The New York Times
April 26, 2013
By María Eugenia Díaz and William Neuman

Courtesy of: Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela — Just a few weeks ago, Tim Tracy spoke of his time shooting a documentary in Venezuela as a rollicking adventure and a filmmaker’s dream. Now he is under arrest, accused by the Venezuelan government of a different kind of adventure: taking part in what officials here said was a plot to destabilize the country and incite a civil war.

The government said Friday that Mr. Tracy, an American citizen, would be charged with involvement in acts of violence after the April 14 presidential election. Mr. Tracy was arrested by the intelligence police on Wednesday at the international airport near Caracas as he was about to leave the country, the government said.

Mr. Tracy was originally identified in a report released by Venezuela’s Information Ministry as Timothy Hallett. Hallett is his middle name.

Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez said Thursday that Mr. Tracy had training as a spy and was part of a conspiracy to set off a civil war.

But those who knew Mr. Tracy in Caracas and in the United States, including in Los Angeles, where he lived, described him as an innocent — or perhaps naïve — filmmaker who had sought to portray Venezuela’s bitter political divide, not take sides in it.

Mr. Tracy spent time with both opposition student protesters and hard-core supporters of former President Hugo Chávez “to show the two sides of the story he was filming,” said Tuki Jencquel, a Venezuelan filmmaker who became friends with Mr. Tracy.

“He always seemed to be very evenhanded in his work and neutral in relation to what was happening in Venezuela,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything subversive about that.”

In a conversation with a New York Times reporter about a week after the March 5 death of Mr. Chávez, Mr. Tracy spoke enthusiastically about the months he had spent working on his film.

And he described himself as one of the most unlikely people to do so: an American with rudimentary Spanish who started out with virtually no knowledge of Venezuela or its politics. He seemed like a man on a lark.

Mr. Tracy said that he had made friends in one of the most pro-Chávez slums in Caracas, an area known as 23 de Enero, and in particular with a man who appeared often at rallies dressed up as the revolutionary Ché Guevara. He marveled at how he had won the man’s confidence, despite the government’s anti-American stance.

But he also sounded a note of concern, saying that the ersatz Ché stopped talking to him after Mr. Chávez’s death. The government expelled two military attachés from the American Embassy on the day Mr. Chávez died, claiming that they were trying to destabilize the country. Mr. Tracy said he wondered if the man had taken the government propaganda to heart and regretted their friendship.

He said he had also filmed opponents of the government, but he seemed most enthusiastic about his ability to break through the apparent barriers and get close to Chávez loyalists.

Mr. Jencquel said that Mr. Tracy had been detained twice before for filming, once at a Chávez rally and once at the presidential palace in Caracas. On Friday, after being allowed to visit Mr. Tracy, Mr. Jencquel said his friend told him he was innocent.

Mr. Tracy, 35, identified himself on LinkedIn, a professional networking Web site, as a director and producer who had been involved in a television series that appeared on the History Channel and a movie. He attended Georgetown University.

Mr. Rodríguez, the interior minister, said that Mr. Tracy had funneled money to student protesters who the government claimed were connected to postelection violence.

But student groups said on Friday that they had not received money from Mr. Tracy, and they denied involvement in violence. “It seems to me like a big farce on the part of the government to distract attention,” said Gaby Arellano, 26, who has taken part in the protests. She said that Mr. Tracy had interviewed her about her reasons for protesting.

Tensions in Venezuela have increased in the wake of the election, which Nicolás Maduro, Mr. Chávez’s heir, won by less than 2 percent. His opponent, Henrique Capriles Radonski, claims that Mr. Maduro stole the election, and he has demanded a recount.

After the election, Mr. Capriles urged his supporters to protest by marching in the streets and banging pots at home at night.

The government responded by claiming that Mr. Capriles was seeking to foment violence. It pointed to several people who were killed the day after the election, saying they were Maduro supporters murdered by members of the opposition.

But it has provided little hard evidence to back up the claims that the deaths were politically motivated. In one case, the father of a man who was shot dead said that his son was killed while taking part in a protest against Mr. Maduro’s victory, contradicting the government’s account.

It is typical of the government here to sometimes make wild claims about conspiracies without providing evidence. During the campaign, Mr. Maduro repeatedly warned of plots to kill him, and he said that foreign agents were entering the country to undermine the government.

In all of this, Mr. Maduro is sticking to the playbook of Mr. Chávez, who regularly warned of threats from the United States or suspected homegrown traitors.

Mr. Maduro has sent mixed signals in recent weeks about whether he hopes to improve his country’s rocky relationship with the United States, which is a major buyer of Venezuelan oil.

“We hope that many of these conspiracies and interventions by sectors of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon can finally be put behind us and we can have a relation with President Obama based on respect,” he said Thursday.

Patrick Ventrell, a State Department spokesman, said Friday that Mr. Tracy had no ties to any government agency. “The U.S. continues to categorically reject any allegations of U.S. government efforts to destabilize the Venezuelan government,” Mr. Ventrell said.

In a statement released Friday, Mr. Tracy’s parents said, “We believe a mistake has been made with the detention of our son Timothy by the Venezuelan authorities.”

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