Obama will use spring summit to bring Cuba in from the cold

US companies are queuing up as the president moves to ease restrictions on travel and trade, raising hopes of warmer relations and an end to the embargo

Taken from the Observer, UK, Sunday 8 March 2009
By Rory Carroll

President Barack Obama is poised to offer an olive branch to Cuba in an effort to repair the US's tattered reputation in Latin America.

The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the president's regional debut and signal a new era of "Yankee" cooperation.

The administration has moved to ease draconian travel controls and lift limits on cash remittances that Cuban-Americans can send to the island, a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of families.

"The effect on ordinary Cubans will be fairly significant. It will improve things and be very welcome," said a western diplomat in Havana. The changes would reverse hardline Bush policies but not fundamentally alter relations between the superpower and the island, he added. "It just takes us back to the 1990s."

The provisions are contained in a $410bn (£290bn) spending bill due to be voted on this week. The legislation would allow Americans with immediate family in Cuba to visit annually, instead of once every three years, and broaden the definition of immediate family. It would also drop a requirement that Havana pay cash in advance for US food imports.

"There is a strong likelihood that Obama will announce policy changes prior to the summit," said Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programmes at the Inter-American Dialogue and author of The Cuba Wars. "Loosening travel restrictions would be the easy thing to do and defuse tensions at the summit."

Latin America, once considered Washington's "backyard", has become newly assertive and ended the Castro government's pariah status. The presidents of Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Guatemala have recently visited Havana to deepen economic and political ties. Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is expected to tell Obama on a White House visit this week that the region views the US embargo as anachronistic and vindictive. Easing it would help mend Washington's strained relations with the "pink tide" of leftist governments.

Obama's proposed Cuba measures would only partly thaw a policy frozen since John F Kennedy tried to isolate the communist state across the Florida Straits. "It would signal new pragmatism, but you would still have the embargo, which is the centrepiece of US policy," said Erikson.

Wayne Smith at the Centre for International Policy, Washington DC, said: "I think that the Obama administration will go ahead and lift restrictions on travel of Cuban Americans and remittance to their families. He may also lift restrictions on academic travel.

"There are some things that could be done very easily - for example it's about time we took Cuba off the terrorist list. It's the beginning of the end of the policies we have had towards Cuba for 50 years. It's achieved nothing, it's an embarrassment."

Wayne Smith, a former head of the US Interest Section in Havana, famously said Cuba had the same effect on American administrations as the full moon had on werewolves.

Cuban exiles in Florida, a crucial voting bloc in a swing state, sustained a hardline US policy towards Havana even as the cold war ended and the US traded with other undemocratic nations with much worse human rights records.

To Washington's chagrin, the economic stranglehold did not topple Fidel Castro. When Soviet Union subsidies evaporated, the "maximum leader" implemented savage austerity, opened the island to tourism and found a new sponsor in Venezuela's petrol-rich president, Hugo Chávez.

When Fidel fell ill in 2006, power transferred seamlessly to his brother Raúl. He cemented his authority last week with a cabinet reshuffle that replaced "Fidelistas" with "Raúlistas" from the military.

Recognising Castro continuity, and aghast at European and Asian competitors getting a free hand, US corporate interests are impatient to do business with Cuba. Oil companies want to drill offshore, farmers to export more rice, vegetables and meat, construction firms to build infrastructure projects.

Young Cuban exiles in Florida, less radical than their parents, have advocated ending the policy of isolation. As a senator, Obama opposed the embargo, but as a presidential candidate he supported it - and simultaneously promised engagement with Havana.

A handful of hardline anti-Castro Republican and Democrat members of Congress have threatened to derail the $410bn spending bill unless the Cuba provisions are removed, but most analysts think the legislation will survive.

Compared to intractable challenges in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East, the opportunity for quick progress on Cuba has been called the "low-hanging fruit" of US foreign policy.

That Obama has moved so cautiously has frustrated many reformers. But after decades of freeze, even a slight thaw is welcome, and there is speculation that more will follow.

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Old enemies
President Kennedy imposed an economic and trade embargo on Cuba on 7 February 1962 after Fidel Castro's government expropriated US property on the island. Known by Cubans as el bloqueo, the blockade, elements have been toughened and relaxed under succeeding US presidents. Exceptions have been made for food and medicine exports. George Bush added restrictions on travel and remittances.

The sanctions regime
• No Cuban products or raw materials may enter the US
• US companies and foreign subsidiaries banned from trade with Cuba
• Cuba must pay cash up front when importing US food
• Ships which dock in Cuba may not dock in the US for six months
• US citizens banned from spending money or receiving gifts in Cuba without special permission, in effect a travel ban
• Americans with family on the island limited to one visit every three years.

CIA Conspired With Mafia To Kill Castro

Taken from The Guardian, UK, June 27, 2007
By Simon Tisdall

The CIA conspired with a Chicago gangster described as "the chieftain of the Cosa Nostra and the successor to Al Capone" in a bungled 1960 attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba's communist revolution, according to classified documents published by the agency yesterday.


The Cuban president Fidel Castro, seen here in 1959. Photograph: Reuters

The disclosure is contained in a 702-page CIA dossier known as the "Family Jewels" compiled at the behest of then agency director James Schlesinger in 1973. According to a memo written at the time, the purpose of the dossier was to identify all current and past CIA activities that "conflict with the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947" - and were, in other words, illegal.

The dossier covers operations including domestic surveillance, kidnapping, infiltration of anti-war movements, and the bugging of leading journalists.

But its detailed information on assassination attempts against foreign leaders is likely to attract most attention.

The plot to kill Mr Castro, whom the US government at the time considered a threat to national security and a stooge of the Soviet Union, begins quietly and sinisterly in August 1960.

The documents released yesterday describe how a CIA officer, Richard Bissell, approached the CIA's Office of Security to establish whether it had "assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro".

The dossier continues: "Because of its extreme sensitivity, only a small group was made privy to the project. The DCI (Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles) was briefed and gave his approval."

Following the meeting with the Office of Security, Bissell employed a go-between, Robert Maheu, and asked him to make contact with "gangster elements". Maheu subsequently reported an approach to Johnny Roselli in Las Vegas. Roselli is described as "a high-ranking member of the 'syndicate' (who) controlled all the ice-making machines on the (Las Vegas) Strip and (who) undoubtedly had connections leading into the Cuban gambling interests".

The CIA is careful to cover its tracks. According to the dossier, Maheu told Roselli that he (Maheu) has been retained by international businesses suffering "heavy financial losses in Cuba as a result of Castro's action. They were convinced that Castro's removal was the answer to their problem and were willing to pay the price of $150,000 (£75,000) for its successful accomplishment".

Roselli was also told that the US government was not, and must not become aware of the operation.

Roselli in turn led the CIA to a friend, known as Sam Gold. In September 1960, Maheu was introduced to Gold and his associate, known as Joe. In a development that appears to underscore the amateurishness of the whole operation, Maheu subsequently accidentally spotted photographs of "Sam and Joe" in Parade magazine.

Gold was in fact Momo Salvatore Giancana, "the chieftain of Cosa Nostra (the mafia) and the successor to Al Capone". Joe was actually Santos Trafficante, Cosa Nostra boss of Cuban operations.

At a meeting at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Gold/Giancana suggested that rather than try to shoot or blow up Mr Castro, "some type of potent pill that could be placed in Castro's food or drink would be much more effective".

He said a corrupt Cuban official, named as Juan Orta, who was in debt to the syndicate and had access to the Cuban leader, would carry out the poisoning. The CIA subsequently obtained and supplied "six pills of high lethal content" to Orta but after several weeks of abortive attempts, Orta demanded "out" of the operation.

Another disaffected Cuban was recruited to do the job, but he demanded money up front. In the event, the dossier relates, "the project was cancelled shortly after the Bay of Pigs episode" (in April, 1961).

Yesterday's document release under the Freedom of Information Act also reveals details of CIA bugging and surveillance operations and the handling of a Soviet defector and KGB agent, Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, in 1965-67. Also made public are 147 pages of documents relating to CIA assessments of the Soviet and Chinese cold war leaderships.

"The CIA fully understands it has an obligation to protect the nation's secrets, but it also has a responsibility to be as open as possible," CIA director Michael Hayden said yesterday. "The declassification of historical documents is an important part of that effort."

The documents are available at: www.foia.cia.gov/

Professor Jailed In US For Spying

Taken from The Times, UK, February 28, 2007
By Devika Bhat and agencies

A Florida university professor and his wife have been handed jail terms after being charged with spying on Cuban exiles and sending information back to the Havana government.



Carlos Alvarez, 61, a professor in psychology at Florida International University in Miami, was sentenced to five years in prison and three years probation after pleading guilty to conspiracy to become an unregistered foreign agent.

His wife Elsa, 56, a counsellor at the university, admitted to knowing about her husband’s activities but failing to report them to authorities, and was given three years in jail and one year of probation – despite the prosecution requesting only 21 months.

The couple, who were born in Cuba but emigrated to the US and have since become American citizens, had originally been charged with the more serious crime of acting as illegal Cuban agents, but were sentenced on the reduced charges to which they admitted guilt.

Alvarez confirmed that for almost three decades he had supplied the Cuban Intelligence Service with information about Miami’s exile community and prominent Cuban-Americans opposed to Fidel Castro’s regime, as well as reporting on US political affairs.

His defence argued that Alvarez’ intentions were not malevolent, insisting he opposed communism and Castro’s command but hoped that by sharing information he would open dialogue between Cuban exiles and the communist nation. The judge however, ruled that “good motive is never an excuse for criminal conduct" and their actions had “undermined U.S. foreign policy.”

Mrs Alvarez was initially also accused of working as a covert agent from 1982, but because she apparently ended such activities in the 1990s, she was sentenced only for concealing her husband’s actions.

Lawyers for the couple told the Miami court that the information conveyed to Cuba was little more than gossip, available in the public domain and free from any secret, classified or defence material.

But the prosecution insisted it was unclear how much damage the pair may have done as only a fraction of the information transmitted was retrieved. Operating under the codenames David and Deborah, they worked under a shroud of secrecy while pretending to be upstanding US citizens, it was claimed.

“This is not idle chit-chat. Mr. Alvarez was tasked by Cuban intelligence to collect information,” said Matthew Axelrod, for the prosecution, adding that this was a case of classic intelligence work."

Mr Axelrod said that “sensitive details” recovered from a computer at the couple’s home showed that Alvarez had written reports on the business ventures of the university’s president, and discussed a “redacted” version of a US report on telecommunications in Cuba.

Before he was sentenced, Alvarez - described in testimony by friends and colleagues as a hardworking teacher and devout Roman Catholic - told the court he had once belonged to an underground movement that sought to topple Castro’s regime by force, but later became “an advocate of dialogue."

“I decided to engage in a relation that would require sharing what I consider innocuous information and analysis for access,” he said. “The method and channel that I used were unfortunately wrong.”

He pleaded for leniency for his wife, who insisted her husband had acted in good faith and did not profit from the Cuban government.

Several family members and friends gave emotional testimony on behalf of the couple, insisting Alvarez was a man of integrity and loyal US citizen. “We are extremely upset,” said the couple’s 40-year-old son, also named Carlos Alvarez, after the hearing.