U.S. officials insist the aid is aboveboard and politically neutral, and say the Chavez government would harass or prosecute the grant recipients if they were identified.

Chavez, however, believes the United States is campaigning - overtly and covertly - to undermine his leftist government, which has crusaded against U.S. influence in Latin America and elsewhere.

"The empire pays its lackeys, and it pays them well," he said recently, accusing some of his opponents of taking "gringo money."

While USAID oversees much of the public U.S. spending on Latin America, President Bush's government also has stepped up covert efforts in the region. This month, Washington named a career CIA agent as the "mission manager" to oversee U.S. intelligence on Cuba and Venezuela.

The Bush administration has an $80 million plan to hasten change in Cuba, where Chavez has sworn to help defend
Fidel Castro's communist system. The U.S. also is spending millions on pro-democracy work in Bolivia, where Bush has warned of "an erosion of democracy" since a Chavez ally, socialist Evo Morales, was elected president in December.

Chavez makes no distinction between the programs supported by U.S. funds and the secret effort he claims the CIA is pursuing to destabilize his government. And it appears a crackdown on the U.S. aid is looming as Chavez runs for re-election in December.

Venezuelan prosecutors have brought conspiracy charges against the leaders of Sumate, a U.S.-backed group that frequently points out perceived flaws in the voting system. The pro-Chavez National Assembly is preparing to require nonprofit groups to reveal their funding sources. And Chavez has threatened to expel U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield, whom he accuses of stirring up trouble with USAID donations to youth baseball teams and day-care centers.

Much of the spending is overseen by USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives, which also works in such "priority countries" as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bolivia and Haiti.

OTI says it has overseen more than $26 million for programs in Venezuela since 2002, when it began work here after a failed coup against Chavez. Much of it has gone toward more than 220 small grants as part of USAID's "Venezuela Confidence Building Initiative."

"It's a pro-democracy program to work with Venezuelans of any point of view," said Adolfo Franco, USAID's assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean. "It's without political bias."

The USAID grants for 2004 and 2005 reviewed by AP include some charity projects - like $19,543 for baseball equipment that Brownfield delivered to a pro-Chavez neighborhood and $23,189 for chickens and coops at a poor school.

Others seem to promote good government, like $15,289 to publish a pocket guide on citizenship.

One recipient, the Development and Justice Consortium, held a workshop in a poor Caracas neighborhood on seeking accountability in local government. A neighborhood banner read "Chavez Forever," but teacher Antonio Quintin reminded students that "governments are only delegates."

Most attendees had no idea U.S. money paid for the class, and even die-hard Chavez supporters saw nothing subversive in it. "As long as it brings benefits, it doesn't matter where the funding comes from," said Ingrid Sanchez, 40, a member of a local planning council.

But other projects remain so vague as to raise concern among Chavistas, such as a $47,459 grant for a "democratic leadership campaign," $37,614 for citizen meetings to discuss a "shared vision" for society, or $56,124 to analyze Venezuela's new constitution of 1999. All went to unidentified recipients.

U.S. officials call the concerns baseless. They point to U.S.-funded programs meant to bridge the divide between Chavez's backers and opponents, such as conflict resolution workshops and public service announcements urging peaceful coexistence.

Much of the spending was for "in kind" aid - anything from snacks to airfare, rather than cash. And every grant requires the inclusion of people from across the political spectrum.

Even some pro-Chavez groups got support, said Russell Porter, an OTI official for Latin America.

Still, USAID said revealing more of their identities would be an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" that could endanger the recipients, saying some have been questioned for 12 hours at a time by the Venezuelan secret police.

"It's simply for the security of the recipient," Porter said. "The only thing we've held back are the names of the groups."

U.S. officials say they simply want to promote dialogue and strengthen Venezuela's "fragile democratic institutions."

But at the same time, Bush has repeatedly called Chavez a threat to democracy, and Chavez sympathizers find it hard to trust the U.S. government's motives.

"It's trying to implement regime change. There's no doubt about it. I think the U.S. government tries to mask it by saying it's a noble mission," said Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer who wrote "The Chavez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela," a book that cites public documents to argue that Washington is systematically trying to overthrow Chavez.

Golinger sees parallels in past U.S. campaigns, partly covert, to aid government opponents in countries from Nicaragua to Ukraine. "It's too suspicious to have such a high level of secrecy," she said.

The U.S. State Department also has supported electoral observer missions and training for human rights activists as part of the $26 million spent since 2002.

In addition, the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy has awarded $2.9 million in pro-democracy grants for Venezuela since 2002, and the U.S.-funded International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute have provided technical training to help restructure various Venezuelan political parties and supported training of electoral observers.

"It isn't designed to favor one party or another," said the National Democratic Institute's president, Ken Wollack. "All parties have participated."

But friction is mounting as Chavez seeks re-election. He holds a wide lead in the polls, and predicts the U.S. will try to discredit the December vote if he wins, with ammunition provided by U.S.-funded nonprofit groups.

Chavistas say their president has good reason to be concerned, given how quickly U.S. officials recognized his opponents during a short-lived coup in 2002. Immediately after Chavez was driven from power, the International Republican Institute's then president, George Folsom, issued a statement praising those who "rose up to defend democracy."

Chavez regained the presidency amid huge street protests, and the IRI's leadership later renounced Folsom's statement as contrary to the group's pro-democracy mission.

Still, all these efforts to influence another country's political process raise concerns outside Venezuela, too.

"It's very hard to accept an innocent directing of those funds," said Bill Monning, a law professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. "We would scream bloody murder if any outside force were interfering in our internal political system."

Sumate leader Maria Corina Machado, who met Bush at the White House last year, faces up to 16 years in prison if convicted of conspiracy for using $31,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy that she says went for voter education courses. Three other Sumate members also face charges.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan lawmakers recommended that Sumate be investigated for currency and tax law violations, and they've given initial approval, in a first reading, to a new law that would require non-governmental organizations to reveal their funding sources.

CIVICUS, a South Africa-based international group that supports citizen participation, says the proposed law will "endanger the existence of an independent civil society."

Russia adopted a similar law targeting human rights and pro-democracy groups this year after opposition leaders rose to power in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Critics say Venezuela's law would bring heavy-handed tactics, but Chavez supporters say they need to keep tabs on U.S. spending.

"They're promoting a U.S. agenda," Golinger said, "and that's the overall goal: to eventually get Chavez out of power."

Chacon accuses the US government of violating the Vienna Convention and insists that of the 20 boxes, only four were declared as diplomatic pouches, while the rest, since they did not go through customs, should be considered contraband.

The US State Department has replied that Venezuela is violating the Vienna Convention, because all the diplomatic pouches were registered.

The US government is demanding an immediate explanation about the incident, while the Venezuelan government wants to know why normal custom control channels were ignored

So far both sides have been content at having a go at each other, refusing to end or clarify the conflict.

Chacon says the box containing material for the Venezuelan Air Force (FAV) was not delivered to an FAV official and taken out of the international airport without passing through arms-control authorities.

The Minister asks what was really inside the box, which is currently inside the US embassy in Caracas.

The US complains that everything brought on the plane was part of personal belongings of the new US Embassy Naval Attache, one David Brown ... his predecessor left Venezuela after accusations of spying were raised against him.

"We will be looking into performance data, we will be looking at the weight of the aircraft, we will be looking at speeds, we will pull at that information off and we will be looking at all that," Hersmann said.

The Atlanta-bound plane was largely intact but in flames when rescuers reached it. A police officer burned his arms dragging the only survivor from the cracked cockpit, but the fire kept rescuers from reaching anyone else.

"They were taking off, so I'm sure they had a lot of fuel on board," Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said. "Most of the injuries are going to be due to fire-related deaths."

The crash was the country's worst domestic airplane accident in nearly five years.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency had no indication that terrorism was involved in any way. Both flight recorders, which should help investigators determine what went wrong, were sent to Washington, D.C., for analysis.

Protesters branded the proposal a racist initiative that would single out Hispanics, who make up about 37 percent of the city's population, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures from 2000.

"If we're of a certain color, they're going to point their finger at us," said Jose Gomez, a 42-year-old naturalized citizen.

Organizers of the rally emphasized that immigrants, regardless of status, pay taxes when they shop, rent or buy a home in Farmers Branch.

Families with children and college students rallied in temperatures topping 100 degrees.

O'Hare, who was not seen at the rally, and a city spokesman did not immediately return calls to The Associated Press.

Counter-protesters carried signs reading "I place all persons in the USA illegally under citizen's arrest" and "Como se Dice illegal en Espanol?", which translates to "How do you say illegal in Spanish?"

Supporters of the proposal said the measure would address problems with health care, education and crime in the city.

"They're taking our jobs, our homes," said Debbie Rawlins, 48. "There's unemployment partly because of the Hispanics. The lady that took my job is Hispanic and she's bilingual."

City Council members heard from constituents earlier this week on whether Farmers Branch should approve the measures, but no decision was made.

Oh, the U.S. claims Iran wants to build nuclear weapons. Well, first and foremost, Iran denies that, and there is no proof to the contrary. But suppose Iran does want to build nuclear weapons. Why shouldn't it? We have nukes. The British, the French, the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis and the Israelis all have nuclear weapons. Why shouldn't Iran? For that matter, what right does anyone have to tell the North Koreans they can't have nukes and can't even test their missiles? Everybody else tests the missiles.

What you see is that the United States and some of the European states are still trying to run the world to suit them, even though formal colonialism has been a long time dead. President Bush seems to think that he has the right to engineer regime change in any country he chooses. The U.S. record on regime change is poor. One reason so many Iranians hate us is because we engineered a regime change in the 1950s that threw out their elected nationalist leader and replaced him with the Shah. A lot of Iranians were executed, tortured and imprisoned before the Iranian people could finally get rid of him.

What right do we have to tell Syria and Iran that they can't supply arms to Hezbollah? We supply arms to Israel. In fact, we are about the world's largest arms peddler. Mr. Bush calls Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The government of Lebanon and the European Union do not. Just because an American politician sticks a label on a group of people doesn't mean those people lose all of their rights.

I don't think the world will know peace until all the nations of the world agree to respect each other's sovereignty. That means no sanctions, no externally arranged coups, no invasions, no refusal to talk. We would do much better if we talked to the Iranians and North Koreans and, while acknowledging their right to nuclear technology, offered incentives - including a security guarantee - not to develop it. You know, of course, that the U.S. refuses to talk to the Iranians and the North Koreans and has refused their requests for security guarantees. Countries don't like to be "dissed" any more than individuals do.

I've been accused by some right-wingers of not liking America. As usual, they have it wrong. I love America, but I don't like this present administration one bit. I think the Bushies are a dangerous combination of ignorance and arrogance, and that they act in a reckless manner. They ignore what they should pay attention to and pay attention to what they should ignore.

Bush seems intent on pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. If he persists, he will likely unleash a regional war, the consequences of which will be catastrophic.

What have you gotten for your $300 billion, your 2,600 dead, your 8,000 seriously maimed in Bush's ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Stability? Don't make me laugh. Security? America is hated in more parts of the world today than at any time in its history. What has Bush done right?

Before you resurrect the slogan "Stay the course," remember that one of the definitions of insanity is to keep doing the wrong thing. Let's face it, folks. We elected ourselves a disaster. Bush didn't understand the world when he was elected; he doesn't now; and when he goes home to Crawford, Texas, he will still be puzzled by it all.

Charley Reese [send him mail] has been a journalist for 49 years.

© 2006 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.