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BREAKING NEWS

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21009

The Miami Herald's Alfonso Chardy has finally caught up with what VHeadline.com has been reporting all along … in a report from San Antonio de Los Altos, the Herald correspondent headlines “Did you hear the one about…?” and then goes on to say that Chavez foes' rumors are unsettling…

Well, of course they are, since they're part of an opposition disinformation campaign seeking to discredit everything good that's happening in Venezuela these days!

Chardy: A Cuban biological weapons laboratory is hidden somewhere in San Antonio de Los Altos, a favor by President Hugo Chavez to his good friend Fidel Castro.

And if you believe that one, Chavez' political opponents have a whole slew of other wild rumors that they pass around, mostly on the Internet.

There's the one about a terrorist training camp for Muslim radicals on a Venezuelan resort island, and the one about the Cuban president recently suffering a heart attack during a clandestine visit. ''All that's lacking is that they say Osama bin Laden is hidden here,'' Chavez said in a recent speech.

Chavez sees dark forces behind the rumors — a US plot to discredit his leftist populist government, perhaps even an excuse to send US Marines into his oil-rich country. But most seem to be the work of Chavez opponents desperate to pass around anything negative about a president they regard as a wanna-be dictator who has ruined the country's economy and pitted poor against rich. ''It may not be true,'' was as far as retired General Nestor Gonzalez Gonzalez, one of the principal Chavez opponents, was willing to go on the bio-weapons lab rumor.

INVESTIGATION: The Herald decided to investigate that rumor, posted on the anti-Chávez site www.militaresdemocraticos.com about a lab in this bustling bedroom community 40 miles west of Caracas. But www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=1014 (as VHeadline.com had earlier pointed out) the website lacked specifics, such as an address. It simply said, without attribution, that the ''bio-weapon lab'' had been flown in from Cuba ''by a Chavez C-130 in a rush/hush mission'' in 2002.

''Are you serious?'' asked a supermarket parking lot attendant, his eyes widening. ``Here in San Antonio de los Altos? Not possible. We would know about it.''

''Don't know anything about it,'' said Juan Pena, standing at a bus stop at the entrance to town. ``Maybe it's a pharmaceutical lab you're talking about.''

''If you don't have an address, it's going to be very difficult to find,'' said a taxi driver, who stopped almost every fellow cab driver he encountered to ask if they had seen or heard of such a thing.

They all shook their heads. After hours of driving around fruitlessly, the search was called off.

But what about the rumor of www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=3228 terrorist training camp in Macanao, the ruggedly mountainous western tip of Margarita, a Venezuelan resort island on the Caribbean? Gloria Flores, a hardware store owner and volunteer tour guide, drove fearlessly into Macanao some 50 miles from Margarita's main city of Porlamar. She was aware of the report — in fact everybody in Margarita was aware — but was skeptical.

NOTHING LIKE THAT: ''Nothing like that, I assure you,'' she said, “just desert, mountains, scrub and beach.'' Although there are many dirt roads that lead off the main road into the mountains on one side and the beach on the other, none seemed linked to a military-style camp — unless it was underground, in a cave or on a mountaintop.

All but one of the people interviewed in Macanao or elsewhere in Margarita said they had never seen any Arabs with guns. But Nazih ''Nelson'' Hamzi, a longtime member of Margarita's Arab community, said he is sure people in Macanao saw Arabs with guns. ''They were probably hunting rabbits,'' he said. “Everybody goes hunting there.''

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