Espia cubano preso en US regala bates a peloteros cubanos

Intelligence-Affiliated Pro-Castro Group Plans Protest in Miami Next Saturday

Cuba Confidential

Solidarity Caravan to Tour Miami for Cuban Five

Washington, Mar 6 (Prensa Latina) Several organizations of Cuban immigrants will stage a motorcade through Miami streets on Saturday, March 9, to demand the immediate, unconditional release of the five anti-terrorist Cuban fighters unfairly held in US prisons since 1998. Cuban American activist Andres Gomez said in a release that those groups are members of Alianza Martiana (Jose Marti Alliance) and will tour main avenues in solidarity with Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, internationally known as The Cuban Five.

Four of them are serving harsh sentences for monitoring Miami-based violent groups that planned actions like those which have left over 3,400 victims in Cuba in the past 53 years. Meanwhile, Rene Gonzalez left prison on Oct.7, 2011 after serving a 13-year sentence, and was given an additional three-year supervised release punishment in Miami.

According to Gomez, the motorcade will protest impunity granted by the US Government to extreme right Cuban-American terrorists and also defend full normalization of relations between Washington and Havana. Alianza Martiana coalition groups the Antonio Maceo Brigade, Alianza Martiana as an individual group, the Jose Marti Association, the ATC, the Bolivarian Club of Miami and the Association of Christian Women in Defense of Family, among other groups in solidarity with Cuba. In the past few years, its members have carried out similar activities for the same purposes.

Editor’s Note: PRELA failed to note that Andrés Gómez is also the coordinator of the Antonio Maceo Brigade and editor of the magazine Areito digital. Both entities have long and distinguished histories of collaboration with Cuban Intelligence. Additional background on these groups can be found in previous “Cuba Confidential” postings. Please use the “search” feature to find the related posts.

Senior Diplomat-Spy Josefina Vidal Demands Access to US Traitor

cubaconfidential

By Chris Simmons

Cuba Denies U.S. Statements on Travel Permission

(Prensa Latina) The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied some statements by the U.S. government on the alleged impossibility of its officials to leave the capital due to "reciprocal travel restrictions" that would oblige Washington to respond accordingly.

The U.S. Interests Section (USINT) in Havana invariably receives permissions to travel outside the capital to visit prisoners from the United States and naturalized Cuban, who comply with sanction anywhere in Cuba, Director for United States affairs at Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs Josefina Vidal said here. Vidal said in a statement that in recent months, U.S. officials, including the head of USINT, have had consular access in the provinces of Matanzas, Artemisa, Mayabeque, Ciego de Avila, and Camaguey, located in the island's western and central regions. "We do not know on what reciprocity we are talking about , because all travel permissions for the USINT consular visits have been authorized without exception," she warned.

On Wednesday, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced that Washington repeatedly denied consular access to Rene Gonzalez, one of the five antiterrorist fighters of the island unjustly held in that northern country. Following that statement, a State Department official admitted to the Spanish agency EFE -on condition of anonymity- such actions, and attributed it to the fact that "the Cubans do not allow us to travel outside Havana without prior permission, so we respond with the same restriction here." He further stated that Rene Gonzalez can travel to Washington to meet with Cuban officials if those responsible for his supervised release allow it.

About this issue, Vidal explained that U.S. authorities have refused the anti-terrorist fighter recent applications to go outside the area where he complies with the additional punishment, which keeps him unjustly away from his wife. The leadership of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the complaint for the impossibility that Rene receives consular visits since September 2012, in violation of the U.S. obligations to the Vienna Convention on this point. The antiterrorist fighter was detained in 1998 along with Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and Ramon Labañino for monitoring violent groups based in Miami that were planning terrorist actions against Cuba similar to those that have left more than 3,400 victims and 2,000 injured.

In October 2011, after completing his prison term, Rene was forced to remain in the United States under supervised release for three years, which activists, human rights organizatioms (sic), and lawyers consider it an additional punishment.

Editor’s Note: Josefina Vidal left the US in May 2003 in conjunction with the expulsion of 14 Cuban spies serving under diplomatic cover.

UN High Commissioner Backs Cuban Five Case

cubaconfidential

By Chris Simmons

HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 28 (Cuban News Agency) The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay [photo], expressed her support of actions in favor of the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters held in the United States and said she would do her best to find a solution to the case. Pillay received the spouses of Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez for the third yearly occasion in Geneva.

Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, along Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Ramon Labanino, known as the Cuban Five, were given extremely long sentences by a Miami court in 2001 after they monitored Florida-based violent organizations that planned terrorist actions against Cuba. Rene Gonzalez, is currently under probation in US territory after having met a 13-year prison term. During the meeting with the High Commissioner, Olga Salanueva said the probation imposed on her husband is absurd since he is denied to return to his country with his family. The two women stressed the importance that the United Nations intercedes in favor of reaching definitive solution to the Cuban Five case.

They also asked for the UN official to help in getting a visa for them so that they can visit their husbands in the United States. The UN High Commissioner admitted that the visa denial by US authorities is a violation of human rights, which should have not been used as an extra punishment. Pillay expressed her support of the case and her intentions to do her best towards a solution, according to a release by the Cuban permanent mission in Geneva.

Commentary: The State Department’s René González “Goat Rope”

cubaconfidential

By Chris Simmons

In a story covered by the Associated Press and other media outlets (see yesterday’s posting), Castro regime officials decried their lack of access to René González. A convicted spy and paroled felon, René González was part of the Wasp Network, the largest spy ring EVER KNOWN to have operated in the United States.

So at the risk of being obtuse, why was René González – AN AMERICAN CITIZEN - ever allowed consular visits with Cuban officials in the first place? Which State Department bureaucrat, clearly asleep at the wheel, thought it was a good idea to allow a foreign government access to an American traitor? I can’t imagine any legal interpretation that would ever allow such a fiasco.

Now State Department finds itself in a real goat rope. Having seen the errors of their ways, they are now refusing Havana’s arrogant and insane request for morale-building visits to its former spy. But having allowed it initially, the Castro brother’s minions are having a field day spinning up the propaganda machine denouncing America’s “unfairness.” Rather than continue to lose the information war to Cuba, the State Department needs to dig deep (way deep), find some intestinal courage, admit the error and remind the world that AMERICAN felons do not rate consular visits from their former spy bosses.

Born in Chicago in 1956, René González was raised in the city’s “North Side.” As a youngster, his parents took him on outings to Lake Michigan, the Lincoln Park Zoo, and the Riverview Amusement Park. Initially raised on the 1300 block of bustling North Ashland Avenue (a Polish neighborhood), better-paying jobs later took the family to northwest Indiana. When he was five years old, his parents left the U.S. to join the fledgling Cuban Revolution.

Classmates.com! (Multi-Convicted Castroite spy Gerardo Hernandez and Arturo Lopez-Callejas)

babalublog
By Humberto Fontova

He (Gerardito Hernandez on left) rose to the rank of major in Castro's KGB-tutored Intelligence agency! Whereas his classmate at the Castro-regime's top KGB-tutored spy school (Arturito Lopez-Callejas, on left)...well...?

According to the FBI's affidavit, DGI major Gerardo Hernandez and his cohorts were engaged in, among other acts:

• Intelligence gathering against the Boca Chica Air Naval Station in Key West, the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa and the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Homestead Florida.

• Compiling the names, home addresses and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command's top officers along with those of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica.

• Infiltrating the headquarters of the U.S. Southern command.

• Spying on MacDill Air Force base, the U.S. armed forces' worldwide headquarters for fighting "low-intensity" conflicts.

• Locating entry points into Florida for smuggling explosive material.

So who pleads for Hernandez' release? Well, among the most voiciferous we find his classmate from
Stalinist Cuba's top spy training center, Arturo (Artie Levy to you!) Lopez-Callejas,

Granted, in the rigorous KGB-mentored curriculum, Arturito fell well behind his classmate Hernandez. "A little slow upstairs," his KGB-tutored instructors always nodded sadly about Arturito, who was never quite up to the intellectual rigors of this demanding profession..But hey, Arturito--whatever else you can say about his "late-development upstairs"--is still a gung-ho team-player--and by golly!-- he surely TRIES hard!

(Arturito SURE seems touchy about his classmate's exposure and fate--and spares no effort to lobby for his classmate's release.

But like his counterpart of the Corleone family this Fredo of the Castro family also gets to dress rakishly and hob-knob with the Babes!

La recomendacion del Senador Leahy a Obama: EE UU tiene que dar para recibir en el caso Gross

diariodecuba

Un prominente senador estadounidense que acaba de realizar una visita a Cuba dijo este domingo que es necesario que Washington y La Habana den y reciban algo para obtener la liberación del contratista norteamericano Alan Gross, condenado en la Isla a 15 años de cárcel, informa la AFP.

Patrick Leahy, que dirige la comisión de Justicia del Senado, se reunió con Raúl Castro y pudo ven a Gross durante su visita la semana pasada a la Isla.

En declaraciones al programa State of the Union, de la cadena CNN, Leahy dijo que la presión de Estados Unidos no funcionará con Cuba. Gross "no será liberado por los cubanos por la presión de Estados Unidos", señaló.

"Hay formas de que sea liberado, pero requerirán alguna forma de toma y daca de ambas partes y una negociación silenciosa", dijo.

Si cada parte deja de mirar a la otra con mentalidad de la Guerra Fría, "creo que podemos encontrar soluciones, no solo al tema de Alan Gross, sino a una serie de otros temas", agregó el senador.

Como ejemplo, Leahy consideró que "no tiene sentido" mantener a La Habana en la lista de estados que fomentan el terrorismo. Argumentó que en la Isla se están desarrollando las conversaciones de paz entre el Gobierno colombiano y las narcoterroristas Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC).

Para Leahy, el embargo de Estados Unidos a Cuba es otro de los temas que puede ser revisado.

Gross, de 63 años, fue detenido en diciembre de 2009 y acusado de distribuir equipos prohibidos de comunicación en la Isla como parte de un programa de la Agencia de Estados Unidos para el Desarrollo Internacional destinado a promover la democracia en Cuba.

El Gobierno de Raúl Castro lo condenó por "actos contra la independencia y la integridad territorial" del Estado.

A cambio de Gross, La Habana busca que Estados Unidos libere a sus cinco agentes condenados en ese país por espionaje.

Yoani Sánchez dice que nunca pidió la liberación de los cinco espías

cafefuerte

En medio de una avalancha de críticas en las redes sociales y medios de comunicación, la bloguera Yoani Sánchez puntualizó que nunca ha solicitado la liberación de los cinco espías cubanos que cumplen prisión en Estados Unidos, porque no los considera inocentes.

En varios mensajes de su cuenta de Twitter y en un comentario en su blog Generación Y, Sánchez aclaró el sentido de sus declaraciones de este miércoles ante la Cámara de Diputados de Brasil para responder la pregunta de un legislador sobre el tema.

"Para mi sorpresa hoy he visto varios titulares en prensa cubana del exilio diciendo que yo pedía la liberación de los 5 espías", escribió. "Evidentemente no se captó la ironía tremenda de mi frase, así que aclaro en próximos tweets mi posición".

La alusión se dirigía al diario miamense El Nuevo Herald, publicaciones digitales y blogs que afirmaron que ella había pedido liberar a los cinco agentes cubanos, condenados en el 2001. Las emisoras de televisión en español de Miami lanzaron también al aire la versión de su supuesto apoyo a los espías, con duras reacciones a sus palabras por parte de figuras del exilio anticastrista.

Incluso el periodista Max Lesnik, abanderado de la liberación de los espías en Miami, interpretó las declaraciones de Sánchez como "un reconocimiento de la oposición de que el pueblo cubano quiere la liberación de los Cinco", según dijo a Univisión-Canal 23.

No son inocentes

A la vez, Sánchez colgó de su blog el siguiente comentario aclaratorio, poco después de arribar a Sao Paulo procedente de Brasilia:

En ningún momento pedí en Brasil la liberación de esos “cinco miembros de Ministerio del Interior”. Utilicé la ironía para decir que si los liberaban ahora mismo el país se ahorraría todos los millones que se gasta en su campaña que ya dura quince años. De ahí a “pedir la liberación” va un trecho enorme. Si la ironía no funcionó bien, si el nerviosismo o las palabras usadas no dejaron claro el mensaje, ruego me disculpen. Mi posición sigue siendo que no son inocentes. Abrazos desde Sao Paulo.
Sánchez reiteró en otro mensaje: "No creo que sean inocentes y por otro lado estoy en contra de los enormes recursos que el Estado cubano utiliza en esa campaña".

La bloguera asistirá este jueves al lanzamiento de su libro Cuba con cariño, editado en Brasil. Luego viajará a Argentina y España.

Sánchez, de 37 años, realizará una gira de 80 días por 12 países antes de retornar a La Haana, a comienzos de mayo.

Notas relacionadas:
Yoani: El embargo es la razón del gobierno cubano para justificar su fracaso
Yoani Sánchez habla en el Congreso brasileño

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

cubaconfidential

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.

Cuban spy Ramón Labañino Transfers Out of Miami Prison

cubaconfidential

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.

New York’s Casa de las Américas Spreads Castro Propaganda; Seeks Admittance of Cuban Spy-Wives

cubaconfidential

Chris Simmons

Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez: State Department of US, Please Grant the Wives Visas [Photo]

The Department of State is prohibiting entry, from Cuba to the US, to two of the wives of the Cuban Five. These women want to visit their husbands incarcerated in US prisons. Olga Salanueva, wife of Rene Gonzalez, and Adriana Perez, wife of Gerardo Hernandez, are law abiding and productive citizens of Cuba who simply want to visit with their respective husbands. Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez are two of five men referred to as the Cuban Five. They are political prisoners serving two life sentences and 98 years collectively after being railroaded by the FBI in its continued hostility toward Cuba. They were arrested on September 12, 1998. They were falsely charged with espionage conspiracy and were convicted in Miami on June 8, 2001.

These five Cuban men never committed espionage nor did they conspire to do so, their actions were not directed against the US. Instead, their mission was to prevent Cuban exile terrorist organizations in Miami from carrying out attacks on Cuba. They wanted to monitor the activities of violent Cuban exiles that were planning violent actions against innocent people in Cuba. They were trying to prevent further brutal acts against Cuba and save innocent lives.

In 1959, after the US backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown; Batista’s repressive police and army torturers took refuge in Miami. With Miami as their staging ground, they organized, planned and carried out numerous sabotage and terrorist acts against the people of Cuba. To date, the attacks have killed 3,478 Cubans. Reports of these acts are not widely publicized in US media.

Anti-Cuban terrorists placed bombs in various hotels ‒ in one instance killing an Italian tourist. A bomb was placed in the Havana airport. Bombs were placed in buses to and from the airport. The Cuban government protested these terrorist activities to the US, but to no avail. They protested to the United Nations, and they recognized that Cuba had the right to defend its sovereignty.

Cuba’s numerous appeals to Washington to stop terrorist attacks from various Miami based groups were repeatedly ignored. This is why a group of concerned Cubans in Miami infiltrated the terrorist organizations: to do what the US government could not do given that these terrorists are connected to and protected by an elite group of extremely wealthy right wing Cubans that live and control the politics of Miami and oppose all attempts between the US and Cuba to normalize their diplomatic relations.

Olga has not seen Rene since August 16, 2000. In April of 2003, the Department of State denied her a visa, invoking section 2112(f) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. Repeated requests to obtain a visa to visit her husband have been denied.

Adriana was subjected to cruel and unjustified treatment when she attempted to visit Gerardo on July 25, 2002. Upon Adriana’s arrival at the Houston Airport, she was detained by the FBI for 11 hours, isolated, deprived of her passport, photographed, fingerprinted and illegally interrogated before she was sent back to Cuba without having seen Gerardo. The FBI offered absolutely no explanation to support their decision. Thereafter, time and again, she has been denied a visa from US authorities, to visit her husband.

While the cause for the case of the Cuban Five has inspired a worldwide movement, these men have remained imprisoned for nearly 14 years. In the case of Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernández they have also been denied family visits. Besides the fact that their right to a fair trial was denied because it took place in Miami, their right to have family visits has also been denied.

Recently, a conference was held at Howard University School of Law in Washington, DC with Danny Glover as the featured guest speaker. The objective of the forum was to bring light to the case of the Cuban Five as well as the inhumane act on the part of the Department of State of denying visas to Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez who simply want to visit their husbands. Many well-known celebrities have joined in the efforts of informing the rest of the nation of this great injustice. These include Bonnie Rait, Susan Sarandon, Benicio del Toro, Oliver Stone, Martin Sheen, Pete Seeger, Ry Cooder, Chrissie Hynde, Haskell Wexler, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, Ed Asner, Mike Farrell, and others.

It is time to correct this wrong and this great injustice. By signing this petition directed at the Department of State, you join in the effort of allowing Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez to obtain visas for them to visit their husbands incarcerated in US prisons.

Editor’s Note: According to its website, Casa de las Américas (Casa) is a New York-based organization of Cuban emigrants who support the revolution. Beginning in 1955, the July 26 Committee was established in NY for the purpose of supporting the armed struggle that was taking place in Cuba against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Shortly after the triumph of the revolution in 1959, the Committee was renamed Casa Cuba, which later became Casa de las Américas.

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

Alan Gross pide a Obama un pacto con Cuba: ¿canje por Los Cinco?

Cubainformación TV

Cato Institute Cites Spy-Authored Assessment in Call For Embargo’s End

Chris Simmons

Time to End the Cuba Embargo

contrainjerencia.com

by Doug Bandow, Cato Institute

The U.S. government has waged economic war against the Castro regime for half a century. The policy may have been worth a try during the Cold War, but the embargo has failed to liberate the Cuban people. It is time to end sanctions against Havana.

Decades ago the Castro brothers lead a revolt against a nasty authoritarian, Fulgencio Batista. After coming to power in 1959, they created a police state, targeted U.S. commerce, nationalized American assets, and allied with the Soviet Union. Although Cuba was but a small island nation, the Cold War magnified its perceived importance.

Washington reduced Cuban sugar import quotas in July 1960. Subsequently U.S. exports were limited, diplomatic ties were severed, travel was restricted, Cuban imports were banned, Havana’s American assets were frozen, and almost all travel to Cuba was banned. Washington also pressed its allies to impose sanctions.

These various measures had no evident effect, other than to intensify Cuba’s reliance on the Soviet Union. Yet the collapse of the latter nation had no impact on U.S. policy. In 1992, Congress banned American subsidiaries from doing business in Cuba and in 1996, it penalized foreign firms that trafficked in expropriated U.S. property. Executives from such companies even were banned from traveling to America.

On occasion Washington relaxed one aspect or another of the embargo, but in general continued to tighten restrictions, even over Cuban Americans. Enforcement is not easy, but Uncle Sam tries his best. For instance, according to the Government Accountability Office, Customs and Border Protection increased its secondary inspection of passengers arriving from Cuba to reflect an increased risk of embargo violations after the 2004 rule changes, which, among other things, eliminated the allowance for travelers to import a small amount of Cuban products for personal consumption.

Three years ago, President Barack Obama loosened regulations on Cuban Americans, as well as telecommunications between the United States and Cuba. However, the law sharply constrains the president's discretion. Moreover, UN Ambassador Susan Rice said that the embargo will continue until Cuba is free.

It is far past time to end the embargo.

During the Cold War, Cuba offered a potential advanced military outpost for the Soviet Union. Indeed, that role led to the Cuban missile crisis. With the failure of the U.S.-supported Bay of Pigs invasion, economic pressure appeared to be Washington’s best strategy for ousting the Castro dictatorship.

However, the end of the Cold War left Cuba strategically irrelevant. It is a poor country with little ability to harm the United States. In 1998, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that “Cuba does not pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other countries in the region. Cuba has little motivation to engage in military activity beyond defense of its territory and political system.” The Castro regime might still encourage unrest, but its survival has no measurable impact on any important U.S. interest.(emphasis added)

Editor’s Note:  Convicted spy Ana Belen Montes was the primary architect of the 1998 DIA assessment referenced above. Amazingly, 11 years into her prison sentence, Montes continues to influence think tanks and the US government. Are there any real “Cuba experts” left?    

Read entire Cato document here:  http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo

Castro Admits Alan Gross is a Hostage

Capitol Hill Cubans

The Castro regime has replied to a letter by over 40 U.S. Senators asking for the humanitarian release of American development worker, Alan Gross, held in a Cuban prison since December 2009.

In its response, the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., Jose Ramon Cabanas, states:

To demand from and hope for the Cuban Government to take the unilateral decision of releasing Mr. Gross without giving any consideration whatsoever to the legitimate concerns of our country is not a realistic approach... 

And what are the regime's "legitimate" concerns?

...[E]nclosed is a summary information on the case of the Five Cubans who remain unjustly imprisoned or retained in the United States, in respect of whom Cuba has legitimate humanitarian concerns.

Alan Gross is the person seized or held as security.

The so-called Cuban Five are the condition for his release.

That is a hostage-taking.

Judy Gross, wife of the Castro regime's American hostage Alan Gross, National Press Club, 11/30/12

December 3rd, three days from now, marks the three year anniversary of Alan's wrongful imprisonment in Cuba. December 3rd, 2009 is when Alan was arrested in Cuba. He was then held in prison for 14 months without charges and then later convicted for undermining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Cuba. December 3rd, 2009 was the day my family's world began to fall apart... As Alan's wife, I continue to fear that his life is in jeopardy. I plead with the Cuban government to allow his condition to be properly evaluated by an independent doctor of his choosing. I cannot and I will not allow my husband to die in a Cuban prison. I urge the government of Cuba to release Alan on humanitarian grounds.

Spy games: Is there a US-Cuban spy swap in the works?

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Cuba Plans 'Announcement' on Alan Gross

Forward
Cuban officials have put U.S. media on alert that an announcement is imminent on the plight of Alan Gross, a Jewish contractor held in a Cuban jail for almost three years. The announcement is expected to be made the morning of November 28.  More >>

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James L. Berenthal/Associated Press - In this photo provided by James L. Berenthal, jailed American Alan Gross poses for a photo during a visit by Rabbi Elie Abadie and U.S. lawyer James L. Berenthal at Finlay military hospital in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2012. T

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

Special evening in Vancouver for the Cuban Spies

 

SPECIAL EVENING IN VANCOUVER FOR THE CUBAN FIVE.

Vancouver, November 2, 2012. As a prelude to the 5th International Annual Che Guevara Conference, convened by the organization "Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba", a special evening was held in this city for the release of the five Cuban heroes imprisoned in U.S. jails. The event was attended by Aleida Guevara, daughter of legendary heroic guerrilla fighter and Antonio Guerrero Cabrera, son of one of the five antiterrorists
Verses of Nicolas Guillen, Bob Marley’s songs and poems of Antonio Guerrero, among other cultural performances, graced the message of peace and justice sent to the US government by those present, with the demand of immediate freedom for our Five Heroes.
Prominent Canadian lawyer, social activist and former City Counsellor, Tom Louis gave those present a comprehensive and emotional overview of the case of the Five and unmasked its true political essence to expose an important group of violations occurred during the legal process.
During the evening were projected greeting video messages sent from the U.S. by the leaders of the National and International Committees to Free the Five in that country, Gloria la Riva and Alicia Jartko, respectively.
Alberto Prieto, CCPCC’s official, Javier Domokos Ruiz, Consul General of Cuba in Toronto and Manuel Yepe, journalist and university professor were present as part of the Cuban delegation.

Wife of American jailed in Cuba pins hopes on Obama's re-election

By Tom Brown

MIAMI (Reuters) – The wife of Alan Gross, the U.S. contractor jailed in Cuba for crimes against the state, said she hopes President Barack Obama’s re-election will soon help lead to her ailing husband’s release from the communist-ruled country. More >>