his possession a document titled Proclama à la Nación del Frente Nacional Bolivariano in which the Coup of 1992 was defended as a political option. He was accused of trying to start political links in Venezuela in particular with Hugo Chávez whom he advised from 1994 to 1995. His reappearance in Venezuela after Chávez was elected in 1998, his close relations with senior members of the government and the publication of a book dedicated to Chávez with the title Caudillo, Ejército, Pueblo: la Venezuela del Comandante Chávez (1999) (published first in Madrid then in Beirut in Arabic and then reprinted in Caracas), created a wave of concern from all sides of Venezuelan society. In 1999 José Vicente Rangel denied any ideological influence on Chávez's administration although in the 1998 book Habla el Comandante Chávez said that he "was reconsidering the ideas of Norberto Ceresole, in his works and studies, where he planned a project of physical integration in Latin America...this will be a project which will integrate the Continent along Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina and their ramifications". At the end of 1999, he was asked by Luis Miquilena, then vice-president, to leave the country. Miquilena later declared that Ceresole left by his own initiative while Ceresole declared that he had been both threatened by Jesús Urdaneta (head of the DISIP) and paid $10,000 by Miquilena to leave. In 2000, amid accusations of his influence in Venezuelan politics he declared that "I am profoundly proud, for example, that the Venezuelan system of military intelligence was restructured following the strategic guidelines that I proposed at the time". He also proposed in a letter to Jorge Olavarría (later published in the Venezuelan Magazine Primicia) the creation of an Office of Strategic Intelligence that could be financed by Hezbollah like his office in Madrid. However, such an office was never created. In May 2006, President Chávez spoke of his relationship with Ceresole during the broadcast of his weekly program Aló Presidente #255. He remembered him as a "great friend" and as an "intellectual deserving great respect" and recalled a meeting with him in 1995 near the Orinoco river in which they talked about the strategic location of Venezuela and the importance of focusing his future policy on South America instead of North America. On his return to Argentina following his 1999 departure from Venezuela, Ceresole became an advisor to the Peronist politician Adolfo Rodríguez