Deciphering Chávez’s psyche

”The paranoid propensities of Chávez do suggest the possibility that Venezuela could conclude that Venezuela must develop a nuclear weapons capability,” wrote Jerrold Post, a Harvard and Yale-trained psychiatrist who once worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and now heads the political psychology program at George Washington University.

AIR FORCE REQUEST

Post’s psychological profile was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force in March as part of the U.S. government’s ”Counterproliferation Papers” — unclassified studies on potential national security threats.

Post would not say what prompted the Air Force’s interest, but Iran is suspected by Washington and many of its allies of seeking nuclear weapons. Chávez also broke military ties with Washington and no longer cooperates with U.S. anti-drug or counterterrorism officials.

In his report, Post says that the Venezuelan leader is capable of seeking nuclear weapons and adds, “It is strongly recommended that attention be continuously focused on Chávez and Venezuela as a possible source of terrorist organizational support.”

Post is one of many who have tried to decipher Chávez, a former army lieutenant colonel who led a failed coup in 1992 and was elected president in 1998. He has made Washington his No. 1 enemy and threatened to cut off the estimated 1.1 million barrels of oil a day exported to the United States.

But he remains popular in Venezuela, spreading his ”petrodollars” through social and educational programs. Chávez has won three elections and a recall referendum, and fought off a national strike and a military coup, while moving his country toward ”21st century socialism” by retaking control of oil fields, telecommunications and energy companies, and ”idle” lands and factories.

BAFFLING EXPERTS

Yet many of his public antics and policies have stymied analysts, academics and armchair psychologists, who seem split when it comes to understanding how his mind works.

There are Chávez-watchers who say he suffers a severe personality disorder and bouts with depression. Argentine journalist Olga Wornat wrote in her recently published book, Crónicas Malditas, that Chávez is bipolar and takes Prozac.

She claims her sources included Edmundo Chirinos, Chávez’s former psychiatrist, and a former girlfriend, Herma Marksman.

Chirinos, who did not respond to repeated Miami Herald requests for comment, has never made this claim in public, or anything even close to it. And Marksman told The Miami Herald that she never told Wornat that Chávez is bipolar.