Center for International Policy

As printed in
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
May 7, 2005

Is Cuba a sponsor of terrorism? Is U.S.?

By Wayne S. Smith

The State Department's just-issued report on state sponsors of terrorism offers nothing new. In the case of Cuba, it simply repeats the same tired old charges without offering any hard or specific evidence. It states, for example, that "Cuba continued to actively oppose the U.S.-led coalition prosecuting the global war on terrorism."

But "oppose" how? Cuba offered to sign agreements with the U.S. for joint actions against terrorism. The U.S. ignored the offer. If the State Department means that Cuba is opposed to the war in Iraq, that is true. But so are half of the American people and the majority of other governments in the world.

Displaying real chutzpah, the report goes on to say that: "The Cuban government claims, despite the absence of evidence, that it is a principal victim of terrorism sponsored by Cuban-Americans in the United States."

Lack of evidence? There was abundant evidence that Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles masterminded the bombing of the Cubana airliner back in 1976, resulting in the loss of 73 innocent lives, including a young Cuban fencing team. Bosch now lives a free man in Miami, having been pardoned by President George H.W. Bush against the advice of his Justice Department. Posada has just come back to Miami to ask for asylum, after having been pardoned from prison by the outgoing president of Panama. (He and three other Cuban exiles were in prison there on charges related to the accusation that they were in Panama to assassinate President Fidel Castro, there for an international meeting.)

There is also evidence, some of it in the form of a 1998 New York Times interview that Posada gave to Annie Bardach, that he was directing a bombing campaign against tourist hotels in Havana, a campaign that in 1997 resulted in the death of an Italian tourist and the wounding of several innocent people.

And this is but the tip of the iceberg. There is voluminous evidence of Cuban exile terrorist acts against Cuba. Most of the perpetrators are living openly and freely in Miami, their actions seemingly condoned by the U.S. government.

Indeed, if one looks closely at the matter of exile terrorism against Cuba, the U.S. government itself may be seen as a "state sponsor of terrorism." And if it allows Posada to remain in the U.S., there will be new evidence to that effect. In an obvious effort to confuse the issue, on May 2, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega said that he didn't know if Posada was in the U.S. This, despite the fact that Posada's lawyer on April 11 stated that he was in the U.S. and requested asylum for him to remain.

The report also charges that in 2004, "Cuba continued to provide limited support to designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, as well as a safe haven for terrorists."

In fact, however, the report only mentions Basque members of ETA who continue to reside in Cuba and members of the Colombian groups FARC and ELN, to whom Cuba, according to the report, provides sanctuary and some degree of support. No other terrorist organizations are mentioned; hence, we must assume that ETA, FARC and the ELN represent the department's entire case.

And even here, the evidence is unconvincing. The report mentions a request from the Aznar government in November 2003 not to give the ETA members sanctuary, but when I discussed the matter with the Spanish embassies in Washington and Havana last year, I was told that the Spanish government had no concerns about ETA members residing in Cuba. They are there as the result of earlier agreements. Spain had no evidence that any are involved in terrorist activities and regards the question of their presence in Cuba as a matter strictly between the Spanish and Cuban governments which is being handled satisfactorily.

In the same way, while there are members of the FARC and ELN in Havana, conversations with the Colombian embassies in Washington and Havana last year indicated that they are there with the acquiescence of the Colombian government, which continues to see Cuba's efforts to broker a peace process in Colombia as "helpful and constructive."

Finally, the report complains that many of the more than 70 fugitives from U.S. justice who have taken refuge in Cuba are accused of committing violent acts in the U.S. that targeted innocents in order to advance political causes.

But as Robert Muse, a lawyer, pointed out at a conference hosted by the Center for International Policy in October of last year and titled "Cuba Should Not Be On the Terrorist List," legal authority to designate a terrorist-sponsoring country is found in Section 6(j) of the 1979 Export Administration Act, which authorizes the secretary of state to determine that a country has "repeatedly provided support for international terrorism."

But as noted by Muse, two further elements must be demonstrated: (a) that the fugitives in question had committed "terrorist" acts and, (b) that those acts were "international" in character. Muse said he had been unable to identify a single U.S. fugitive in Cuba who meets the criteria.

In sum, if what we see in the State Department's latest accusations that Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism is its entire case, then clearly it has no case.

But its claim to have one is part of a by-now familiar pattern, like the Bush administration's claim that weapons of mass destruction were virtually ready to fire in Iraq, when in fact none existed. Like the biological and chemical weapons that John Bolton said threatened us from Cuba, but which did not exist.

That such misrepresentations seriously undermine U.S. credibility seems to bother the Bush administration not a whit.

Wayne S. Smith is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. and the former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana (1979-82).