U.S. ups funds for Cuba opposition
Published Apr 6, 2005 4:16 PM
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
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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