Full Indictment of Marta Rita Velazquez, the “Talent-Spotting” Agent Who Helped Recruit Ana Montes

Marta Rita Velazquez is at right/
alongthemalecon.blogspot.com

cubaconfidential
By Chris Simmons

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Full Indictment of Marta Rita Velazquez, the “Talent-Spotting” Agent Who Helped Recruit Ana Montes

U.S. Seeks Extradition of Alleged Cuban Spy Living in Sweden

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By Chris Simmons

WASHINGTON, April 26 (UPI) -- U.S. officials say they are stepping up efforts to extradite an alleged Cuban spy they charge convinced a federal clerk to give up national secrets for decades. Justice Department officials want to arrest Marta Rita Velasquez, 55, an American born in Puerto Rico who they say recruited Ana Belen Montes to give U.S. secrets to Cuba, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.
Velasquez, who was indicted in 2004 for conspiracy to commit espionage, has been living in Sweden since 2002. Her indictment was sealed until recently after U.S. officials learned Velasquez knew of the charges.

Under a treaty with Sweden, espionage is considered a "political offense," so the U.S. cannot ask Stockholm to extradite her. By publicizing the indictment, Washington hopes the Swedes will feel pressure to return her to the United States. Montes is serving a 25-year sentence for espionage. At the time of her arrest, she worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency. The women met in the early 1980s, officials say, while Montes was a clerk at the Justice Department. Velasquez allegedly used her political connections to get Montes a position at DIA in 1985.

U.S. Seeks Extradition of Alleged Cuban Spy Living in Sweden

Castro’s US-Based Supporters Continue “Free the 5″ Push

Cuba Confidential

Students Host Event at Columbia U, Help Expand Fight to Free Cuban 5

BY RUTH ROBINETT, in The Militant

NEW YORK — “We can learn from the Five a lesson for our own struggle of how to stand tall and never bow,” said Randolph Carr, political chair of the Black Students Organization in opening remarks at a March 29 student-organized event of some 200 people at Columbia University on the fight to free the Cuban Five — Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González. (See Who are the Cuban Five?) “For me the story of the Five is one that is, unfortunately, similar to the story of the many unseen and forgotten that sit, waiting and waiting, behind the wall of America’s dungeons.” said Carr, who is also a leader of Students Against Mass Incarceration. “Similar to the Five, people are swept into the system of incarceration by whatever means and forced to bow down to the weight of that machine. The Five have been swept into that system, and to this day remain unbowed.” He then posed the question: “What do we have to learn about how to live free from those forced to live in cages because of their politics?”

Sponsored by eight campus organizations, the event was attended by dozens of Columbia students. Speakers included representatives from the Caribbean Students’ Association and the Chicano Caucus of Columbia University; Martin Garbus, lead attorney for the Five; Rodolfo Reyes, Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations; Julio Escalona, Venezuelan Deputy Ambassador to the U.N.; and Luis Rosa, a Puerto Rican independence fighter and former political prisoner who spent 19 years behind bars in the U.S. It was chaired by Nancy Cabrero, president of Casa de las Américas, and civil rights attorney Michael Warren, who provided an extensive overview of the U.S. government’s frame-up.

‘Cuba gives meaning to solidarity’

Imani Brown speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Students’ Association talked about why the group decided to “stand in solidarity with the Cuban Five and what they stand for.” Brown pointed to the role and example of Cuba in the Caribbean and beyond. “In the history of independence struggles and movements to end the reign of colonialism and neocolonialism worldwide, Cuba has not hesitated to lend its support and strategic partnership to what it has seen as its Caribbean and African family,” Brown said, “ranging from sending freedom fighters to Angola — fighters who include three of the Cuban Five, I should note — in order to end South African apartheid, to providing scholarships to Cuban medical schools to the rest of the Caribbean. Cuba has given new meaning to ideals of solidarity, unity, and support within its community.”

Hernández, Fernando González and René González all took part in Cuba’s internationalist combat mission to defend Angola from the invading white supremacist army of apartheid South Africa (see article on page 7). Like Hernández and Fernando González, Cuban Ambassador Reyes served during the later years of the 1975-91 mission, after graduating from Cuba’s Institute for Advanced Study of International Relations, where they were studying to be diplomats. “We were not professional soldiers,” Reyes said. “We volunteered to go to Angola to fight apartheid and help defend the sovereignty of the Angolan people.” “Fernando and Gerardo could have been in my place,” said Reyes. “But they agreed to take on responsibility for a mission to defend the dignity, sovereignty and life of the Cuban people.”

When Fernando and Gerardo returned from Angola, Reyes noted, counterrevolutionary paramilitary groups operating with impunity from southern Florida were stepping up a campaign of bombings in Cuba, targeting the island’s tourist industry and carrying out other provocations designed to draw Washington into a military confrontation with Havana. The Five’s mission, Reyes said, was to protect the revolution by gathering information on the activities and plans of these rightist groups.

In the days leading up to the event, students organized a successful free-speech campaign to prevent the university administration from limiting participation from outside the campus to 15 people on the pretext of “public safety.” Most who wanted to were able to attend as a result of their victory. But dozens who were not on an RSVP list were turned away by university officials. “We have run into some difficulties, as events like this centered around things others deem controversial often are,” said Brown. “But that’s not going to stop us when it comes to our voices being heard about this important topic.”

‘Fight to free 5 is fight for ourselves’ 

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Castro’s US-Based Supporters Continue “Free the 5″ Push

Today in History: Cuban-Supported Guerrillas Kill 65 in El Salvador, Including an American “Green Beret”

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By Chris Simmons

March 31, 1987: Sergeant First Class Gregory A. Fronius [photo], an Army “Green Beret” in El Salvador, died organizing the defense against the unprecedented guerrilla attack on the Salvadoran headquarters of the 4th Infantry Brigade at El Paraiso, Chalatenango. The pro-communist insurgents called themselves the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

The well-planned attack followed a visit to the camp by Cuban spy Ana Belen Montes weeks earlier. Sixty-four Salvadoran soldiers were killed and 79 wounded. Fronius, a member of the 3rd Battalion of the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), posthumously received the Silver Star for his combat service. Many in the U.S. Intelligence Community believe Montes provided intelligence critical to the attack by the Cuba trained and armed FMLN.

Today in History: Cuban-Supported Guerrillas Kill 65 in El Salvador, Including an American “Green Beret”

Yoani Sánchez Calls for the Release of 5 Cuban Spies and End to Embargo

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By Juan Carlos Chavez, jcchavez@elnuevoherald.com

Arguing that Cuba’s government wastes money, time and resources in an international campaign for the release of five Cuban spies, opposition blogger Yoani Sánchez said Wednesday in Brazil that she would support their release. The five men were convicted in a highly-publicized trial in Miami in 2000 for being part of the Wasp Network, the largest the biggest Cuban spy ring known to have been dismantled in the U.S.

"The amount of money that my country’s government is spending on this worldwide campaign, on [ad] space of international media by the Interior Ministry, the number of hours spent in schools talking about those five people, in order to bring that campaign to an end, they should free them,’’ said Sánchez, 37. “I’m worried about my country’s coffers and would prefer their release to see if they save more [money] because there are more issues on the table."

Sánchez is the creator of the blog Generación Y, an award-winning journalism and human rights blog published in various countries. She is in Brazil as part of an 80-day trip outside of the island and was received on Wednesday at the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia where a documentary titled, Cuba-Honduras Connection was screened. The film was supposed to be shown on Monday in the northeastern city of Feira de Santana but was canceled due to violent demonstrations and protests by Cuba government supporters.

In his meeting with Brazilian lawmakers, Sánchez also criticized the U.S. trade embargo. She referred to it as “interventionist” and said that it has not worked. "As a pressure method, it is a failure. The third reason, and not in order of importance, it should end as soon as possible is that it is used by the Cuban government as the fundamental reason to explain its economic failure and political and social repression,” Sánchez said. Sánchez’s remarks began to spread quickly on the Internet. The remarks were first reported in the Viewpoint blog of journalist Joan Antonio Guerrero Vall, a collaborator Martí Noticias.

One of the five spies is serving two life sentences on charges of conspiracy to murder and help Cuban warplanes shoot down two civilian planes in 1996, killing the four crew members from Miami who were aboard. Three others are still in prison and the fifth finished his 13-year prison sentence last year and is now completing three years of probation. Trial evidence showed that ring members, some using fake identities, tried to infiltrate U.S. military installations and Cuban exile groups in an effort to feed military and political information back to Havana.

Sánchez arrived Monday in Brazil and was met with protests by supporters of the Cuban regime at airports in Recife and Salvador, but the most serious incident occurred in Feira de Santana, where a larger group interrupted the scheduled Monday night documentary with shouts of "Long live the revolution" and "Cuba yes, Yankees no." Brazilian Senator Eduardo Suplicy, the ruling Workers Party (PT), who participated in the act, tried in vain to mediate between the protesters and the blogger, who could only speak a few minutes in an impromptu debate. Deputy Mendonça Filho, of the Democrats opposition party, also asked the Federal Police to take charge of Sánchez’s safety while in Brazil, the first stop in the blogger’s visit to a dozen countries.

Sánchez, who is scheduled to visit Miami on April 1, had been denied permission to leave Cuba 20 times in six years. Her trip was approved by Cuban authorities under new immigration reforms that took effect in January.

Yoani Sánchez Calls for the Release of 5 Cuban Spies and End to Embargo

Havana’s Smear Campaign Against Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez Follows Her To Brazil

cubaconfidential

Chris Simmons

BY Ryan Villarreal, International Business Times

Cuba’s most prominent dissident Yoani Sanchez has described the ridicule she encountered upon her arrival in Brazil by pro-Fidel Castro leftists as an extension of Havana’s “information war” against her. Waving Cuban flags, protesters called Sanchez a “mercenary” for the U.S. government and tossed photocopied dollar bills at her she passed, flanked by her own supporters, through the Guararapes International Airport in northeastern Brazil Monday morning.

“On arrival many friends welcomed me and other people shouted insults. I wish in Cuba we could do the same. Long live freedom!” Sanchez wrote in a post on her Twitter account, which has been blocked by the Cuban government for the few Cubans that have access to the Internet. Later in the evening, more protesters showed up in the city of Bahia to picket the screening of a documentary featuring commentary from Sanchez, titled “Connection Cuba-Honduras,” forcing the event to be cancelled. Sanchez, who was in attendance, attempted to open a dialogue with her detractors but was ignored and shouted over. “They repeated a hackneyed, identical script without any intention of listening to my response,” Sanchez wrote in her latest blog entry. “They responded to orders … I could see the long arm that moves from the Revolution Square in Havana.”

The Brazilian magazine Veja first reported that the Cuban government was coordinating a local defamation campaign against Sanchez through its diplomats. “The plan to spy on and embarrass Yoani Sanchez was drafted by the Cuban government, but will run with the knowledge and support of the PT (Workers’ Party), the party activists and at least one employee of the Presidency,” wrote Veja reporter Robson Bonin. The presidential employee, Ricardo Martins Poppi, an aide to Gilberto Carvalho, chief minister in President Dilma Rousseff’s cabinet, told Veja he had attended a clandestine meeting on Feb. 6 which discussed migration policy and Sanchez’s upcoming trip.[emphasis added] “That doesn’t surprise me, it’s part of an information war,” Sanchez said in her initial response, the Miami Herald reported.

Sanchez, 37, has gained international recognition for her blog Generation Y, established in 2007 and in which she has written about her experiences living in Cuba. Her writing, which has been critical of the Cuban government at times, has gotten her blacklisted. Her blog has been blocked and she is only able to publish it through the covert help of supporters who can transfer her entries from her portable hard drive onto the Internet. In the past five years she has been denied an exit visa to leave the country over 20 times until the travel restriction was universally lifted last month. Sanchez has also reported multiple instances of harassment, intimidation and physical abuse from Cuban police and Castro supporters, though she has never been arrested. [emphasis added]

One of Sanchez’s supporters, Sebastian Arcos, a Cuban exile and Associate Director of Development at the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University, said the Cuban government is threatened by her because she was born and raised in Cuba, a product of the education system and therefore her criticisms are rooted in the genuine experiences of a Cuban citizen. Aside from two years Sanchez spent studying in Switzerland from 2002 to 2004, she has spent the rest of her life in Cuba.

“They see her as an internal threat and she has been able to disarm them by engaging them in a civilized way,” Arcos said. “There is nothing more dangerous to a totalitarian regime than a well-educated, articulate and civilized opponent." Arcos added that Sanchez is considered even more threatening because her writing is not overtly political. “She is not an active member of any dissident movement,” he said. “She is a human being, and she has political opinions, but her primary goal is free expression in its purest form.”

Sanchez has embarked on a three-month world tour, making her first stop in Brazil among roughly a dozen countries, including the U.S., Mexico and Spain.

Havana’s Smear Campaign Against Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez Follows Her To Brazil

Cuban spy Ramón Labañino Transfers Out of Miami Prison

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By Louis Martin, The Militant, Vol. 77/No. 6, February 18, 2013

Ramón Labañino, one of five Cuban revolutionaries framed up and jailed by the U.S. government for more than 14 years, recently won his demand to transfer from a Miami prison where he was sent in mid-January. The Bureau of Prisons consented to the transfer following protests by Labañino’s lawyers and supporters, who argued the move to Miami put his personal safety in jeopardy.

In a Feb. 1 message from the medium security federal prison in Jesup, Ga., posted on the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five website, Labañino explains what happened. “Since June 2012, the authorities of this institution informed me that I could be assigned to an institution of low security, due to the low points and clean record that we have maintained in all these 14 years of imprisonment,” he wrote. Labañino was later assigned to the low-security federal prison in Miami “despite the fact that Ramón told the Bureau of Prisons that this was not a good idea,” his lawyer William Norris wrote in an accompanying article. In Miami, wrote Norris, “both some inmates and some staff hold deeply rooted animus to the regime in Cuba that makes Ramon’s safety, let alone fair treatment, a problem.”

Labañino eventually left the prison in Jesup Jan. 11 and arrived at the Miami facility Jan. 14. “When I was interviewed by the official who receives the new ‘tenants,’” Labañino said, “she told me in a few words that I should not be in the population of that institution for obvious reasons of personal security, and therefore she decided to send me to the ‘hole’ where I should wait for the decision that the management of the place would make later. “Thanks to your phone calls, the efficient actions or our [Cuba’s] revolutionary government and our attorneys, they finally decided to remove me quickly not only from Miami but from all Florida.” After being held eight days in solitary confinement, Labañino was sent back to Jesup, where he is now waiting for a decision to be made on where to go next.

In agreeing to the transfer, the government has drawn attention to one facet of its frame-up: the insistence of U.S. prosecutors and the presiding judge to hold the 2001 trial of the five in Miami, despite seven defense motions to move it to any other location in the country. “What happened is significant,” Norris said in a phone interview. “If the Bureau of Prisons can’t guarantee his safety in a Miami jail today, what does that say about the trial?” The 2001 trial in Miami took place against a backdrop of a constant sensational and negative media against the five, as well as harassment and intimidation of the jury by the press and counterrevolutionary Cuban American groups.
In August 2005, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta unanimously overturned the convictions and ordered a new trial outside Miami. They ruled that “an impartial jury in this case” was “an unreasonable probability” and “the perception that these [counterrevolutionary Cuban] groups could harm jurors that rendered a verdict unfavorable to their views.” But the U.S. government appealed and the decision was reversed the following year by a full 12-judge review by the same appeals court. The Supreme Court refused to hear the defense’s appeal of the reversal.

Starting in 2010, lawyers for four of the five filed habeas corpus motions arguing for new trials on the basis that some of the journalists who wrote false and inflammatory articles during the trial were at the time on the U.S. government payroll. These motions and related court documents from both sides are before Judge Joan Lenard, who presided over the 2001 trial.

Cuban spy Ramón Labañino Transfers Out of Miami Prison

Havana Gives Literary Award to One of its Master Spies

cubaconfidential

By Chris Simmons

Writer Jesus Arboleya Wins Casa de las Americas Award

Havana, (PL).- Cuban writer Jesus Arboleya said that winning the Casa de las Americas Award is a special honor because this is one of the most prestigious awards worldwide, and also because it is a revolutionary award. Arboleya earned the highest distinction in the social-historical literature category, for his book "Cuba y los cubanoamericanos. Un analisis de la emigracion cubana" (Cuba and Cuban Americans. An Analysis of Cuban Migration). The jury that unanimously granted the award, announced at the Casa de las Americas in Havana, was comprised of the French Salim Lamrani, Colombian Renan Vega Cantor, and Cuban Sergio Guerra Vilaboy. According to the decision, the jury took into account that Arboleya´s work reconstructs in detail, with solid supporting documentation, the issue of relationships between the United States and the Cuban Revolution from the perspective of migration policies between both countries. The clarity and expository text fluently allows the work to be accessible to all readers, without diminished rigor and analytical depth, and demystifies one current issue that has been subject to many interpretations, the jury added. For his part, Arboleya stated that this award, in its 54th edition, is "deeply connected to the history of our struggles, the defense of our identity, and the dignity of our people."

Jesus Arboleya Cervera (1947), is a PhD in Historical Sciences, and has collaborated with the Center for Policy Alternatives, the Center About the United States at the University of Havana, the Center for American Studies, and the Center for European Studies, as well as having worked with the Chilean newspaper La Nacion. Among his books are "Las corrientes políticas en la comunidad de origen cubano en Estados Unidos" (The political currents in the Cuban community in the United States (1994), Havana-Miami: The US-Cuba Migration Conflict (1995), and "La contrarrevolución cubana" (The Cuban counterrevolution) (1997).

Editor’s Note: Colonel Jesus Arboleya Cervera was identified by DGI Captain Jesus Perez Mendez after his defection in 1983. Arboleya, who served as a Second Secretary at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York City before transferring to the Washington-based Cuban Interests Section, was also identified by convicted spy Carlos Alvarez. During his tour, Arboleya was the architect of the 1970’s US-Cuba normalization drive, which almost succeeded in 1977 following the formation of a group of prominent Cuban-Americans who called themselves the Committee of 75. Although headed by respectable Cuban-Americans, including two clerics and several businessmen, the Committee was DGI-inspired. According to Senate testimony of March 12, 1982, at the time, Arboleya may have been the longest serving DGI officer in the United States.

On a related note, Arboleya’s co-author, Rafael Betancourt Abio, along with his brother, were founders of the pro-Castro magazine Areito in April 1974. He was also a founder of the Antonio Maceo Brigade in December 1977. On April 28, 1978, he met in D.C. with Arboleya and Ricardo Escartin Fernandez, another DGI member. Rafael Betancourt Abio was born in Havana April 23, 1952.

Havana Gives Literary Award to One of its Master Spies

The US Would be Crazy to Re-establish Ties With Cuba

cubaconfidential

Chris Simmons

By Juan Williams
Published February 05, 2013
FoxNews.com

Get ready for the U.S. to make a big mistake on Cuba. Sixty percent of Americans favor re-establishing ties with Cuba, in the last Gallup poll on the issue and that was four years ago. Meanwhile, more Americans are traveling to Cuba -- erasing memories of Fidel Castro confiscating property and wealth while working with Russia to threaten the U.S. with missiles.
And now President Obama’s new Secretary of State is on the record calling for the U.S. to end cold war sanctions against Cuba’s communist regime. It will be a mistake for President Obama to end any part of the U.S. embargo against Cuba without insisting on a full slate of democratic freedoms, human rights and property rights in the country.

John Kerry, the new boss at the State Department, has criticized the “power of the Cuban-American lobby” and a half-century of hatred of Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro. As a senator, Kerry voted against the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which tightened trade restrictions on Cuba. Back in 2000, Kerry said: "We have a frozen, stalemated counterproductive policy [on Cuba]… There's just a complete and total contradiction between the way we deal with China, the way we deal with Russia, the way we have been dealing with Cuba. … The only reason we don't re-evaluate the policy is the politics of Florida.” Secretary Kerry is not alone.

Chuck Hagel, the president’s choice to become Secretary of Defense, has been an out-spoken critic of the 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba and restrictions on travel to the Caribbean nation. The former Nebraska senator has called on the U.S. to “engage” with Cuba just as we have with communist countries like Vietnam and China. President Obama’s decision to elevate two such vocal advocates for rapprochement with Cuba has attracted little press attention. But it is just the latest in a string of signals that big changes are imminent.

As a matter of politics, the Democrat in the White House did surprisingly well with Florida’s Cuban American voters in winning Florida in the 2012 election. Older Cubans who traditionally support anti-Castro Republicans largely stayed with the GOP but younger Cubans voted for President Obama. And the young voices are becoming more vocal about the need for a new era of U.S. policies that bring change to Cuba through closer ties to the U.S.

In addition, Fidel Castro is now 86 and in poor health. His brother, Raul, Cuba’s current leader, is 81. And despite the official ban on Americans traveling to Cuba there is a large loophole allowing academics and cultural leaders to go there. Those tourists generally romanticize Cuba’s revolutionary past. And American business is also anxious to see the doors open to investment in an island 90 miles from Miami and ready for an economic boom once trade with the U.S. resumes.

President Obama has been sending signals, too. In his inaugural address last month, he said he wants to “resolve our differences with other nations peacefully -- not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear.”
For President Obama, a man looking to make history as part of his second term legacy, that policy makes Cuba a tempting target.

Several Latin countries are joining the chorus of calls for the U.S. to change its attitude toward Cuba. They are pushing the U.S. to allow Cuba to join regional economic groups. On January 28th, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States [CELAC] even passed its rotating presidency to Cuba’s current leader, Raul Castro. CELAC’s charter mission is to promote democracy and human rights in the region and they are trusting Cuba’s dictators. With so many signs pointing in one direction – resumption of U.S. ties to Cuba – it is time to call for a STOP sign.

For example, CELAC’s decision is tragically wrong given Cuba’s awful history on human rights and democracy. Cuba continues to jail political opponents and suppress free speech. That is a fact. Independent observers can see it. José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch said Castro’s selection as CELAC president “sends a message [that Latin governments] couldn’t care less about the poor human rights record and the lack of fundamental freedoms in Cuba.” And it will be a mistake for President Obama to end any part of the U.S. embargo without insisting on a full slate of democratic freedoms, human rights and property rights in Cuba.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal last year, I expressed my disagreement with those who have suggested cozying up to Latin American dictators like the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. It is personal with me. My family fled Panama in the early 1950’s to escape the poverty and open the door to education and opportunity. Those doors were shut by a Latin strong man -- Panama’s Arnulfo Arias. I wrote: “My life's major turn away from poverty came thanks to my father's vision of his children escaping a despot like Arias. That dream of a better life is alive throughout Latin America. To romanticize any dictator is to kill those dreams by condemning poor kids in Latin America, like me, to tyrants and the burden of limited education and economic opportunity."

Congressional Republicans remain largely united in their opposition to normalizing relations with Castro’s Cuba. They are led by Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lethnien, both Cuban Americans. New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, a Cuban American, supports continuing tight restrictions to isolate the Castro regime and promote democracy and human rights for the Cuban people. He is scheduled to become chair of the Senate Foreign Relations panel. It will be up to Rubio, Ros-Lethnien and Menendez to stop President Obama from making a big mistake and turning away from a freedom agenda for America’s neighbors in Latin America. STOP!

Juan Williams is a Fox News political analyst. He is the author of several books including "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It" and "Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate."

The US Would be Crazy to Re-establish Ties With Cuba

CFR’s Castro Apologist Foresees Free Economy Within Five Years

Cubaconfidential

Chris Simmons

The Post-Castro Era Is Today

Author: Julia E. Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies

January 30, 2013, Folha de Sao Paulo

The post-Castro era in Cuba has arrived. But its main architect is Raul Castro. His reform agenda does not have the formulaic recitations of a political science textbook or the guidelines of an IMF structural adjustment program. No multiparty elections. No Starbucks, Walmart, or Burger King. Not much independent media. But little by little Cuba is undergoing a significant transformation in the basic expectations Cuban citizens have of the state, and vice versa. Lula's visit this week may focus on Venezuela, but all around him Cuba is becoming a freer, more open, and yes, more democratic society.

Earlier this month, a new law took effect that eliminates restrictions on travel for almost everyone: Cubans no longer need pay exorbitant fees or await the "tarjeta blanca"—state permission—to travel. Now, they need only a visa, like the rest of the world. And if they want to live and work abroad, Cubans will no longer lose their property or residence status: a big step forward for freedom and human rights, and a potential economic boon as well.

Business and profit are no longer dirty words. Senior officials project that with new laws and regulations empowering small businesses, within five years fully 50 percent of the economy will be in private, non-state hands. Under the new rules, individuals and cooperatives can now hire employees, obtain bank financing, procure inputs from wholesale markets, and turn a profit. There are myriad problems for sure: but these are increasingly of a practical, not ideological nature, more about the need to build capacity and experience, whereas before the private sector was viewed as a necessary evil. Now this new space has legitimacy and legality.

A progressive tax system is also taking shape. This is not a mere technical adjustment. With the new decentralization, state and municipal government will raise and spend their budgets from tax revenue collected at the base, with the federal government paying a much reduced slate of costs—mainly education, health and defense. Cubans are used to getting everything for free. The notion that they will work, pay taxes, and receive health, education and a pension but not much more, represents a radical political shift.

Next month Raul Castro begins his second and very likely final five-year term as president of the Cuban republic. The slate of candidates represents a big demographic and political step forward. Some 67 percent of the candidates for 612 seats are completely new picks, and of these, more than 70 percent were born after 1959. Women comprise 49 percent of the candidates and Afro descendants 37 percent. Cuban voters will be asked to check yea or nay from this new list, so it's not a direct competition. But if you want to understand where the successors to the post post-Castro era may come from, I'd look at this new group.

CFR’s Castro Apologist Foresees Free Economy Within Five Years

Self-Admitted Former Spy Calls For Alan Gross Negotiation

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With Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter/ isrianos80.com

By Arturo Lopez-Levy 23 January 2013

The case of Alan Gross, an American development expert sentenced by Cuba to fifteen years in prison for “acts against the independence or the territorial integrity of the state", is the latest instalment (sic) in the tense story of Cuba-US relations. Negotiating is the only way to break the cycle.

Last year, in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of representatives, Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) demanded that Wendy Sherman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, reveals whether the US somehow tried to negotiate with Havana, the release of Alan Gross. Mr.
Gross is an international development expert who worked for a contract of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and is serving a fifteen year prison sentence in Cuba, condemned for participating in acts against Cuban sovereignty and political integrity.

Gross entered Cuba five times as a non-registered foreign agent. His mission, as a USAID subcontractor, was to create a wireless Internet network that would circumvent Cuban government detection. The USAID program was approved under section 109 of the Helms-Burton Act, a law committed to regime change in Cuba. Gross’ actions were covert. He never obtained the informed consent of the Cuban Jewish community, which has always expressed opposition to the Helms-Burton law, particularly its attempt to politicize religious communities as tools to promote opposition groups.

Mr. Gross didn’t know Cuba and didn’t speak Spanish. Gross loved Cuban music but that is hardly a qualifier for the type of covert mission he was recruited for by Development Alternatives Initiatives (DAI), a contractor for the US government. A clear indication of the lack of professionalism of the USAID Cuba program is its recently declassified listof go-to sources of information about Cuba headed by the website Babalu Blog. You don’t need to be a Cuba expert to realize that the Babalu blog is hardly eduational (sic) on Cuba but disseminates right wing propaganda against every Cuban American or American who disagrees with its writers’ McCarthyism. Accordingto Babalu Blog, for example, President Obama is a “Marxist tyrant” in the “Stalin-Mao-Castro tradition”.

Questioning the Obama administration, Republican congressman Rivera said: "It is outrageous that the Obama administration would be negotiating with a terrorist regime to free an American hostage."

This policy is correct: the US should not give in to the demands of terrorists. That would only encourage them to take further hostages. But this has nothing to do with Gross or Cuba.

Rivera's references to terrorism are a manipulation. The State Department has not recorded a single terrorist act sponsored by Cuba in two decades. Recently, Havana hosted another round of negotiations between the FARC guerrillas and the Colombian government of Juan Manuel Santos. The Colombian government not only appreciated Cuba’s facilitation of the conversations but also demanded that Havana be included in the next Summit of the Americas. In Spain, the other country supposedly a target of groups protected by Cuba, the ETA has demobilized and successive socialist and popular governments have thanked Havana for receiving freed commandos of the Basque organization.

Read more here:
Alan Gross: Time for a Negotiated Solution Alan Gross: Time for a Negotiated Solution

Editor’s Note: Arturo Lopez-Levy is an admitted “former” intelligence officer closely connected to Cuban President Raul Castro. He details some of his spy service in his recent book, Raul Castro & the New Cuba

Self-Admitted Former Spy Calls For Alan Gross Negotiation

Cuban “Numbers Station” Spy Broadcast From Last Week

Cubaconfidential

Standard voice pattern begins at 27 second mark, only to be repeatedly intermixed with what sounds like digital bursts. 

Cuban “Numbers Station” Spy Broadcast From Last Week

Castro Apologist Seeks Obama Support For Cuban Five

Chris Simmons

Letter to Obama: Alan Gross not a "hostage"

Courtesy:  Tracey Eaton – Along the Malecon

Below is the text of an open letter from Canadian journalist Steven Kimber to President Barack Obama. He is writing a book called, "What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five."

Honorable Barack Obama

President of the United States of America

The White House

Washington DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

This is my first ever letter to an American president. That’s not just because I’m not an American citizen. I’m also a journalist, and journalists are not in the habit of writing letters to heads of governments.

But having spent the past three years researching the case of the Cuban Five, I believe I have an obligation to write to you.

The fact is American journalism hasn’t done a very good job of explaining to the American public the case of the five Cuban intelligence agents who have been incarcerated in the U.S. since 1998. As a result, your administration has mostly managed to avoid dealing with the issue at all or, when forced to comment, responding with the tired, rote rhetoric of the Cold War era.

But the case of the Cuban Five has recently been brought back into the public spotlight because of Alan Gross, the USAID subcontractor currently serving a 15-year jail term in Cuba for bringing satellite communication equipment into that country.

The media reporting of his case has been equally problematic, mostly parroting your own State Department line that Gross is a “humanitarian” who was arrested while trying to help Havana’s tiny Jewish community communicate with the outside world, and is now being held “hostage” by Havana.

You know that’s not true. So, of course, should the media. After all, it was Desmond Butler, a foreign affairs reporter for the Associated Press—a news agency subscribed to by most American media and unlikely ever to be mistaken for a tool of the Cuban regime—who documented the facts of the case.

Alan Gross was “paid a half-million dollars” by USAID, your government’s “democracy promoting” agency, to smuggle sophisticated communications equipment into Cuba. That technology included Internet satellite phones capable of avoiding detection and spy-quality SIM cards “most frequently” used by the Defense Department and the CIA.

The goal of all of this was not to assist Cuba’s Jewish community communicate, as your government has insisted (the Jewish community already had Internet connectivity) but to promote regime change—to overthrow the government of Cuba.

Gross’s own reports make clear he knew he was engaged in “very risky business” and that discovery of what he was up to “will be catastrophic.”

That said, Alan Gross’s family and friends, not surprisingly, want him freed.

Just as the Cubans want the Five—who are considered national heroes in their homeland—freed.

Your government’s unblinking response has been that there is simply “no equivalence.” The Cubans were trained intelligence agents convicted of trying to steal military secrets and conspiracy to murder four innocent civilians killed in the shootdown of two unarmed Brothers to the Rescue aircraft in 1996. By contrast, the American argument goes, Alan Gross was just a humanitarian do-gooder.

We now know Alan Gross was much more than that.

Story continues here:  http://alongthemalecon.blogspot.com/2013/01/letter-to-obama-alan-gross-not-hostage.html

Castro Apologist Seeks Obama Support For Cuban Five

Miami Herald Continues to Minimize Columnist’s Ties to Cuban Intelligence

Chris Simmons

Editor's Note:  A  very interesting exchange between University of South Carolina professor, Dr. Tony de la Cova, and the Miami Herald.  For those unfamiliar with Dr. de la Cova's work, his website (www.latinamericanstudies.org) is a Must-Read, especially the Cuba section.

From: delacova@latinamericanstudies.org

Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2012 2:34 PM

To: Myriam Marquez

Cc: Juan Tamayo ; David Landsberg ; Manny ; Jay ; Michael Sallah ; mailto:AMarques@miamiherald.com ; Edward Schumacher-Matos

Subject: Re: Selective journalism

Dear Ms. Marquez,

Thank you for your prompt response.

Marifeli Perez-Stable

Professor Marifeli Pérez-Stable for years appeared on the Miami Herald website as a member of the Board of Contributors to the Miami Herald. The Miami Herald to this day has avoided fully investigating the various accusations against her of being controlled for more than a decade by the Cuban Directorate General of Intelligence (DGI). The accusation was first made by DGI defector Capt. Jesús Pérez Méndez in an FBI debriefing in 1983. A copy of the document appears here:  http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/Perez-Mendez-debriefing.pdf

I have been a university professor for two decades with a lengthy and award-winning academic publication record that is found here http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/articles.htm

In contrast, while you offer so-called “Cubanologists” access to the Herald’s Opinion page, you personally denied me the same right of rebuttal that you gave Prof. Pérez-Stable in November 2009, in response to the Herald ombudsman´s article “Charges against columnist don’t add up.” Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos mentioned me eight times in seven paragraphs with a total of 356 words. Instead, you chose to limit me to a 330-word “Letter to the Editor” rather than the same 700-word op-ed piece afforded Pérez-Stable. To refresh your memory, please read our exchange of emails on my academic website here http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/Miami-Herald-spy-polemic.htm

I use that correspondence as a teaching tool to let my students judge for themselves if the Miami Herald denied me the appropriate right of rebuttal and if the newspaper uses selective journalism. You are invited to attend my class to present the Herald’s viewpoint when we again discuss this issue next semester.

Enjoy the holidays.

Antonio de la Cova, Ph.D.

From: Myriam Marquez

Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2012 1:44 PM

To: mailto:delacova@latinamericanstudies.org

Cc: Juan Tamayo ; David Landsberg ; Manny ; Jay ; Michael Sallah ; mailto:AMarques@miamiherald.com ; mailto:ombudsman@miamiherald.com

Subject: Re: Selective journalism

Dear Mr. de la Cova,

Please correct your false assertion about Prof. Perez-Stable's links to TMH. The professor wrote two columns monthly for The Miami Herald. She was never a member of the editorial board and certainly never guided editorial positions. We offer an array of opinions on our pages, prominently including Cubanologists Carlos-Alberto Montaner, Jose Azel, Jaime Suchlicki, Pedro Roig, and many others every week.

Wishing you a happy new year,

Myriam Marquez

On Dec 22, 2012, at 12:42 PM, <delacova@latinamericanstudies.org> wrote:

Juan Tamayo

Miami Herald

Dear Juan:

Elsa y Carlos Alvarez

I read your article “Ricardo Alarcón will leave his post as president of the Cuban legislature,” published in the Herald on December 20, http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/20/3151330/ricardo-alarcon-will-leave-his.html where you again mention Cuban intelligence operative Mercedes Arce and that “Former FIU professor Carlos Alvarez, convicted of spying for Cuba, identified Arce as one of his handlers in the 1980s and 1990s.”

However, the Herald once again omits mention that Professor Alvarez, in page 489 of his FBI interrogation, that appears here http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/Alvarez-spy-6.pdf stated that when Arce visited Miami, she stayed in the home of accused Castro agent, former Miami Herald Editorial Board member and FIU Professor Marifeli Pérez-Stable, whose background appears here http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/marifeli.htm

Mercedes Arce

I indicated this to you in my email of June 7, 2012, and your terse response was: “thanks for reminding me of the arce-marifeli connex.” I wrote back the same day: “There is a pattern at the Herald of omitting any information linking their columnist Marifeli Perez-Stable to Cuban spies, such as Mercedes Arce, who stayed at her residence.”

I first brought this issue to the Herald’s attention in the exchange of emails on October-November 2009 that I sent you, Miami Herald Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos and Herald Editorial Page Editor Miriam Marquez, that I copied other Herald editors and posted on my academic website at http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/Miami-Herald-spy-polemic.htm

My email on November 5, 2009, to Ms. Marquez concluded by indicating: “Hopefully, what people will remember is that Perez-Stable and her intimate friend Mercedes Arce are spies and the Herald suppressed the truth.”

Three years have passed since that exchange of emails and the Herald is still using biased and selective journalism on this story. The Herald continues neglecting to investigate or mention the decade-long links between Professor Perez-Stable and Cuban intelligence agents such as Arce.

In consequence, I have used my posted email exchanges with the Herald as a teaching tool for my history students as an example of the Herald’s duplicity, manipulation and yellow journalism.

Sincerely,

Antonio de la Cova, Ph.D.

Miami Herald Continues to Minimize Columnist’s Ties to Cuban Intelligence

This Month in History: CIA Recruited Wife of Cuban Spy

Chris Simmons

December 1964:  The CIA recruited Maria del Carmen y Ruiz to serve as an intelligence agent. The Agency selected her, in part, because she was married to Alfredo Ruiz, a senior Cuban Intelligence Officer.  He entertained frequently, which provided her with excellent placement and access to key officials -- a requirement for her CIA mission. However, in January 1969, she was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison following a two-hour trial. She was released less than nine years into her sentence after Senator Frank Church personally intervened on her behalf.

This Month in History: CIA Recruited Wife of Cuban Spy

Was Baseball Star Aroldis Chapman a Cuban Spy?

Chris Simmons

sports.yahoo.com

Those are the blockbuster allegations in this suit pending before Judge Altonaga. Chapman, a pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds, is accused of some pretty outrageous things. According to the complaint, as summarized by Judge Altonaga:

Plaintiffs allege Chapman is liable for Curbelo Garcia and Perdomo’s prolonged arbitrary detentions and torture, not because Chapman was personally involved in detaining or torturing Plaintiffs, but because he provided the Cuban government with the false accusations in the first instance. This furnishing of false accusations, Plaintiffs allege, was part of a conspiracy between Chapman and the Cuban government that Chapman entered into on the day he met Raul Castro. (See id. ¶¶ 301–10). When Chapman agreed to the conspiracy, he became part of a pervasive “snitch network of athletes.” (Id. ¶ 216). This network included “athletes in every team in Cuba,” and was so widespread that “[t]here was a special unit of security officials that were in charge of connecting directly with the athletes to seek out reliable informants.” (Aff. of Gregorio Miguel Calleiro (“Calleiro Aff.”) ¶¶ 8–9 [ECF No. 48-5]). Athletes who voluntarily became government informants reported “suspicious” behavior to their individual handlers in the Department of State Security (“DCSE”). (Id. ¶¶ 10–12; see Am. Compl. ¶ 216). In return for providing “actionable information for the state,” the informants received benefits from the Cuban government, such as the ability to travel with a national team. (Calleiro Aff. ¶ 14). Chapman sought the opportunity to travel with the National Baseball Team as a means of defecting. (See Am. Compl. ¶¶ 218, 221).

The Court denied the motion to dismiss and the case is proceeding.

Chapman is represented locally by Manny Garcia-Linares of Richman Greer.

Posted by South Florida Lawyers at 10:26 AM

Was Baseball Star Aroldis Chapman a Cuban Spy?

Cuba Hoping to Benefit From Possible Gross Release

by Chris Simmons

By Jaime Suchlicki, suchlicki@miami.edu

Gen. Raúl Castro’s regime is considering a pardon for Alan Gross, the American USAID subcontractor arrested in Cuba in December 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in jail for distributing computers to the Jewish community in the island. This calculated olive branch to the just-reelected Obama administration has two objectives. First, to obtain U.S. concessions in the area of travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba. Second, to obtain the release of four Cuban spies, serving sentences in U.S. jails for espionage activities on behalf of the Castro government.

Some within the Castro regime are arguing that the Obama administration will be pushed to offer major concessions if Cuba frees Gross. The reasons: there is a pent-up demand for travel to Cuba; American tourists will bring much needed dollars; and Cuba’s efficient security apparatus could control American tourists, primarily interested in visiting Cuban beaches and less concerned about subverting the Communist regime.

Most argue that American tourists will have little impact, other than economic. They point out that over the past several years hundreds of thousands of Canadian, Europeans and Latin American tourists have visited the island. There have been no major political changes. Money from tourists, furthermore, has been flowing into businesses owned by the Castro government and the Cuban military, thus strengthening state enterprises.

The recent migration law enacted by Cuba that eases travel for Cubans to visit the United States and other countries is also entering into Gen. Castro’s calculations. The liberalization of Cuban travel will put pressure on the Obama administration to allow Americans to travel to the island. From Cuba’s point of view it is a win/win situation. More Cubans will travel abroad, many staying in the host country or making their way to the U.S. More American tourists will travel to Cuba leaving their dollars in the island.

What should the United States do? Any major policy concession to Cuba will be out of proportion to the release of an unjustly imprisoned American. Gross is a hostage being used by the Cuban government to exact change from the U.S. The history of U.S-Cuba relations has been characterized by Cuba’s daring actions followed by major U.S. concessions (i.e. U.S.-Cuba migration accord allowing 20,000 Cubans to enter the United States following Mariel). The release of Gross should be seen as a humanitarian gesture requiring no action on the part of the United States. When Raúl Castro is willing to offer irreversible concessions, the administration should respond in kind. Ping-pong diplomacy worked with China. Tit for tat should with Cuba.

Jaime Suchlicki is director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.

Cuba Hoping to Benefit From Possible Gross Release

Cuba Hints at Swapping US Contractor for Cuban Spies

Chris Simmons

By JUAN TAMAYO — The Miami Herald

One week after President Barack Obama won re-election, Havana offered a "draft agenda" for U.S.-Cuba negotiations that largely repeats its years-old positions but almost directly offers to swap American Alan Gross for five Cuban spies. The statement by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla Lopez to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday received little initial media attention. It was disseminated more broadly Wednesday by his ministry and Cuba's diplomatic mission in Washington.

Obama has lifted nearly all limits on Cuban-American travel and remittances to the island, allowed educational visits by other U.S. residents, and restarted - and then stopped again - bilateral talks on migration issues. But his administration has repeatedly said that more significant improvements in bilateral relations can come only after Cuba frees Gross, a U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor serving a 15-year prison sentence.

Wayne Smith, a former chief U.S. diplomat in Havana and now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, said Rodriguez laid out a list of issues that Havana has long said it wanted to discuss in any bilateral talks. "He simply reiterated their position. I don't see anything new there," Smith said. "This is a nonstarter. Same demands as in the past. No offers of major concessions on human rights, etc.," Jaime Suchlicki, head of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami, wrote in an email.

Arturo Lopez-Levy, a former Cuban government analyst now lecturing at the University of Denver, called Rodriguez's speech "a list of maximum demands that shows the bilateral conflict can be handled better but not solved" during Obama's next term. But he added that the foreign minister's words evoked Obama's offer of a "new start" in relations with Cuba shortly after he won the White House in 2008. The U.S. State Department said it had no comment on the Rodriguez proposal.

"Today, here and now, I am again submitting to the U.S. government a draft agenda for a bilateral dialogue aimed at moving towards the normalization of relations," Rodriguez said. His agenda items included lifting all U.S. sanctions; removing Cuba from the U.S. list of countries with links to international terrorism; and ending the Cuban Adjustment Act and the wet-foot, dry-foot policies, which Havana complains unfairly lure Cuban migrants to the United States.

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/11/15/2769003/cuba-hints-at-swapping-us-contractor.html#storylink=cpy

Cuba Hints at Swapping US Contractor for Cuban Spies