U.S. lacks coherent policy on Cuba

Monday, August 31, 1998

Monday, August 31, 1998

U.S. lacks coherent policy on Cuba

ASSASSINS: Hypocrisy seen as America files charges against alleged assassins

By Howard Kleinberg

Cox News Service

America's policy toward Cuba and its exile community is much like the old expression about the weather: If you don't like the weather now, wait five minutes; it will change.

In recent days, a U.S. grand jury in Puerto Rico indicted seven Cuban exiles on charges of plotting to murder Fidel Castro.

Thirty-eight years ago, John Kennedy and probably his brother Bobby could have been indicted for the same reason - and they were president and attorney general of the United States at the time.

In its first reaction to the indictments, in which an officer of the Cuban American National Foundation was named, the organization called the move politically motivated.

That's a broad term. I'm not certain if by "political" they meant it was something brought on them by the Clinton administration or by some zealous prosecutor in San Juan.

If anyone knows the policy of the Clinton administration toward Cuba, please tell me. I assure you it will be as vague and wobbly as those of the Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations.

That the feds say the indictments passed through the highest levels of the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., would cast a light on Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno, a Miami native who has experienced a lifetime of dealing with the tender issue of fervent Cuban exiles.

I do find it odd, however, that after all these years of threatening and isolating Castro, the United States finds a need to indict people for plotting to kill the Cuban dictator. For many of the 38 years of Castro's rule, covert (if not official) U.S. policy was to kill him.

For the United States to cast a shocked eye on anyone who would plot to kill a head of state reeks of hypocrisy, since our country dearly would love to put one between the eyes of Saddam Hussein; actually bombed the tent of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, killing his son; and now is targeting Osama bin Laden - not a head of any state, but a princely overseer of terrorism.

Shortly after the Castro takeover, Cuban exiles - under the training and watchful eye of the United States - prepared themselves to retake the island. History recalls it as the Bay of Pigs, and the United States was waist-deep in the plotting, only to leave the invaders stranded on the beach when the situation seemed lost.

In all the years since, U.S. policy on many Cuban issues has fluctuated so often that anyone involved has lost track on where we stand vis-a-vis Cuba.

One minute we're training exiles to launch raids on Cuba, the next minute we're intercepting them. One minute we're plotting an invasion of the island, the next minute we're promising the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that we will not.

One minute we allow exiles floating toward the United States in rubber rafts to reach our shores and stay. Later we change that policy and begin intercepting the rafts and sending the occupants back to Cuba.

One minute we're allowing exiles to return to the island on humanitarian visits, the next minute we're not. Then we resume. On and on it goes, in circles wider than Hurricane Bonnie.

Now the United States has charged exiles with plotting to kill Castro, a not-unique strategy and one which the United States embraced and failed at, then stood humiliated before the rest of the world. (Remember, we're the ones who tried to poison his bread!)

Circumstance indicates that those indicted were planning to get Castro when he visited Venezuela last year, but no attempt was carried through - the enterprise fizzling because of mechanical problems and ugly weather at sea.

One could argue that there are laws against doing what they tried to do, but America itself has been guilty of the same thing many times. The overriding question is how the Justice Department decided that this was the time to press charges against this particular group - and why.Howard Kleinberg, a former editor of the Miami News, is a columnist for Cox Newspapers. His e-mail address is hkmiami@aol.com.