Posted at 6:32 a.m. EST Wednesday, February 14, 2001 in the
Miami Herald.
Former Southcom chief in Cuba
By Carol Rosenberg . crosenberg@herald.com
Just months ago, Marine Gen. Charles E. Wilhelm ran Pentagon operations for
Latin America as chief of the Southern Command and was prohibited from contact
with the Cuban military.
Tuesday, citizen Wilhelm, 58, was in Havana on a fact-finding tour sponsored
by the Washington, D.C., Center for Defense Information, a private,
not-for-profit think-tank that specializes in security issues.
"They're going down to talk to Cuban military. This is similar to trips
that we have made before, albeit without someone of Gen. Wilhelm's stature,''
said retired Army Col. Dan Smith, a Vietnam veteran and director of research at
the center.
Wilhelm is the second top U.S. military officer who once had responsibility
for Cuba to visit the island after taking off his uniform. In 1998, retired U.S.
Marine Gen. Jack Sheehan, whose turf included Cuba as commander in chief of the
Atlantic Command, met with both Fidel and Raúl Castro and caused a stir
by urging closer relations between the United States and Cuba.
Wilhelm, who took over Southcom after oversight of Cuba was transferred to
it, has made no similar public statements. He was not available for comment
Tuesday.
Smith said the center, whose staff includes a retired rear admiral and other
former senior U.S. officers, advocates military-to-military contacts between the
U.S. and Cuba. He did not have specifics on the delegation's itinerary.
"We're in favor of lifting the embargo and the restrictions that have
been placed on Cuba,'' Smith said. "Cuba is not a threat to the United
States or anybody else.''
Cuban-U.S. military contacts are rare.
The captain in command of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay periodically
meets a Cuban general at the gate between U.S. controlled territory and Cuba
proper, but mostly on migration and marine matters.
Wilhelm, a 37-year career Marine, retired to suburban Virginia in September.
He recently said he still has interest in returning to South Florida.
Besides dismantling Southcom's former headquarters in Panama and supervising
its move to Miami, Wilhelm functioned as a sort of U.S. envoy to Latin American
and Caribbean nations, delivering both strategic and goodwill aid.
On a recent visit here, for a University of Miami conference on the U.S. aid
program to Colombia, he said he was consulting with two Washington, D.C.-area
businesses, work that recently took him to Colombia and a meeting with President
Andres Pastrana.
A Southcom spokesman said Tuesday that he did not know whether Wilhelm had
told Southcom about the trip. He did, however, notify the State Department, got
briefed and was expected to meet diplomats at the U.S. Interests Section in
Havana during this week's trip.
"Retired Gen. Charles Wilhelm is a private American citizen on a
private trip to Cuba. Period,'' a State Department statement said Tuesday.
A department official said a retired two-star general was also on the trip,
which was licensed by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets
Control.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Panama Ambler Moss of the University of Miami's
North/South Center said he has long supported such exchanges.
"I've always thought that the Cuban military, quite possibly someday --
like Polish, Hungarian and Czech counterparts who took off their Red Star and
marched into NATO -- are a pragmatic lot who may be thinking about their
future,'' he said.
Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation,
countered that Wilhelm's sponsor was wrong in asserting that Cuba was no threat.
"I don't have a problem with them meeting,'' he said of the retired
general's contact with Cuban military officials. "The problem is when they
come back and say they aren't a threat. We know they are an espionage threat. We
know that they are a drug threat. We know they are a terrorist threat. And we
know they're an immigration threat.''
He specifically cited the espionage trial of the so-called Cuban Wasp
Network in Miami federal court, where evidence suggests the alleged spies'
Havana handlers ordered them to penetrate Southcom during Wilhelm's tenure.
Senior U.S. military officials have privately expressed frustration with the
ban on contacts with the Cuban military, saying soldiers on opposing sides
should attempt to keep lines of communication open.
An earlier Southcom commander, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who later
became President Clinton's so-called drug czar, has also advocated closer
cooperation between the U.S. and Cuban officers on drug interdiction issues.
"Cuba will not remain a collapsing Communist dictatorship with a goofy
economic system much longer,'' McCaffrey said in May 1999. "Eventually it
is going to be another economic center in the hemisphere, so we clearly don't
want international drug crime dominating Cuba.''
Spy case judge to hear gag order issue
By Alfonso Chardy . achardy@herald.com
U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard will hold a hearing today to decide whether
Brothers to the Rescue leader José Basulto, witness in an ongoing Cuban
spy trial, violated a court gag order by announcing plans to fly over the ocean
where Cuban MiGs shot down two Brothers planes five years ago.
The Feb. 24, 1996, shoot-down is at the heart of the U.S. government's case
against five defendants accused of trying to infiltrate U.S. military
installations and Cuban exile organizations in South Florida.
Lead defendant Gerardo Hernández is specifically charged with
conspiracy to commit murder by allegedly giving Cuba the flight plan of the
Brothers planes involved in the fateful episode.
Basulto, who plans to be at today's hearing, piloted one of the three planes
but survived because his aircraft was not shot down.
Basulto told The Herald last week that his plan to overfly the shoot-down
site Feb. 24 is aimed at commemorating the four people aboard the downed planes
-- not to interfere with the spy trial. He plans to drop anti-Castro leaflets at
the site, which he called Martyrs' Point.
But Paul McKenna, Hernández's defense attorney, asked Lenard to
enforce her earlier ruling ordering witnesses not to discuss the case in the
media. In court papers, McKenna suggests that Lenard should halt the flyover.
"This sensationalistic grandstanding to the mass media in direct
contravention of this court's gag order must be immediately addressed and halted
in order to prevent any future prejudice to the defendants in their attempt to
receive a fair trial,'' McKenna wrote in a court motion. "The fact that Mr.
Basulto would at this juncture propose another Cuba leaflet drop and announce
same to the mass media and further condemn the government of Cuba and request
further indictments shows his utter disregard for this court's gag order.''
In response, Basulto's lawyers, Sofia Powell-Cosio and Silvia B. Piñera-Vazquez,
asked Lenard to deny McKenna's motion, saying Basulto's "right of free
expression and right of assembly'' must be protected.
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