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The Miami
Herald, April 2, 2002.
Exiles see a Cuban trap in alleged plot to kill Castro
By Juan O. Tamayo. jtamayo@herald.com
PANAMA CITY, Panama - After languishing in jail for 16 months, four Cuban
exiles accused of plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro now believe they were
caught in an elaborate Cuban intelligence trap designed to divert attention from
Castro's own connections to terrorism.
The discovery of a crucial piece of evidence -- the C-4 explosives that were
to be used in the alleged plot -- in a gym bag bearing the logos of the Florida
Marlins and The Miami Herald is considered by them a telltale sign that Castro
was trying to point the finger at Miami exiles.
The exiles' most detailed version yet of the events that landed them in a
Panama jail is contained in a 400-page manuscript in which a man now portrayed
as a Castro agent confided in mid-2000 that Cuba's top spy planned to defect
when Castro visited Panama later that year.
''He will do this only if you pick him up in person,'' the man allegedly
told one of the men arrested, Luis Posada Carriles, because the spy chief knew
that other Miami exile groups were ''under a high grade of infiltration'' by
Cuba's intelligence services.
Posada, 73, Gaspar Jiménez, 65, Guillermo Novo, 61, and Pedro Remón,
56, were detained here Nov. 17, 2000, hours after Castro arrived for a summit
and notified Panamanian authorities of a plot to assassinate him.
''It was a trap,'' Remón acknowledged in an unpublished book he wrote
in prison under the title of ''The Real Terrorist'' -- referring to Castro's
support for foreign subversive and terrorist groups.
TALE OF INTRIGUE
Remón's book denies any murder plot but tells a twisted tale of
intrigue that begins in 1999, with Posada allegedly making covert contacts with
unidentified Cuban military and security officers on the island who were tired
of Castro's rule.
According to Remón, on June 24, 2000, an envoy who called himself
Emilio flew from Havana to El Salvador, where Posada lived in hiding since 1985,
and called him on a cellular telephone whose number was known only to the
''cells'' on the island.
After giving the code words -- ''without country but without lord,'' a Cuban
exile motto from a José Martí poem -- the messenger met Posada the
next day over coffee and doughnuts at San Salvador's Cafeteria Biggest,
according to Remón.
The messenger reported that Intelligence Directorate Chief Gen. Eduardo
Delgado would defect -- but only to Posada -- while accompanying Castro to
Panama for an Ibero-American Summit and reveal all the names of Havana's
infiltrators in Miami.
Jiménez counseled Posada not to go to Panama alone. Jiménez,
Novo and Remón, all U.S. citizens living in Miami, agreed to join Posada
in Panama to help protect him and spirit Delgado to a safe place, according to
Remón.
''Havana manufactured the scheme, and Luis carried it out,'' said a longtime
Posada friend aware of many of his activities.
The friend said he had heard rumors that unknown exiles urged Posada weeks
before the summit to try to kill Castro. Posada agreed to explore the
possibilities and asked for $100,000 in operational funds, but never intended to
carry out the attack, the friend said.
PLAN CANCELED
That version coincides with a Herald report last year that Posada had told a
Panamanian official in a ''private'' prison chat that he had canceled a plan to
kill Castro with a car bomb to avoid killing innocent civilians.
Remón wrote that Posada arrived in Panama Nov. 5, using a false
Salvadoran passport. The three others arrived Nov. 16 by land from Costa Rica,
and they all met later that day in Room 310 at the Royal Suite hotel in the
capital's El Cangrejo neighborhood.
Cuban officials later gave Panamanian prosecutors covertly snapped
photographs of the three men crossing the Costa Rican border, and a video of
Posada, Jiménez and Novo outside their hotel the evening the arrived.
That afternoon, according to Remón, Posada received a call on his
cellular phone from a man who told him to meet him at the Hotel Las Vegas the
next morning, but did not use the right code word. Posada was suspicious and
talked about moving out of the hotel later that night, but in the end decided to
stay, still hoping that Delgado would contact him.
Castro warned Panamanian authorities of the alleged plot shortly after his
arrival at 10 a.m. on Nov. 17, then told a press conference at 3 p.m. that
Posada was on his trail. He made no mention of the other men.
Posada and Jiménez were napping when police burst into their room.
Remón and Novo were returning from buying cold drinks at a nearby
store when they were detained, Remón reported. None of the exiles was
armed.
Two days later, José Manuel Hurtado, a Panamanian chauffeur whom the
men had hired, led police to 17.6 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives stuffed in a
teal and black gym bag with the Herald and Florida Marlins logos.
DIFFERENT VERSIONS
Hurtado initially told police he found the bag in the exiles' rented car
after their arrest and tried to hide it, but later gave two other versions. Remón
claimed the explosives were planted by Cuban agents -- with the logos intended
to point to Miami exiles.
Remón argues that if Castro really believed the exiles were bent on
killing him, the notoriously security-conscious president would not have risked
going to Panama without first tipping off local authorities.
''Its clear, then, that there was a propaganda intention,'' Remón
wrote, not only to overshadow Castro's refusal to sign a condemnation of
terrorism adopted at the summit but to smear the four exiles.
Cuba has accused Posada, a CIA-trained explosives expert, in the 1976
bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people; Posada denies responsibility.
Venezuela has also asked for Posada's extradition for escaping from a prison
there in 1985.
Remón was convicted in 1986 of trying to kill a Cuban diplomat and
bomb a Cuban office in New York. Jiménez was arrested in Mexico in the
1970s on charges of killing a Cuban official but escaped and returned to Miami.
Novo was convicted of perjury for denying that he knew details of the 1976
murder in Washington of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier.
PRESSURING PANAMA
Since the arrests, the Cuban government has kept up a steady drumbeat of
pressures on Panama to extradite Posada -- the request was denied last year --
and all but threatened Panama if the courts do not convict the four.
''Cuba expects these terrorists will be convicted, and the government of
Panama will assume a great international responsibility if it allows those
people to evade justice,'' Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque of Cuba
said last month.
But the evidence is so weak that prosecutors recently recommended dropping
the attempted murder charge and trying the four only for possession of
explosives and conspiracy to commit a crime.
Posada and Jiménez also could face charges of entering the country
with false passports.
Defense lawyer Martín Cruz said a trial expected in four to six
months will probably either clear them or convict only on the lesser charges,
whose maximum jail terms they will have already served.
New Jersey swears in nation's first Cuban-American governor, but term
lasts just 24 hours
TRENTON, New Jersey - (AP) -- Abio Sires became the country's first
Cuban-American governor -- but held the office for only a day.
Gov. James E. McGreevey and both Senate presidents were out of the state
Monday, so the line of succession for acting governor passed to Spires, the
Assembly Speaker.
''I'm not invading Pennsylvania or New York,'' Sires said of his plans for
the day. "I don't intend to spend any money.''
Sires, mindful that New Jersey is predicting a dlrs 5.3 billion shortfall
this fiscal year, said he would only sign a bill if it had no appropriations
attached. By Monday afternoon there had not been any bills to sign.
Sires, a Democrat who emigrated to the United States from Cuba when he was
10 years old, was planning a party Monday night at the governor's mansion for a
handful of staff members. He said it was an honor to become the country's first
Cuban-American acting governor.
Democratic Senate President Richard Codey was scheduled to return Tuesday
and become acting governor. McGreevey was to return Wednesday.
Why hold back? Connect with Cuban people
Jeff Flake. April 2, 2002.
These are excerpts of remarks by U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, a Republican from
Arizona, during the conference on reassessing U.S. policy toward Cuba held at
the Biltmore Hotel last week.
I like the title of this conference -- ''The Time is Now to Re-Assess U.S.
Policy Toward Cuba'' -- and I fully agree. Our country has important interests
in Cuba. We want human rights respected. We want to protect our security. We
want our neighbors to be free, independent and prosperous.
So how do we build a policy that helps the Cuban people and that serves our
national interest, today and into the future?
Today's policy is inadequate. Just look at the assumptions behind it. A
decade ago when the Soviet Union collapsed, Washington assumed that economic
catastrophe alone would bring down socialism in Cuba. It didn't happen.
So in 1992, Congress passed the Cuba Democracy Act, tightening the embargo
in many ways. Sen. Torricelli, the sponsor, said it would ''bring the hammer
down'' on Castro. It didn't happen.
So in 1996, Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, again tightening the
embargo in many ways. The sponsors said this bill would also bring Castro down.
But again, it didn't happen.
Maybe it's time to conclude that economic trouble is not going to force
political change in Cuba.
It's also time to consider the message that the embargo sends. You don't
have to convince a conservative Republican like me that socialism doesn't work.
But we can't embargo an economy without affecting the people who live in it.
And after all this time, I am not comfortable sending a message to the Cuban
people that we aim, as Cuba's Catholic bishops put it, ``to use hunger and want
to pressure civic society to revolt.''
It's also time to debate the travel issue. Right now, we have a travel ban
that doesn't apply in Miami because it's not enforced against Cuban Americans.
I'm glad it doesn't apply here, because we should encourage, not penalize,
family visits and family charity. But I don't want the travel ban to apply to
the rest of America either -- I want it repealed, and let me give you four
reasons.
• Freedom. I believe in personal freedom and limited government.
Regardless of Cuba's form of government, there is no justification for imposing
a Soviet-style bureaucracy on Americans who travel there -- asking them where
they are going, why they are going, who they will see, what their itinerary is,
how much they will spend, etc. No American should be denied the right to see,
first hand, the failure of socialism in Cuba.
• Communication. Our China policy recognizes the value of American
contacts with Chinese citizens in all walks of life. This has long been a
missing element of U.S. policy toward Cuba. Ordinary Americans are our best
ambassadors, and U.S. travelers will unleash a flood of contact with Cubans,
transmitting our nation's ideas and values.
• Small enterprise. Cuba's small entrepreneurs -- especially artists,
taxi drivers, families that run small restaurants or rent rooms in their homes
-- will benefit from U.S. travelers. Their numbers will expand dramatically.
They will gain independence, and their families will have better livelihoods.
• Terrorism. Do you know that our nation's top experts working to break
up global terrorist financial networks are also in charge of enforcing the Cuba
travel ban? Can you believe that we divert these people from al Qaeda to chase
down grandmothers who take bike tours of Cuba? Recently, a man from Washington
state was tracked down and fined for spending 24 hours in Cuba. His purpose for
visiting: to spread his parent's ashes at the site of a church they had built in
the 1950s.
Is this a wise use of limited resources?
Some may argue that revenues from U.S. travelers will ''cast a lifeline'' to
the Cuban government. But this government is not on the brink of collapse -- it
has been in power 42 years.
It is also argued that Cuba, unlike China, has made no significant internal
reforms. But American engagement with China began in 1972 -- before China began
economic reforms in the late 1970s.
Cuba, beginning in 1993, has allowed foreign investment, small-scale
entrepreneurship, incentive-based farm production and free-market sale of farm
produce. Cuba's people know that these limited reforms have worked, and Cuba's
leaders will one day have to decide whether to expand them.
What direction will Cuba's next generation take? None of us know. Maybe they
will opt for a free-market system and a full democracy. Maybe they will change
gradually. It's likely that after 42 years of socialism, they will preserve a
large state apparatus to deliver social services.
As Cubans make these choices, I want them to be exposed to our ideas and
views. And we don't need a big government program to do it, complete with
licenses and AID grants. We need only follow the advice of Pope John Paul II:
``Open the doors to Cuba.''
Finally, as this healthy debate takes place, I want to encourage the Bush
administration to open its doors to the full range of Cuban-American opinion.
The president has already heard from one side. He should also hear from the
people in this room -- people who travel to Cuba, know Cuba and who call for
greater engagement.
The time to connect with the Cuban people is now. The time to help them,
visit them, learn from them, listen to them -- and in some cases, argue with
them -- that time is right now. Why hold back?
If we believe in freedom and we want our ideas to count, then we must free
all Americans to state those ideas. In person. In Cuba. These are not Democratic
ideas or Republican ideas. These are American ideas, as old as the Declaration
of Independence, as young as our newest immigrant.
And with your help, these ideas are going to prevail, and we will have a
policy that fits our values and serves the long-term interests of the people of
both of these great countries. | 
