Thread by @cubacenter

CubaBrief: Is cooperation between Havana and Washington resulting in the US turning a blind eye to the Castro regime's crimes? 1/ cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

On August 10, 2023 Andrea Mitchell reported on MSNBC News about cooperation between Cuba and the United States in combating drug trafficking. This CubaBrief will address what was left out, and provide some context. 2/ cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"In May more than 750 LBS of Marijuana were seized during a joint maritime anti-drug operation between the U.S. Coastguard and Cuban border patrol. The drug traffickers were captured and their boat was sunk." 3/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"NBC News also got exclusive access to witness Cuban and US officials overseeing the burning of the drugs in a huge melting pot inside a steel plant." 4/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"Showcasing that despite a lot of differences between the two countries, Cuba and the United States are cooperating when it comes to stopping the flow of drugs." 5/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Two U.S. officials attending the destruction of the drug shipment were Jon Carter Bass, head of security at the US Embassy in Havana and Alejandro Collazo, US Coastguard liaison officer at the US Embassy in Havana. 6/ cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Mr. Carter Bass offered the following reasoning for this joint effort. 7/ cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Mr. Carter Bass offered the following reasoning for this joint effort. 7/ cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"We want communication and cooperation in areas that also fit within the U.S. national security interest."
9/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"We want communication and cooperation in areas that also fit within the U.S. national security interest."
9/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"Essentially when it is a shared national security interest and If it's an area that is under the U.S. national security interest, then of course we want communication and cooperation." 8/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"We want communication and cooperation in areas that also fit within the U.S. national security interest."

This word salad ignores 63 years of Cuban government involvement in drug trafficking to the United States.
9/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Officer Collazo outlined areas where Havana and Washington are collaborating. "We have more than one cooperative agreement with Cuba. We have been working on what we call maritime environmental response." ... 10/ cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"We've been working on maritime law enforcement. We have been working on search and rescue. I do believe that these bilateral agreements should be expanded into something that is more regional." 11/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Setting aside the work on "maritime environmental response", what are the results of the United States working on "maritime law enforcement" and "search and rescue." 12/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

The desire to engage for engagement's sake has a long and sordid history in and out of Cuba. 13/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Watching these 2 U.S. officials on the 8/10/23 MSNBC news report praise cooperating with Havana on drug interdiction is reminiscent of the times when John C. Lawn, DEA administrator on 5/27/87 praised Manuel Noriega "for his 'personal commitment' to a drug investigation.  14/

''I look forward to our continued efforts together,'' Mr. Lawn said in the same letter. ''Drug traffickers around the world are now on notice that the proceeds and profits of their illegal ventures are not welcome in Panama." 15/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

But in the Cuban case it may be even more sinister. 16/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

US Coastguard liaison officer Collazo claims they are working with the Cuban military dictatorship on "search and rescue", but omits Havana's well documented record of murdering fleeing Cuban refugees. 17/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

This includes the October 28, 2022 purposeful ramming and sinking of a boat carrying Cuban refugees by the Cuban border patrol that killed seven, including a two year old girl. 18/ cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

High profile examples of this documented over the past six decades are the "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre in 1994, the Canímar River massacre in 1980, and the massacre of Barlovento in 1962. 19/ cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Ministry of the Interior vessels of the Cuban dictatorship were (and are) used as weapons against Cubans trying to flee the island, regardless of the presence of children, women, or elderly people. 20/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Survivors and family members were detained, pressured to change their stories, & the Cuban govt released its own narrative in conflict with what witnesses & survivors stated. 21/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

The Embassy of the U.S. in Havana tweeted out in Spanish on October 29, 2002 a message that affirmed the Castro regime's official story that the massacre was an "accident." 22/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"The United States sends our condolences to the families of the Cubans who died today in an accident north of Bahía Honda. As we expand safe & legal pathways for migration, we warn against attempting dangerous and sometimes fatal irregular migration." 23/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

The outrage expressed in the response to this Tweet by many Cubans offers a demonstration of how to curry favor with Cuba's tyrants while estranging everyday people. 24/

https://twitter.com/ilianahcuba/status/1586518760155922434

So much for cooperation with "search and rescue" with a regime that murders refugees, and bars the survivors from returning home for having spoken out. 25/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

The question of Washington's cooperation with Havana in "maritime law enforcement" is equally problematic. 26/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

The February 1991 Frontline documentary "Cuba and Cocaine" revealed the links of current Cuban dictator Raul Castro to cocaine trafficking into the United States. 27/

A full transcript of the program is available online, and above is a video excerpt. A declassified CIA report from 1984 reveals the extensive and direct involvement of the highest levels of the Castro regime in drug trafficking.  28/pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fro…

Lt. Commander Jeff Karonis of the United States Coast Guard in the documentary described how they would observe an airdrop going on in Cuban waters in the middle of the day. 29/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

A small twin-engine plane carrying 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of cocaine would fly over Cuba and drop the shipment at a rendezvous point with several boats. A Cuban military vessel would be nearby, right on site to provide them cover. 30/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Things changed in 1999 when Hugo Chavez took power in Venezuela. 31/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Christopher Dickey,  World News Editor at The Daily Beast, on June 4, 2018 wrote "How Cuba Helped Make Venezuela a Mafia State" that outlines the Castro regime's involvement in linking up Venezuelan officials with drug traffickers and guerrilla groups. 32/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

It begins with the 1989 Ochoa Trial, an effort by the Cuban autocrats to whitewash their drug trafficking image by executing the high ranking Cuban general Arnaldo Ochoa in a political show trial. 33/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

This ended one chapter of large-scale drug trafficking for the Castros, but a new chapter would begin with the Chavez regime in Venezuela according to Dickey. 34/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"In the years that followed the Ochoa trial, Cuba offered to cooperate with the United States fighting against drug traffickers." 35/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"The Clinton administration shelved proposed indictments of the regime, and as relations gradually warmed, the U.S. would begin to liaise with Cuban authorities in the war on drugs." 36/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

But at the same time the Cuban intelligence services were reaching out in other directions, to networks that would become the world’s biggest suppliers of cocaine: the narco-guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and Venezuela’s security forces. 37/

"Cuban counterintelligence is said to have tutored the Venezuelan spies, domestic & foreign, and helped to organize them to root out opposition to the regime of Hugo Chávez. Indeed, the Cubans taught them to do whatever might be necessary to survive." 38/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"Over time, many of Chavez’s officers would become known as the Cartel of the Suns: “cartel” because of their involvement with the drug trade on a scale that nobody in 1989 could have imagined; “the suns” for the insignias on the epaulets of Venezuela’s generals." 39/

This also concurs with earlier reporting by Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post on the Venezuela, FARC, Cuba trafficking axis in the May 24, 2015 in the article "A drug cartel’s power in Venezuela": 40/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"Ever since Colombian commandos captured the laptop of a leader of the FARC organization 8 years ago, it’s been known that Chávez gave the Colombian narcoguerrillas sanctuary & allowed them to traffic cocaine from Venezuela to the U.S. with the help of the Venezuelan army." 41/

But not until a former Chávez bodyguard [ Leamsy Salazar] defected to the United States in January did the scale of what is called the “Cartel of the Suns ” start to become publicly known. 42/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

... "The day after Salazar’s arrival in Washington, Spain’s ABC newspaper published a detailed account of the emerging case against Cabello, & last month, ABC reporter Emili Blasco followed up with a book laying out the allegations of Salazar & other defectors," ... 43/

... "who say Cuba’s communist regime & the Lebanese militia Hezbollah have been cut in on the trafficking." 44/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

"That was followed by a lengthy report last week in the Wall Street Journal that said Cabello’s cartel had turned Venezuela into 'a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering.'" 45/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Furthermore there are interviews with individuals that witnessed first hand the links of the highest levels of the Castro regime with drug trafficking. This includes Fidel Castro's bodyguard who wrote a tell all memoir. 46/

Worse yet this was not the first time that the United States shared drug intelligence with a government deeply involved in drug trafficking. 47/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Manuel Noriega was a trusted partner for years, but Washington refused to end the relationship despite an abundance of evidence. 48/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

BBC's John Simpson interviewed Castro's former bodyguard, Juan Reinaldo Sanchez, where he explained how he became disillusioned with Fidel Castro because of his links to drug traffickers, despite the dictator's public denunciation of the practice. 49/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

Sanchez died within a year of publishing his memoir in May 2015 at the age of 66 in Miami. The above interview was broadcast when Fidel Castro died in November 2016. 50/cubacenter.org/archives/2023/…

What has this joint anti-drug operation done in concrete terms for US citizens? In 1999, the year when Washington intensified these efforts 3,186 US citizens died of cocaine overdoses. In 2021, after 22 years of this "cooperation" 23,513 died in 2021. 51/injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-commu…