-Caveat Lector-
> Published Date September 24, 1999, in Washington, D.C.
> www.insightmag.com
>
>
> A Visa for Castro's
> Terrorism Chief in Washington?
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> By J. Michael Waller
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As President Clinton granted clemency to the Puerto Rican terrorists, the White
> House was pushing to allow Fidel's terrorism coordinator to set up shop in
> Washington.
>
> <Picture: A>mysterious White House push to allow one of Fidel Castro's top
> covert operatives to set up shop in Washington adds a new twist to the deepening
> controversy about President Clinton's August decision to free members of two
> Cuban-backed Puerto Rican terrorist groups. . . . . Insight has learned that
> while the White House prepared to grant clemency to 16 imprisoned terrorists, it
> pressured the State Department to grant a visa to Fernando Garcia Bielsa, a
> high-ranking Cuban Communist Party official in charge of supporting the very
> terrorist groups to which the prisoners belonged. The visa would allow Garcia
> Bielsa to work under diplomatic cover at the Cuban Interests Section on 16th
> Street in Washington, just blocks from the White House. . . . . Garcia Bielsa is
> not a typical gray apparatchik. As chief of the America Department of the Cuban
> Communist Party Central Committee, he is responsible for the party's covert
> operations -- including agent-of-influence activity and support for Puerto Rican
> terrorism against the United States. . . . . The America Department, known by
> its Spanish initials DA, long has been Castro's main instrument for coordinating
> terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. A 1975 Senate investigation on Cuban
> support for terrorism found that the DA began directing terrorist operations in
> Puerto Rico and in the Midwestern and Eastern United States in 1974. Senate
> hearings in 1982 revealed that Cuban intelligence "organized" the Puerto Rican
> Armed Forces of National Liberation, known by its Spanish acronym, FALN. The
> terrorists Clinton recently freed belonged to the FALN and a related group, the
> Boricua Popular Army-Macheteros, or the Macheteros. . . . . A 1981 State
> Department report says the DA was created "to centralize Cuban control over
> covert activities" in support of revolutionary groups in the hemisphere.
> Castro's KGB-like state intelligence service, the General Intelligence
> Directorate, or DGI, is a separate organization also used for terrorist support.
> . . . . Under U.S. law, State cannot independently issue visas to foreigners
> believed to be entering the country for the purpose of hostile intelligence
> activity. The Immigration and Nationality Act requires that such cases also must
> have the approval of the attorney general. And Attorney General Janet Reno -- a
> native of Miami with years of knowledge of how the Cuban regime works -- has not
> rushed her decision. But officials opposed to Garcia Bielsa's visa are concerned
> that Reno will cave in. A Justice spokeswoman, Kara Peterman, told Insight at
> press time that she had no information on the issue. . . . . Before the Clinton
> administration took the reins of the federal government, the Cuban Interests
> Section contained 24 staff, nearly all of whom were intelligence agents,
> according to a Cuban-American National Foundation study by Rex A. Hudson. Today,
> the espionage presence there is nearly double that number, according to a
> congressional source, while U.S. intelligence presence at the U.S. Interests
> Section in Havana is "meager" by comparison. . . . . An intelligence source
> tells Insight that Garcia Bielsa personally oversaw the funding and direction of
> the Macheteros, a clandestine militant organization that seeks to convert Puerto
> Rico into an independent, Marxist-Leninist state. Machetero members offered
> clemency were serving time in connection with the 1983 armed robbery of a Wells
> Fargo armored truck in Connecticut to finance their terrorist activity. . . . .
> A 1988 federal report on terrorism signed by then-vice president George Bush,
> who headed the Task Force on Combating Terrorism, termed the Macheteros "a
> tightly controlled and extremely violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that has
> targeted primarily U.S. military personnel and Puerto Rican police.... The
> stated position of the group is that they have 'declared war' on the United
> States." . . . . One of the Machetero members involved in the Wells Fargo
> robbery, Victor Manuel Gerena, remains on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. A U.S.
> Information Agency international crime alert says Gerena "escaped to Cuba." . .
> . . Cuba also continues to provide asylum to FALN fugitives, including bomber
> William Morales, who escaped in 1979 while serving a 99-year sentence for
> bombing and murder, fled to Mexico where he killed a policeman and was granted
> asylum by the Castro government. Clinton granted clemency to Morales' common-law
> wife, Dylcia Noemi Pagan, who was serving time for illegal weapons possession
> and seditious conspiracy. . . . . After Machetero-attributed bombings rocked
> Puerto Rico in connection with radical protests against privatization of the
> telephone company in 1998, Garcia Bielsa flew to the island to meet with
> Machetero leaders and order them to desist. "He appears to have directly
> intervened to stop recent violent actions committed by the Macheteros in Puerto
> Rico," according to a U.S. government source. "After that meeting, the violence
> abruptly ceased." . . . . The meeting was not necessarily an act of mercy on
> Garcia Bielsa's part. Studies of Latin American revolutionary groups by Michael
> Radu of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, David Nolan of the University of
> Miami and others show that the Cuban Communist Party leadership historically has
> intervened with guerrilla and terrorist groups to stop their violent activity if
> the acts are strategically or tactically counterproductive. . . . . "Castro and
> his people are desperate to bring Fernando Garcia Bielsa to Washington," a
> government source tells Insight. "They view this administration as their last
> hope. To them, it is vital to bring their highest-[ranking] intelligence
> coordinator to Washington so he can better run the networks under his
> direction." . . . . Elite DA officers occupy senior posts in the Cuban foreign
> ministry and in Havana's missions abroad, including the Cuban mission to the
> United Nations and the Cuban Interests Section in Washington. José Cardenas of
> the Cuban-American National Foundation has been tracking Havana's current
> political-influence operations in the United States. "Cuban intelligence
> activity today," he says, "is at its greatest point in the history of U.S.-Cuban
> relations. They are flying their men coast to coast in the United States,
> meeting with citizens' groups all over the country, complaining about why the
> mean old United States keeps picking on poor Cuba." The goal, he says, is to
> induce Washington to lift its trade embargo by influencing U.S. businesses and
> trade groups from the grass roots. . . . . That emphasis might explain why
> Garcia Bielsa pressured the Macheteros, for the time being, to stop bombing in
> Puerto Rico. But it doesn't explain the pressure to free imprisoned terrorists.
> Calls to the National Security Council were not returned. . . . . Communist
> Cuba, with a very capable network of intelligence services trained and equipped
> by the former Soviet Union, continues to wage a massive espionage campaign
> against the United States, according to FBI sources. The Cubans have proved so
> adept at the craft that, like the old East German Stasi, they have foiled most
> U.S. attempts to recruit their people as agents. "The Cubans very substantially
> infiltrated U.S. intelligence in the Cuban area and therefore are able to
> influence U.S. thinking through false information or muddying the waters," says
> William Ratliff of the Hoover Institution. . . . . Though it no longer serves as
> a foreign-policy tool of Moscow as it did during the Cold War, Cuba maintains a
> close working relationship with the Russian External Intelligence Service,
> Russia's GRU military intelligence service and the KGB's old electronic
> intelligence services, now under the umbrella of the Federal Agency for
> Government Communications and Information. Havana also is building strong
> intelligence ties with Communist China. . . . . The State Department continues
> to classify Cuba as a state sponsor of international terrorism. It places Cuba
> "on par with Iran and North Korea for engaging in terrorist activity themselves
> or by providing arms, training, safe haven, diplomatic facilities, financial
> backing, logistic and/or other support to terrorists." The report, issued last
> year, adds, "Although there is no evidence to indicate that Cuba sponsored any
> international terrorist activity in 1997, it continues to provide sanctuary to
> terrorists from several different terrorist organizations. Cuba also maintains
> strong links to other state sponsors of terrorism." . . . . The secret White
> House campaign to bring Garcia Bielsa to Washington has met opposition from
> career officials in the government bureaucracy. The effort comes at a time when
> the FBI is hunting for Cuban penetration agents with access to top U.S.
> officials. The FBI strongly objects to granting Garcia Bielsa entry. But sources
> say the State Department, under White House pressure, protested so strongly that
> the bureau dropped its objection, apparently paving the way for Garcia Bielsa to
> work at the Cuban mission just up the street from the White House. . . . . U.S.
> counterintelligence has reason to believe that the Castro government has placed
> agents under its control to influence policy decisions on issues affecting the
> regime. Among those decisions, sources tell Insight, is Clinton's baffling
> clemency to the FALN terrorists, who until their September release had been
> serving stiff federal sentences for their involvement in terrorist campaigns of
> the 1970s and 1980s. . . . . The White House isn't helping to clear the air.
> Rather than allay concerns about espionage and Cuban influence operations, it
> has quashed congressional inquiries about the decision-making process behind the
> president's unusual clemency offer. . . . . Many political observers following
> the clemency issue, particularly Republicans, have assumed that the decision was
> designed to help first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton curry favor with ethnic
> Puerto Rican voters in New York City for her anticipated Senate campaign.
> Evidently, there was more to it than that.
>
>
>
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