Who
is a terrorist?
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
By Wayne S. Smith
May 31, 2002
President Bush's speech in Miami on May 20 was new evidence that
he is determined at all costs to win the votes of the hard-line
exiles. Whatever policies and actions they want, he will try to
give them. But that has serious implications for the credibility
of his war on terrorism. He describes for us, for example, a Manichaean
world in which there are the good guys and the bad guys, the "terrorists."
And as he has said over and over again, anyone who supports a
terrorist, anyone who harbors a terrorist, is a terrorist.
But if we go by that definition, there may be terrorists right
in the Bush family. In 1989, for example, the first President
Bush went against the advice of his own Justice Department and
canceled the deportation of arch-terrorist Orlando Bosch. Shortly
thereafter, he set him free. Bosch was a Cuban exile who had been
convicted in the U.S. of terrorist activities and spent four years
in prison. Released in 1972, he then violated parole and fled
to Latin America, ending up eventually in Venezuela, where in
1976 he was imprisoned for masterminding the bombing of a Cuban
airliner with the loss of 73 lives, including
virtually the entire Cuban fencing team.
The
hard-line exiles in Miami loved it. In 1983, the Miami City Commission
declared a "Dr. Orlando Bosch Day," apparently to honor
him for his acts of terrorism.
Released from Venezuelan prison under strange circumstances in
1987, Bosch returned to Miami in 1988 without benefit of a visa
and was almost immediately arrested for his earlier parole violation.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service began proceedings to
deport him. As the associate attorney general put it in 1989:
"For 30 years, Bosch has been resolute and unwavering in
his advocacy of terrorist violence."
This was not an idle statement. The Justice Department had information
linking Bosch to more than 30 acts of sabotage and violence in
the United States, Puerto Rico, Panama and Venezuela. As the associate
attorney general pointed out: "The security of this nation
is affected by its ability to urge credibly other nations to refuse
aid and shelter to terrorists....We could not shelter Dr. Bosch
and maintain that credibility."
The logic was unassailable, but , unfortunately, the case was
not decided on the base of logic. Miami congresswoman Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen and the usual bevy of hard-line Cuban exiles weren't
going to have it. They lobbied unrelentingly for Bosch's release.
Among those in the forefront of the lobbying effort was Jeb Bush,
then managing Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's election campaign.
In the face of all this pressure, coming even from his own son,
the first President Bush decided it was politically expedient
to harbor a terrorist. Bosch was released and still lives freely
and unrepentant in Miami.
And the case of Orlando Bosch is not an isolated one.
Ros-Lehtinen has also urged the release of Valentine Hernandez,
whose principal crimes were the murder of other exiles -- exiles
who dared to advocate a dialogue with the Castro government. But
Ros-Lehtinen thinks he should go free. And neither she nor Gov.
Bush, by the way, have ever backed away from their support of
Orlando Bosch.
And then there is the case of Luis Posada Carriles, who along
with Bosch master-minded the 1976 bombing of the Cuban airliner.
He, too, spent time in a Venezuelan prison, but escaped in 1985
and turned up in Central America working in Oliver North's secret
Contra operation, along with Felix Rodriguez, a key figure in
the Iran-Contra scandal with close ties to then Vice President
Bush.
In 1998, Posada Carriles acknowledged in an interview with The
New York Times that he had directed the bombing of a number of
hotels in Havana the previous year which had resulted in the death
of an Italian tourist. Though Posada Carriles confessed his culpability,
no charges were ever filed against him in the U.S. Today, he is
in prison in Panama, accused of involvement in a recent assassination
plot against Fidel Castro.
These elements in Florida who have helped to harbor terrorists
are President George W. Bush's closest political allies in the
state. Indeed, some months ago, he nominated Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's
chief of staff, Mauricio Tamargo, for an important position in
the federal government. And Otto Reich, one of the hardest of
the hard-line Cuban-Americans and a close associate of the Cuban
American National Foundation, has been appointed assistant secretary
of state for Latin Americans affairs. Roger Noriega, formerly
of Sen. Jesse Helm's staff, is now our ambassador to the OAS.
In short, those who have condoned
terrorism now seem to be running our Latin American policy.
President Bush's admonition should be rephrased, now to read:
"Anyone who has harbored a terrorist we don't like, is a
terrorist. But anyone who harbors terrorists we do like is OK.
In fact, we may have a place for them in our administration!"
