The U.S. Agency for International Development will begin conducting financial reviews of about a dozen Cuba democracy groups that receive federal money to answer concerns in Congress about possible fraud totaling at least $500,000.
The reviews follow the agency's suspension of a grant to the Miami-based Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia after a recent audit turned up $11,000 in irregular spending. The group's executive director did not return an e-mail and a telephone call seeking comment yesterday. The matter has been referred to the agency's inspector general.
In March, agency officials suspended a $2.3 million grant to the Center for a Free Cuba after the group disclosed that a former employee, who later became a White House staffer working on Cuba issues, allegedly had used more than $500,000 in grant money for illegitimate purposes. The former employee, Felipe Sixto, resigned from his Bush administration job March 20 after the allegations came to light.
The case is under investigation by the Department of Justice and the USAID inspector general.
"USAID has decided to conduct an immediate review of all the grants to determine where financial vulnerabilities exist and how best to address these vulnerabilities to strengthen the program for future success," Stephen Driesler, a deputy assistant administrator, wrote in a memo Friday.
The two grantees with cases before the inspector general will receive only partial funding until their audits are completed, while the others will receive their full budget, according to USAID spokeswoman Portia Palmer.
USAID has a history of financial mismanagement of grants. In 2006, the Government Accountability Office found that nearly all of the $74 million USAID awarded in contracts to promote democracy in Cuba over the previous decade had been distributed without competitive bidding or oversight. In one case, a grant recipient used government money to purchase video games, leather coats, cashmere sweaters and Godiva chocolates.
USAID has installed additional financial controls in the last two years, according to Driesler. They include quarterly reviews of grantees, more training for agency staff and a new contract for outside audits. The new financial reviews are in addition to such efforts.
"I applaud this expanded oversight," Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement issued yesterday. "I received assurances that USAID and the State Department are seized with the gravity of the problems in these programs and that they are actively working to correct the problems."
Berman had sought to block the Cuba program funding until the agency addressed his concerns about financial oversight. USAID told him in a letter Friday that it would begin the new reviews.
Lynne Weil, a committee spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that USAID officials told the panel that between $500,000 and $700,000 in Cuba democracy grants had been stolen from the program.
Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, which favors lifting the travel ban to Cuba, noted that funding for grantees grew fourfold to $45 million this year. The misspending raises the question of "whether this program should be receiving any money at all," she said.
Frank Calzón, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, said he welcomes the added scrutiny, noting that it was he who discovered the possible fraud at his group and reported it to USAID.
The attention is simply part of the long-standing political battle over U.S. policy toward Cuba, a conflict bound to intensify as the Bush administration ends, he said.
"The folks who do not like the Cuba policy of the United States and have not been able to win a change [of it] in the Congress are going after the execution of the policy," Calzón said.
BY Frances Robles
Published: Tue, Jul. 22, 2008
Congress has put the U.S. Agency for International Development's $45 million Cuba program's 2008 funding on hold, following a series of troubling audits and cases of massive fraud, The Miami Herald has learned.
In a quest to get the funding hold lifted, U.S. AID on Friday ordered a bottoms-up review of all its Cuba democracy programs and suspended a Miami anti-Castro exile group that spent at least $11,000 of federal grant money on personal items. Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ordered a hold on the U.S. AID Cuba program funding last month, in part in response to a $500,000 embezzlement at the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington disclosed earlier this year, federal officials said. In a memo sent Friday to various members of Congress, Stephen Driesler, AID's deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs, said the agency recently implemented stricter financial reviews. That new review turned up irregularities at the Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group in Support of Democracy), a Miami group criticized in the past for using federal funds to send Nintendo games to Cuba.
The executive director of Grupo de Apoyo admitted that an employee used the organization's credit card for thousands of dollars in personal items and then billed them to the grant aimed at bringing democracy to Cuba, Driesler's memo said.
The group's funding has been suspended pending further review, and the money has been reimbursed, Driesler said. In a telephone interview, he declined to say what items were purchased.
''U.S. AID has decided to conduct an immediate review of all the grants to determine where financial vulnerabilities exist and how best to address these vulnerabilities to strengthen the program for future success,'' his memo said. ``All grants are currently undergoing review, and pending the outcome of these reviews, some grants will be partially suspended.''
Grupo de Apoyo Executive Director Frank Hernández Trujillo did not return several messages seeking comment.
The announcement that U.S. AID would conduct a thorough review of its controversial $45 million program is considered a significant development that illustrates increased congressional oversight over the program.
A report by the Cuban-American National Foundation released in May showed that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ''direct, on-island assistance.'' The bulk of the money, the report said, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.
Congress has put the U.S. Agency for International Development's $45 million Cuba program's 2008 funding on hold, following a series of troubling audits and cases of massive fraud, The Miami Herald has learned.
In a quest to get the funding hold lifted, U.S. AID on Friday ordered a bottoms-up review of all its Cuba democracy programs and suspended a Miami anti-Castro exile group that spent at least $11,000 of federal grant money on personal items.
Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ordered a hold on the U.S. AID Cuba program funding last month, in part in response to a $500,000 embezzlement at the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington disclosed earlier this year, federal officials said.
In a memo sent Friday to various members of Congress, Stephen Driesler, AID's deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs, said the agency recently implemented stricter financial reviews. That new review turned up irregularities at the Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group in Support of Democracy), a Miami group criticized in the past for using federal funds to send Nintendo games to Cuba.
The executive director of Grupo de Apoyo admitted that an employee used the organization's credit card for thousands of dollars in personal items and then billed them to the grant aimed at bringing democracy to Cuba, Driesler's memo said.
The group's funding has been suspended pending further review, and the money has been reimbursed, Driesler said. In a telephone interview, he declined to say what items were purchased.
''U.S. AID has decided to conduct an immediate review of all the grants to determine where financial vulnerabilities exist and how best to address these vulnerabilities to strengthen the program for future success,'' his memo said. ``All grants are currently undergoing review, and pending the outcome of these reviews, some grants will be partially suspended.''
Grupo de Apoyo Executive Director Frank Hernández Trujillo did not return several messages seeking comment.
The announcement that U.S. AID would conduct a thorough review of its controversial $45 million program is considered a significant development that illustrates increased congressional oversight over the program.
A report by the Cuban-American National Foundation released in May showed that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ''direct, on-island assistance.'' The bulk of the money, the report said, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.
The report echoed findings by The Miami Herald in 2006 and a congressional Government Accountability Office audit that found lax oversight of the programs and came as the Bush administration prepares to dole out a record $45.7 million in Cuba democracy grants.
IMPORTANT SHIFT
In an important shift, the Bush administration this year ordered a major change in the grants, favoring international advocacy groups over Miami exile organizations.
''Yes, we were worried,'' Driesler said in an interview. ``When we have problems with two institutions within six months out of 11 active grantees, you say, `We hope this is not a pattern, but we better pause and check and make sure.'
``We are focusing on procurements, validating that purchases being billed are being delivered, that the purchase price on the invoice is accurate and that the purchase was legitimate for a government program.''
Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, stressed that the $500,000 fraud at his organization was not discovered by a federal audit but by Calzon himself. He said Berman, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, pushed for the audits because he is against President Bush's Cuba policy.
POLITICS CHARGED
''I think any additional oversight is fine; I don't have any problem with that,'' Calzon said. ``I would say that it is simply motivated by politics. If Mr. Berman were in agreement with the president's Cuba policy, he would not be on this fishing expedition.''
Berman's office did not return a call seeking comment.
Critics say AID's move did not go far enough.
''Those of us who have been following this issue are alarmed about the program,'' said Sarah Stephens, whose organization, Democracy in the Americas, lobbies for a change in Cuba policy.
``We are pleased that Congress has started asking questions and, given what we have learned about possible corruption and waste, we believe Congress needs to stop this funding and continue asking the hard questions.''
The report echoed findings by The Miami Herald in 2006 and a congressional Government Accountability Office audit that found lax oversight of the programs and came as the Bush administration prepares to dole out a record $45.7 million in Cuba democracy grants.
By Lourdes Heredia
Published: Thursday, June 27, 2008
Un comité en el Congreso de Estados Unidos aprobó un proyecto de ley para flexibilizar las restricciones de los viajes a Cuba de los estadounidenses que tienen familia en la isla.
Esta medida no llegará al pleno hasta noviembre porque es parte de la ley de presupuestos del 2009. Tiene que ser aprobada por ambas cámaras y después deberá superar el veto presidencial, lo que será muy difícil.
El proyecto refleja, sin embargo, el debate que existe dentro del Congreso sobre las restricciones para los cubano-americanos que sólo pueden visitar a su familia cada tres años, por una ley que implementó el presidente George W. Bush hace cuatro años.
Los demócratas, en la oposición, quieren flexibilizar la medida para que al menos puedan viajar cada año.
"No hay razón para aplicar duras restricciones a quienes simplemente quieren visitar a sus familiares cercanos. Además, el proyecto de ley contiene una cláusula que facilita el comercio agrícola con Cuba, lo que permite que más agricultores estadounidenses vendan sus productos a Cuba", explicó José Serrano, presidente del panel del Comité de Apropiaciones de la Cámara de Representantes.
Más familia inmediata
La iniciativa de este comité también amplía la definición sobre "familia inmediata", para que se pueda también visitar a tíos, sobrinos y primos. Asimismo en el texto se incluye derogar los impedimentos para la venta de medicinas y alimentos a Cuba.
Aquellos que han criticado el embargo hacia Cuba como inefectivo, opinan que este tipo de intentos legislativos son un paso hacia una mejor política estadounidense.
"Esta iniciativa corrige dos de los peores excesos de la política estadounidense hacia Cuba. Las familias cubanas y los disidentes políticos en Cuba quieren la eliminación de las restricciones de viaje. Además no es correcto utilizar los alimentos como arma política", señaló en un comunicado de prensa Sarah Stephens, del Centro para la Democracia en las Américas.
Más dificultades
Muchos otros opinan que es hora de cambiar la política de EE.UU. hacia la isla.
Esta no es la primera vez que un comité legislativo propone levantar algunas restricciones del embargo.
También en el Comité de Medios y Arbitrios de la Cámara Baja se presentó un proyecto de ley para levantar las restricciones de viaje.
Sin embargo, el gobierno de George W. Bush ha advertido que no permitirá ninguna flexibilización a estas restricciones mientras no haya un "cambio democrático" en la isla.
Nuevos controles
Además, mientras el Congreso en Washington debate iniciativas que serán muy difíciles de superar, en la vida real, los cubano-americanos que viven en Florida enfrentarán desde el 1 de julio más dificultades para visitar a sus familias.
El gobernador de Florida, Charlie Crist, firmó esta semana una ley que refuerza los controles estatales sobre las agencias de viajes que venden pasajes y envían mercancías a Cuba.
Esta legislación, aprobada por el congreso estatal, pide que las agencias de viajes ubicadas en el estado paguen un honorario de registro de US$2.500, así como un depósito de entre US$100.000 y US$200.000 como requisito operativo.
La ley, que también exige a las agencias informar al gobierno sobre el número de pasajeros, mercancías y volumen de su negocios, provocará que le cueste más dinero a los cubano-americanos viajar o mandar regalos a sus familias.
Washington
Miércoles, 25 de Junio de 2008
EFE - El Comité de Asignaciones de la Cámara de Representantes de EE.UU. aprobó hoy a viva voz un proyecto de ley que flexibilizaría la frecuencia de los viajes de cubanoamericanos a la isla.
De ser aprobada por ambas cámaras del Congreso, la medida permitiría que los cubanoamericanos visiten a sus familiares en la isla una vez al año, en vez de cada tres años como lo estipulan las leyes en vigor.
La medida fue incluida en el proyecto de ley presupuestario de 22.400 millones de dólares para el año fiscal 2009 del Departamento del Tesoro, que regula el embargo de EE.UU. contra Cuba, y de otras agencias de servicios financieros del país.
La iniciativa también amplía la definición de quiénes constituyen una "familia inmediata", de tal manera que los cubanoamericanos también podrían visitar a tíos, sobrinos y primos.
En el capítulo que se refiere al sector agrícola, el proyecto de ley "deroga los impedimentos reglamentarios de la administración a la venta de fármacos y alimentos a Cuba", según el texto de la medida.
Aunque se trata de tan solo un primer paso en el largo recorrido legislativo, la aprobación de la medida en el comité fue elogiada por legisladores y entidades que favorecen la flexibilización del embargo que EE.UU. mantiene contra Cuba desde hace más de cuatro décadas.
"No hay razón para aplicar duras restricciones a quienes simplemente quieren visitar a sus familiares cercanos. Además, el proyecto de ley contiene una cláusula que facilita el comercio agrícola con Cuba, lo que permite que más agricultores estadounidenses vendan sus productos a Cuba", afirmó el legislador demócrata José Serrano.
Sarah Stephens, del Centro para la Democracia en las Américas, dijo en un comunicado que la iniciativa "corrige dos de los peores excesos de la política estadounidense hacia Cuba".
"Las familias cubanas y los disidentes políticos en Cuba quieren la eliminación de las restricciones de viaje. Estados Unidos no debería utilizar los alimentos como un arma política y no hay razón para que el presidente (George W.) Bush no promulgue esta ley", enfatizó Stephens.
El Gobierno de Washington ha dejado en claro que no levantará el embargo mientras Cuba no tome medidas, más allá de "cambios superficiales", para agilizar la transición democrática en la isla.
Desde que la oposición demócrata recuperó el control de ambas cámaras del Congreso en las elecciones legislativas de 2006, los grupos a favor y en contra del embargo han mantenido la presión ante el Legislativo.
El presidente del Comité de Medios y Arbitrios de la Cámara Baja, el demócrata Charles Rangel, presentó un proyecto de ley a comienzos de año para levantar las restricciones de viaje, y la medida ahora cuenta con más de un centenar de patrocinadores.
Sin embargo, los legisladores de corte conservador y grupos afines se mantienen en pie de lucha para evitar cualquier flexibilización de las restricciones contra Cuba, y no está claro si la medida aprobada hoy por el Comité llegará a buen puerto.
By Jeff Franks
Published: Thursday, June 12, 2008
HAVANA (Reuters) - Sometime next year, Cuba plans to begin drilling a major oil field off its northern coast that might do what little else has done -- bring change to U.S-Cuba relations.
In a rare confluence of circumstances, oil could grease the wheels for the two bitter enemies to come together in the middle of the Florida Straits out of mutual need, experts say.
Getting there would require a sea change in U.S. policy -- namely putting a major hole in the U.S. trade embargo imposed against Cuba in 1962 to topple Fidel Castro's communist government.
If the embargo stays as is, a nearby source of oil will be off-limits to the energy-thirsty United States and the American oil industry will miss out on billions of dollars of business.
Embargo opponents rule out change until President George W. Bush, who has toughened the embargo, leaves office next year.
Even then they can expect a fight from influential Cuban-American leaders, who argue that helping Cuba produce oil will aid the Cuban government and undermine the 46-year-old embargo's reason for being.
"We think what really needs to happen in Cuba is for that system to change," U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told Reuters.
But embargo foes say the combination of economics, energy needs and environmental concerns, as well as new leaders in the two countries make easing the embargo possible.
"The pro-embargo status quo is really threatened right now," said Sarah Stephens, director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas. "The sands are running out of the clock on the policy and I think that has the pro-embargo folks worried."
DRILLING The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated the Cuban field holds at least 5 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
In a few years, Cuba could be producing 525,000 barrels of oil per day, enough to make it energy independent and perhaps even an oil exporter, said former oil company executive Jorge Pinon, now a researcher at the University of Miami. Cuba consumes 145,000 barrels daily, of which 92,000 come from Venezuela.
The government has sold oil concessions to seven companies and has said a consortium of Spanish, Indian and Norwegian companies will drill the first production well in the first half of 2009.
Drilling was supposed to begin this year and has been put off twice due to undisclosed factors that U.S. experts say likely include difficulty getting a rig because global drilling activity is high, the need for more downstream facilities to handle the oil and possible effects of the U.S. embargo.
The Cuban field lies as much as 6 miles below the sea surface, depths at which U.S. production technology is superior, said Cuba oil expert Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
"Cuba and none of the present partners have that (depth) capability without accessing American technology, and therein lies the rub," he said. "U.S. export controls forbid them to transfer that technology to Cuba."
Cuba, looking past the United States, has been in talks with Brazil's Petrobras, which has much deepwater expertise, about getting involved.
The embargo has withstood repeated legislative attempts to water it down, including unsuccessful bills in the U.S. Congress in 2006 to exempt oil companies.
But embargo foe Kirby Jones, a consultant on Cuba business and founder of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association in Washington, said a big Cuba oil find changes the political equation.
"This is the first time that maintaining the embargo actually costs the United States something," he said. "And we need oil. We need it from wherever we can get it, and in this case it's 50 miles off our coast," he said.
CLOSE TO U.S.
An odd fact is that Cuba will be drilling 50 miles from the Florida Keys, or more than twice as close as U.S. companies can get due to regulations protecting Florida's coast.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who has introduced bills to lift the embargo for oil companies, said the environmental argument may be key because there is much concern in Florida about potential oil spills.
"If there are going to be oil rigs off of Florida, I think most Americans would be more comfortable if they were U.S. oil rigs, rather than Chinese for example," Flake said.
He said U.S. companies are definitely interested in Cuba, but have not publicly pushed for embargo change. In interviews, industry executives emphasized they did not oppose the embargo because it is U.S. national policy and were pushing instead for access to U.S. areas that are currently prohibited, such as offshore western Florida.
"When U.S. companies are not even allowed to drill in the eastern half of the Gulf of Mexico, we have a long way to go before we can think about international waters off the coast of Cuba," said Larry Nichols, chairman of Houston-based Devon Energy.
Cuba has said it would welcome U.S. companies to their offshore field and showed its interest by sending Cubapetroleo representatives to a 2006 conference in Mexico City with companies including oil giant Exxon Mobil and top U.S. refiner Valero Corp.
The conference became the center of international controversy when the Sheraton Hotel kicked out the Cuban representatives after the Bush administration told the U.S.-based hotel chain it was violating the embargo by having paying Cuban guests.
The incident may have convinced the oil industry to lie low on Cuban oil.
"Nobody wants to rankle the Bush administration and get them in a tizzy about what may occur," said Benjamin-Alvarado.
The political landscape for the embargo already has changed with Raul Castro taking over in February as Cuba's president, succeeding his ailing brother, Fidel, Flake said.
Raul Castro has made small openings in Cuba's state-run economy, but perhaps more importantly he is not the anti-American firebrand and lightning rod his brother was for 49 years.
Wolf Blitzer
May 22, 2008
By Albor Ruiz
Published: Sunday, May 25th 2008
President Bush's sense of humor is legendary.
This is a man who can tell a joke with the best of them - and on Wednesday he proved it again.
That was the day when he announced at the White House that he was making changes to his Cuba policy: From now on, the President said, Americans are authorized to send cell phones to Cuba!
"If he (Cuban President Raúl Castro) is serious about his so-called reforms, he will allow these phones to reach the Cuban people," Bush said.
Castro may or may not be serious about his reforms but surely President Bush was putting us on.
Cell phones can be sent to Cuba, yet the trade embargo on the island that for half a century has accomplished nothing but making life harder for ordinary Cubans remains the same? That's funny.
Keep in mind that President Bush himself tightened the "blockade" (as they call the embargo in Cuba) to the point of absurdity.
Add to this the fact that it was President Bush who severely curtailed travel to Cuba even for Cuban-Americans, allowing them to travel to their native country only once every three years (they could travel once a year before) and only if they have very close relatives (parents, spouses or children) on the island.
Also, under this policy, no humanitarian visas are ever granted for any reason (a mother's funeral, a daughter's wedding, you name it), and remittances to help family in the island were severely curtailed.
But now that Americans can send cell phones to Cuba everything will be just fine. Funny, no?
"The President can do a lot more than sending cell phones to Cuba," said Sarah Stephens, director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas.
"He can send Americans to Cuba by wiping out restrictions on family travel, and more broadly support change through engagement and by encouraging the Cuban people to determine their future for themselves.
" While the joke was funny, the President's timing was somewhat off.
At the same time the President was announcing the cell phone policy, Cuban officials were accusing - and offering plenty of evidence - the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, Michael Parmly, of delivering money to Beatriz Roque and other dissidents in Cuba sent by the private Fundación Rescate Jurídico, a Miami exile group.
Rescate Jurídico is the brainchild of Miami businessman Santiago Álvarez, currently jailed in the U.S. on weapons charges. It even lists its address as Álvarez's Hialeah office.
For the record, Álvarez is also a close buddy and benefactor of reputed terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.
Yet, it was Alvarez's money that Parmly was carrying from the U.S. and distributing in Havana.
Hey, no problem, let's send Cubans some cell phones!
"While the President surely ought to find ways to communicate directly with Cuba, fundamental reform of U.S. policy based on engagement would benefit the Cuban people much more than today's symbolic gesture," said Jake Colvin, Director of USA*Engage, a coalition of businesses, agriculture groups and trade associations.
"If the President were serious about wanting to communicate with the Cuban people," Colvin added, "he would remove travel and trade restrictions that prevent Americans from doing just that.
" At least now they can call them on their cell phones. Funny, no?
By Jeremy Pelofsky
Published: Thursday, May 22, 2008
WASHINGTON, USA (Reuters): President George W. Bush announced an easing of restrictions on Wednesday to allow Americans to send mobile telephones to their families in Cuba, which he portrayed as a challenge to the Communist authorities to advance reforms.
Cuban President Raul Castro, who took over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro in February, has announced a series of economic changes in recent months, including allowing Cubans to buy computers, DVD players and mobile telephones. In practice, few on the island can afford them.
US President George W. Bush. AFP PHOTO "If Raul is serious about his so-called reforms, he will allow these phones to reach the Cuban people," Bush said.
"Through these measures the United States is reaching out to the Cuban people, yet we know that life will not fundamentally change for Cubans until their form of government changes," he said at a White House event on Cuba.
Washington has maintained a decades-long economic embargo against Cuba and the Bush administration has firmly upheld it, despite calls both in the United States and abroad to loosen it. Washington has been dismissive of prospects for political change under Raul Castro.
White House officials portrayed the change on mobile telephones as an extension to the US existing policy on sending family gift parcels rather than a crack in the embargo. The changes in US regulations will likely take effect in the next couple of weeks, said Dan Fisk, National Security Council senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs.
He said US telephones should work on the island, which lies 90 miles south of the Florida coast.
Fisk also told reporters that mobile telephones in Cuba cost an average of $120 plus another $120 to activate, but Cubans' average monthly wage is between $12-$20. But he did not say how much making calls cost.
In Havana, the Cuban government had not yet commented on Bush's announcement.
Bush also made it clear that there would be little change in policy toward Havana under Castro unless the Cuban people were given more freedom to speak, political prisoners were released and economic reforms were implemented.
"But experience tells us this regime has no intention of taking these steps," Bush said. "Instead, its recent gestures appear to be nothing more than a cruel joke perpetrated on a long-suffering people.
" One Cuba analyst criticized Bush for being dismissive of the changes in Havana.
"It seems to me at a time when we're seeing real reforms in Cuba all the way from decentralization in agriculture to allowing Cubans new personal liberties, President Bush is wrong to dismiss these changes as a cruel joke, and he's wrong to position the United States against the process of change in Cuba," Sarah Stephens of the Center for Democracy in America said in a conference call.
Bush's announcement of the policy change coincided with scraps on the US presidential campaign trail between Republican candidate Sen. John McCain and Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama over Cuba.
Trying to rally support among Cuban-Americans, who are a crucial voting bloc in Florida, McCain attacked Obama on Tuesday for his proposals to ease the embargo on Cuba.
Obama, who is likely to be the Democratic choice for candidate in November's election but is still battling Hillary Clinton for the nomination, has said he would like to ease stringent US restrictions on family visits and remittances from the United States.
Published: May 21, 2008
WASHINGTON— President George W. Bush on Wednesday announced a change in US policy to allow Americans to send cellphones to relatives in Cuba after an easing of restrictions on phone ownership there.
The administration was quick to note the move was not an easing of a decades-old US embargo against the island nation, as Bush slammed the "personal despotism of Fidel and Raul Casto" and reiterated calls for more substantial reform.
"Since Raul is allowing Cubans to own mobile phones for the first time, we are going to change our regulations to allow Americans to send mobile phones to family members in Cuba," Bush told a White House gathering which included US lawmakers and relatives of Cuban political prisoners.
"If Raul is serious about his so-called reforms, he will allow these phones to reach the Cuban people," Bush said, referring to Cuban leader Raul Castro, brother of revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, 81, who relinquished power in February after almost 50 years as president.
Raul Castro, 76, in one of a series of reforms, last month eased restrictions on mobile phone ownership in Cuba.
State telecoms company Etecsa in April predicted 1.4 million new mobile service contracts in the next five years on the island of some 11 million people.
Bush's announcement at a White House ceremony came on the 106th anniversary of the Caribbean island's independence from the United States, where he called on Havana to release some 200 political prisoners in Cuba's "tropical gulag."
"Cuba's society is crumbling after decades of neglect under the Castros," he said.
"If the Cuban regime is serious about improving life for the Cuban people, it will take steps necessary to make these changes meaningful."
The president said he was launching the inaugural "day of solidarity with the Cuban people," and hoped Washington would continue to mark the day each year "until Cuba's freedom."
US officials stressed that with the cellphones announcement Bush was not abandoning the decades-old trade embargo against Havana, but modifying a regulation that allows Americans to send certain gifts to residents of the island nation.
"This is not a loosening of the embargo," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said. "This is a change in the already established policy that allows people to send gift parcels to their family, and we are allowing now cell phones to be a part of that gift parcel."
Washington's embargo on Havana is under pressure from US business leaders and lawmakers who say sanctions and diplomatic isolation have failed to pry open the socialist state.
National Security Council official Dan Fisk said he believed cellphones subscribed to US networks work on the island.
"Americans will be allowed to send a phone and support an account" by paying the bill in the United States, Fisk said, adding that the policy would be ready in "a couple of weeks."
Fisk acknowledged it was unclear if the phones would actually get to the intended recipients, but he defended the policy as providing much-needed communications service to Cubans.
"This is not a case in which we're enriching the regime," he said, adding that that cellphones in Cuba cost about 120 dollars, plus a 120-dollar activation fee -- exorbitant for most Cubans.
Some activists felt Bush should be engaging Havana more rather than circumventing the country's policies.
"The president can do a lot more than sending cell phones to Cuba," Sarah Stephens, director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, said in a statement.
"He can send Americans to Cuba by wiping out restrictions on family travel, and more broadly support change through engagement and by encouraging the Cuban people to determine their future for themselves."
US sanctions policy against Cuba is comprised of a patchwork of travel, trade and diplomatic restrictions, and US law allows an easing of sanctions only if Cuba first meets several conditions such as organizing free and fair elections without either Fidel or Raul Castro.
Letter to the Editor:
Published: May 8, 2008
Re “In Stores, Hints of Change Under New Castro” (front page, May 2):
In my three trips to Cuba this year — before, during and after the election of Raúl Castro — Cubans were talking, with greater candor and hope than I’ve encountered during more than 30 trips since 2001.
The signal sent by the reforms, such as moving control over agriculture from Havana to the municipal level or allowing Cubans to buy cellphones or stay in hotels, is that after 50 years the path forward is now toward decentralization and honoring the desire of Cubans for more autonomy.
What catches the attention of Cubans is that they asked for these changes in a continuing national debate, the government is responding, and they now expect that these reforms will produce an even greater opening.
Rather than condemning the reforms as cosmetic, as our government does, our foreign allies are commending Cuba’s government to encourage it to do more. By contrast, no Cuban tells us that United States policy has a constructive role. As one said, “You don’t understand what’s going on here, and we don’t care.”
Sarah Stephens Director,
Center for Democracy in the Americas
Washington, May 2, 2008
By Sarah Stephens and Gail Reed
Published: Apr 8, 2008
Even in retirement, Fidel Castro exerts outsized influence over our country’s political life. Even now, he may affect the access Floridians have to health care.
How can this be? To teach Castro a lesson, a state legislator is fighting to ban American doctors, educated in Cuba, from practicing medicine in Florida, and already a committee has acted to move this proposal forward.
This story, about a small and largely symbolic issue, speaks volumes about how Fidel-o-phobia can cause even our most well-meaning public officials to do the strangest and most self-defeating things.
Nearly a decade ago, President Castro founded the Latin American School of Medicine, also called “ELAM,” where foreign students are given a medical education for free. They come largely from developing countries’ poor and indigenous communities where medical care is desperately needed, and they are encouraged to return to those communities to practice. ELAM is a classic example of Cuba’s application of soft-power in its international diplomacy.
Over a hundred American students—mainly from minority communities-- are now enrolled there. Who are these students? They are whip smart, highly motivated kids, desperate to become physicians, yet unable to afford a medical education in the United States, or unwilling to shoulder the $200,000 debt that now hits the average US medical student the day after graduation.
So, they go to Cuba, learn Spanish (coming home bilingual), take bridging courses in sciences if necessary and spend six years being trained as physicians in Cuba alongside students from 28 other countries. After which, the hope is, they will return to the United States and practice medicine in some of the thousands of our country’s under-served communities.
Is a Cuban medical education any good? According to experts we’ve consulted, the answer is yes. Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan, a former U.S. Assistant Surgeon General, says Cuban medical education is well-respected and that Cuba’s achievement in scaling up physician training is an important example for other countries. The first US graduate has already passed his medical boards and is in his first year of residency in New York City. With the latest class, a total of 17 will have graduated by this summer.
Enter Rep. Eddy Gonzalez.
His bill, HB 685, which was passed by the Healthcare Council, and will now go to a floor vote, will strictly prohibit any of these American medical students currently enrolled at ELAM from practicing medicine in Florida.
According to the Federation of State Medical Boards, this would make Florida the first state in the nation to ban all physicians who graduated from any school in a particular country.
Even though Rep. Gonzalez has called facets of Cuba’s health care system "state of the art," he says that students educated in Cuba, whose government he despises, “do not possess the basic judgment and character required for the ethical practice of medicine in Florida."
Rep. Gonzalez vastly underestimates the idealism and the devotion to medicine possessed by these doctors, and nothing in his legislation will change the Cuban system. What it will do is stop Florida from getting young, talented physicians to practice where they are surely needed.
Dr. Karl Altenburger, president of the Florida Medical Association, calls the state’s doctor shortage severe. He’s said that young doctors don’t want to come to Florida to practice; the state lacks internships, residency programs, and fellowships. The average age of doctors in Florida is 51 and a quarter of the state’s physicians are over 60.
Florida, the fourth most populous state, is ranked 20th in its number of active physicians by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Tad Fisher, executive Vice President of the Florida Academy of Family Physicians, said that Florida needs an additional 12,000 primary care physicians by 2020 to meet its health care needs.
And there are plenty of underserved people in Gonzalez’s home district: the Health Council of South Florida’s Miami-Dade County’s 2007 Community Health Report Card gave “access to health care” a pretty scary “F”.
Florida acknowledges these problems and advertises on the internet to recruit physicians to treat patients in the state who don’t have adequate access to doctors. It even offers waivers to attract foreign-born, foreign educated physicians to serve. But American students educated in Cuba? They need not apply.
When Floridians come down with Fidel-o-phobia, they torment each other (and the rest of us) just to show Castro up. More often than not, we end up with silly ideas like this which hurt us, not him. Now that Fidel’s retired, we should stop dancing at the end of his string, look squarely at our own interests, and decide for ourselves the right way to pursue our nation’s ideals.
-- Sarah Stephens and Gail Reed
Gail Reed M.S., is a journalist who serves as International Director of Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC). Sarah Stephens is Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas.
By Pablo Bachelet and Frances Robles
Published: Mar 31, 2008
MIAMI - Cuba's so-called "tourism apartheid" -- which has long prohibited locals from staying at hotels -- ends midnight Monday, according to news agencies in Havana.
The move ends a ban that many Cubans had fixated on as a prime example of the inequities and hardships they faced under Fidel Castro's regime. The lifting comes five weeks after Fidel Castro's brother, Raul, took over the nation's presidency, and just days after he ended the ban on Cubans owning personal mobile phones, computers and household appliances.
But the measure is largely symbolic: a night's stay at a luxury hotel in Cuba can cost more than $200 -- which is just about what the average Cuban earns in a year.
Cubans were prohibited from staying at hotels even if someone else paid the tab.
Reuters news agency reported Monday that now Cubans can also rent cars and go to beaches once restricted to tourists.
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a fierce critic of the Castro government, called the lifting of the hotel restrictions "pathetic."
"There might be many superficial changes like this hotel maneuver and making DVD players and computers legal, but what the Cuban people want are true changes, like freedom and democracy," she said in an e-mail. "Raul may make these nominal rather than real changes because most Cubans can't afford hotel stays. "What a dismal picture that legalizing microwaves and hotel stays are considered reforms," she said. "It's pathetic."
But those who are pushing for an easing of sanctions on Cuba had a different take on Raul Castro's reforms. Many experts view Raul Castro's early decisions as positive steps, even if they do not come with democratic elections and freedom of speech.
"This is a real reform, because it speaks to the desire of Cubans to have more autonomy over their own lives," said Sarah Stephens, the director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, an advocacy organization that takes lawmakers on trips to the island. "It is part of a piece with cellphones and agrarian reforms, and when the Cuban government allows more private decisions, that is something our government should recognize and applaud. It doesn't, but it should."
Carlos Saladrigas, the co-chairman of the moderate Cuba Study Group, said the lifting of the hotel restriction was "a very positive move" by Raul Castro but noted that without more economic reforms "the tourist apartheid will shift from a political apartheid to an economic apartheid."
"None of these measures put food on Cubans' tables," he said. "That's what's really needed."
Reuters and the Associated Press news agencies interviewed hotel managers who said they were informed that any Cuban with a national ID card could check in starting Monday night.
Like other guests, they will be charged in convertible pesos worth 24 times the regular pesos earned by state employees, the AP reported.
There was no official announcement in state-controlled media on the lifting of the ban on hotel rooms and other tourist services, and word-of-mouth spread slowly through the Cuban capital.
Inside the world-renowned luxurious but somewhat run-down Hotel Nacional, it was business as usual, Havana news outlets reported. Receptionists at several other hotels reported no immediate spike in reservations, the AP said.
Other tourism employees said they had not yet been officially informed of the change.
By Sarah Stephens
Published: Feb 19, 2008
This is the event that fifty years of U.S. policy was designed to stop.
Fidel Castro has announced his retirement. He will be replaced in a peaceful succession, without the violent upheaval that U.S. policy makers have been predicting since the 1960s.
Now that Fidel Castro has announced his retirement, it's time to retire our Cold War era Cuba policy. It failed.
Every U.S. president since Eisenhower has tried to kill or topple Fidel Castro and replace Cuba's government and economic system with something more to our liking. They never succeeded.
It was the express purpose of the U.S. embargo, with sanctions more comprehensive than any we impose on Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria to stop this transition. But it couldn't.
For years, the U.S. embargo has been rebuked in lop-sided votes in the U.N. General Assembly. On October 30, 2007, when we were last drubbed by a margin of 184 to 4 (and one abstention), not a single country in South America, Central America or the Caribbean supported our policy. Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, three countries praised by President Bush one week earlier for their support of U.S. policy against Cuba, joined the condemnation -- so did Afghanistan, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, a nation whose democracy was born with the help of U.S. sanctions.
As the Cuba embargo sullies our image around the world, it undermines the national interest and our highest values here at home. The embargo sacrifices the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to travel. It cruelly divides Cuban families on both sides of the Florida straits. Trade sanctions cost U.S. businesses about $1 billion annually, and deny U.S. citizens access to vaccines and other medical treatments. Enforcing the embargo drains resources from the war on terror. By isolating the American people from the Cuban people, we stop our citizens from doing what Americans do best; we can't offer Cubans our support or our ideas, and we're unable to benefit from what they could offer us.
I have been to Cuba close to thirty times in the last seven years and I have spoken to Cubans of every stripe -- fans of the revolution and diehard opponents of President Castro.
Cubans by their nature have vastly divergent opinions, except on one fundamental point: it is Cubans living on the island -- not politicians in Washington, not their kinsmen in Miami -- who must decide for themselves what happens next in Cuba. They cherish their sovereignty, they reject violence and instability, and they want the United States to respect those values as much as they do, especially now that they can see a future past President Fidel Castro and beyond the 50th year of their revolution.
There is a debate happening in Cuba right now, triggered by Raúl Castro on economic reform that is remarkable in its sweep. Leaders have spoken to us with unusual candor about the inability of Cubans to keep pace with prices, but they are committed to raising living standards in ways that are consistent with the preservation of Cuba's political system. We have to have clear minds about their intentions for this debate, its limits, and where it might lead.
Now would be a perfect time to send the long overdue signal that the United States is no threat to Cuba's national security, that we honor the aspirations of average Cubans, and that we are capable of having a constructive relationship with their government.
If President Bush cannot answer the call to history that has been issued in Havana, perhaps his successor will respond with greater imagination when he or she takes office in Washington next year.
People here should not misunderstand this historic moment: the Cubans we know, even determined political opponents of Fidel Castro, are proud of their country, proud of its accomplishments, and persuaded that only Cubans in Cuba -- not politicians in Washington or hardliners in Miami -- have the right and responsibility to determine their own destiny. We owe them that opportunity, now more than ever.
By PABLO BACHELET
Published: Feb 19, 2008
Several groups that have lobbied against U.S. sanctions on Cuba seized Fidel Castro's retirement from official power Tuesday to renew their calls for lifting the sanctions.
''The United States has just spent almost 50 years trying to stop an event that has just taken place,'' said Sarah Stephens, who heads the Center for Democracy in the Americas, which takes members of Congress on visits to the island.
''Fidel Castro's retirement and his peaceful replacement with new leadership in Cuba is the clearest possible demonstration that U.S. policy has failed,'' she added.
Vicki Huddleston, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana from 1999 to 2002, called the resignation ``one of the most anti-climactic moments in Cuba's last 50 years.''
''While the political demise of Fidel Castro will diminish his influence over his brother Raúl Castro, who at 76 has been running Cuba for the last 18 months, it will not change the course of Cuba's Revolution,'' she said.
''The Bush administration is likely to stick to its current isolationist policy, reducing further the ability of the United States to effectively press for change in Cuba by empowering the Cuban people,'' Huddleston added.
Mavis Anderson, with the Latin America Working Group, which advocates lifting Cuba sanctions, said the administration and Congress should ``begin an immediate process of engagement, dialogue and policy change.''
''Opening up unrestricted travel to Cuba would be a good beginning,'' she said. ``It is America, not Cuba, that has been isolated by our policy.''
Jake Colvin, the director of USA*Engage, a business group that lobbies for lifting sanctions, said the resignation brought ``a new urgency for President Bush to show that America is open to a different relationship with Cuba.''
He said there was a window of opportunity to change policies that would benefit U.S. business and security interests.
''If we do not,'' he said, ``the United States risks alienating another generation of Cubans and pushing the Cuban government farther into the arms of countries like Venezuela and China.''
By Carol J. Williams
Published: Jan 20, 2008
Analysts see signs of modest political and economic reform in the 18 months since Fidel Castro temporarily stepped down.
MIAMI -- Cubans waited hours in line for tickets, packed Havana's cinemas and watched with rapt attention as "The Lives of Others," a chilling account of East German secret-police repression of communism's doubters, arrived in the Cuban capital last month.
Was the debut of the Academy Award-winning film two years after its release another signal that Cuba's Communist leaders are open to reform? Or was the cinematic snapshot of life two decades ago and half a world away more reflective of their confidence that Cubans wouldn't see themselves in the picture?
Raul Castro has urged young Cubans to expose government shortcomings in providing adequate food, transportation and housing. The idea of giving idle land to farmers has been floated for the first time since private estates were nationalized in the 1960s.
Havana authorities also have proposed compensating Cuban employees of foreign companies in hard currency, in a land where Fidel Castro has long fought the dollar's encroachment because of the class division it inflicts between those who have convertible money and those who don't.
But the most radical transition may come as soon as this spring, with 81-year-old Fidel Castro hinting that he may relinquish the Cuban presidency after 49 years as supreme leader of the Marxist-Leninist state he created.
In a letter read on state-run television in late December, Castro caused a bit of a stir by saying he wouldn't "cling to positions" or "obstruct the path of younger people" aspiring to lead Cuba.
He didn't demur when his name was again included on the slate of Communist Party candidates for the National Assembly to be rubber-stamped in an election today. And after a two-hour meeting with the Cuban leader last week, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva proclaimed Castro fit, lucid and "ready to take over his historic political role," raising expectations of a comeback.
But those familiar with the Havana hierarchy predict that the elder Castro will take his seat in the National Assembly when it convenes in March but decline another five-year stint as head of state.
"I still think it's significant that he made those comments about making way for the next generation," said Sarah Stephens, head of the Center for Democracy in the Americas. "If I were going to guess, which is all any of us can do, I think it's going to have everything to do with his recovery, and there's no way for us to know if he has been experiencing setbacks, whether he's recovering quickly or slowly."
As part of a U.S. congressional delegation that visited Havana late last year, Stephens met with National Assembly leader Ricardo Alarcon and with a senior Communist Party official, Fernando Ramirez. They denied that any transition was underway in their country, she said, casting the recent inklings of internal reflection as a continuation of their ever-evolving revolution.
But Stephens pointed to the December film festival screening of "The Lives of Others" as a sign of changing attitudes about what can be discussed and debated.
This month, Cuban TV aired a 2003 documentary on Havana's Industriales baseball team, a film that had been held back from the public for nearly five years because it included interviews with players who later defected. Among them were Kendry Morales, now with the Angels, and New York Mets pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez.
Jaime Suchlicki, director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, sees the unusual airings and musings circulating in Havana as "tokens of liberalization" that signal an attempt to tinker with a failed system rather than reform it.
"I don't think any of these things is significant," he said. "If they made significant changes in the agriculture sector, if they imported significant amounts of consumer goods from China, people would think things are getting better. But things are really tough right now."
Nonetheless, Suchlicki, whose analysis often reflects the views of Miami's anti-Castro exiles, shares the expectation of other Cuba watchers that if Fidel Castro hasn't fully recovered his health and vigor by the March assembly opening, he will step down as president and he and his brother Raul, who is 76, will make way for a younger head of state.
Many expect Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, a 56-year-old former physician, to take the helm, which would open the way for the architect of a previous reform period to tackle the economic problems that most concern Cubans. Monthly income on the island averages about $15, and though Cubans pay almost nothing for healthcare and a monthly ration basket, food costs rival those in U.S. supermarkets.
"Finally, the Cuban elections are interesting!" said Paolo Spadoni, an associate professor of political science at central Florida's Rollins College who did his doctoral work on Cuba's economy. "Before, everyone knew what was going to happen. This time there is quite a bit of uncertainty about whether he will retain his post as president."
The elder Castro was "re-centralizing" the economy before he fell ill, an attempt to roll back the modest private enterprise permitted in the early 1990s to get through the lean years after the Soviet Union's billions of dollars' worth of annual subsidies to Cuba ended. Those reforms were designed and implemented by Lage and enthusiastically embraced by entrepreneurial Cubans.
The recent resurrection of those strategies signals that a fresh reform phase is in the offing, Spadoni said.
"They've said they can't perform miracles, that it is going to go step by step and within a socialist framework," Spadoni said of the post-Fidel transition.
"But reform will happen. You don't raise expectations or stimulate debate if you have no intention to deliver."
Cubans, world wait to see if Fidel Castro retires
Published: December 19 2007
HAVANA - The lengthy letter signed by Fidel Castro appeared Tuesday on the front pages of two state dailies, but many Cubans in the capital were unfazed by the news that the man who has dominated the island since 1959 might not retake power.
"It's time to move on," said Enrique Marrero, 82, who was more interested in talk about Cuba's national baseball series in a Havana park frequented by sports fans. "He needs to open a path for young people. That's the law of life."
Outside of Cuba, however, policy experts, exiles and presidential candidates speculated about the way the transition of power will play out in the coming months.
"His retirement is like writing the final chapter of the cold war," said Sarah Stephens, executive director for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Democracy in the Americas, which advocates the lifting of travel restrictions to Cuba.
Since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006 and handing the presidency to his brother Raúl, Fidel Castro has played more of an emeritus role. With his health said to be improving, he was nominated on Dec. 2 as a candidate for the National Assembly. The assembly meets in March to choose a 31-member Council of State, which will hand-pick the next president. Only assembly members qualify for the top job, which Fidel Castro has held since its creation in 1976.
Fidel Castro's lingering presence on the political scene is seen as an impediment to his brother's efforts to implement important economic reforms.
"Fidel's illness but not death and now this further yielding allows Raúl and the others around him who are running the country to manage expectations and keep them under control, but allow this process of debate and slow but incremental reform to go forward," Julia Sweig, a Latin America expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said in a conference call.
Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, said the statement affirms the younger Castro's control: "It is confirmation that Raúl is in charge."
Stephens said Castro's statement "puts people on notice that a change is in the offing and, more importantly, it puts Fidel Castro himself in charge of writing the script."
Omar Lopez, human rights director of the Cuban American National Foundation, said Cuban Americans were growing tired over speculation about Castro's future, waiting instead for real political and economic changes. "Everyone is waiting for the next chapter," he said.
In a letter read by an announcer on state television Monday night, Fidel Castro said, "My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, or even less to obstruct the path of younger people, but to share experiences and ideas whose modest worth comes from the exceptional era in which I lived."
The vague statement was the first time the 81-year-old head of state has suggested he would not return to power in the 16 months since he had emergency stomach surgery and handed over power to younger brother. Castro ended the letter with admiration for Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who still is working at 100.
"I think like Niemeyer that you have to be of consequence up to the end," he said.
On the sprawling University of Havana campus, a 26-year-old math teacher who declined to give her name said she was unmoved by word that Castro might step aside permanently.
"The regime lives on," she said. "It will be a long time before we see concrete changes in our lives."
The Terrorists Among US
Published: October 6 2007
This piece was co-written by CDA Executive Director Sarah Stephens and Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, a non-profit research center in Washington D.C.
Think of how angry Americans would be if Pakistan's government let Osama bin Laden emerge from his cave of refuge and take up open residence in Islamabad?
A scene just like that is the reality here in the United States where Luis Posada Carriles, who ranks in the top ten list of the world's most prolific terrorists, is living freely in Florida--despite his known involvement in blowing up a civilian airliner and other bombings and assassination attempts over more than forty years. Since May, when a Federal judge tossed out the minor charges of immigration fraud leveled by Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department, Posada has been enjoying life in Miami's hard-line Cuban exile community. The U.S. media has all but forgotten about him. His victims, however, remain seared by this remarkable injustice and so should we.
Today, after all, marks the anniversary of the mid-air destruction of Cubana Airlines flight 455, which took the lives of 73 passengers and crew, including the Cuban Olympic Fencing team and a group of teenage Guyanese science students on their way to Cuba to go to medical school. Their families will commemorate this day of loss, as they have for 31 years, wondering whether Posada and his co-conspirator Orlando Bosch--who is also living freely in Miami--will ever be brought to justice.
But for those of us in the United States, the case of Luis Posada Carriles is not only about a long overdue legal reckoning for the victims of terrorism, it is about the hypocrisy of the purported leader in the global fight against international terrorism now harboring a renowned purveyor of terrorist violence. "The United States cannot tolerate the inherent inhumanity of terrorism as a way of settling disputes," declared a 1989 Justice Department ruling that Orlando Bosch should remain detained or deported after he illegally returned to the United States from Venezuela. "We must look on terrorism as a universal evil, even if it is directed toward those with whom we have no political sympathy."
That principle was ignored by the administration of George H.W. Bush which, urged on by politically powerful rightwing Cuban exiles in Florida, set Bosch free in 1990. Following in his father's footsteps, George W's administration has politicized the Posada case as well, allowing him to go free and flaunting the credibility of the U.S. war on terror in the process.
Make no mistake, this former CIA asset and demolition trainer is a resolute and unrepentant advocate of terror. As early as 1965, declassified CIA intelligence reports cite Posada's operations to blow up ships and other targets, financed by benefactors in Miami. Documents uncovered in his office in Caracas link Posada to a string of sabotage attacks on consulates and travel agencies that did business with Cuba in the summer of 1976. Those same records contained information on the route of Cubana flight 455.
Indeed, the part Posada played in the first atrocity of aviation terrorism in the Western Hemisphere is especially well corroborated. Declassified FBI reports place him in meetings in Caracas where the attack on the plane was planned. According to a secret CIA intelligence report, a high level informant overheard Posada declaring, "We are going to hit a Cuban airliner and Orlando has the details" only days before the plane exploded after take off from Barbados. Confessions by the two Venezuelans who brought the bomb on board--plastic explosives stuffed into a large tube of Colgate toothpaste--and who worked for Posada, noted that their first calls after the airliner plunged into the ocean were to Posada's office. "The bus has gone off the cliff and the dogs are dead," they reported.
Both Posada and Bosch were arrested in Caracas. Posada was held in Venezuela for nine years for the aircraft bombing but escaped from prison in 1985. (He then went to El Salvador to work on the Reagan administration's illicit contra resupply operation.) In the spring and summer of 1997, he orchestrated a bombing campaign against Havana hotels and discotheques that resulted in the death of an Italian businessman; "That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time," Posada noted in an interview with the New York Times a year later in which he publicly took responsibility for the attacks. "I sleep like a baby."
Three years later, at age 73, he was caught in Panama with 34 pounds of C-4 explosives, which he planned to use to blow up an auditorium where Fidel Castro was scheduled to speak.
After serving only four years of a prison sentence, Posada and three co-conspirators were inexplicably pardoned and freed; still wanted in Caracas for the bombing of flight 455, Posada became a fugitive once again. But in March 2005, he illegally entered the United States and surfaced in Miami, sufficiently comfortable in the cradle of the anti-Castro exile community to announce his presence to the media and actually seek political asylum. If Orlando Bosch could live freely in Miami, why couldn't Luis Posada?
For two months, the Bush administration basically pretended that he was not there. But this is the post 9/11 world. Massive and embarrassing publicity finally forced Bush's hand. On May 17, 2005, DHS agents detained Posada on illegal entry charges, and then indicted for lying to immigration authorities on how he came to the United States.
Yes, you read that correctly: one of the world's most infamous terrorists charged as an illegal immigrant. Using the counter-terrorism provisions of the Patriot Act, the administration could have certified Posada as a terrorist danger and detained him indefinitely. But apparently the Justice Department viewed his brand of political violence is different than those other terrorism suspects with Middle Eastern names.
The Administration could have also accepted Venezuela's formal petition for Posada's extradition. After all, Posada is a naturalized Venezuelan citizen; the crime was planned in Caracas, and he is a fugitive from justice from Venezuela. But Bush has his priorities: it is more important to mollify rightwing Republican Cuban-American voters in Florida who would view Posada's extradition as a betrayal and as a victory for Chavez and Castro, than to turn over a terrorist to the country that has a legitimate claim to hold him accountable for the first act of airborne terror in the hemisphere, a devastating crime.
The charade of detaining Posada on immigration violations has not been lost on the U.S. courts. Indeed, last May a Federal Judge dismissed the entire illegal entry case against Posada, citing prosecutorial misconduct and incompetence. Without even a slap on the wrist, he returned to Miami a free man, limited only in his movements by the ironic DHS decision to place him on a government "no fly" list.
To date, Bush has made a mockery of his motto that no nation should harbor terrorists and all nations should take steps to bring those who commit acts of terrorism to justice. If his administration will not certify and detain Posada for the international criminal he is, if his administration will not extradite Posada to Venezuela because Bush doesn't like Chavez, the administration still has one option to redeem itself: the Justice Department can indict Posada for the hotel bombings in Havana ten years ago for which he has publicly claimed credit.
The known body of evidence in this case is strong: the FBI has an informant who witnessed Posada's meetings in Guatemala where the bombings were organized, and saw a bag of 23 tubes of plastic explosives in the offices Posada used. Couriers have told how they were recruited by Posada associates to transport the explosives in Prell shampoo bottles and in their shoes. Federal authorities are also in possession of an August 1997 fax, in Posada's own handwriting and signed "Solo"--one of his nom de guerres--stating that "if there is no publicity, the job is useless" and arranging for funds to be "sent by Western Union from New Jersey." Additional evidence was gathered during a rare FBI trip to Havana late last year and presumably turned over to a federal grand jury which as been impaneled in Newark to hear this case.
With a new attorney general designate soon to face confirmation hearings, the Senate Judiciary Committee has the opportunity to voice its concerns about the way the Justice Department has allowed a known terrorist to go free. Retired judge Michael Mukasey, who is known for being tough on terrorism, should be given every opportunity to disassociate himself from the political contamination of this case and to commit the Justice Department to finally holding Posada accountable for his acts of international violence.
Prosecuting Posada matters. It would put our country on the side of justice for a crime that took place in Cuba that was inspired politically to hurt the Castro regime. This, in turn, would send a signal to Cuba and the world that Washington is serious about deterring acts by terrorists using U.S. soil as their base of operations. It would end a dramatic and hypocritical inconsistency in our policy toward terrorism. Moreover, the families of Posada's many victims deserve their day in court.
And, who knows. If we take the man known as Latin America's Osama bin Laden off our own streets, someone might just help us take America's bin Laden off theirs.
Letters
US must listen to Latin America, not lecture it
Published: September 12 2007
From Ms Sarah Stephens.
Sir, With reference to the article by Nancy Soderberg, "America must tell Fernández to be more responsible" (September 10): is it good policy for the US to be telling a presidential candidate in Argentina (or elsewhere for that matter) what her foreign policy should be weeks before the people of her country have even participated in the election that will determine who serves as their nation's next president?
Former Ambassador Soderberg's advice, both premature and presumptuous, is also wrong, for at least two reasons.
First, her analysis is in error. She divides the region into "responsible" and "irresponsible" camps, between Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro adherents and haters. But Latin America, like life and reality, is far more complicated than that. Ms Soderberg praises President Michelle Bachelet of Chile for pursuing good policy, but elides the fact that her relations with Venezuela and with President Chávez himself are cordial. The fact is that the countries of the region negotiate separate trade arrangements with each other, have agreements and arguments with each other, and pursue their own national interests completely outside the false framework Ms Soderberg has constructed. Argentina will undoubtedly follow its own course, and should.
Second, her advice is ineffective and it has been proven so time and again. US policymakers can shout themselves hoarse telling governments what to do and telling publics who to elect, and we have seen how fruitless this advice can be. Regional governments, especially those with active lefts, cannot afford to be viewed as "lackeys" of Washington, and citizens are largely indifferent to admonitions from the outside, as voters have proved in the last several years in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and Nicaragua, when they took opposite tacks from those advocated by President Chávez or the US Department of State. In other words, they are acting like democracies, something we should applaud and not discourage.
It is crucial for the US to be involved in this hemisphere, even though, as Canada's former prime minister Joe Clark said this weekend in Montreal, our credentials for doing so are diminished. We cannot revive our influence, or pursue our interests, by following the failed policies of the recent past, as if ordering countries to do things will make them do so. We need to engage and most of all listen. We might not like what we hear, but the long term will be a lot more promising.
Director
Center for Democracy in the Americas,
Washington, DC 20009
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
