[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 16]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 23097]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                                  CUBA

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, November 27, 2001

  Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend to you the 
attached article from earlier this summer written by Mr. Frank Calzon, 
entitled ``Yes, Cuba is a Terrorist Nation''. Mr. Calzon is the 
executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, DC and 
is a tireless fighter for democratic causes. I encourage my colleagues 
to learn from his insightful article.

                 [From the Miami Herald, Nov. 7, 2001]

                    Yes, Cuba Is a Terrorist Nation

                           (By Frank Calzon)

       Harvard scholar and former New York Sen. Daniel Patrick 
     Moynihan once said that everyone is entitled to his own 
     opinion but not his own facts. Not a bad concept to keep in 
     mind now that Cuban government officials claim that the 
     reason for including Cuba on the list of terrorist nations is 
     total nonsense; that the inclusion of Castro's Cuba among 
     Iraq, Libya, Iran and other unsavory characters is motivated 
     by U.S. domestic politics.
       Sixteen anti-embargo activists, including Princeton 
     professor Alejandro Portes and Johns Hopkins University 
     visiting professor Wayne Smith agreed, charging that Castro 
     is on the terrorist list due to the unwillingness of the 
     United States to offend elements of the Cuban-American 
     community.
       Is Castro's Cuba a terrorist state?
       Biological weapons are of no minor concern for Americans 
     today. Castro's bankrupt regime has spent more than $1 
     billion to set up a scientific infrastructure that, former 
     Secretary of Defense William Cohen said in 1998, could 
     support an offensive biological-warfare program. In 1995 the 
     U.S. Office of Technological Assessment included Cuba among 
     17 countries believed to possess biological weapons.
       Last year Ken Alibeck, former deputy director of 
     Biopreparat, the Soviet Union's biological-weapons program, 
     revealed that a few years after Castro's visit to the Soviet 
     Union in 1981, Cuba had one of the most sophisticated 
     genetic-engineering labs in the world.
       A few days ago the University of Miami School of 
     International Studies released a report, Castro and 
     Terrorism: A Chronology. It says that:
       Castro refused to join the other Ibero-American heads of 
     state in condemning ETA terrorism at the 2000 Ibero-American 
     Summit in Panama and slammed Mexico for its support of the 
     summit's statement against terrorism.
       This summer Colombian officials arrested IRA members Niall 
     Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan and accused them 
     of training the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia 
     (FARC). Connolly had been living in Cuba as the 
     representative of the IRA for Latin America.
       Argentine-born Cuban intelligence agent Jorge Massetti 
     helped funnel Cuban funds to finance Puerto Rican terrorists 
     belonging to the Machetero group. The Macheteros hijacked a 
     Wells Fargo truck in Connecticut in September 1983 and stole 
     $7.2 million.
       Illich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal and 
     responsible for numerous terrorist acts in Europe in the 
     1960s and '70s trained in Cuba.
       Black Panther leaders in the 1960s received weapons 
     training in Havana.
       Does any of that have anything to do with the influence of 
     Cuban Americans? Were exiles responsible for the expulsion of 
     Castro's diplomats from Paris and London who were linked to 
     Carlos the Jackal? Do exiles explain why Castro supported 
     Puerto Rico's Macheteros, charged with terrorist acts there 
     and on the mainland? Were exiles responsible for his training 
     of the Faribundo Marti Front, El Salvador's terrorist group, 
     or for Uruguay's Tupamaros, known for targeting Americans?
       One day the archives of Cuba's intelligence service will be 
     opened just like the KGB's and East Germany's Stasi's. Then 
     details will be known, as well as the names and activities of 
     Castro's ``agents of influence'' in the United States. But if 
     history is any indication, they will say they fell for the 
     romance of the revolution, that they could not have imagined 
     such a regime and such a tyrant. They will go on with their 
     lives, just like the old Stalinists who saw no difference 
     between Stalin's Russia and Great Britain and who claimed, 
     while it mattered, that Stalin's terror was simply an 
     invention of the Russian exiles in Paris.

     

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