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CUBA
NEWS
The Miami Herald
Cuba's frozen assets depleted by lawsuits
A handful of large payouts
have virtually wiped out $268 million in
Cuban assets held in the United States since
they were frozen in 1963
By Jane Bussey. jbussey@MiamiHerald.com.
Posted on Fri, May. 18, 2007.
Audio
| Interview with Janet Ray Weininger
Thousands of U.S. companies -- hoping for
compensation from the Cuban government for
property seized after the 1959 revolution
-- may as well forget the Cuban money once
held at JP Morgan Chase bank in New York.
Cuban funds, as much as $268 million at
one point, sat in U.S. bank accounts since
1963, when the Kennedy administration froze
all Cuban assets in the United States. But
now almost all of that money is gone, paid
out to a handful of citizens who sued the
Cuban government in Miami courts in wrongful-death
cases.
Awards from the frozen accounts have gone
to the families of Brothers to the Rescue
pilots shot down by Cuban MiGs, to the spurned
wife of a Cuban spy and to relatives of
Americans executed shortly after the revolution.
This means there is virtually no money
at banks such as JP Morgan Chase for the
long list of other parties who seek compensation
from Cuba, including nearly 6,000 American
companies and individuals who have certified
claims for seized property and Cuban-Americans
who also seek payments for former homes,
farms and businesses.
If and when Cuba and the United States
get closer to normalizing relations, the
issue could be a major stumbling block.
Havana has denounced the payouts as theft,
and at least one U.S. corporation has fought
the payouts in court.
In January, after $400 million was awarded
to the survivors of Robert Fuller, an American
executed by a Cuban firing squad in 1960,
the Cuban government accused the United
States of stealing more than $170 million
of its money kept in the frozen accounts.
The families and individuals who have
collected on judgments against Cuba insist
they were seeking justice for their suffering
and the painful deaths of their relatives.
''The money wasn't that important,'' said
Janet Ray Weininger, who won a wrongful-death
suit in 2004 in Miami-Dade Circuit Court
for her father Thomas ''Pete'' Ray.
''Fidel Castro chose to hold my life hostage.''
said Weininger, who was 6 years old when
her father, a CIA pilot, was shot down during
the Bay of Pigs invasion. "I wanted
Castro exposed.''
But critics of the massive payouts -- $23.9
million to Weininger, for example -- say
they create potential problems in restoring
diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba
in the future.
''It's fundamentally unfair that individuals
and companies that filed claims and played
by the rules in the 1970s and waited 40
years would have had their claims trumped
by lawsuits that were filed decades later,''
said Stuart Eizenstat, who served as undersecretary
of state in the Clinton administration.
THOUSANDS OF CLAIMS
During the 1960s, the Foreign Claims Settlement
Commission certified 5,911 claims of American
citizens and companies worth $1.85 billion.
Now those claims are valued at more than
$7 billion after 47 years at 6 percent interest.
Eizenstat, now with a Washington law firm,
said the frozen assests have traditionally
been viewed as a bargaining chip in bringing
countries like Cuba to the table to discuss
property disputes and other issues.
Also looking to receive compensation or
recover property are Cuban-Americans whose
property was seized. Miami lawyer Nicolás
Gutiérrez said he has an informal
registry of 350 claims totaling $100 billion.
They aren't certified because the claimants
weren't U.S. citizens at the time their
property was taken.
Gutiérrez said he has been studying
whether the group can try to obtain the
frozen funds or even seize commodities being
shipped to Cuba from a U.S. port. Under
an exception to the embargo, food shipments
to Cuba must be paid for before they leave
the United States so they're Cuban property.
''This mess will have to be cleaned up
down the road,'' said Robert Muse, a Washington
attorney who represents some of the certified
claimants.
'96 LAW PIVOTAL
What started the run on the frozen accounts
was the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act, passed after the Oklahoma
City bombing. It cleared the way for private
citizens to sue foreign governments for
terrorist acts and triggered a flurry of
lawsuits from those by families of Brothers
to the Rescue fliers to the family of Howard
Anderson, an American businessman linked
to the CIA, who was shot by a Cuban firing
squad in 1961.
The Cuban government has never defended
itself in the wrongful-death suits but has
insisted it is the rightful owner of the
money in the frozen accounts and wants Washington
to "take full responsibility for the
theft.''
What lawyers on all sides agree is that
there is hardly any money in the accounts
that can be claimed. Most of what is left,
$60 million to $70 million, is exempt from
garnishment under U.S. law.
Weininger has collected her full judgment
from Cuban funds held at JP Morgan Chase,
but first she and the Anderson family had
to face a challenge from OfficeMax, the
corporation that wound up with the claims
for the Cuban Electric Co., a seized American
property.
In an unsuccessful brief filed for OfficeMax,
Muse argued that Cuba was not designated
as a terrorist state until 1982, more than
20 years after Ray and Anderson were killed.
But Weininger questions why anyone would
think corporate interests or international
relations should take precedence over people
seeking redress for emotional suffering.
''Why would an American company seek to
deny justice to an American who had died
for his country?'' she said.
'This is a process that will take time'
Rui Ferreira. Posted on
Fri, May. 18, 2007.
He is, without a doubt, one of South Florida's
most controversial Cuban Americans. In an
exile community that is mostly Republican,
Joe Garcia was recently elected Democratic
Party chairman in Miami-Dade County, after
serving as executive director of the Cuban
American National Foundation.
To some exiles, García is the man
responsible for ideological divisions that
prompted many older ones to leave CANF and
start their own group.
He says his great passion is helping the
island's dissidents, who he believes are
key to a free Cuba -- a Cuba the 43-year-old
Miami-born lawyer has never seen.
''It seems to me that most Cuban Americans
are rational people and realize that this
is a process that will take time,'' García
said. "Only the ultra-rightist elements,
who live in a different reality, have another
perception.''
After 48 years of Castro's rule, García
says, the Cuban people's patience has run
out.
"From the government official to the
political prisoner, those people depend
on us for a vision of the future.''
Sick Ground Zero worker grateful for
filmmaker's help
By Jordan Lite, New York
Daily News. Rui Ferreira. Posted on Fri,
May. 18, 2007.
NEW YORK -- As Michael Moore trades barbs
with the Bush administration over his unauthorized
jaunt to Cuba to make his new movie, there's
at least one person who's grateful for the
controversial director -- a sick Ground
Zero worker who got free healthcare on the
trip.
Disabled carpenter-EMT John Graham objects
to critics who say Moore made false promises
to three desperate 9/11 responders featured
in Sicko, which premieres Saturday at the
Cannes Film Festival.
Cuban doctors gave him medicines that work
better than ones he tried in New York, he
said.
''See the movie, because everyone else
is wrong,'' Graham, 45, told the New York
Daily News. "There were no promises
of a cure; there were promises of doctors
that are willing to do tests that would
cost thousands of dollars in the United
States.''
Overwhelmed by the prospect of paying $5,000
himself for a test here, Graham traveled
with Moore in March to communist Cuba, where
medical care is free.
Over five days at a Havana hospital, Graham
said he underwent ''intensive tests'' that
confirmed the breathing problems his doctors
in New York found -- and was told that no
better treatment exists.
But the Cuban doctors also discovered digestive
problems that Graham, a former health and
safety instructor for the city carpenters'
union, didn't know about before, he said.
Drugs they gave him for reflux ''seemed
to be a lot better,'' said Graham of Paramus,
N.J.
While foreigners sometimes get better care
than Cubans in ''shiny clean facilities''
in Havana, there isn't much difference between
the drugs available there and in the United
States, said Dr. Peter Muennig, an assistant
professor of health policy and management
at the Mailman School of Public Health at
Columbia University.
Graham said he worked at the World Trade
Center site on the day of the terrorist
attacks and for several days each week until
it was cleared, and multiple news accounts
describe him as being present there on Sept.
11 and for months afterward.
Retired since 2004 on $400 a week in workers'
compensation, Graham said the healthcare
he needs is expensive, and the red tape
too thick to navigate.
Medical monitoring and treatment are available
for responders, workers and others at the
Fire Department, Mount Sinai Medical Center
and Bellevue Hospital.
Graham, who will become one of the faces
of that battle when the film opens June
29 in the United States, isn't sure what
to make of his upcoming notoriety.
''I've never been a movie star before,''
he said. "I'd give up all the fame
for Sept. 10.''
State, Herald seek open hearing in Cuban
child's custody case
By Carol Marbin Miller,
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Fri,
May. 18, 2007.
State child welfare administrators have
joined The Miami Herald's petition to open
up court hearings involving a 4-year-old
girl at the center of a custody dispute
between her father, a Cuban national, and
a Coral Gables family that wishes to raise
her.
The petition by the Department of Children
& Families is a dramatic departure for
an agency that for decades has been steeped
in secrecy. Secretary Bob Butterworth has
said repeatedly that DCF will be more transparent
under his leadership, and he has agreed
in recent months to release records when
the agency has erred.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen
ruled April 4 that neither the newspaper
nor any other media would be allowed to
observe hearings involving the little girl,
who is not being named in order to protect
her privacy.
Cohen also has ordered all courtroom participants
to refrain from discussing the case.
DCF's reasons for favoring openness in
the case are unknown, because its arguments
to the appeals court are contained in a
legal brief that was filed under seal, as
was The Herald's petition.
Cohen has never said publicly why she closed
the case, but sources with knowledge of
the proceedings say the judge wants to avoid
the kind of turmoil that surrounded the
custody battle over Elián González,
the boy whose mother drowned at sea while
bringing him to the United States.
The little girl and an older brother entered
the United States legally with their mother
in 2004. The following year DCF took the
children into custody after their mother
tried to slash her wrists and was taken
to a hospital. Child protection workers
say neither the girl's mom nor dad are fit
parents.
The girl's father is seeking to gain custody,
and has entered the U.S. in recent days
to fight his battle in court.
The 12-year-old boy has a different father,
who has consented to the Coral Gables family
caring for the preteen.
More interaction with Cuba denied
A Pentagon request for
more contacts with Cuba has been denied
as a Cuba and Venezuela intelligence operation
languishes for lack of staff and money,
a former official said.
By Pablo Bachelet, pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com.
Posted on Thu, May. 17, 2007.
WASHINGTON -- A recent Pentagon request
for more military-to-military contacts with
Cuba was denied and a special intelligence
office created to closely monitor Cuba and
Venezuela has ''practically disappeared,''
due to staff and budget cuts, the office's
former head said Wednesday.
Norman Bailey, who until March was mission
manager for Cuba and Venezuela at the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence
(ODNI), said the State Department recently
blocked the Pentagon request to allow its
military attachés abroad to contact
their Cuban counterparts.
The Venezuela and Cuba mission manager
post was established last year by John Negroponte,
then ODNI's chief. He acted on instructions
from President Bush amid concerns over the
threat to U.S. interests posed by Venezuela's
socialist President Hugo Chávez and
the consequences of Fidel Castro's illness.
After three months on the job, Bailey,
an economic consultant and Cold War expert,
was fired by Mike McConnell, who replaced
Negroponte in the job of coordinating the
work of 16 government intelligence agencies
and programs.
Bailey said he was initially told the position
was being eliminated, but McConnell denied
this in a March 14 letter to House members.
He wrote that he was looking for a replacement
and that the position "has not been
diminished in any way.''
OFFICE 'DISAPPEARED'
But at a gathering at the conservative
American Enterprise Institute think tank
to discuss the impact on the U.S. military
of Ana Belén Montes, a Defense Intelligence
Agency Cuba analyst convicted of spying
for Havana, Bailey painted a different picture.
''The fact is that office has practically
disappeared,'' he said, noting that with
his dismissal and one resignation its staff
has dropped to one full timer and one half-timer.
ODNI spokesman Ross Feinstein declined
to comment on personnel matters but said
that a replacement search was under way
and that Patrick Maher, a 33-year CIA veteran
who specializes on Latin American issues,
is the acting mission manager for Cuba and
Venezuela.
Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
said she has voiced her ''great regret''
on the administration's failure so far to
replace Bailey. She added that at a classified
hearing next week with ODNI officials on
the damages caused by Montes' spying, she
will press for a replacement "who will
ensure that we have the information necessary
to address the Castro and Chávez
threats.''
The State Department and the Defense Department
declined to discuss Bailey's comment on
the State Department's rejection of the
Pentagon request, but other U.S. government
officials confirmed the request.
In the past, U.S. military attachés
abroad were reprimanded even if they entered
into casual conversations with their Cuban
counterparts.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Only a Coast Guard representative at the
U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana is allowed
to talk to Cuban government officials on
matters like migration and drug trafficking.
The U.S. commander at the Guantánamo
Naval Base also holds periodic talks with
Cuban military officers to avert tensions.
But further contacts between the U.S. and
Cuban military have long been resisted by
the U.S. government in part because of fears
that Cuban intelligence officers would take
advantage of U.S. military officers, said
Roger Noriega.
Noriega, who until 2005 was assistant secretary
of state for the Western Hemisphere, said
at the conference he had "killed that
idea more than once.''
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