What's outrageous in Miami? Journalist Tim Padgett's column confusing a national security threat with cultural insensitivity Jesse Scheckner

"Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak." - Mohandas Gandhi

Officials from state terror sponsors shouldn't be given tours of secure facilities

 

WLRN Americas Editor Tim Padgett's latest column "What's outrageous in Miami is the outrage — and TSA's Cuba optics" is an example of a lack of seriousness.

 Jesse Scheckner writing in Florida Politics on the visit of Cuban officials to Miami International airport on May 20th provided important context: "The tour also happened just under five years after reportedly leaked Cuban intelligence showed that spies at MIA had stolen security codes and other confidential information."

There are also a number of reasons why the United States, or any sane country for that instance, would think twice about "cooperating" with the Cuban dictatorship in the fight against terror [or for that matter against drug trafficking].

Consider the following omitted by Mr. Padgett about the Cuban government currently in power.

The dictatorship in Cuba led by the Castro brothers came to power through a campaign of urban terrorism carried out by the July 26th Movement in the 1950s against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.  

 One of nine bombs placed in Havana by Fidel Castro's July 26 movement in El Collar store on Aguila St. in Aug 1957

Throughout the 1950s, Castro's July 26th Movement carried out multiple bombings terrorizing and killing Cuban civilians. 

Fidel Castro ordered the burning of Cuban sugar mills, warehouses, busses, and factories. He also ordered bombings of stores, theaters, nightclubs, and clinics around the island as part of the revolution against the Batista dictatorship. In 2015, the Office of Publications of Cuba's Council of State produced a four-volume chronology titled "We shall fight until the end" [Lucharemos Hasta el Final].

According to the 1958 volume, in May of that year "electric transformers that provided electricity to Santiago de Cuba, El Cobre and Contramaestre were blown up [by Castros' forces] leaving important urban areas without electricity ...". In Havana, a  member of Castro's 26 of July Movement is killed when he was "surprised setting up a bomb."  In "Santiago de Cuba,  two rebels fired against a government soldier in the intersection of Trocha and Corona streets. The soldier was seriously wounded." 

Two rebels set on fire furniture store' La Caridad". In "Ramon de las Yaguas neighborhood" in Oriente province "an activist from a government political party (PURS) is murdered." A revolutionary died when a bomb he was placing in front of a movie theater in Marianao (Havana province) went off.  And earlier this month a town near Santiago was left without electricity due to sabotage carried by rebel forces.  

These are some of the terrorist attacks carried out during the month of May 1958. The number of such crimes which took place during 1955,1956,1957 and 1958 were chronicled in 2015 by the Office of Publications of Cuba's Council of State. The many innocent victims and millions of property loses demonstrate without a doubt the mendacity of Fidel Castro's claim that "the Cuban revolution never engaged in terrorism."    

Raul Castro, considered by some as ‘the father’ of the modern crime of skyjacking, plotted several skyjackings. One skyjacking resulted in the deaths of 17 civilians on November 1, 1958.

Once the Castro brothers took power, and consolidated their rule through a campaign of revolutionary terror that included mass executions, they turned their attention to international terrorism, and promoting it as a necessary tactic for revolutionaries.

Castroism views terrorism as a legitimate tactic to advance its objectives. Havana published the "Mini Manual of the Urban Guerilla" by Carlos Marighela. Translated into many languages, it contains a chapter on terrorism that states: "Terrorism is a weapon the revolutionary can never relinquish."

 

The Castro brothers created a terrorist international.  

The Tricontinental Conference held in Havana from January 3-16, 1966, and the creation of Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAL) sought to support terrorist groups worldwide. “Castro insisted that ‘bullets not ballots’ was the way to achieve power.”  He maintained “‘conditions exist[ed] for an armed revolutionary struggle.’

Carlos the Jackal trained in Cuba.

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (age 17)  attended the 1966 Conference. Afterwards, Ilyich spent the summer at Camp Matanzas, a guerrilla warfare school run by the Cuban DGI.  Following a string of terrorist attacks, he picked the alias “Carlos. France expelled three high‐ranking Cuban diplomats on July 10, 1975. ”The Cubans, according to the French Interior  Ministry, were “constant visitors” to the Paris hideout of Carlos”

 

"In the Arab world some 3,000 [Cuban advisers could] be found in Libya and Algeria, among other things training terrorists" in 1988. Havana today collaborates with Hamas and other Middle East terrorists groups.

 

Concern about Cuban diplomats touring security facilities at an American airport is not an example of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but common sense. 

Killing Americans in New York City. 

 

Aftermath of bombing in Fraunces Tavern in 1975 that killed four.

The Puerto Rican terrorist group, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, (FALN) carried out more than 130 bombings.  The FALN is responsible for:

 

•  the 1975 explosion at Fraunces Tavern, killing four and wounding 63 others. 

• A bombing spree in New York City in August 1977 that killed one, injured six, and forced the evacuation of 100,000 office workers; 

• and the purposeful targeting and maiming of four police officers. 

FALN was started in the mid-1960s and received advanced training in Cuba.

Frank Connor killed in Frances Tauvern by Cuban trained terrorists

Samuel T. Frances in his 1979 essay “Latin American Terrorism: The Cuban Connection” published by The Heritage Foundation found that "[a]lmost every significant Latin American terrorist group of left-wing orientation has had or has today links with Cuba.”  

Cuba was placed on the list of state terror sponsors on March 1, 1982. 

 

The US State Department confirmed Havana was using a narcotics ring to funnel arms and cash to the Colombian terrorist group M-19. Three years later on November 6, 1985, M-19 members stormed Colombia’s Palace of Justice. This attack led to many hostages killed, including 11 of the Colombian supreme court’s 25 justices. It is a perverse irony that the election of former M-19 terrorist Gustavo Petro to the Colombian presidency, and his subsequent request to rescind extradition requests for ELN guerillas housed by Cuba for a 2019 terrorist attack is part of the reason that the State Department is now saying that Havana is fully cooperating in anti-terrorism efforts.

The Cuban dictatorship has carried out acts of state terrorism against Cuban nationals including killing dozens of men, women, and children on July 13, 1994. Fidel Castro, in the case of the "13 de marzo" tugboat massacre, then defended and celebrated the men responsible for the massacre declaring their actions to be "exemplary, there's no denying it." 

Spy network plots murder of Americans in coordinated attack.  

The WASP Network (La Red Avispa) targeted U.S. military facilities, planned to smuggle arms and explosives into the U.S.,among other active measures. Havana carried out Operation Scorpion, an act of state terrorism using its WASP spy network in the United States that killed four in international airspace on February 24, 1996.

 

10 captured members of the WASP spy network.

The Castro regime's embrace of terrorism has caused unexpected blowback for the dictatorship. According to Havana, the October 6, 1976 bombing of Cubana airlines flight 455 that caused the deaths of 73 passengers was the work of two Cuban exile terrorists. 

Mr. Padgett ends his column citing this act of terrorism as follows.

"Still, all those outraged Miami politicos who are sure TSA exposed MIA to the DGI (Cuba’s spy service) might themselves remember Cuba also has aviation security concerns. It has ever since Cuban exile terrorists carried out the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner that killed all 73 people onboard. That, too, was an outrage."

Yes it is, but what both he and the Cuban dictatorship omit is that the two Cuban exiles credited for the terrorist attack had first engaged in terrorism for the Castro brothers as members of the July 26th Movement in their struggle against Batista, and turned against the Castros when they imposed a new dictatorship, betraying their promises of a democratic revolution.

73 passengers on Cubana airlines flight 455 killed on 10/6/76

Padgett also viewed as "good policy" the Biden Administration’s "move a few years ago to take Colombia’s defunct Marxist guerrilla army, the FARC, off the U.S.’s terrorist list" in 2021. Yet so-called "FARC dissidents" continue to carry out terrorist attacks in Colombia in 2024.  

Hopefully, the Biden Administration hasn't given FARC terrorists tours of airport and port security around the United States like they have Cuban officials. This is not a question of slighting an ethnic group, or PTSD, but a question of national security.

Thankfully others in the media have taken this matter more seriously.

Cuba Independence Day 2023: A reflection on the first 467 years [ 1492 - 1959 ]

  Before the arrival of the totalitarian darkness

Independence Day in Havana, Cuba on May 20, 1902

One hundred and twenty two years ago today at noon the flag of the United States was brought down and the Cuban flag raised over Havana as Cuba became an independent republic. However, when looking at Cuba one should look back over the first 467 years [1492 - 1959] and where it is situated today to gain greater understanding of the unfolding tragedy.

Cuba is just 90 miles south of the United States with a population of approximately 11 million people. It is 780 miles long and has a land area of 40,369 square miles and is the largest island in the Caribbean and 17th-largest island in the world by land area.

Cuba seen from space.

Columbus’s second stop in the New World was on October 28, 1492 when he landed in Cuba. (The first place he landed on October 12 was the Bahamas). Cuba was a Spanish colony from Columbus’s landing in 1492 until 1898 when Spain lost Cuba in the Spanish-American War.

President Tomas Estrada de Palma

Cubans engaged in two protracted wars of independence. The first was the 10 Years War that took place between 1868 and 1878 and the second took place between 1895 and 1898 ending with U.S. intervention and a 4-year occupation that ended on May 20, 1902. Cuba's first president was a Cuban exile named Tomas Estrada de Palma.

Future first Cuban president Tomas Estrada de Palma travels to Havana

There are many important figures and entities that emerge in the 19th century but for the sake of brevity will mention Father Felix Varela, Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo, Maximo Gomez and the Bacardi family.

Father Varela was a catholic priest who is said to “have taught the Cubans how to think” and entertained ideas of independence that led to his exile to the United States. 

Antonio Maceo and Maximo Gomez were Cuban generals that played important roles in both wars of independence. Antonio Maceo was of a mixed racial background: part Spanish and part African.

Maximo Gomez, was an experienced military man of Dominican origin who oversaw the overall military campaign in the second war of independence and of the three previously mentioned was the only one who survived the war to see the arrival of the Republic.

José Martí and Antonio Maceo

Jose Marti was a journalist, poet and revolutionary who organized and advocated for the 1895 war of independence and spent most of his adult life exiled in the United States in New York City.

The Bacardi family, began their world famous Rum business in Santiago de Cuba. Don Facundo Bacardí Massó and Don Emilio Bacardi founded Bacardi Limited on February 4, 1862.

Emilio Bacardi Lay, son of one of the two founders of Bacardi, Don Emilio Bacardi, "was a field officer for Gen. Antonio Maceo in 1895 during the invasion of Cuba by independence forces, and reached the rank of colonel by the age of 22," according to his obituary in The New York Times on October 16, 1972 when he died at the age of 95 in exile in Miami. 

Emilio Bacardi Lay

The family would also play an important role in civic life in Cuba, especially Santiago over the 20th century, and were constant opponents of dictatorship, political corruption and remained ardent Cuban nationalists over several generations.

Forced into exile by the Castro regime the Bacardi family has maintained the traditions of the Cuban Republic celebrating independence day, carrying on the family business and continuing the fight for a free Cuba.

The beginning of the Cuban republic on May 20, 1902 had an asterisk – The Platt Amendment: which allowed the United States to intervene in Cuban affairs if U.S. interests were threatened. This Amendment was gotten rid of in 1933 but left a bad taste in the mouth of Cuban nationalists.

Between 1902 and 1952 Cuba progressed socially and economically but faced challenges on the political front. For example in the late 1920s Gerardo Machado, the democratically elected president did not want to leave power becoming a dictator. He was driven from office and into exile in 1933 by a general strike. 

This was followed by a revolution led by university students and enlisted men in what became known as the sergeants revolt.  

During this period labor unions made great strides for worker's rights in Cuba, especially after the ousting of President Gerardo Machado in 1933.  

Ramon Grau San Martin's provisional government marked a before and after in Cuban history. Between October and December of 1933, it issued a first package of popular and nationalist measures that strengthened labor rights in Cuba.

1. Created the Ministry of Labor, since there was no body specifically in charge of labor matters.
2. Established employer liability for accidents; he suspended the evictions of tenants and canceled 50% of the taxes and contributions not paid in due time.
3. Established the eight-hour work day and the right to unionize. He promulgated the Labor Nationalization Law that established the obligation that 50% of the workers and employees had to be native Cubans.

Labor legislation passed in 1938 guaranteed Cuban workers' additional rights: 

1.  A minimum wage; 
2. Pensions that assumed a constitutional character;
3. Creation of the Central of Workers of Cuba Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC in Spanish) 

In 1940 all the political tendencies in Cuba met to draft what became known as the 1940 Constitution and a presidential election was held and Fulgencio Batista elected. He served out his term as president from 1940 to 1944. Due to a clause in the new Constitution he was unable to run for re-election. Cuba's 1940 Constitution further enshrined workers’ rights into law with 26 articles which included:

A maximum work day of no more than 8 hours and a maximum working week of 44 hours equivalent to 48 in wages (Article 66); The right to paid vacation of one month for each 11 months of work in each calendar year (Article 67); The right of unionization (Article 69); The right to strike (Article 71); The system of collective labor contracts (Article 72); a non-discriminatory practice in the distribution of opportunities to work ( Article 74).

Strong trade unions and labor legislation in the Cuban Republic were a factor in rising living standards, and improved healthcare outcomes.

In the election of 1944 the opposition candidate, Ramon Grau San Martin, won and served a term as president from 1944-1948 and in the election of 1948, Batista’s political party again lost at the general elections and Carlos Prios Socarras was elected president.

Cuba's republic during this democratic period played an important role in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations and the establishment of the UN Human Rights Commission.

This democratic renaissance was brought to an end within days of the 1952 presidential elections, when on March 10th Fulgencio Batista organized a coup against the last democratically elected president.

A little over a year later on July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro organized an armed assault on the Moncada Military barracks that was a military disaster but a public relations success. Although most of the men involved with Fidel Castro in the assault were killed, Fidel Castro became a national figure at his trial for organizing the attack. At the trial he portrayed himself as a democrat that wanted to restore the previous democratic order and attacked the Batista dictatorship for its usurpation of the democratic order.

How the totalitarian darkness arrived in Cuba

Upon Batista’s departure from Cuba on January 1, 1959 Fidel Castro began his triumphal trek across Cuba to Havana where he began to consolidate power while continuing publicly to claim that he was a democrat but privately began to infiltrate his movement with communists, alienating many who had fought with him. 

On January 22, 1959 the CTC was replaced by the CTC-Revolucionaria. In the X Congress, held in November 1959, the Secretary General, David Salvador Manso,"said that the workers had not gone to the event to raise economic demands but to support the revolution." And in the XI Congress, November 1961, the delegates renounced almost all the achievements of the labor movement, including  "the nine days of leave for sickness, the supplementary Christmas bonus, the weekly shift of 44 x 48 hours, the right to strike and an increase of 9.09%, among many others. Workers were required to do "voluntary work" that was actually mandatory.

Castro began to approach the mass media threatening them with violence if they reported anything critical. As the months passed all independent media were taken over. Mass televised executions imposed fear in the populace.

 Ramiro Valdez oversaw the installation of the totalitarian communist apparatus in Cuba beginning in 1959. He is now probably doing the same thing in Venezuela.  It was on his watch that the East German Stasi, and KGB created and trained Cuban State Security.

This is how the darkness of totalitarianism took over Cuba and 64 years later remains entrenched there. Cuba gained its independence on May 20, 1902 after centuries of Spanish colonial rule and four years of U.S. occupation following the Spanish American war.

Half of Cuba's post colonial history, thus far, has been under the boot of communist caudillos whose father, ironically, fought for the Spanish crown in the war of independence.

What would José Martí say?

José Julián Martí Pérez: January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895

José Martí was killed in battle against Spanish troops at the Battle of Dos Ríos, near the confluence of the rivers Contramaestre and Cauto, on May 19, 1895. He is buried in the Santa Efigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. Cubans the world over honor his memory and Cuban independence follows a day later. Seven years and one day after Martí's death Cuba formally obtained its independence on May 20, 1902.

Cubans across the ideological divide claim José Martí as their own. The claims of the dictatorship led by the Castro brothers that Martí is the intellectual author of their political project is ironic considering that the life and writings of this Cuban patriot is the antithesis of the Castro regime.

José Martí believed that "Peace demands of Nature the recognition of human rights." A 64 year old dictatorship that rejects fundamental human rights is the antithesis of what the Cuban independence leader fought and died for.

Furthermore, José Martí proclaimed the idea that: "One just principle from the depths of a cave is more powerful than an army." 

A principle shared not only by dissidents in Cuba today but also echoed by Vaclav Havel, one of the dissidents who had an important role in ending Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 said: "I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions."

On this Cuban Independence Day we observe that Cubans have lived without democracy for 72 years, and rededicate ourselves to the struggle for a free Cuba. 

May 20, 1902 the Cuban flag is raised and the Republic born

How Cuban spies infiltrating the United States government remain a real and present danger to America, and the role they played in helping flood the U.S. with cocaine.

 

CBS's 60 Minutes tonight on their 56th season finale will air a segment titled "Cuban Spycraft": 

"For decades, prolific Cuban spies working in the U.S. government, serving in high-profile positions with top security clearances, have evaded American intelligence officials. This Sunday, Cecilia Vega reports on two undercover agents." 

Peter J. Lapp retired as an FBI special agent after 22 years of investigating or leading counterintelligence investigations involving Cuba, Russia, and China. He is the author of Queen of Cuba: An FBI Agent's Insider Account of the Spy Who Evaded Detection for 17 Years and an excerpt of his interview with 60 Minutes is available on YouTube.

 

Cecilia Vega: The story of two American citizens with top security clearances, and how they spied on behalf of Cuba which bartered and sold America's secrets to enemies around the world. 

Cecilia Vega: Do you think there are other Ana Montes's in the government right now?

Peter Lapp: Oh, absolutely, absolutely

Cecilia Vega: That's chilling

Peter Lapp: There is no doubt that the Cubans are penetrating our government with individuals who are loyal to them, and not to us.

On May 13, 2024 the Miami Herald published my OpEd titled, "History of Cuban spying and the harm done to the U.S." This is an expanded version of that piece. Available exclusively here:

Partial history of Cuban spying and the harm done to the U.S. 

by John Suarez 

Ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha spent over 40 years spying for communist Cuba at the State Department, holding important postings in Latin America, and in the National Security Council. Later, he worked as a private consultant for the US Southern Command, which oversees Cuba. 

The government prosecutor from the Biden Administration's Department of Justice in the plea deal with Rocha attempted to strip other potential victims of the right to seek restitution arguing that the only victim was the U.S. government.  This argument did not hold up under scrutiny, and Judge Beth Bloom called it out, and had both parties remove it from their agreement. 

The Associated Press reported on April 12, 2024 that "Federal authorities have been conducting a confidential damage assessment that could take years to complete," and when discovered, much of the harm done by Ambassador Rocha will remain classified. Rocha was sentenced on April 12th to 15 years in federal prison and fined $500,000.

Others have stolen U.S. intelligence that got Americans killed, and engaged in influence operations to downplay Havana’s threat to the United States. 

Spying for Havana were Ana Belen Montes, who spent 17 years at the Pentagon in the Defense Intelligence Agency; Walter Kendall Myers, a high ranking analyst at the State Department who spent 30 years spying with his wife Gwendolyn; and Marta Rita Velazquez, a legal officer at the Agency for International Development, who recruited Ana Belen Montes. Philip Agee who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency defected to Cuba in 1973 and outed 250 CIA officers and agents. 

 In addition Castro’s spies, who pass themselves off as diplomats, operate in Havana’s embassy in Washington, and at Cuba’s UN Mission in New York City. 

They also operate on our college campuses, and the FBI declassified a report in 2014 warning about this practice. Mary O’Grady of The Wall Street Journal made the case in her May 12, 2024 column that the Cuban intelligence services are behind the nationwide pro-Hamas protests.

Carlos Alvarez, a psychology professor at Florida International University spent nearly 30 years spying on his community, and organizing trips for students to Cuba. His wife Elsa pleaded guilty to concealing her husband’s actions.

Soviet intelligence files made public in Vasili Mitrokhin and Christopher Andrew's 2005 book, The World Was Going Our Way show that U.S. travelers to Cuba helped KGB agents obtain identity documents and that Fidel and Raul Castro worked with the spy agency five years before taking power in 1959.

 The Cuban dictatorship also sends illegal agents to spy and conduct active measures in America. Havana’s WASP spy network infiltrated the United States to gather information on military installations and personnel, sow division among Cuban exiles, locate places to store weapons and explosives, and terrorize then assassinate a CIA agent living in Florida with a mail bomb. They helped kill four in the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, and the network’s head Gerardo Hernandez was convicted of murder conspiracy. 

 These practices began in 1959. In 1961, the Soviet Defense Council gave Czechoslovakia orders to use Cuban intelligence to infiltrate existing drug operations in the United States and Latin America and to lay the groundwork for “recruiting” these independent activities. The former high-ranking Czech official Jan Sejna gave a detailed account of his meetings with Raul Castro, which he had on average four times a year between 1961 and 1968, the year Sejna defected to the U.S..

After the State Department determined in January 1982 that Havana had armed the M-19 terrorist group in exchange for drugs smuggling to the U.S., Cuba was added to the state terror sponsors list on March 1, 1982

Four high-ranking Cuban officials were indicted by a US grand jury for narcotics smuggling on November 5, 1982.

• Rene Rodriguez-Cruz, Cuban Communist Party Central Committee member and president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship With The Peoples. 

• Aldo Santamaria-Cuadrado, a vice admiral in the Cuban navy and Cuban Communist Party Central Committee member.

• Fernando Ravelo-Renedo, Cuban ambassador to Colombia.. 

• Gonzalo Bassols-Suarez, former minister-counsel of the Cuban embassy in Bogota and Cuban Communist Party member.

Ana Belen Montes was recruited by Cuban intelligence agents in New York City in December 1984, and on September 30, 1985 she reported to work at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the Pentagon. 

 Former Army counterintelligence special agent Reg Brown also came to the DIA in 1985. Chris Simmons,a career Counterintelligence Officer, in his 2023 book, Castro’s Nemesis describes how Brown conducted an assessment that revealed the “Castro regime still trafficked drugs” and that this involved the “organized and sustained involvement by many of Fidel’s highest ranking officials.” The assessment was sent to other DIA analysts for a “routine review” in early June 1989. Brown was shocked  when CNN reported “Cuba’s arrest of 14 officials for drug trafficking” on June 27th. 

Simmons wrote, “Reg was suspicious at the coincidence. The timing of the internal release of his assessment and Havana’s crackdown were eerily close. Additionally, most Cuban officials named in his assessment were among the thirty-three executed, imprisoned, fired, or who committed suicide.”

A Cuban spy in the DIA warned Havana that their role in flooding the U.S. with cocaine would be discovered.

 This was not the end of the Havana Cartel. With the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1999, Havana played a major role in the formation of the Soles Cartel, and the dramatic increase in cocaine entering the U.S. over the next 25 years.

 3,186 Americans died of cocaine overdoses in 1999. After over 20 years of cooperation between Cuba and the United States combating drug trafficking 23,513 Americans died from cocaine in 2021.

Rocha and other Cuban spies like him harm the U.S. government and tens of thousands of Americans.

Below is the 2023 short documentary Havana Cartel that explores the Castro regime's extensive involvement in drug trafficking with the objective of causing harm to Americans, and profiting from it to advance communist revolutionary objectives.