Elian's flight arranger linked to Hillary
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Cuban government paid for Elian Gonzalez's chartered
flight to Havana through a Miami firm headed by a woman whose
$22,000 donation to Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign was
returned when it was learned the woman had ties to a convicted
drug smuggler.
Vivian Mannerud Verble heads a Miami-based firm known as
Airline Brokers Company Inc., which arranged all of the chartered
flights to and from Havana involving Elian's father, Juan Miguel
Gonzalez, his grandmothers and other Cubans.
Mrs. Verble has been linked to convicted drug trafficker
Jorge "Gordito" Cabrera, a Cuban-born U.S. citizen sentenced to
19 years in a Florida prison and fined $1.5 million for his
conviction in the transportation of 6,000 pounds of cocaine into
the United States.
It was that connection that prompted Mrs. Clinton's New York
senatorial campaign in April to return the $22,000 donation ‹ the
"the largest single contribution" to her soft money fund.
Campaign officials returned the cash after determining the
donation was "inappropriate," according to the first lady's
spokesman, Howard Wolfson.
Mrs. Verble, also a Cuban-American, served as the
fund-raising intermediary between Cabrera and the Democratic
National Committee in 1995. After giving $20,000 to the DNC,
Cabrera attended a 1995 White House Christmas party with
President Clinton, where he had his picture taken with the first
lady. He also attended a fund-raiser in Miami in December 1995,
where he was photographed with Vice President Al Gore.
His $20,000 contribution in November 1995 was returned after
DNC officials learned of his arrest.
House investigators said Cabrera wrote the DNC check from an
account to which he had diverted illicit drug profits. They said
the donation came after Mrs. Verble talked with Cabrera in
November 1995 at the Copacabana Hotel in Havana ‹ an accusation
the Miami businesswoman, who has not been charged with any crime,
has denied.
Mrs. Verble confirmed in a telephone interview Thursday she
arranged the flights for the Gonzalez family through the Cuban
government and the National Council of Churches, which served as
intermediary with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
in the dispute over Elian's custody.
"I think I was chosen because of public statements I made
earlier this year that I would be willing to fly Elian and other
members of his family to and from Havana as the process
continued," she said, acknowledging that she arranged for the jet
to Havana this week and was paid by the Cuban government for the
flight.
"The National Council of Churches called me because they
knew my company was licensed by the U.S. government to arrange
for charter flights into Cuba," she said.
Her firm is one of only a handful licensed by the Treasury
Department to charter flights between the United States and Cuba.
It handled flight arrangements for the Baltimore Orioles when
they played reciprocal games last year with the Cubans.
The National Council of Churches helped defray much of the
costs for Juan Miguel Gonzalez and others, including legal fees,
through a humanitarian fund established by the board's executive
committee.
Mrs. Verble herself is no stranger to the Democratic Party.
She attended an October 1995 White House coffee with Mr. Gore,
DNC Chairman Donald L. Fowler, DNC Finance Chairman Marvin S.
Rosen and oil financier Roger Tamraz, now an international
fugitive who donated thousands of dollars to the DNC.
Elian flew home Wednesday aboard the chartered jet to a
hero's welcome in Havana. The flight came after the Supreme Court
rejected a final plea from members of the boy's Miami relatives,
who had sought his custody since he was plucked from the sea in
November.
The plane landed in Havana shortly before 8 p.m., marking a
victory for Cuban President Fidel Castro, who made the boy an
icon of his revolution. With the Supreme Court refusing to
intervene, a legal injunction keeping Elian in this country
expired at 4 p.m. and at 4:31, the private jet carrying Elian and
his family back to Cuba took off.
Elian's mother, her boyfriend and nine others perished when
their boat sank. The boy and two others were the only survivors.
His great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, won temporary custody of Elian
and the boy stayed with his Miami relatives until federal agents
seized him at gunpoint in a pre-dawn April 22 raid.
Cabrera was arrested in January 1996, a month after the
White House party, by undercover detectives who confiscated
cocaine, $50,000 in cash, several boxes of illegal Cuban cigars
and photos of Cabrera with Cuban President Fidel Castro.
He was indicted in 1983 by a federal grand jury in Miami on
racketeering and drug charges and charged in 1988 with managing a
continuing narcotics operation. In both cases, he pleaded guilty
to lesser charges ‹ conspiracy to bribe a witness and income-tax
evasion.
According to federal election records, Cabrera gave the
money to the DNC on Nov. 9, 1995, and was invited a month later
to a political fund-raiser attended by Mr. Gore in Miami and a
pre-Christmas event at the White House.
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