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August
8, 2003
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|
August
9, 2003
Terrorism
and Civil Society
The Instruments of
US Policy in Cuba
By PHILIP AGEE
Condemnation of Cuba was immediate, strong and
practically global last month for the imprisonment of 75 political
dissidents and for the summary execution of 3 ferry hijackers.
Prominent among the critics were past friends of Cuba of recognized
international stature.
As I read the hundreds of denunciations
that came through my mail, it was easy to see how enemies of
the revolution seized on those issues to condemn Cuba for violations
of human rights. They had a field day. Deliberate or careless
confusion between the political dissidents and the hijackers,
two entirely unrelated matters, was also easy because the events
happened at the same time. A Vatican publication went so far
as to describe the hijackers as dissidents when in fact they
were terrorists. But others of usual good faith toward Cuba also
jumped on the bandwagon of condemnation treating the two issues
as one. The remarks that follow address the human rights issues
in both cases.
With respect to the imprisonment of 75
civil society activists, the main victim has been history, for
these people were central to current U.S. government efforts
to overthrow the Cuban government and destroy the work of the
revolution. Indeed regime change, as overthrowing governments
has come to be known, has been the continuing U.S. goal in Cuba
since the earliest days of the revolutionary government. Programs
to achieve this goal have included propaganda to denigrate the
revolution, diplomatic and commercial isolation, trade embargo,
terrorism and military support to counter-revolutionaries, the
Bay of Pigs invasion, assassination plots against Fidel Castro
and other leaders, biological and chemical warfare, and, more
recently, efforts to foment an internal political opposition
masquerading as an independent civil society.
Terrorism
Warren Hinkle and William Turner, in
The Fish is Red, easily the best book on the CIA's war against
Cuba during the first 20 years of the revolution, tell the story
of the CIA's efforts to save the life of one of their Batista
Cubans. It was March 1959, less than three months after the revolutionary
movement triumphed. The Deputy Chief of the CIA's main Batista
secret police force had been captured, tried and condemned to
a firing squad. The Agency had set up the unit in 1956 and called
it the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities or BRAC
for its initials in Spanish. With CIA training, equipment and
money it became arguably the worst of Batista's torture and murder
organizations, spreading its terror across the whole of the political
opposition, not just the communists.
The Deputy Chief of BRAC, one Jose Castano
Quevedo, had been trained in the United States and was the BRAC
liaison man with the CIA Station in the U.S. Embassy. On learning
of his sentence, the Agency Chief of Station sent a journalist
collaborator named Andrew St. George to Che Guevara, then in
charge of the revolutionary tribunals, to plead for Castano's
life. After hearing out St. George for much of a day, Che told
him to tell the CIA chief that Castano was going to die, if not
because he was an executioner of Batista, then because he was
an agent of the CIA. St. George headed from Che's headquarters
in the Cabana fortress to the seaside U.S. Embassy on the Malecon
to deliver the message. On hearing Che's words the CIA Chief
responded solemnly, "This is a declaration of war."
Indeed, the CIA lost many more of its Cuban agents during those
early days and in the unconventional war years that followed.
Today when I drive out 31st avenue on
the way to the airport, just before turning left at the Marianao
military hospital, I pass on the left a large, multi-storey white
police station that occupies an entire city block. The style
looks like 1920's fake castle, resulting in a kind of giant White
Castle hamburger joint. High walls surround the building on the
side streets, and on top of the walls at the corners are guard
posts, now unoccupied, like those overlooking workout yards in
prisons. Next door, separated from the castle by 110th street,
is a fairly large two-story green house with barred windows and
other security protection. I don't know its use today, but before
it was the dreaded BRAC Headquarters, one of the CIA's more infamous
legacies in Cuba.
The same month as the BRAC Deputy was
executed, President Eisenhower, on the 10th of March 1959, presided
over a meeting of his National Security Council at which they
discussed how to replace the government in Cuba. It was the beginning
of a continuous policy of regime change that every administration
since Eisenhower has continued.
As I read of the arrests of the 75 dissidents,
44 years to the month after the BRAC Deputy's execution, and
saw the U.S. government's outrage over their trials and sentences,
one phrase from Washington came to mind that united American
reactions in 1959 with events in 2003: "Hey! Those are OUR
GUYS the bastards are screwing!"
A year later I was in training at a secret
CIA base in Virginia when, in March 1960, Eisenhower signed off
on the project that would become the Bay of Pigs invasion. We
were learning the tricks of the spy trade including telephone
tapping, bugging, weapons handling, martial arts, explosives,
and sabotage. That same month the CIA, in its efforts to deny
arms to Cuba prior to the coming exile invasion, blew up a French
freighter, Le Coubre, as it was unloading a shipment of weapons
from Belgium at a Havana wharf. More than 100 died in the blast
and in fighting the fire afterwards. I see the rudder and other
scrap from Le Coubre, now a monument to those who died, every
time I drive along the port avenue passing Havana's main railway
station
In April the following year, two days
before the Bay of Pigs invasion started, a CIA sabotage operation
burned down El Encanto, Havana's largest department store where
I had shopped on my first here visit in 1957. It was never rebuilt.
Now each time I drive up Galiano in Centro Habana on my way for
a meal in Chinatown, I pass Fe del Valle Park, the block where
El Encanto stood, named for a woman killed in the blaze.
Some who signed statements condemning
Cuba for the dissidents' trials and the executions of the hijackers
know perfectly well the history of U.S. aggression against Cuba
since 1959: the murder, terrorism, sabotage and destruction that
has cost nearly 3500 lives and left more than 2000 disabled.
Those who don't know can find it in Jane Franklin's classic historical
chronology The Cuban Revolution and the United States.
One of the best sum-ups of the U.S. terrorist
war against Cuba in the 1960's came from Richard Helms, the former
CIA Director, when testifying in 1975 before the Senate Committee
investigating the CIA's attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.
In admitting to "invasions of Cuba which we were constantly
running under government aegis," he added:
We had task forces that that were striking
at Cuba constantly. We were attempting to blow up power plants.
We were attempting to ruin sugar mills. We were attempting to
do all kinds of things in this period. This was a matter of American
government policy.
During the same hearing Senator Christopher
Dodd commented to Helms:
It is likely that at the very moment
that President Kennedy was shot, a CIA officer was meeting with
a Cuban agent in Paris and giving him an assassination device
to use against Castro.
[Note: the officer worked for Desmond
Fitzgerald, a friend of Robert Kennedy and at the time overall
chief of the CIA's operations against Cuba, and the agent was
Rolando Cubela, a Cuban army Comandante with regular access to
Fidel Castro whose CIA codename was AMLASH.]
Helms responded:
I believe it was a hypodermic syringe
they had given him. It was something called Blackleaf Number
40 and this was in response to AMLASH's request that he be provided
with some sort of a device providing he could kill Castro....I'm
sorry that he didn't give him a pistol. It would have made the
whole thing a whole lot simpler and less exotic.
Review the history and you will find
that no U.S. administration since Eisenhower has renounced the
use of state terrorism against Cuba, and terrorism against Cuba
has never stopped. True, Kennedy undertook to Khrushchev that
the U.S. would not invade Cuba, which ended the 1962 missile
crisis, and his commitment was ratified by succeeding administrations.
But the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991 and the commitment with
it.
Cuban exile terrorist groups, mostly
based in Miami and owing their skills to the CIA, have continued
attacks through the years. Whether or not they have been operating
on their own or under CIA direction, U.S. authorities have tolerated
them.
As recently as April 2003 the Sun-Sentinel
of Ft. Lauderdale reported, with accompanying photographs, exile
guerrilla training outside Miami by the F-4 Commandos, one of
several terrorist groups currently based there, along with remarks
by the FBI spokeswoman that Cuban exile activities in Miami are
not an FBI priority. Abundant details on exile terrorist activities
can be found with a web search including their connections with
the paramilitary arm of the Cuban American National Foundation
(CANF).
Reports abound of the arrest in Panama
in November 2000 of a group of 4 exile terrorists led by Luis
Posada Carriles, a man with impeccable CIA credentials. They
were planning the assassination of Fidel Castro who was there
for a conference. Posada's resume includes planning the Cubana
airliner bombing in 1976 that killed all 73 people aboard; employment
by the CIA in El Salvador in 1980's re-supply operations for
the contra terrorists in Nicaragua; and organizing in 1997 10
bombings of hotels and other tourist sites in Havana, one of
which killed an Italian tourist. A year later he admitted to
the New York Times that CANF directors in Miami had financed
the hotel bombings. Through the years Posada freely traveled
in and out of the United States.
Another of the CIA's untouchable terrorists
is Orlando Bosch, a pediatrician turned terrorist. As mastermind
along with Carriles of the 1976 Cubana airliner bombing, Bosch
was arrested with Carriles a week after the bombing and spent
11 years in a Venezuelan jail undergoing 3 trials for the crime.
He was acquitted in each trial, released in August 1987, and
arrested on his return to Miami in February 1988 for parole violation
after a previous conviction for terrorist acts. In 1989 the Justice
Department ordered his deportation as a terrorist citing FBI
and CIA reports that Bosch had carried out 30 acts of sabotage
from 1961 to 1968 and was involved in a plot to kill the Cuban
Ambassador to Argentina in 1975. After lobbying on Bosch's behalf
by Miami Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban American
with close ties to CANF, and by Jeb Bush, Ros-Lehtinen's campaign
manager prior to his election as governor, the elder President
Bush, who was CIA Director at the time of the Cubana airliner
bombing, ordered the Justice Department in 1990 to rescind the
deportation order. Bosch was released from custody and has freely
walked the streets of Miami ever since.
Seeing the obvious, that the U.S. government
was not taking action to stop Miami-based terrorism, the Cubans
opted in the 1990's to send their own intelligence officers to
Florida under cover as exiles to provide warnings on coming terrorist
actions. There they infiltrated some of the exile groups and
were reporting back to Havana, including information on planned
illegal over-flights of Cuba by Brothers to the Rescue.
Still, the Cuban government hoped that
the U.S. could be convinced to take action against Miami-based
terrorists. So in 1998 Cuba delivered to the FBI voluminous information
they had collected on U.S.-based terrorist activities against
Cuba. But instead of taking action against the terrorists, the
FBI then arrested 10 members of a Cuban intelligence network
whose job was to infiltrate the terrorist organizations. Later
the 5 Cuban intelligence officers running the network were tried
in Miami, where conviction was guaranteed, for conspiracy to
commit espionage and for not having registered as agents of a
foreign power. They had never asked for nor received a classified
government document or classified information of any kind, yet
they were given draconian sentences, one of them two life terms.
The inhuman treatment of these unbending prisoners ordered by
Washington, designed to destroy them mentally and physically
and turn them against Cuba, sets world records for sordid, deranged
punishment. Demand for their freedom is the main political topic
in Cuba today.
Most recently, in declaring an unending
war against terrorism following the September 2001 attacks by
Al Qaeda and prior to the war against Iraq, President Bush declared
that no weapons in U.S. possession are banned from use, presumably
including terrorism. But rather than starting his anti-terrorist
war in Miami, where his theft of the White House was assured
and his election to a second term may depend, he started the
series of pre-emptive wars we have watched on television, first
Afghanistan and then Iraq, and now he threatens Syria, Iran and
others on his list of nations that supposedly promote terrorism.
Cuba, of course, is wrongfully on that list, but people here
take this seriously as a preliminary pretext for U.S. military
action against this country.
Civil Society and
the Dissidents
Going back to the Reagan administration
of the early1980's, the decision was taken that more than terrorist
operations was needed to impose regime change in Cuba. Terrorism
hadn't worked, nor had the Bay of Pigs invasion, nor had Cuba's
diplomatic isolation which gradually ended, nor had the economic
embargo. Now Cuba would be included in a new world wide program
to finance and develop non-governmental and voluntary organizations,
what was to become known as civil society, within the context
of U.S. global neo-liberal policies. The CIA and the Agency for
International Development (AID) would have key roles in this
program as well as a new organization christened in 1983 The
National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Actually the new program was not really
new. Since its founding in 1947, the CIA had been deeply involved
in secretly funding and manipulating foreign non-governmental
voluntary organizations. These vast operations circled the globe
and were targeted at political parties, trade unions and businessmen's
associations, youth and student organizations, women's groups,
civic organizations, religious communities, professional, intellectual
and cultural societies, and the public information media. The
network functioned at local, national, regional and global levels.
Media operations, for example, were underway continuously in
practically every country, wherein the CIA would pay journalists
to publish its materials as if they were the journalists' own.
In the Directorate of Operations at the CIA's headquarters, these
operations were coordinated with the regional operations divisions
by the International Organizations Division (IOD), since many
of the operations were regional or continental in nature, encompassing
many countries, with some even worldwide in scope.
Over the years the CIA exerted phenomenal
influence behind the scenes in country after country, using these
powerful elements of civil society to penetrate, divide, weaken
and destroy corresponding enemy organizations on the left, and
indeed to impose regime change by toppling unwanted governments.
Such was the case, among many others, in Guyana where in 1964,
culminating 10 years of efforts, the Cheddi Jagan government
was overthrown through strikes, terrorism, violence and arson
perpetrated by CIA international trade union agents. About the
same time, while I was assigned in Ecuador, our agents in civil
society, through mass demonstrations and civil unrest, provoked
two military coups in three years against elected, civilian governments.
And in Brazil in the early 1960's, the same CIA trade union operations
were brought together with other operations in civil society
in opposition to the government, and these mass actions over
time provoked the 1964 military coup against President Joao Goulart,
ushering in 20 years of unspeakably brutal political repression.
But on February 26th, 1967, the sky crashed
on IOD and its global civil society networks. At the time I was
on a visit to Headquarters in Langley, Virginia near Washington,
between assignments in Ecuador and Uruguay. That day the Washington
Post published an extensive report revealing a grand stable of
foundations, some bogus, some real, that the CIA was using to
fund its global non-governmental networks. These financial arrangements
were known as "funding conduits." Along with the foundations
scores of recipient organizations were identified, including
well-known intellectual journals, trade unions, and political
think tanks. Soon journalists around the world completed the
picture with reports on the names and operations of organizations
in their countries affiliated with the network. They were the
CIA's darkest days since the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
President Johnson ordered an investigation
and said such CIA operations would end, but in fact they never
did. The proof is in the CIA's successful operations in Chile
to provoke the 1973 Pinochet coup against the elected government
of Salvador Allende. Here they combined the forces of opposition
political parties, trade unions, businessmen's groups, civic
organizations, housewife's associations and the information media
to create chaos and disorder, knowing that sooner or later the
Chilean military, faithful to traditional fascist military doctrine
in Latin America, would use such unrest to justify usurping governmental
power to restore order and to stamp out the left. The operations
were almost a carbon copy of the Brazilian destabilization and
coup program ten years earlier. We all remember the horror that
followed for years afterwards in Chile.
Fast forward to now. Anyone who has watched
the civil society opposition to the Hugo Chavez government in
Venezuela develop can be certain that U.S. government agencies,
the CIA included, along with the Agency for International Development
(AID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), are coordinating
the destabilization and were behind the failed coup in April
2002 as well as the failed "civic strike" of last December-January.
The International Republican Institute (IRI) of the Republican
Party even opened an office in Caracas. See below for more on
NED, AID and IRI in civil society operations.
In order to understand how these civil
society operations are run, let's take a look at the bureaucratic
side. When I entered the CIA's training course, the first two
words I learned were discipline and control. The U.S. government
was not a charitable institution, they said, and all money must
be spent for its exact, designated purpose. The CIA operations
officer that I would become is responsible for ensuring this
discipline through tight control of the money and of the agents
down the line who spend it. Orders to the agents on their duties
and obligations are to be clear and unambiguous, and the officer
must prevent personal embezzlement of money by an agent, beyond
the agent's agreed salary, by requiring receipts for all expenses
and for all payments to others. Exceptions to this rule needed
special approvals.
In the CIA, activities to penetrate and
manipulate civil society are known as Covert Action operations,
and they are governed by detailed regulations for their use.
They require a request for money in a document known as a Project
Outline, if the activity is new, or a Request for Project Renewal,
if an on-going activity is to be continued. The document originates
either in a field station or in Headquarters, and it describes
a current situation; the activities to be undertaken to improve
or change the situation vis-a-vis U.S. interests; a time-line
for achieving intermediary and final goals; risks and the flap
potential (damages if revealed); and a detailed budget with information
on all participating organizations and individuals and the amounts
of money to go to each. The document also contains a summary
of the status of all agent personnel to be involved with references
to their operational security clearance procedures and the history
of their service to the Agency. All people involved are included,
from the ostensible funding agencies like officers of a foundation,
down to every intermediate and end recipient of the money.
In additional to these budget specifics,
a certain amount of money without designated recipients is included
under the rubric D&TO, standing for Developmental and Targets
of Opportunity. Money from this fund is used to finance new activities
that come up during the project approval period, but of course
detailed information and security clearances on all individuals
who would receive such funding is always required. A statement
is also required on the intelligence information by-product to
be collected through the proposed operation. Thus financial support
for a political party is expected to produce intelligence information
on the internal politics of the host country.
Project Outlines and Renewals go through
an approval process by various offices such as the International
Organizations Division, and depending on their sensitivity and
cost, they may require approval outside the CIA at the Departments
of State, Defense, or Labor, or by the National Security Council
or the President himself. When finally approved the CIA's Finance
Division allocates the money and the operation begins, or continues
if being renewed. The period of approvals and renewals is usually
one year.
Both the Agency for International Development
and the National Endowment for Democracy without doubt have documentation
requirements and approval processes similar to the CIA's for
project funding in the civil societies of other countries. All
the people involved must receive prior approval through an investigative
process, and each person has clearly defined tasks. An inter-agency
commission determines which of the three agencies, the CIA, AID
or NED, or a combination of them, are to carry out specific tasks
in the civil societies of specific countries and how much money
each should give. All three have obviously been working to develop
an opposition civil society in Cuba.
One should note that the high-sounding
National Endowment for Democracy has its origins in the CIA's
covert action operations and was first conceived in the wake
of the disastrous revelations noted above that began on February
26th, 1967. Two months later in April that year, Dante Fascell,
member of the House of Representatives from Miami and a close
friend of the CIA and Miami Cubans, together with other Representatives,
introduced legislation that would create an "open"
foundation to carry on what had been secret CIA funding of the
foreign civil society programs of U.S. organizations (e.g., the
National Students Association) or of foreign organizations directly
(e.g., the Congress for Cultural Freedom based in Paris).
The Fascell idea failed to prosper, however,
because of the breakdown of the bipartisan approach to foreign
policy that had prevailed since the administration of Harry Truman
after World War II. Differences since the late 1960's within
and between the two parties over the war in Southeast Asia, then
in the 70's over Watergate and the loss of the Vietnam war, and
finally over revelations of assassination plots and other operations
of the CIA by Senate and House investigating committees, prevented
agreement and resulted in several years of isolationism. Only
the successes of revolutionary movements in Ethiopia, Angola,
Namibia, Zimbabwe, Grenada, Nicaragua and elsewhere brought "cold
warrior" Democrats and "internationalist" Republicans
together to establish in 1979 the American Political Foundation
(APF). The foundation's task was to study the feasibility of
establishing through legislation a government-financed foundation
to subsidize foreign operations in civil society through U.S.
non-governmental organizations.
Within APF four task forces were set
up to conduct the study, one for the Democrats, one for the Republicans,
one for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and one for the American
Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
Together their work became known as the Democracy Program. They
consulted a vast array of domestic and foreign organizations,
and what they found most interesting were the government-financed
foundations of the main West German political parties: the Friedrich
Ebert Stiftung of the Social Democrats and the Konrad Adenauer
Stiftung of the Christian Democrats. When these foundations were
first set up in the 1950's, their task was to build a new German
democratic order, a civil society based on the Western parliamentary
model while lending their weight to repression of communist and
other left political movements.
From early on the CIA channeled money
through these foundations for non-government organizations and
groups in Germany. Then in the 1960's the foundations began supporting
fraternal political parties and other organizations abroad, and
they channeled CIA money for these purposes as well. By the 1980's
the two foundations had programs going in some 60 countries and
were spending about $150 million per year. And what was most
interesting, they operated in near-total secrecy.
One operation of the Friedrich Ebert
Stiftung shows how effective they could be. In 1974, when the
fifty-year-old fascist regime was overthrown in Portugal, a NATO
member, communists and left-wing military officers took charge
of the government. At that time the Portuguese social democrats,
known as the Socialist Party, could hardly have numbered enough
for a poker game, and they all lived in Paris and had no following
in Portugal. Thanks to at least $10 million from the Ebert Stiftung
plus funds from the CIA, the social democrats came back to Portugal,
built a party overnight, saw it mushroom, and within a few years
the Socialist Party became the governing party of Portugal. The
left was relegated to the sidelines in disarray.
Ronald Reagan was an early and enthusiastic
supporter of the Democracy Program, describing his plans in a
speech before the British Parliament in June 1982. This new program,
he said, would build an "infrastructure of democracy"
around the world following the European example of "open"
support, furthering "the march of freedom and democracy..."
Of course the German programs were anything but "open,"
nor would the American programs be "open" once they
began. In fact even before Congress established the NED, Reagan
set up what was called Project Democracy in the U.S. Information
Agency under direction of the State Department. A secret Executive
Order at the time, soon leaked to the press, provided for secret
CIA participation in the program. An early grant was $170,000
for training media officials in El Salvador and other right-wing
authoritarian regimes on how to deal with the U.S. press---the
Salvadoran program to be carried out through the Washington public
relations firm that had represented the Somoza dictatorship.
In November 1983 Dante Fascell's dream
finally came true. Congress created the National Endowment for
Democracy and gave it an initial $18.8 million for building civil
society abroad during the fiscal year ending September 30, 1984.
Fascell became a member of NED's first Board of Directors. Whereas
the CIA had previously funneled money through a complex network
of "conduits," the NED would now become a "mega-conduit"
for getting U.S. government money to the same array of non-governmental
organizations that the CIA had been funding secretly.
The Cuban American National Foundation
was, predictably, one of the first beneficiaries of NED funding.
From 1983 to 1988 CANF received $390,000 for anti-Castro activities.
During the same period the separate political action committee
(PAC) run by CANF directors to fund political campaigns, gave
a nearly identical amount for the campaigns of Dante Fascell
and other friendly politicians, a clear trade-off based on funds
received from NED.
Legally the NED is a private, non-profit
foundation, an NGO, and it receives a yearly appropriation from
Congress. The money is channeled through four "core foundations"
established along the lines of the four original task forces
of the Democracy Program. These are the National Democratic Institute
for International Affairs (Democratic Party); the International
Republican Institute (Republican Party); the American Center
for International Labor Solidarity (AFL-CIO); and the Center
for International Private Enterprise (U.S. Chamber of Commerce).
The NED also gives money directly to "groups abroad who
are working for human rights, independent media, the rule of
law, and a wide range of civil society initiatives." [Quote
from NED web site May 2003.]
The NED's non-governmental status provides
the fiction that recipients of NED money are getting "private"
rather than U.S. government money. This is important because
so many countries, including both the U.S. and Cuba, have laws
relating to their citizens' being paid to carry out activities
for foreign governments. The U.S. requires an individual or organization
"subject to foreign control," i.e., who receives money
and instructions from a foreign government, to register with
the Attorney General and to file detailed activities reports,
including finances, every six months. The five Cuban intelligence
officers were convicted for failing to register under this law.
Cuba has its own laws criminalizing actions
intended to jeopardize its sovereignty or territorial integrity
as well as any actions supporting the goals of the U.S. Helms-Burton
Act of 1996, i.e., by collecting information to support the embargo
or to subvert the government, or for disseminating U.S. government
information to undermine the Cuban government.
Reagan's new programs in civil society
started out with a huge success in Poland. During the 1980's
the NED and the CIA, in joint operations with the Vatican, kept
the Solidarity trade union alive and growing when it was outlawed
during the marshal law period beginning in 1981. The program
was agreed between Reagan and Pope John Paul II when Reagan visited
the Vatican in June 1982. They did it with intelligence information,
cash, fax machines, computers, printing and document copying
equipment, recorders, TVs and VCRs, supplies and equipment of
all kinds, even radio and television transmitters. The trade
union transformed itself into a political party, and in 1989,
with encouragement from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Solidarity
took control of the government. Years later, in May 2001, Senator
Jesse Helms introduced legislation to provide $100 million to
duplicate in Cuba, he said, the successes of the CIA, NED and
Vatican in Poland.
Such efforts to develop an opposition
civil society in Cuba had already begun in 1985 with the early
NED grants to CANF. These efforts received a significant boost
with passage in 1992 of the Cuban Democracy Act, better known
as the Torricelli Act, that promoted support through U.S. NGO's
to individuals and organizations for programs to bring "non-violent
democratic change in Cuba." A still greater intensification
came with passage in 1996 of the Cuban Liberty and Solidarity
Act, better known as the Helms-Burton Act. As a result of these
laws the NED, AID and the CIA, the latter not mentioned publicly
but undoubtedly included, intensified their coordinated programs
targeted at Cuban civil society.
One may wonder why the CIA would be needed
in these programs. There were several reasons. One reason from
the beginning was the CIA's long experience and huge stable of
agents and contacts in the civil societies of countries around
the world. By joining with the CIA, NED and AID would come on
board an on-going complex of operations whose funding they could
take over while leaving the secret day-to-day direction on the
ground to CIA officers. In addition someone had to monitor and
report the effectiveness of the local recipients' activities.
NED would not have people in the field to do this, nor would
their core foundations in normal conditions. And since NED money
was ostensibly private, only the CIA had the people and techniques
to carry out discreet control in order to avoid compromising
the civil society recipients, especially if they were in opposition
to their governments. Finally, the CIA had ample funds of its
own to pass quietly when conditions required. In Cuba participation
by CIA officers under cover in the U.S. Interests Section would
be particularly useful, since NED and AID funding would go to
U.S. NGO's that would have to find discreet ways, if possible,
to get equipment and cash to recipients inside Cuba. The CIA
could help with this quite well.
Evidence of the amount of money these
agencies have been spending on their Cuba projects is fragmentary.
Nothing is publicly available about the CIA's spending, but what
is easily found about the other two is interesting. The AID web
site cites $12 million spent for Cuba programs during 1996-2001
(average per year $2 million), but for 2002 the budget jumped
to $5 million plus unobligated funds of $3 million from 2001
to total $8 million. Their 2003 budget for Cuba is $6 million
showing a tripling of funds since the Bush junta seized power.
No surprise given the number of Miami Cubans Bush has appointed
to high office in his administration.
The money, according to AID, was spent
"to promote a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba."
From 1996 to 2001 they disbursed the $12 million to 22 NGO's,
all apparently based in the U.S., mostly in Miami. By 2002 the
number of front line NGO's had shrunk to 12: The University of
Miami, Center for a Free Cuba, Pan-American Development Foundation,
Florida International University, Freedom House, Grupo de Apoyo
a la Disidencia, Cuba On-Line, CubaNet, National Policy Association,
Accion Democratica Cubana, and Carta de Cuba. In addition, the
International Republican Institute of the Republican Party received
AID money for a sub-grantee, the Directorio Revolucionario Democratico
Cubano, also based in Miami.
These NGOs have a double purpose, one
directed to their counterpart groups in Cuba and one directed
to the world, mainly through web sites. Whereas on the one hand
they channel funds and equipment into Cuba, on the other they
disseminate to the world the activities and production of the
groups in Cuba. Cubanet in Miami, for example, publishes the
writings of the "independent journalists" of the Independent
Press Association of Cuba based in Havana and channels money
to the writers.
Interestingly, AID claims on its web
site that its "grantees are not authorized to use grant
funds to provide cash assistance to any person or organization
in Cuba." It's hard to believe that claim, but if it's true,
all those millions are only going to support the U.S.-based NGO
infrastructure, a subsidized anti-Castro cottage industry of
a sort, except for what can be delivered in Cuba in kind: computers,
faxes, copy machines, cell phones, radios, TVs and VCRs, books,
magazines and the like.
On its web site AID lists 7 purposes
for the money: solidarity with human rights activists, dissemination
of the work of independent journalists, development of independent
NGOs, promoting workers' rights, outreach to the Cuban people,
planning for future assistance to a transition government, and
evaluation of the program. Anyone who wants to see which NGOs
are getting how much of the millions under each of these programs
can check out: http://www.usaid.gov/.
AID's claim that its NGO grantees can't
provide cash to Cubans in Cuba, makes one wonder about the more
than $100,000 in cash that Cuban investigators found in possession
of the 75 mostly unemployed dissidents who went on trial. A clue
may be found in the AID statement that "U.S. policy encourages
U.S. NGOs and individuals to undertake humanitarian, informational
and civil society-building activities in Cuba with private funds..."
Could such "private funds" be money from the National
Endowment for Democracy?
Recall the fiction that the NED is a
"private" foundation, an NGO. It has no restrictions
on its funds going for cash payments abroad, and it just happens
to fund some of the same NGO's as AID. Be assured that this is
not the result of rivalry or lack of coordination in Washington.
The reason probably is that NED funds can go for salaries and
other personal compensation to people on the ground in Cuba.
There is, after all, the rung of organizations below the U.S.
NGOs in the command and money chain, and these are the individuals
and groups in Cuba that correspond in purpose with the U.S. NGO's.
They number nearly 100 and have names [translated from Spanish]
like Independent Libraries of Cuba, All United, Society of Journalists
Marquez Sterling, Independent Press Association of Cuba, Assembly
to Promote Civil Society, and the Human Rights Party of Cuba
Each of the Cubans in these organizations
will be fully identified with assigned tasks in the AID, NED
or CIA project documentation covering the activity, probably
in a classified annex, whether they are categorized as human
rights activists, independent journalists, independent librarians,
or distributors of information materials. The money, after all,
does not go to phantoms or ghosts even on the lowest level. Nor
are the U.S. NGO's given discretion to pass out money to whatever
malcontents they can find to take it. End users (final recipients)
are designated beneficiaries in writing just as the core foundations
and intermediary U.S. NGOs are.
NED's web site is conveniently out of
date, showing only its Cuba program for 2001. But it is instructive.
Its funds for Cuban activities in 2001 totaled only $765,000
if one is to believe what they say. The money they gave to 8
NGOs in 2001 averaged about $52,000, while a 9th NGO, the International
Republican Institute (IRI) of the Republican Party received $350,000
for the Directorio Revolucionario Democratico Cubano, based in
Miami as previously noted, for "strengthening civil society
and human rights" in Cuba. In contrast, this NGO is to receive
$2,174,462 in 2003 from AID through the same IRI. Why would the
NED be granting the lower amounts and AID such huge amounts,
both channeled through IRI? The answer, apart from IRI's skim-off,
probably is that the NED money is destined for the pockets of
people in Cuba while the AID money supports the U.S. NGO infrastructures.
According to the Cuban Foreign Minister,
Felipe Perez Roque, in a press conference on April 7th, and Cuban
security agents working inside the dissident groups that he showed
on film, the U.S. money came to recipients in Cuba disguised
as wired family remittances, in cash mixed with the many remittances
brought by couriers known as "mules," and by payments
to the Transcard debit card system in Canada for credit to cards
held by dissidents in Cuba. (The cards are good for cash withdrawals
from Cuban banks.) Although the Foreign Minister said the Cuban
Central Bank has followed carefully the flow of money to the
dissidents, he did not reveal the total amount for any given
period or specific amounts to recipient groups or individuals.
Whatever the amounts of money reaching
Cuba may have been, everyone in Cuba working in the various dissident
projects knows of U.S. government sponsorship and funding and
of the purpose: regime change. Far from being "independent"
journalists, "idealistic" human rights activists, "legitimate"
advocates for change, or "Marian librarians from River City,"
every one of the 75 arrested and convicted was knowingly a participant
in U.S. government operations to overthrow the government and
install a different, U.S.-favored, political, economic and social
order. They knew what they were doing was illegal, they got caught,
and they are paying the price. Anyone who thinks they are prisoners
of conscience, persecuted for their ideas or speech, or victims
of repression, simply fails to see them properly as instruments
of a U.S. government that has declared revolutionary Cuba its
enemy. They were not convicted for ideas but for paid actions
on behalf of a foreign power that has waged a 44-year war of
varying degrees of intensity against this country.
To think that the dissidents were creating
an independent, free civil society is absurd, for they were funded
and controlled by a hostile foreign power and to that degree,
which was total, they were not free or independent in the least.
The civil society they wished to create was not just your normal,
garden variety civil society of Harley freaks and Boxer breeders,
but a political opposition movement fomented openly by the U.S.
government. What government in the world would be so self-destructive
as to sit by and just watch this happen?
Those interested in understanding how
U.S. promotion of "independent civil society" works
in one sector, private libraries, can find an excellent report
presented in November 2002 by Rhonda L. Neugebauer, Bibliographer,
Latin American Studies, University of California, Riverside,
at the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies, East
Los Angeles College. The report is the result of extensive research,
visits to private libraries in Cuba and interviews with their
owners, and a study of the Cuban state library system. Included
are descriptions of the U.S. NGO system backing private libraries,
their funding by AID, and the misleading information put out
by this system. Click here to see the Neugebauer report.
Foreign Minister Perez Roque in his press
conference gave an example of how several operations worked.
He showed a film clip from the trial of Oswaldo Alfonso Valdes,
President of the Liberal Democratic Party of Cuba, in which Alfonso
described a meeting he had with an AID official and Vickie Huddleston,
until mid-2002 the chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana,
in which they discussed how to improve the way that he was getting
"resources" in order to better conceal the U.S. government
as the source. In the clip Alfonso also acknowledged receiving
money and material resources from the U.S. government via organizations
based in Miami.
Under Cuban law, being paid to execute
U.S. policy toward Cuba is illegal and in itself sufficient to
convict. The largest group within the 75, the 37 "independent
journalists," were writing commentaries on Cuba for publication
outside the country using the internet for communications. One
of their organizations in Cuba was the Independent Press Association
of which the President, Nestor Baguer, was a Cuban government
security agent who testified in court. Members of his group,
he said, wrote for the website Cubanet, based in Miami, and were
paid via the Transcard debit card system in Canada except for
large amounts that were brought by courier. Cubanet by the way
received $35,000 from NED in 2001 and is to receive $833,000
from AID in 2003. Baguer also testified that on visits to the
U.S. Interests Section, he and his colleagues received instructions
on topics to cover in their writings such as the shortage of
medicines, the treatment of patients in hospitals, and the treatment
of inmates in prisons. Generally speaking the "independent
journalists" were to place Cuba in a bad light abroad and
to justify continuation of the trade embargo.
The Foreign Minister also showed three
letters dated in January and March 2001 to Oswaldo Alfonso, the
Liberal Party leader, from Carlos Alberto Montaner, an exile
journalist who lives in Madrid and is President of the Cuban
Liberal Union (member of the Liberal International). Montaner
is also a founding member of the Hispanic-Cuban Foundation, a
project of Spain's ruling conservative party. Montaner is also
closely associated with the exile cultural/political quarterly
Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana which is based in Madrid and financed
in part by NED ($80,000 in 2001).
Reading from the letters, Perez Roque
revealed that each of the three letters mentioned money included:
200 dollars, 30,000 pesetas and 200 dollars, the latter two apparently
from people Montaner and Alfonso know mutually. In the letter
with the pesetas, Montaner wrote: "Very soon two high level
Spanish friends will call you to talk about Project Varela. I
suggested five names for the founding of that new idea: Paya,
Alfonso, Arcos, Raul Rivero and Tania Quintero."
Readers can draw their own conclusions
on the possible foreign influence in Project Varela. Oswaldo
Paya, of course, is the dissident honoured by the European Union
with the Sakarov Human Rights Prize for his leadership of Project
Varela.
Prominent in the outrage at Cuba's action
against the dissidents were commentaries of shock over how nice
things had been getting in recent years with Fidel's mellowing
and tolerance of the dissident community, and suddenly now THIS!
In actual fact May 20, 2002 was the turning point when in speeches
in Washington and Miami, Bush announced his "Initiative
for a New Cuba." Central to this "new" plan, citing
Poland as a past success, he announced increased and direct assistance
to "help build Cuban civil society," leading to a "new
government" in Cuba. I wonder. Would it be overreach to
say Bush was advocating regime change through the dissidents?
The Cubans made no secret of their interpretation.
The knell for "our guys" came
with the arrival in September 2002 of a new Chief of the U.S.
Interests Section in Havana, the equivalent of Ambassador were
Cuba and the U.S. to have full diplomatic relations. James Cason
is a career State Department diplomat who has served mostly in
Latin American countries, not menacing to the eye, just a bit
overstuffed in the round face, double chinned like a Porky Pig
in his late fifties, with wide round glasses in front of half-closed
eyes. Like he's had too many two-hour lunches and not enough
jogging. Otto Reich, Cuban-American fanatic and one of the un-indicted
criminals of Iran-Contra, who was serving a limited recess appointment
(read no chance for Senate confirmation) as Bush's Assistant
Secretary of State for Latin American, gave Cason the job and
apparently put an ample load of hot sauce on his appointee's
backside.
Cason swooped down on Havana like a fed
from Gangbusters' central casting with an "in your face"
attitude big time. But give the guy credit. He ran his ass off
all over this island burning his dissident friends, "our
guys," and sealing their fate as he went along. His blatant
support for Washington's civil society in Cuba looked for all
the world like he was bent on getting himself PNG'd, expelled
as persona non grata in diplomatic parlance. He made a show of
unity with groups in the provinces as well as Havana; gave 24-hour
passes to the Interests Section to favorites, including Cuban
penetration agents, for free internet access and other facilities;
attended meetings in dissidents' homes where he gave the equivalent
of press conferences to foreign journalists; personally launched
the youth wing of the Liberal Party; entertained dissidents in
his official residence, even hosting an independent journalists'
workshop there one Saturday. His conduct went so far beyond accepted
diplomatic protocol that you might say he was the mother of all
provocations.
But expelling Cason would have led to
a new crisis with the U.S., and the Cubans didn't take the bait.
For six months they waited and watched through their highly placed
penetrations of Cason's dissident community. Then they decided
to act. They had the evidence of criminal activities in support
of Helms-Burton and in violation of other legislation on sedition,
so they finally decided to sweep away Cason's constituency in
a stroke. And there he stood in March, appropriately like the
Emperor who wore no cool. Indeed, there's been not a peep from
the man since his acolytes were picked up.
One can imagine the bitterness from prison
with 75 of "our guys" reflecting on how stupid they
were to fall for Cason's grandstanding. So now Cason and his
staff, CIA and AID officers included, have to start all over,
pretty much from scratch. But hey, buddy, careful whom you all
recruit. You may be salivating tomorrow over another of Fidel's
finest. Never know, do you? Think about that when you file for
security clearances on your next generation of dissidents.
Without a doubt the Cubans weighed the
price they would have to pay with friends and foes before taking
the decision to act. And they knew they had a lot to lose. The
movement in the U.S. to end the embargo and travel ban, in Congress
and on the street, would peel rubber in reverse with all the
media distortions. Cuban entrance into the Cotonou Agreement
for preferential trade and aid with the EU would likely go back
into the deep freeze, which it did. Moreover, the U.N. Human
Rights Commission was then meeting in Geneva, and the U.S. was
trying as hard as possible, with threats and bribes, to get a
motion approved condemning Cuba for human rights violations.
In the end they didn't get it, but the Cuban government was willing
to take this risk as well.
With so much at stake, the timing of
the decision triggered intense speculation. In truth the dissident
community, including those imprisoned, has never been a threat
to the revolution, and Cuba could have gone on indefinitely tolerating,
penetrating and monitoring their U.S. government-ordered activities.
But the U.S. might have seen that as weakness, and that's the
last thing you want a Grendel to think.
Moreover there was an important internal
political dimension to tolerating Cason's insulting provocations
because they were so widely known here. He had gone so far beyond
the pale that people in general wondered about the government's
tolerance. This too could be seen as weakness by supporters of
the revolution. So they decided to stop him once and for all
and to send a message to his remaining proteges, to stretch the
protective connotation just a bit in the Cuban context. In 1996
the government had stopped the highly visible Brothers to the
Rescue overflights by the shootdowns, largely for internal political
reasons, knowing full well the price they would pay internationally.
So also in 2003 they decided to firmly use the hook on Cason's
Top Gun stage act regardless of international opinion. As in
the shootdowns, internal Cuban politics, not international reactions,
more than likely determined the timing.
The Three Executions
The hijacking of the Havana harbor ferry,
the Baragua, couldn't have come at a worse time. It was the 7th
hijacking in 7 months and came on April 2, a day before the trials
of the dissidents were to start, making it easy for Cuba's enemies,
and not a few of its friends, to lump the two disparate events
into one "wave of repression."
The ferry was no more than a flat-bottomed
self-propelled barge with a cabin, safe only for calm harbor
waters, and that night there were 50-odd people on board including
children and foreign tourists. The armed hijackers took it to
sea in a highly dangerous Force 4 wind, ran it out of fuel, and
threatened by radio to start throwing hostages overboard if they
were not given enough fuel to reach Florida. The amazing part
is how the Cuban coast guard convinced the hijackers to allow
a tow of the drifting ferry to the port of Mariel where special
forces set up a trap and divers prepared for the rescue. After
many hours of standoff, it all ended in less than a minute when
a French woman suddenly dove overboard and was followed en masse
by the other hostages and the hijackers as well. The hostages
were all rescued, and the hijackers quickly arrested.
In the trial the state asked for, and
received, the death penalty for the three ringleaders of the
hijacking, an action upheld by an appeals court because it was
a terrorist act of extreme gravity even though no one was injured.
Then the Council of State had to ratify or commute. Should Cuba
end their nearly three-year moratorium on executions? Should
they stir up condemnation from the world movement against the
death penalty? Should they delay their decision and let those
guys wait on death row for a while---not 15-20 years like in
the States but at least a few weeks so as not to show undue haste?
Or should they commute to life and show mercy.
Frankly, being against the death penalty,
I thought a combination of the last two would be best: wait and
commute. But I didn't know that at the time the Cuban security
forces were investigating another 29 hijacking plots. From the
Council of State's point of view it surely looked like the beginning
of a wave of hijackings encouraged as always by the 1966 Cuban
Adjustment Act and the wet-foot, dry-foot policy that discriminates
against all non-Cuban illegal immigrants. Particularly galling
to Cuba is the hero treatment hijackers have gotten in Florida
and the fact that if a pilot flies a plane over there willingly,
he's not considered a hijacker and is guilty of no more than
misappropriation of property.
If there is one principle that Cuba has
always followed, at least since the missile crisis of 1962, it
is never to give the U.S. a pretext for military action. Another
Mariel exodus or rafters crisis, or indeed a wave of hijackings,
would be just such a pretext, as Fidel later reasoned, for imposing
a U.S. naval blockade, an all-out bombing campaign, and an outright
invasion. They could avoid another Mariel or rafters episode,
but they had to stop the hijackings immediately. And he was right.
On April 25th the chief of the Cuba Bureau of the State Department
told the Chief of Cuba's Interests Section in Washington that
the United States considers any more hijackings to be a serious
threat to U.S. national security. Understanding "one more
and we take military action" would not be paranoia.
But the Council of State didn't have
to wait for that news. They knew it already. They ratified the
sentences on April 10th, and they were carried out the next morning.
You can fault Cuba on the principle of "no death penalty
under any circumstances," but the fact is that Cuba is one
of more than 100 countries that have it on the books. They had
just seen what U.S. bombs and missiles had done to Baghdad, saw
the painstaking work of two generations at risk, including their
centers of science and technology, educational institutions,
hospitals and clinics, their historic cultural heritage, but
most important their people who would be killed and maimed. And
they didn't confuse the hijackers with dissidents. They were
delinquents turned terrorists who had threatened vastly more
than their 50 hostages.
It came as no surprise to Cuba when,
with the executions and the sentencing of the dissidents at nearly
the same time, the howling around the world began. They seemed
to be ready for it to a degree, but you could sense a certain
shock when long-time friends of the revolution like Eduardo Galeano
and Jose Saramago joined the chorus of condemnation. They were
joined by Chomsky, Zinn, Albert, Davis, Dorfman and others, whose
works are treasures in my library, who signed the superficial
statement of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy: "We the
undersigned strongly protest the current wave of repression in
Cuba...[against dissidents]...for their non-violent political
activities..." Like the dissidents are not equal to terrorism,
embargo, and psychological warfare as instruments in Washington's
unending campaign to convert Cuba into another American vassal.
Fair enough if that's what they want for Cuba. Pitiful if they
signed without thinking.
A few weeks after the executions and
dissident trials, at the May Day rally of more than a million
people in Havana's Revolution Square, the Rev. Lucius Walker,
one of the most effective and committed U.S. Cuba solidarity
activists, made an elegant plea for Cuba to abolish the death
penalty. Fidel responded with appreciation, saying only that
such an action was under study. Yet less than 3 weeks later another
group of 8 armed hijackers, arrested before taking over a flight
on April 10th, were tried and sentenced. Despite convictions
for terrorism and violence, the ringleaders were sentenced to
life imprisonment and the others to terms of 20 to 30 years.
Readers will note that the important
legal and human rights issue of due process has not been addressed
in these pages. Among the criticisms of both the dissidents'
and the hijackers' cases were allegations that the defendants
were railroaded without an opportunity for adequate legal defence.
The problem in addressing this issue has not been helped by the
lack of published information on the trials. For example, I have
found no public chronology in any of the 75 cases from the moment
of arrest to the opening of the trial that would include dates
and times for events such as the arrest, the presentation of
charges, and sessions spent by the defendant with a defence lawyer
in preparation for the trial. Nor have the written charges nor
the defendants' responses and pleas nor the judges' decisions
been published with the exception of the sentences. This lack
of information prevents assessment of due process.
Nevertheless the Foreign Minister went
to pains to address these criticisms in his three hour-plus press
conference of April 7th, pointing out the Spanish colonial origins
of summary trial procedures and their wide use around the world
today. He also said that in the 29 trials (some trials had more
than one defendant) 54 lawyers participated of whom 44 were chosen
by the defendants and 10 appointed as public defenders by the
courts, adding that several lawyers served more than one defendant.
Perhaps most important, he said that defendants were allowed
to testify before the court answering the charges and submitting
to cross-examination. He emphasized the number of people allowed
to attend the trials, mostly family members and averaging about
100 observers per trial. Still, the lack of full information
on the prosecution and trial procedures has left the door open
for charges of lack of due process, charges that cannot be resolved
until the courts provide more details.
Epilogue
In Washington, despite the black eye
that Cuba is seen to have self-inflicted, the Congressional supporters
of legislation to end or ease the embargo and to abolish the
travel ban are again moving ahead with the introduction of new
legislation for that purpose. While most condemned the April
events, they are sticking with their principles, mostly in the
belief that Americans who come to Cuba will change the Cubans.
Over the years I've seen just the opposite happen, but ending
the travel ban is certainly worthy, reasons aside.
The Bush administration, peopled as it
is with hard line Cuban-Americans, continues to ratchet up the
pressure with the expulsion of 14 Cuban diplomats in Washington
and New York on vague espionage charges. Clearly a political,
not a national security decision, someone in the FBI leaked the
news that the White House had apparently told the State Department
to expel Cubans, and State asked the FBI for some names. The
FBI source added that none of the Cubans was the subject of an
on-going espionage investigation. Conversely the Cuban-American
congressional representatives from Miami, Ros Lehtinen and Diaz
Balart, whine openly that Bush won't take their calls demanding
a swift end to the Cuba problem once and for all.
In Miami all those NGOs sucking at the
teats of AID and NED to keep their anti-Castro industry going,
along with their comfortable life-styles, will have to go back
to their computers and draw up new plans for civil society in
Cuba. They'll have to look for ways to salvage their counterpart
fronts across the straits and for more Cubans with few enough
scruples and just enough self-destructive instincts to take their
money.
Over here in Havana, James Cason would
do well to slip away on consultations back at the State Department
and quietly retire. He did, after all, get 75 of "our guys"
put away, some for quite a while, and all the anti-Cuban propaganda
dividend flowing from his service to Reich in no way compensates.
He's finished in the Foreign Service even though he was carrying
out Reich's orders, for Cason, not Reich, is the one who'll take
the fall. Then again he might just find a fat new anti-Cuba career
with one of the Miami NGOs.
At the U.S. Interests Section, State,
AID and CIA officers will now have to start beating the bushes
for new blood, sending names and background information for security
clearances on people willing to work with the Miami NGOs following
in the footsteps of the 75, and the Cuban security service will
surely oblige with promising candidates as they always have in
the past.
And the rest of us?
The threat of war in Cuba from Bush and
his coterie of crusaders, all of them crazed with hubris after
Iraq, is real. A military campaign against Cuba, coinciding with
the already-underway 2004 electoral campaign, may be the only
way he can hope to finally get himself elected, even if only
for his second term. And every day the economy is working against
him with no signs of improving for 2004. He knows the economy
in '92 did his father in, and he may conclude that fulfilling
his divine mission to extend U.S. military control of the world
will need a crisis very close to home.
The time to mobilize against that war
is now, and not a day can be lost.
Philip Agee
is a former CIA officer and author of CIA Diary: Inside the Company
and On the Run. Agee is a founder of the Cuba travel site Cubalinda.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
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Francis
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My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
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Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
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The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
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