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June 22, 2001

You can’t trust the FBI

• Say U.S senators requesting independent investigation
• Director of organization’s Miami branch receives CANF funds

BY RAISA PAGES  (Granma International staff writer)

A group of U.S. senators recently requested an independent investigation into the FBI, as they believe the organization can no longer be trusted. However, the report issued by that organization on the Cubans found guilty for alleged spying in Miami, when what they were really doing was alerting Cuba about terrorist actions, was accepted without question.

In a roundtable discussion attended by Fidel Castro on Thursday, June 21, Cuban television commentator Eduardo Dimas stated that Héctor Pesquera, the current head of the FBI in Miami, has links with the CANF and receives money from that organization.

Dimas also reported that, "purely by coincidence," that man was in Puerto Rico when the terrorists who tried to assassinate Fidel at the Ibero-American Summit in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, were released.

The media barrage designed to whip up the "Cuban spy syndrome," at a time when the terrorist Cuban American National Foundation’s influence in the U.S. Congress was waning, was also analyzed by the panel in Havana.

A 1998 Pentagon report was bitterly received by the Miami mafia, because it did not suit their interests in presenting Cuba as a threat to the United States. CANF’s other problem was that it had recently been hit by the death of Jorge Mas Canosa.

Jorge Mas Santos, Mas Canosa’s son, did not possess the same leadership qualities as his father and the CANF had also received a body blow in the shape of well-known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles’ declarations to The New York Times, admitting the organization’s responsibility for the explosion on the Cubana Airlines plane off the coast of Barbados in 1976.

Although Posada Carriles later retracted his confessions on a television show, times had become hard for the Miami mafia. Radio Havana Cuba journalist Bárbara Betancourt commented that the spy show was a blessing for the CANF, at a moment when they were trying to justify the robbery of Cuban funds from telephone calls to Havana, currently frozen in the United States.

 

‘EL NUEVO HERALD’ MAKES A FUSS ABOUT NOTHING

September 12, 1998, saw the execution of an FBI operation against the alleged "network of Cuban spies," they were initially accused of obtaining information on military facilities, according to El Nuevo Herald, the mouthpiece for the anti-Cuban mafia, a day after the arrest of the 10 alleged guilty suspects.

They tried to exaggerate and twist the case, presenting it as a national security issue. The fallacious way the incident was treated in El Nuevo Herald aimed to persuade its readership that the alleged Cuban spies were planning to sabotage U.S. planes and hangars in Florida.

This Miami paper took on the job of spreading the idea that they were a powerful network with sophisticated equipment when in fact testimonies from neighbors of the Cuban prisoners suggested they led humble lives and behaved correctly.

Clouded in a huge media fuss, the trial of the 10 Cubans was set for October 2, 1998, and they were refused bail. Raúl Fernández, head of the FBI operation that arrested them, immediately released an 18-page report which, despite its size, was published in full by El Nuevo Herald, an unusual move considering they would normally summarize such a document. The report justified charges that they were gathering information against a foreign government, explained Cuban journalist Renato Recio during the roundtable discussion.

According to reporter Eduardo Dimas, in order to give the impression that the members of the alleged spy network were international assassins, in November 1998 the five Cubans were charged with the deaths of the four pilots aboard the light aircrafts belonging to the terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue, shot down for violating Cuban airspace.

This contrived farce against Cuba was the perfect excuse to justify the robbery of funds from telephone calls to Cuba that have accumulated in the United States, and use them as compensation for the families of the dead pilots, under the authorization of Judge Laurence King.

In this assault on Cuba, three Cuban diplomats were also accused of spying and were expelled from their mission in New York, good news for the promoters of anti-Cuba hysteria in Miami.

The Cuban spy syndrome continues to inundate press agencies and it has gotten to the point where they are claiming the existence of 600 Cuban agents in the United States. But this psychotic atmosphere is nothing new. The recipe is old and the truth will win out within international public opinion.

--Accused of spying for defending their country from the Miami mafia’s terrorism
June 21, 2001
THE first of a series of roundtable broadcasts, presenting information on the case of the five Cubans held prisoner and unjustly charged with spying in the United States, made clear the reasons justifying those young men’s behavior.
--
René Gonzalez’s father was separated from his son for 11 years
June 29, 2001
ON the telephone he would assure his father: "I’m fine, old man, no problems." On the island they would doubt him and say: "he’s having us on..."
--The only information of interest to us from the United States is on the acts of terrorism against Cuba, organized and financed there
Two years and eight months before the events currently under study with regard to the monstrous injustice committed against five Cuban patriots, Fidel, during an October 19, 1998 interview with CNN in Portugal,...

 

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