Formerly, after Citgo was taken over by PDVSA in 1990, the top positions at Citgo were unofficially reserved for American executives, allowing it to operate in the landscape of American business as a competent and independent enterprise, removed from Venezuelan politics. This was a natural extension of the domestic policies of PDVSA. Even though it had been owned by the Venezuelan government since the oil nationalization of 1976, PDVSA had functioned admirably and independently, according to relatively sound business principles. PDVSA was one of the most respected companies in the petroleum industry.

All this began to change in 1999, when Hugo Chávez came to power as the self-declared leader of the “revolution” in Venezuela. Despite his dreams of conquering grandeur, however, there was no revolution. Chávez came to power through an election, and took office swearing to uphold the ideals and institutions of democratic Venezuela. This was quite a rehabilitation for the radical Colonel Chávez, who in 1992 led a failed putsch against the elected government of Venezuela – a government he was sworn to protect as a Venezuelan military officer.

In the name of reconciliation, Chávez was pardoned after just two years in prison (despite the fact that his coup attempt claimed 18 lives). He immediately entered legitimate politics, preying upon the economic fears of Venezuela’s poor so successfully that he was soon elected to the office he had previously failed to seize. Stop me if you’ve heard a similar story before.

Once in office, Chávez set about re-engineering Venezuela so that he could never be gotten out of office. The jewel of Venezuela’s economy and the heart of its anti-Chávez middle and upper classes was PDVSA, against which Chávez had long railed as an obstacle to his dream of a Castro-style national revolution. Chávez began, gingerly at first, to replace the upper management of PDVSA with his personal political hacks and cronies. In addition, military personnel believed loyal to Chávez were given security and management posts.

When this failed to silence and co-opt PDVSA fast enough, Chávez precipitated a crisis by appointing as head of PDVSA Gaston Parra, a Marxist college professor whose entire knowledge of the petroleum industry consisted of a belief that it was somehow evil. The reaction to this move was a strike by outraged PDVSA personnel, which shut down Venezuela’s petroleum-centered economy and set off a wave of pent-up distrust and hatred against Chávez. The strike was joined by millions outside PDVSA. Street protests coalesced and 700,000 Venezuelans marched through Caracas – the largest demonstration in the country’s history.

On April 11, 2002, Chávez’s volunteer revolutionary thugs opened fire on the crowd, killing 17. When he ordered the military to do likewise, they refused, and Chávez was briefly removed from power. Following two days of struggle within the military, Chávez’s forces re-emerged in control, and a newly empowered Chávez began a swift and debilitating purge of PDVSA, forcing out 20,000 employees and replacing them with his “Bolivarian” henchmen. At the purge’s conclusion, PDVSA was crippled, corrupt, incompetent, and firmly under the control of President Hugo Chávez, revolutionary leader of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The Leader then turned his attention to PDVSA’s wholly owned, indirect subsidiary in the United States, PDV America – parent company of Citgo Petroleum Corporation. Chávez would more subtly repeat the pattern employed with such success against PDVSA: appoint a few corrupt and loyal incompetents to high positions and watch with glee as the honest and legitimate were driven past the breaking point and replaced.

Among the first Chávez loyalists to be installed was Antonio J. Rivero, who was appointed to Citgo in 1999. Rivero, a graduate of Venezuela’s military academy who had participated in Chávez’s failed 1992 putsch, had no experience in the petroleum industry. And he seemed to have no duties at Citgo, other than reporting upper management’s goings-on “directly” to Hugo Chávez. “He was like the old Soviet commissar. He was here to make sure we were doing things politically correct, and was passing back information to Venezuela,” said Robert Funk, a former Citgo executive.

Other Venezuelan cronies began flooding into the company, and did not stop even when Rivero and fellow Chávez sycophant Luis Marin, the CEO, were eventually forced to resign for corruption. Indeed, by that point the takeover was fairly complete, with all power controlled by the Chavistas through puppet committees and a “culture of intimidation.” When Jim McCarthy, the VP for Government and Public Relations, discovered that his computer files regarding the Venezuelan embassy were being tampered with, his home was vandalized and he subsequently resigned. “I got the message,” he said later. “I was afraid for my family.”

McCarthy’s resignation was part of a trend. Geoff Reid, the assistant treasurer of Citgo, quit because it had “become tough to track” where the company’s cash was actually flowing and he was concerned over his personal liability. Eddie Humphrey, Chief Financial Officer, resigned for similar reasons.

Today, the American leadership is gone, replaced by Chávez agents who, at a cost of $69 million, have moved the company from Tulsa to an extravagant new Houston headquarters – perhaps unique in the industry, since it includes a bulletproof citadel near the top executives’ offices. Rivero described it as merely “a crisis room to protect top management.” Perhaps Rivero’s personal past has given him a too literal interpretation of what American corporate leaders refer to as a “hostile takeover.”

Given Chávez’s declared aim of destroying America’s global power, it seems relevant to assess just how total his Citgo takeover is. To address this and other developments since 2005, I contacted Gustavo Coronel, a founding member of PDVSA’s Board of Directors. He now lives in the U.S., where he writes about Venezuelan politics.

“Up to a few years ago, say 2002, Citgo had a mixed U.S./Venezuelan board, and top-level managers were mostly U.S. citizens,” Coronel explained. “Now this is no longer the case. All (possibly with one or two exceptions) of [the] top managers of Citgo and all members of the Board are Venezuelan, and are there because they are unconditional supporters of Hugo Chávez,” he stated. As an example of the dearth of qualifications possessed by the Chavista managers, Coronel cites Felix Rodriguez, who became Citgo’s president following Luis Marin’s resignation over the 2005 corruption scandal. He “speaks a Tarzan-like English” – yet somehow he is the head of a major “American” corporation.

“It is not a matter of political infiltration,” Coronel continued, “but a matter of total political control. This is an issue of the highest importance for U.S. national security.” He emphatically concluded, “I repeat: ALL Board members of Citgo are Chávez supporters.”

And that would seem to be bad news for our country. Indeed, all one needs as proof of the total takeover of Citgo by a foreign ruler is a look at its recent actions. Citgo has devoted a huge portion of its profits and resources, not to improving the lives of Venezuelans – who are the effective “shareholders” of this government-owned business – but instead to propagandizing for Chávez and buying influence for him among the American public, media, and, sadly, several willing members of Congress.

I refer here to Citgo’s Chávez-initiated program to provide subsidized heating oil to states where the congressional delegation is friendly to Chávez. This program, which is named (in rather Tarzan-like English) “From the Venezuelan Hearts to the U.S. Hearths,” has several apparent political aims.

One is to buy good publicity for the class warrior Chávez by showing him to aid America’s poor when American oil companies have not. The fact that the money for this program comes out of the pockets of Venezuelans (per capita GDP: $6,100) in order to help Americans (per capita GDP: $41,800) is somehow omitted from the Robin Hood-themed press releases.

Chávez has also used the program in an attempt to tap into American racial politics. Jesse Jackson and Danny Glover are leading trumpeters of the program, which is targeted especially at African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods and Indian reservations. Chávez draws heavy support in Venezuela from Indian and other minority groups, whom he has declared historical victims, under his benevolent protection. To further his dream of an anti-American world revolution, he seemingly hopes to exploit America’s race issues so as to philosophically co-opt a portion of the divided population.

Finally, Chávez hopes to influence congressional policy and interfere in American elections with the program, which was engineered in concert with Congressman Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts and is administered (in part) through Citizens Energy, a non-profit cooperative founded and run by former Massachusetts Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II.

By doling out Chávez’s stolen oil at a 40 percent discount in liberal Congressional districts, and allowing the incumbent representatives to take credit for it, I believe Chávez seeks to alter the makeup of Congress and indebt Delahunt and other compromised Congressmen to him. He has, essentially, turned pork-barrel politics into oil-barrel politics, and is buying votes for his sympathizers with a new brand of imported pork. SUV drivers are not the only ones with a costly addiction to foreign oil. Certain congressmen, having gotten the first hit for free, are now paying a price for the “free” oil with which they have bribed their constituencies.

The 15-page publicity brochure Citgo distributes to promote the program is illuminating, describing how, in a time “of catastrophic events within some of the poorest and most vulnerable communities in the United States…President Chávez offered help from Venezuela and Citgo….” It then goes on to quote the gratitude of Chávez’s charity recipients.

Rose King of Mattapan, Massachusetts, who lives on a “limited income” (unlike Chávez, but like nearly every other human), states, “I didn’t really think about Citgo or Venezuela before, but I am so appreciative that they cared enough about people like me.”

Carmen Garcia of the Bronx was included for this nugget regarding Chávez: “It’s nice to see Latin American leaders extending themselves and taking care of their own. We’re not forgotten. We’re not ghosts in someone else’s eyes.” You know, the way she’s a pale brown ghost to Bush and the gringos.

Terry Spence, Speaker of Delaware’s House, groveled, “We’re grateful to Citgo and President Chávez for what they are doing to help.” And that’s the idea, Terry. Good boy.

The brochure ends with a touching tale of how select recipients and community leaders were transported to “personally thank President Hugo Chávez, Citgo’s parent company PDVSA, and the Venezuelan people for their generosity.”

Having been granted an audience with Chávez, the group of supplicants “was delighted to hear that, as a response to the letter they had written to him asking for the program to continue, it was going to be expanded to help more U.S. families heat their homes during the next winter.”

The group of warm and well-trained terriers was then treated to a tour of working-class neighborhoods, a Chávez-supported footwear factory, a health-care clinic, and “dozens of cooperatives that provide work” to Chávez’s indigenous terriers.

Keep in mind that this was not a press release from Chávez’s propaganda ministry, but a public relations pamphlet from the “independent” Citgo Petroleum Corporation. The only thing missing was a photo-op with the delegation aiming anti-aircraft cannons skyward at imperialist planes.

Today, Citgo is – quite simply – an unregistered agent of a foreign government, propagandizing for and subsidizing the Chávez regime in its crusade against America’s alleged empire. Yet it is still treated like any other American business. The Citgo sign towers proudly over Kenmore Square in Boston, and Americans – who were concerned to learn that Chávez seeks an alliance with Iran and North Korea, or were incensed when Chávez called our President “the devil” at the U.N. – continue to mindlessly fill up at Citgo, giving Chávez not only profits from Venezuela’s oil (unavoidable), but also profits from retail sales of fuel (easily avoidable).

It has become clear that Chávez’s Citgo is no friend of America. What is less clear is why America is still so friendly toward Citgo.