Confidante of 'Tyrants'
The Story of the American Woman Trusted by the US's Biggest Enemies
`I had breakfast with Hugo Chavez, lunch with Bashar al-Assad, cocktails with Putin and dinner with Qadafi. Fidel Castro wooed me with flowers, perfume and cigars. Ahmadinejad told me he loved me. Chavez proclaimed me `The Girlfriend of Venezuela'. But I am not a spy, and I am not a traitor.' When US lawyer Eva Golinger first spent some time in Venezuela uncovering her ancestral roots, she little realized how the country was going to change her life. Within a few years she had become an enthusiast for the Bolivarian Revolution and a close confidante of its charismatic leader, Hugo Chavez. She achieved worldwide notoriety by exposing and condemning US intervention in Venezuela and ended up travelling with Chavez all over the world, spending time with many other controversial leaders. In this frank and disarming memoir, she tells the full story of her time in Chavez's inner circle and reflects on what she has learned about revolutionary politics, about the dangers of authoritarian populism - and about herself.
Eva Golinger is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (1994) and CUNY Law School (2003), and the author of six non-fiction books including The Chavez Code, a best seller in Latin America and published in eight languages around the world (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Turkish and Farsi). Over 500,000 copies of The Chavez Code were sold and distributed worldwide. Her work has been extensively covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, The Chicago Tribune, Reuters, AP, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and other major media around the world. She practices law in New York, specializing in immigration and international law. She lived in Venezuela for 12 years and counseled several Presidents, Foreign Ministers and senior officials in Latin America and was an Advisor to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for nearly a decade.
