Miami Herald, April
2, 2001.
Attorney: Cuba hindered inquiry
U.S. investigating Havana bombings
By Gail Epstein Nieves. gepstein@herald.com. Published
Saturday, March 31, 2001
Contrary to defense claims, it has been Cuba -- not the United States --
that has dragged its feet and thwarted an investigation of possible
exile-community involvement in a series of bomb attacks in Havana, a federal
prosecutor in the Cuban spy trial asserted Friday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Kastrenakes, while cross-examining a
counterterrorism investigator from Havana, said the Cuban government has refused
for more than two years to allow the FBI access to key witnesses, some of whom
were convicted in the bomb cases and sit in Cuban jails.
Cuban Lt. Col. Roberto Hernández Caballero did not disagree that
witnesses have not been made available.
But he said that the Cuban government had provided plenty of other evidence
-- from names and phone numbers of suspects to samples of plastic explosives --
for U.S. prosecutors to press charges.
"Here in Miami, there was enough information to verify what we had done
down there,'' said Hernández, a lieutenant colonel for the State Security
Department of the Interior Ministry and lead investigator into some 12 bomb
attacks against Cuban tourist sites in 1997.
The five accused spies on trial in U.S. District Court acknowledge working
as agents of the Cuban government.
But they contend that they were legally justified in pursuing clandestine
activities -- including infiltration of Miami exile groups -- because the United
States was either unwilling or unable to stop terrorist acts by exiles.
NOTES AND VISITS
But Kastrenakes said that U.S. authorities sent Cuba five diplomatic notes
over more than a year seeking a meeting about the bomb attacks.
FBI Agent Agustín Rodríguez and Miami-Dade Police Detective
Luis Rodríguez finally were allowed to visit Havana in June 1998.
In March 1999, Hernández and his colleagues traveled to Washington,
where they toured the FBI crime laboratory and were given the results of an
analysis conducted on some evidence from the bombs.
The law officers told Hernández "they had actually opened an
investigation into the bombings,'' and gave him a two-page list of interviews
and physical evidence they needed in Cuba to complete their case, Kastrenakes
said during questioning.
While the officials were not allowed to interview witnesses, they did return
to Havana for other work in October 2000, Hernández disclosed.
Kastrenakes suggested retaliation was the reason for the delay.
He said Hernández's boss told the American law officers in October
that "the reason they had not been brought back to Cuba'' was because the
five men now on trial had been arrested. Hernández said he did not hear
his boss say that.
The spy-case arrests took place on Sept. 12, 1998.
NAMING NAMES
On Thursday, Hernández -- who was under heavy protection from federal
marshals -- had testified that people living in the United States were
responsible for plotting and financing the bomb attacks. He named names Friday,
reiterating a list of suspects whom Cuba has blamed.
They are the Cuban American National Foundation; Alpha 66, a militant exile
group; the Cuban-American Veterans Association; and Ex-Club, a group of former
Cuban political prisoners. The CANF has denied any involvement in the bomb
attacks.
Hernández also named Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA-trained
explosives expert who has claimed responsibility for the bombings. Posada linked
the bombings to CANF at one point, but ultimately denied that the foundation was
involved in the plot.
Posada is now imprisoned in Panama in connection with an alleged plot to
assassinate Fidel Castro.
'NO TERRORIST ACTS'
At another point, Kastrenakes asked Hernández if he knew whether
Cuba's intelligence directorate -- the government branch that directed the
co-defendants in their missions -- ever sponsored terrorist acts.
Hernández's answer -- "My government does not sponsor terrorist
acts'' -- sparked loud laughter from Mirta Costa and other survivors of four
Brothers to the Rescue fliers whose planes were shot from the sky by Cuban
fighter pilots on Feb. 24, 1996. Costa's son, Carlos, was among the dead.
At defense attorney Joaquín Méndez's request, U.S. District
Judge Joan Lenard told spectators to quiet down.
Hernández completed his testimony and the trial broke until April 10.
Testimony is expected to continue until May, according to the lawyers'
timetable.
Hernández testified that he and the Cuban government were concerned
for his safety. The U.S. Marshals Service prohibited a sketch artist from
drawing his picture in the courtroom Friday.
Now available: Satellite photo of Cuba
May help exiles map properties
By Warren P. Strobel. Herald Washington Bureau . Published
Saturday, March 31, 2001
WASHINGTON -- A private satellite firm has released the first commercially
available picture of Cuba as seen from outer space, depicting in crisp detail
ships in Havana harbor, railroad tracks and even the lettering on the roof of a
huge warehouse.
The image, snapped in January by a spacecraft orbiting 423 miles overhead,
is the latest example of how ``spy'' satellites, once the exclusive domain of
defense and intelligence agencies, have gone private. And the impact of that
shift is just beginning to be felt, say experts on the technology.
In the case of Cuba, the effect could be political and economic. Some Cuban
exiles in the Miami area say satellite photographs could be used to inspect and
map properties they still claim on the island.
``Many of these people have not seen their properties for 40 years,'' said
Nick Gutierrez, a Miami-area lawyer with about 100 clients who have claims. ``We
are not going to get these properties back until Fidel Castro is gone. But there
are certain steps we can take to prepare for that day.''
Under the Helms-Burton law, U.S. citizens can sue foreign companies that are
using property expropriated by the Castro government. Former President Bill
Clinton waived that provision of the law, known as Title 3, each time it came up
for renewal.
President Bush has not decided what to do when he faces the issue this
summer. ``It's under review,'' said a White House official who spoke on
condition of anonymity.
An American hotel chain also has expressed interest in satellite photos of
Cuba's beaches to prepare for when the U.S. economic embargo against the island
is lifted, said Mark Brender, a director for Denver-based Space Imaging, which
owns and operates the satellite.
The 1,600-pound satellite, called Ikonos, was launched in 1999, joining a
handful of other commercial ``remote sensing'' spacecraft in orbit. Over the
next five years, the number of such satellites ``is expected to explode,'' a
report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think
tank, concluded last year.
Because other countries also operate imaging satellites, government
``attempts to control access to high-resolution satellite imagery are bound to
fail,'' the Carnegie report concluded.
Ikonos' camera is capable, under optimal conditions, of photographing
objects on Earth that are slightly less than 39 inches square. That's far less
detail than photographs from the Pentagon's classified spy satellites, but still
good enough for many purposes. In fact, the Pentagon's National Imagery and
Mapping Agency is Space Imaging's biggest customer.
After a lengthy security review, the U.S. government late last year approved
Space Imaging's license to launch an even more powerful orbiting camera with
half-meter resolution, meaning it can photograph objects on the ground larger
than about 20 inches.
Ikonos has provided images of many hidden military installations previously
seen only by government intelligence analysts. They range from North Korea's
missile launch pad to Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor to the U.S. Air Force's
secret Area 51 facility in Nevada.
``In a way, we're entering an age of transparency,'' said Brender, a former
naval officer and TV news producer. Yet while those high-profile images make
headlines, he said, other markets will determine if the new commercial industry
thrives. They include mapping, coastal zone management, insurance and risk
assessment, urban planning and agriculture.
The image of Havana doesn't appear to show any military secrets. But it
clearly depicts sections of Old Havana, the Capitol building and docks jutting
into the harbor.
Veteran of Bay of Pigs now fights for dialogue
By Elinor J. Brecher. ebrecher@herald.com . Published
Saturday, March 31, 2001
Yes -- he shook Fidel's hand. It was the first thing that Miami lawyer
Alfredo Durán told people when he returned from Cuba on March 25. Got it
out of the way so he could discuss what really mattered: Old enemies found it
possible to gaze into history together and glimpse the future.
Durán, 64, and four other Bay of Pigs veterans spent three intense
days across a conference table from men they fought to overthrow 40 years ago.
In April 1961, Durán joined the 1,500-member, CIA-trained exile force
that mounted a doomed three-day invasion of the island. The U.S. air support
they expected never came. They ran short of ammunition. The Cubans, who lost
151, killed 114 invaders and captured 1,189.
LAWYER UNMOVED
Durán, imprisoned for 18 months, remembered well his Cuban trial.
``Our defense attorney said we should all be shot.'' It's the reason he switched
careers, from agricultural engineer to law.
``We were patriots,'' Durán said at his Coconut Grove law office.
Patriotism in those days meant an uncompromising belief that Castro had to
go. To Durán, it now means working to normalize relations -- an
unacceptable perspective among those in and around Brigade 2506, the group that
represents about 900 surviving members of the invasion force.
In fact, Durán's views got him booted from the group, of which he'd
twice been president, though he stopped paying dues in 1993, after co-founding
the pro-dialogue Cuban Committee for Democracy.
BROAD COOPERATION
George Washington University and the Cuban government organized the March
conference and Durán, along with four other ex-brigade members,
academics, former JFK-era CIA officials and advisors Pierre Salinger and Arthur
Schlesinger, and an actual Kennedy -- Eunice Kennedy Shriver -- met at Havana's
Palace of Conventions with 24 top-ranking Cuban military and civilian officials.
They examined declassified documents from several countries, traded
revelations about how the invasion was planned, executed and repelled, and
analyzed its historical impact.
Not unexpectedly, the Cuban American National Foundation was outraged. In a
press release, CANF President Francisco Hernandez, a brigade member, derided the
conference as a ``shameless propaganda spectacle'' staged by the Castro regime
``and its sympathizers.''
He accused the Americans of ``[walking] all over the memories of many fallen
friends on those beaches'' and said he was ``disappointed but hardly surprised''
that Durán and the others participated, since they had ``long ago changed
their views on what this struggle is all about.''
To Durán, the struggle is about Cubans on the island and Cuban exiles
in the United States finding common ground.
``When you have love for Cuba, it overcomes your personal feelings,'' he
said. ``There is great debate in Washington about whether to maintain the status
quo or liberalize [the U.S.] position. Many of the Republican constituencies
want relations with Cuba.'' Those favoring better relations include powerful
agribusinesses and the pharmaceutical industry.
Durán holds degrees from Louisiana State University and the
University of Miami Law School. He's a former Florida Democratic Party chairman,
unsuccessfully ran for Miami City Commission and was a short-lived Miami-Dade
School Board member. He is divorced, with two sons -- both of whom share his
name -- and two grandchildren. Son Alfredo R. Duran, 39, is president of Latin
E! Entertainment Network.
For Durán, the conference triggered deep emotions. He was surprised
to learn from declassified documents that a long-held piece of conventional
wisdom wasn't true: the rebel army didn't know the place of the exile landing.
``Some people believe they were waiting for us.''
Castro, whom he'd never met, ``looked exceptionally healthy,'' he said. And
he came close to apologizing for the suffocation deaths of eight brigade
prisoners during their transfer to Havana, calling it `` `a regrettable
incident.' It was an admission that this was a terrible, terrible tragedy.''
Alarcon compares U.S. to nazi Germany
From Herald Wire Services. Published Saturday, March 31, 2001
HAVANA -- Cuban National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcón on Friday
described President Bush's nomination of Otto Reich as the top U.S. diplomat for
Latin America as an attempt ``to impose a kind of Third Reich in Latin
America.''
Havana-born Reich, still awaiting Senate confirmation, has drawn criticism
by some for his activities in support of Nicaraguan contra rebels while working
at the State Department during the 1980s.
Reich is not only ``a member of Miami's anti-Cuban mafia,'' Alarcón
said, but also ``a notorious character throughout the Iran-contra operation.''
His appointment presages a policy ``of arrogance and ignorance'' toward Latin
America, the official said.
Lawmakers try to ease way for Castro foes to get funds
By Frank Davies . Fdavies@Herald.Com. Published Friday,
March 30, 2001.
WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan coalition of House members introduced a bill
Thursday designed to make it easier to get financial assistance to opposition
groups in Cuba.
Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, said his bill would
provide ``democracy assistance'' to former political prisoners, activists and
others through direct U.S. aid and the granting of licenses to independent
organizations so they can send money to opposition groups.
Díaz-Balart had a chance to pitch the bill to President Bush on
Thursday at a White House meeting. Díaz-Balart and seven other Republican
members of the House Rules Committee met with Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney.
``The president was receptive,'' Díaz-Balart said. On Cuba issues, he
added, ``we now have a friendly president.''
The bill, the Cuban Internal Opposition Assistance Act, is co-sponsored by
the two other Cuban Americans in the House, Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of
Miami and Democrat Bob Menendez of New Jersey.
The measure has more than 80 co-sponsors, including South Florida Democrats
Carrie Meek, Peter Deutsch and Robert Wexler, and Republican leaders Tom DeLay
and J.C. Watts. Florida Republicans Clay Shaw and Mark Foley also support the
bill.
Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, plans similar
legislation.
Díaz-Balart said the bill ``seeks to make certain that the Cuban
internal opposition is supported by the United States in a similar manner to how
the Reagan-Bush administrations supported the Polish internal opposition during
the 1980s.''
Current law allows an administration to send U.S. aid to dissidents and
opposition groups, but Díaz-Balart complained that the Clinton
administration was reluctant to do that.
``It makes a big difference when the U.S. government gets behind
something,'' Díaz-Balart said. Such aid would ``change the dynamics in
Cuba and encourage and support dissidents who need help.''
In a related development, Ros-Lehtinen met Wednesday with diplomats and
embassy staff from 20 nations, lobbying them to support a resolution condemning
Cuba at a U.N. Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva next month.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 