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Conspiracy Nation Vol. 07 Num. 39
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 7 Num. 39
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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DID CFR APPROVE CUBAN DOWNING?
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Shades of April Glaspie {1}: Was Castro Told
He Could Shoot Down U.S. Craft? What Did the
CFR Prez Tell Castro in January?
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[Spotlight, 03/11/96]
Exclusive To The Spotlight
By Martin Mann
The four unarmed search-and-rescue pilots who met their death
over the Florida Straits on February 24, and the Cuban MIG
fighters that downed them, may have been pawns in a larger game
plan set up by strategists of the Council on Foreign Relations
(CFR).
At first glance the attack appears to have been a "reckless,
mindless mid-air murder," noted Dr. Alvarado Tarquin, a former
Cuban foreign service officer who is now a research fellow at
George Mason University.
The Cessnas of "Brothers to the Rescue," a Cuban exile group of
volunteer pilots, have been flying up and down the Cuban
coastline for almost 10 years, spotting -- and trying to save --
refugees adrift on rafts or inner tubes.
"Why fire on them now?" Tarquin asked.
News reports sounded similarly stymied by the savagery and timing
of the incident. "The Question: Why Did Castro Do It?" asked the
headline of the Wall Street Journal.
The Washington Post, noting the Cuban government's recent
breakthrough successes in ending its diplomatic isolation,
obtaining foreign financing and lifting its fallen economy,
called the timing of the attack "perplexing."
One of the last significant American visitors to arrive in Havana
for private meetings with Fidel Castro, the island's communist
dictator, in recent weeks was Leslie Gelb, the president of the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and their policy aides at the
CFR have maintained a secret diplomatic back-channel to communist
Cuba for almost a year, well-placed sources say.
"Since 1993, Castro has become a problem, and then a threat to
Wall Street," explained Casimir Menges, a veteran New York trader
in Caribbean securities. "He gradually abandoned his Marxist
restrictions on foreign capital, inviting European and Latin
American money moguls to acquire controlling stakes in Cuba's
tourism business, industrial infrastructure and even the island's
natural resources, such as mining sugar and oil exploration."
Rockefeller, and his principal international affairs adviser,
Kissinger, did not take this threat lightly, Wall Street sources
say.
A small but potentially wealthy nation in Latin America, where
the Rockefellers have played a dominant behind-the-scenes role
since World War II, was being invaded by foreign competitors.
To counteract this challenge, the Rockefeller consortium set out
to develop an intense relationship of its own with Cuba's
communist rulers.
When Castro landed in New York City last fall to attend the UN's
50th anniversary assembly, Rockefeller assumed the role of his
unofficial host.
The last communist dictator in the West found himself closeted in
high-level meetings with top executives of Chase Manhattan Bank
and other Rockefeller fiefdoms at the tightly guarded CFR
headquarters on Park Avenue.
But the bearded strongman was not to be dissuaded from inviting
European and Latin American corporations to take over such key
Cuban assets as the hotel industry, the national telephone
company, the rich mineral deposits in Cuba's eastern mountains,
and even the newly privatized sector of banking services, says a
New York economist who served as one of the CFR's advisors last
year.
The only remaining threat to this rolling takeover of Cuba's
economy by giant competitors of Rockefeller's own conglomerate
remained a proposed congressional measure named after its
Republican sponsors (Sen. Jesse Helms [R-N.C.] and Rep. Dan
Burton [R-Ind.]) as the Helms-Burton bill.
Helms-Burton was designed to penalize any foreign corporation
that tried to muscle in on Cuba.
"In effect, this bill is a declaration that anyone who did
business with Cuba would be cut off by the United States, and
suffer legal sanctions," explained Menges.
President Bill Clinton, however, engaged in his own attempts to
improve relations with Cuba, threatened to veto Helms-Burton if
adopted by Congress this year.
The only way to get around that hurdle was to lure Castro into
some abrupt and explosive action -- something so violent and
outrageous that it made U.S. reprisals inevitable.
"Castro has been complaining about the flights of the 'Brothers
to the Rescue' group for years, but fear of American retaliation
kept him from doing anything about them," Tarquin said.
But this year, the visit of the CFR president to Havana seems to
have put the Cuban dictator's fears to rest, sources say.
"Castro learned, from this authoritative contact, that the U.S.
government no longer supports -- does not even condone -- exile
incursions across the Florida Straits," said Robert Maldonado, a
former U.S. wire service correspondent in Havana. Castro "was
persuaded the time had come to get rid of the bothersome refugee
rescue patrols."
Now events followed each other in quick succession. Castro
ordered the planes of "Brothers to the Rescue" blasted from the
sky.
Clinton, confronting a crisis, announced that he would cut off
charter flights to Cuba, restrict the movements of Castro's
envoys in New York, and, most importantly, throw his support
behind the passage of the Helms-Burton bill.
---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
{1} April Glaspie: "On July 25, 1990... U.S. Ambassador April
Glaspie assured Iraq's Saddam Hussein that the United States had
no interest in its conflict with Kuwait. These assurances were
interpreted by Saddam Hussein as clearance to invade Kuwait,
which he did several days later. This sequence of events almost
suggests that Saddam Hussein was encouraged to attack Kuwait
while the United States waited to retaliate." (*Defrauding
America* by Rodney Stich. Book may not be available in stores;
phone 1-800-247-7389 to order.)
The claim that April Glaspie gave Saddam Hussein a "green
light" to invade Kuwait is corroborated in Robert Parry's book,
*Fooling America*. (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1992.)
So "Shades of April Glaspie" in the sub-header for the
Spotlight article (above) suggests that Castro was subtly led to
believe that any attacks by him on Brothers to the Rescue
aircraft would *not* cause a notable U.S. government reaction.
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