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that Cold War drivel, surely. Anyone who has been awake, and conscious is very likely aware that Cubans do leave their country frequently. I have posted articles here over a well known situation dominating the news in Miami constantly a couple of years ago when a Cuban woman who came to the States, arriving at the Miami International Airport with her husband learned he was leaving her the moment they got off the plane, leaving her with her son and daughter. She worked in Miami for a time, then became unhappy because she was having a hard time supporting herself and children, and started talking about returning. Miami Cubans with whom she worked started harrassing her when she talked about wanting to go home. It escalated, and then they contacted the government and somehow managed to get her welfare, food stamps, US taxpayer-financed Section 8 housing terminated, leaving her absolutely helpless, and she moved to Texas where she tried to kill herself. Her daughter called the cops who came and removed the children from her home, sent her to a hospital, returned the children to Miami where a prominant Miami figure, Joe Cubas and his wife started trying to adopt the daughter. When the mother was released from the hospital she told authorities she wanted her daughter to return to Cuba to live with the child's biological father. He came to the US to get the daughter, and was forced to wait for ages while the government in Miami held trials, dragging out the case, forcing the father to remain a long time. The Cuban community tried to bribe him to move to Miami (just as they did with Juan Miguel Gonzalez, father of the child Elian Gonzalez), offering him a very large amount of money, and he declined, just as Juan Miguel did. The court finally decided to allow the father to take the girl some of the time until he became reacquainted with her, for the next year, living still in Miami, then to take her to back to Cuba, while leaving allowance for her to also spend time occassionally with the Cubases. http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/0bn9cjT1Zpere/610x.jpg
AP Photo 30 months ago
Joe Cubas, left, and Rafael Izquierdo greet each other before entering a court room at the Dade County Courthouse Thursday, Sept. 27, 2007 in Miami. Izquierdo, the father of a 5-year-old Cuban girl at the center of an international custody dispute, whose current foster father is Cubas, should get her back, because he did not abandon or neglect the child, a judge ruled Thursday.
~~~~~~~
(The child's father is the younger man, Cubas is a man who is prominent, popular in Miami, having chased Cuban athletes down around the world, and made contracts with them, bringing them to the US to play baseball here. He was sued by these same athletes when they discovered he was stealing a lot of their money from them. He was banned from associating himself with baseball professionally forever after that, and started selling real estate in Miami. He is popular in Miami for spiriting the athletes away from their country to make a big score politically for the "exiles.")
~~~~~~~People in Miami are very well aware of the conditions surrounding this case, if they were conscious during the time of the trial. Here are links which discuss the Brothers to the Rescue airplane shot down after invading Cuban airspace, which is your first link. They will be useful for people who are not aware of the elements of this pathetic story: Nov 29, 2009 7:05 pm US/Eastern I-Team: Docs Show Cuban Shoot Down Was Expected
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
For more than a decade the mystery surrounding the secrets behind the shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue airplanes by Cuban military jets has remained elusive. To find answers to that mystery, the CBS4 I-Team spent a year digging through once-top secret documents about the shoot down.
In those documents as well as interviews with nearly one dozen major players in the event, the I-Team discovered details that raise questions about whether the U.S. government might have prevented it had someone in Washington taken more decisive action.
The I-Team's investigation raises serious questions about the White House's role in the shootdown.
~snip~
Richard Nuccio served as the top advisor on Cuba to President Bill Clinton. Nuccio now serves as Director of the Civitas International Program at the Center for Civic Education in Calabasas, California.
Nuccio says after the "wet foot/dry foot" policy was put in place, the Brothers to the Rescue actions became more provocative and more political.
"They (Brothers to the Rescue) started to redefine their mission as one of not helping innocent people at risks for their lives but to carry out a political agenda of harassing and threatening the Cuban government by over flights, dropping leaflets (from the air into Cuba)," Richard Nuccio told the I-Team.
That created tensions which were discussed in secret talks and cables between Havana and Washington in 1994, 1995 and 1996.
~snip~
The I-Team has discovered in the once secret documents further proof that shows clear warnings of the shootdown and suggests it might have been prevented by the US government.
For nearly a year, the I-Team dug through thousands of e-mails, diplomatic memos, letters and reports. The I-Team read through page after page of documents which filled two large boxes, some once classified, but declassified at our request, show that for a year and a half before the shootdown, there were urgent secret talks between the Clinton administration and officials in Havana. They were talking about the Brothers to the Rescue flights.
"There had been secret negotiations a year prior to the time I became special advisor for Cuba," said Nuccio.
"It was a slow motion crisis," said Dr. Brian Latell.
University of Miami Professor Dr. Brian Latell is one of the leading American authorities on US Cuba relations and Cuban history.
"The Brothers to the Rescue missions that were flying toward Cuba and around Cuba repeatedly, those missions were exacerbating the situation," said Dr. Latell.
"The bilateral situation was that the Cuban government had been protesting those intrusions, quite often in diplomatic sessions," said Dr. Latell.
"They would call in our diplomats into session over there in Havana; they would make a protest, in diplomatic language. They were polite, direct, firm, not angry or confrontational but the message was clear-these flights are interfering with Cuban air space," said Dr. Latell.
At the I-Team's request Dr. Latell reviewed the entire two boxes of government documents, including the once classified documents, relating to the shootdown.
"Not all the flights did (violate the airspace), Dr. Latell said. "Not all the flights, but many did and we knew that in the US. There were American diplomats, I've heard, in Havana who actually during the American diplomatic mission, they were able on different occasions where they could hear the Brothers to the Rescue there (in Havana)," said Dr. Latell.
"They (the US diplomats in Havana) would hear the Brothers to the Rescue planes, they would look up and there they (the planes) were. It was visible and audible from the ground even from the American diplomatic mission," said Dr. Latell.
...
"The Cuban government had been protesting the flights for at least 17 to 18 months prior to the shootdown," said Dr. Latell.
One document from an International Manager to her superiors at the FAA dated January 22, 1996, stands out. The memo was from Cecilia Capestany, an International Affairs analysis at the FAA, to her superior at the FAA's Miami flight standards district office, Michael C. Thomas. Thomas then forwarded the memo to Charles J Smith, Jr. at the FAA.
The document reads in part. "Worst case scenario is that one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes and the FAA better have all its ducks in a row."
~snip~
Richard Nuccio says the Clinton Administration did try to informally warn the Brothers to the Rescue leaders numerous times months before the shootdown but politics got in the way.
"We repeatedly warned brothers to the rescue. To the point that Brothers to the Rescue complained to their constituents members of congress, the Cuban-Americans, that we were persecuting them," Richard Nuccio said.
The government documents reviewed by the I-Team also show that for nearly a year before the shootdown, the Federal Aviation Administration tried to take away Jose Basulto's pilot's license because he had flown over Cuba.
One FAA memo reads quote "this latest over flight can only be seen as further taunting of the Cuban Government. State is increasingly concerned about Cuban reactions..."
You can read a copy of that FAA memo by clicking here.
The I-Team showed the memo to Jose Basulto who insisted he'd never seen it until we showed it to him.
But for whatever reason, the FAA didn't act until it was too late.
"We suspended Basulto's pilot's license the day the shootdown occurred. Basulto was in the cockpit of an airplane with a suspended license," said Richard Nuccio.
http://cbs4.com/iteam/brothers.rescue.cuba.2.1337438.html
~~~~~~~
Keeping things in perspective: Cuba and the question of
international terrorism
“For almost 40 years, we have isolated Cuba on the assumption that the tiny island is a center of terrorism in
the hemisphere, and year after year we gain new evidence that it is the U.S. that has terrorized Cuba and not
the other way around.”—Robert Scheer, The Los Angeles Times, July 14, 19981
By Anya K. Landau and Wayne S. Smith
November 20, 2001Page 10:
The Downing of the Brothers to the Rescue Planes
There are those in Miami, and a few of their
allies in the U.S. Congress, who maintain that the
shootdown of the two Brothers to the Rescue planes
in the straits of Florida in February of 1996 was an
act of terrorism on the part of the Cuban government
which constitutes sufficient grounds for labeling
Cuba a terrorist state.
The shootdown was reprehensible. The Cuban
government could have—and ought to have—
warned the planes off or forced them down. It might
then have taken the whole issue to the UN Security
Council, pointing out that the failure of the U.S.
government to halt these illegal
flights was creating a dangerous
situation in the Straits of Florida
and asking the Security Council
to take cognizance. It might then
have avoided taking human lives
and have had world public
opinion on its side.
But if we are to call the
shootdown a terrorist act, this
would imply it took place without provocation or
warning. But the fact is that Brothers to the Rescue
planes had been penetrating Cuban airspace and
overflying the island itself for months; the FAA
began investigating Jose Basulto’s group in August
of 1995.107 From July 7 to October 13, 1995 alone,
the FAA and the State Department warned Brothers
to the Rescue at least seven times in public and
private statetements that Cuba would defend its
boundaries against any intruders.108 Cuba, in
response to the Brothers’ continuing incursions into
its airspace, had repeatedly warned that, “Any boats
from abroad and any aircraft can be downed.”109
On two separate occasions in January of 1996,
Brothers to the Rescue overflew Havana at low
altitude dropping leaflets. It was at that point that the
Cuban government lost patience and issued a
warning that the next time these planes came into
Cuban airspace they would be shot down. These
warnings were repeated several times publicly and in
private conversations with U.S. officials.110
In a meeting with Fidel Castro that same month,
Hill staffers who were part of a CIP delegation to
Cuba asked about the overflights. When they
suggested that the offending planes were unarmed,
Castro insisted that they could not be certain the
planes were unarmed. Planes piloted by exiles from
Miami had dropped incendiary devices and
explosives over Cuban territory in past years, and
they might do so again. Castro emphasized that the
first duty of any government was to defend the
national territory and that Cuba would defend its
own. Cuba had warned the Brothers to the Rescue
planes to stay away. If they did not, Castro
maintained, Cuba would act accordingly.111
As Cuba historian Jane Franklin has put it,
“Nobody from a foreign country would dare fly into
U.S. airspace to drop leaflets over Washington.
NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense)
would be ready for a shootdown.”112
FAA official Charles H. Smith, testified (during
the Miami trial of five Cuban spies who infiltrated
exile organizations—see
intelligence operations
below) that he had
warned Basulto even
before his first leafleting
flight in 1995—seven
months before the
shootdown—that Cuba “might force him to land or
shoot him down.” Basulto’s response to the official
was, “Chuck, you know I always play by the rules,
but you must understand I have a mission in life to
perform.”113
Basulto, a CIA-trained exile, began that mission
by committing acts of sabotage in Cuba in the early
1960’s.The Miami Herald reported in March that
Basulto testified that “he refused to help the U.S.
government track illegal arms shipments to Cuba
because he broadly supports Cuban exile groups
bent on overthrowing Fidel Castro violently.”114 The
Herald noted this contradicted Basulto’s claim that
he follows the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr.
and Mohandas Gandhi.115
Aviation expert Charles Leonard testified that
Basulto and other Brothers pilots had repeatedly
flown into Cuba airspace to drop anti-government
leaflets. Leonard also acknowledged that Cuba had
repeatedly warned the government of the United
States that planes that continued to undertake
“provocative” flights might be shot down.116 The
U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization
records also confirmed that Havana had issued these
warnings. Leonard further acknowledged that the
United States had indeed passed these warnings on
to Basulto.117
An internal FAA communication revealed that
the U.S. State Department had warned that, “it
would not be unlikely that the
attempt an unauthorized flight into Cuban airspace
tomorrow….State has also indicated that the
Government of Cuba would be less likely to show
restraint this
time around.”118
On the morning of the shootdown, the planes
were warned by Havana tower. They were told they
had entered the Cuban defense zone, which had been
activated, and that they should turn back. They
ignored multiple warnings, and Basulto told Cuban
air-traffic control that he had the “right” as a “free
Cuban” to be in the area.119
U.S. radar indicated that only one of the three
planes had entered Cuban airspace at the time of the
shootdown.120 The two
that were brought down
were still over
international waters.
Cuba maintains that all
three were in Cuban
airspace. Interestingly,
Basulto's plane was the only one all sides agree was
in Cuban airspace, yet his was the only one not shot
down.
The Cubans should not have shot the planes
down, but it was not an act of terrorism; rather, the
incident would not have occurred if not for the
incredible imprudence and repeated provocations on
the part of Jose Basulto, who led his pilots toward
the Cuban coast—despite urgent warnings to turn
back.
University of Miami political scientist Max
Castro agreed:
In the months prior to the attack, Brothers to the Rescue leader
Jose Basulto had carried out a series of incursions into Cuban air
space clearly intended to taunt, humiliate, embarrass and
demoralize the regime, especially the military.
what had been an organization engaged in an essentially
humanitarian mission into a political weapon aimed at the
Cuban regime playing with fire -- and with
people's lives.121
According to The Miami Herald, even family
members of the fliers who were killed have blamed
Basulto for the death of their loved ones. "I don't
talk to him,'' Mirta Costa, mother of dead flier Carlos
Costa, said recently.122
"If the Brothers were really saving lives, I would
support that facet," said Maggie Khuly, whose
brother, Armando Alejandre, Jr., was a crewmember
in one of the downed Brothers to the Rescue planes.
"They're really not doing that anymore, and I
certainly do not support their political activities."
More:
http://www.ciponline.org/cuba/ipr/keepingthingsinperspective.pdf |
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