiac Gold, whose firm taps Liberia’s mineral resources amid widespread illicit smuggling and environmental destruction fueled by foreign control of gold mining sites. Another managing partner, retired Lt. Gen. Dave Bellon, also leads Global Frontier Capital, a private equity firm that “creates carbon credits to sell to investors and polluters” across South Asia and South America. These figures represent the type eager to exploit Venezuela’s downfall in a speculative post-Maduro world.
Additionally, Story serves as “strategic partner” at Tower Strategy LLC, a lobbying company established by Enrique “Rick” de la Torre, former CIA station chief for Venezuela. Journalist Jack Poulson reveals in the republished All Source Intelligence article that de la Torre previously worked at a lobbying firm founded by a close associate of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the primary architect behind Trump’s Venezuelan regime change policies.
Enrique “Rick” de la Torre recently launched Tower Strategy LLC, listing former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela James B. Story as a “strategic partner.” The four newly registered lobbying clients of Tower Strategy were brought over from de la Torre’s previous firm, Continental Strategy.
Founded in 2021 by Carlos Trujillo, former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) closely connected to current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Continental Strategy also featured de la Torre, who shared an image of himself wearing a CIA pin alongside Rubio when announcing his joining of the firm in January.
Though earlier ambiguous about his Latin American posting, recent interviews reveal de la Torre headed the CIA station in Venezuela, with outlets such as Breitbart, NTD News Capitol Report, and SiriusXM Patriot reporting on this fact.
The exact period of de la Torre’s leadership in Venezuela remains uncertain beyond his retirement around June 2024, although his lobbying partner, Story, directed the State Department’s Venezuela Affairs Unit from November 18, 2020, until May 19, 2023. Post-diplomatic service, Story primarily works as a senior advisor at Dinámica Americas alongside former CIA Latin America chief Juan Cruz.
In late November, de la Torre released a blog titled “The Case for Ending Maduro’s Rule,” assigning much of the blame for the Biden administration’s hesitancy to topple Maduro to Juan S. González, formerly a Western Hemisphere national security advisor. One day before this, the Peter Thiel-supported Human Rights Foundation (HRF) released a series of social media posts alleging conflicts of interest involving González in relation to Greylock Capital CEO Hans Humes.
González responded on social media, asserting, “I don’t lobby, represent, or do FARA work for anyone, and my views are not for sale,” stating this and later reiterating his criticism of President Trump’s pardon of the convicted drug trafficker and former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández.
Ambassador Story’s commitment to U.S.-backed change in Venezuela matches that of de la Torre. Following President Trump’s October announcement authorizing the CIA to conduct secret activities against Nicolás Maduro’s government, Story told CBS News, “The assets are there to do everything up to and including decapitation of [the] government.”
The Trump administration’s sizable naval deployment in the region has, however, so far resulted mainly in the capture of two Venezuelan oil tankers, the Skipper and the Centuries, while a third tanker, Bella 1, was still being pursued as of Friday night.
Former CIA director Mike Pompeo praised these seizures as the “right course of action” during an interview with Fox & Friends on Monday and further suggested that, should Maduro’s government fall, “American companies can come in and sell their products — Schlumberger, Halliburton, Chevron — all of our big energy companies can go down to Venezuela and build out an economic capitalist model.”
Lobbying clients and foreign agent roles of the former station chief
Following a short stint with the IT division of Reston-based defense contractor General Dynamics, de la Torre spent about 11 months working as both a lobbyist and a registered foreign agent at Continental Strategy. His clients included the Dominican Republic’s National Intelligence Department (DNI) and Guyana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with ongoing tensions regarding Guyana’s Essequibo region bordering Venezuela.
Former Green Beret and acting USAID administrator John Barsa registered as a foreign agent alongside de la Torre for both governments. Together, they lobbied the U.S. State Department via Continental for TXAT, a Houston-based international ammunition distributor. TXAT, known as the exclusive reseller of Mexican ammunition manufacturer Aguilar, promotes partnerships with the Houston Police Department, Mexican Navy, and Royal Thai Police’s Special Branch Bureau.
Dale Bendler, a more senior former station chief turned lobbyist than de la Torre, was sentenced to a year in prison last month for failing to register as a foreign agent for Venezuelan media executive Armando Capriles. Bendler had visited Capriles on behalf of the D.C.-based firm BGR in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, shortly before federal agents raided a villa linked to Samark López-Bello, who faces U.S. sanctions for alleged money laundering linked to former Venezuelan petroleum minister Tareck El Aissami. The U.S. State Department-supported outlet Insight Crime has also cited rumors that López-Bello was involved in the covert sale of Capriles’s family’s media company, Cadena Capriles, later known as Ultimas Noticias Group.
De la Torre’s new venture, Tower Strategy, has no public foreign agent filings yet, but its four lobbying clients were all recently affiliated with Continental Strategy: the controversial treasure hunting firm Odyssey Marine Exploration, Singapore-based Tether-linked crypto company Bitdeer, solar supply chain business T1 Energy, and international solar exporter UGT Renewables / Sun Africa.
Initially Norway-based and focused on lithium battery tech, Freyr Battery moved operations to Austin, Texas after tough competition from Chinese producers, rebooting as a patriotic American company, T1 Energy, in February. T1’s board includes former CIA Amman and Prague station chief David Manners, and the company announced a September partnership with data analytics powerhouse Palantir, citing the alliance as key to quickly establishing a domestic supplier network to create jobs and meet legislative demands.
Among Tower Strategy’s clients, only Odyssey Marine Exploration has a history of major international disputes. Last September, a tribunal ordered Mexico to pay Odyssey $31.7 million after the company sued over Mexico withdrawing from a phosphate mining deal in 2019. Odyssey is perhaps best remembered for its involvement in the “Black Swan” treasure salvage controversy, which saw Spanish authorities seize 17 tons of gold coins recovered from a sunken Spanish ship near Portugal in 2007. Following a legal battle, Odyssey was fined $1 million in 2013 by a U.S. court for “bad faith and abusive litigation.”
In late 2015, the Odyssey Explorer ship was seized by Cyprus authorities in Limassol, with “588 separate artefacts dating from the 18th century” confiscated, according to The Independent.
The European-focused solar supply chain client UGT Renewables and its African counterpart Sun Africa rank as the less contentious entities. A statement from the U.S. Export-Import Bank indicates that a $900 million solar project in Angola was “initially announced during the 2022 G7 Summit by the Government of Angola, U.S. firm AfricaGlobal Schaffer, and U.S. project developer Sun Africa.”
UGT Renewables and Sun Africa CEO Adam Cortese transitioned from leading AfricaGlobal Schaffer around the time of that announcement and has publicly mentioned UGT’s talks with Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum and Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity earlier this year. Bloomberg reported in April that the Iraqi ministry agreed with UGT on “a 3-gigawatt integrated solar project,” backed by financing from the US Export-Import Bank, UK Export Finance, and JPMorgan.
“Big week last week for UGT Renewables in the Middle East! In addition to our negotiations in Egypt, we executed an agreement with the Government of Iraq and are now off and running in Baghdad!” Cortese wrote on LinkedIn.
Original article: thegrayzone.com
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