U.S. ups funds for Cuba opposition

If you live in the United States, it might be harder to pay your heating bill or for your medicine and doctor’s visits; maybe your tuition assistance for school is gone for next term. The new Bush budget proposes to cut 150 human-needs programs. Apparently, though, some special-interest groups in south Florida are having no problem getting federal aid. All they have to do is violate Cuban sovereignty.

While U.S. travelers face harassment and fines for visiting and spending money in Cuba, three separate U.S. government agencies illegally channel funds into Cuba. Since 1996 the U.S. Agency for International Development has spent more than $35 million. The National Endowment for Democracy paid $4.9 million since 2000 and proposes to double the annual sum to $2 million in the next fiscal year. The third organization is a new one, the President’s Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, with a proposed budget of $29 million. (Gary Marx, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 22)

One U.S.-funded agency fronting as an online news agency spends $3,000 per month paying for freelance articles from inside Cuba. Dollars and propaganda are distributed through the U.S. Interest Section in Havana, in an effort to provoke a justifiable response from Cuba. Yet when these violators of Cuban law, like the 73 self-styled “dissidents,” are charged, tried and convicted in Cuban courts it is portrayed in the U.S. media as a “human-rights violation.”

The U.S. slander campaign is failing. At the 61st Session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, held March 14-April 22 in Geneva, no amount of imperialist bullying could force even a single other country to present a resolution against Cuba-U.S. had to do it alone.

Former FBI chief admits Cuban Five were not a threat

The International Free the Five Committees, the government and people of Cuba and the families of these political prisoners held in the United States have for seven years demanded that they be freed. The imprisoned five—Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Gerardo Hernández, Ramon Labañino and Rene González—were jailed for trying to stop U.S.-based espionage against Cuba.

Now the FBI chief responsible for jailing the five and falsely labeling them as spies has stated they really posed no threat to the United States.

According to a March 15 report in the Cuban newspaper Granma, Hector Pesquera, now retired head of the South Florida FBI bureau, was asked, “Do you believe that at some moment the security of the United States was in danger or that they [the Cuban 5] had access to some intelligence information that could be valuable to the enemies of the United States?”

Pesquera answered: “No. For example, in the case of [Antonio] Guerrero a retrospective study of the information was made that he had taken, but the investigation was unable to determine if he had such intelligence information.”

Antonio Guerrero is serving a sentence of life plus 10 years. An appeal for all five men was heard by the 11th Circuit Court in March 2004, but a decision has not yet come down.

The interview with Pesquera was part of a series filmed for TV Marti and broadcast on Radio Marti. Both stations are U.S.-tax-funded propaganda tools in the U.S. war against socialist Cuba.

Why wasn’t this information shared with the Cuban Five’s defense team?

In February 1998, Hector Pesquera was named FBI special agent in charge in Miami after holding that same post in Puerto Rico. In his previous 22 years with the FBI he had served in Miami and Tampa, Fla., Uruguay and Washington, D.C. in counterintelligence. In 1998, his brother, Ricardo Pesquera got the charges dropped for a Cuban American National Foundation assassin who had been caught in a small boat off Puerto Rico on an admitted mission to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro.

—Cheryl LaBash