Post by TexPost by => Vox Populi©Post by TexGuess there must be many more stupid Cubans than Americans then. The
rafts only go one way. Why is that, chimpy?
Cuban CRIMINALS escaping prosecution for their crimes, looking to
hide out with their Cuban Mafia goombahs in that Crime ridden
festering repugnikkkan shithole of Miami.
LOL. Sure chimpy. Pity you have no evidence of that.
Still eating Repugnikkkan shit, eh Chimpy? Aren't you full yet?
The Bush dynasty and the Cuban criminals
Book reveals links of two presidents and the governor of Florida with exiled
hardliners
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
The Guardian
The brother of President George Bush, the Florida governor, Jeb Bush, has been
instrumental in securing the release from prison of militant Cuban exiles
convicted of terrorist offences, according to a new book. The Bush family has
also accommodated the demands of Cuban exile hardliners in exchange for
electoral and financial support, the book suggests.
Last year, after September 11, while the justice department announced a sweep of
terrorist suspects, Cubans convicted of terrorist offences were being released
from US jails with the consent of the Bush administration, according to the
book, Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana, by Ann Louise
Bardach, the award-winning investigative journalist who has covered Cuban and
Miami politics for the New York Times and Vanity Fair.
The Bush family connections go back to 1984 when Jeb Bush began a close
association with Camilo Padreda, a former intelligence officer with the Batista
dictatorship overthrown by Fidel Castro.
Jeb Bush was then the chairman of the Dade county Republican party and Padreda
its finance chairman. Padreda had earlier been indicted on a $500,000 (£320,000)
embezzlement charge along with a fellow exile, Hernandez Cartaya, but the
charges were dropped, reportedly after the CIA stated that Cartaya had worked
for them.
Padreda later pleaded guilty to defrauding the housing and urban development
department of millions of dollars during the 1980s.
The president's younger brother was also on the payroll in the 80s of the
prominent Cuban exile Miguel Recarey, who had earlier assisted the CIA in
attempts to assassinate President Castro.
Recarey, who ran International Medical Centres (IMC), employed Jeb Bush as a
real estate consultant and paid him a $75,000 fee for finding the company a new
location, although the move never took place, which raised questions at the
time. Jeb Bush did, however, lobby the Reagan/Bush administration vigorously and
successfully on behalf of Recarey and IMC. "I want to be very wealthy," Jeb Bush
told the Miami News when questioned during that period.
In 1985, Jeb Bush acted as a conduit on behalf of supporters of the Nicaraguan
contras with his father, then the vice-president, and helped arrange for IMC to
provide free medical treatment for the contras.
Recarey was later charged with massive medicare fraud but fled the US before his
trial and is now a fugitive.
Jeb Bush sealed his popularity with the Cuban exile community by acting as
campaign manager for another prominent Cuban-American, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, when
she ran successfully for Congress.
George Bush Sr famously appeared with her during her campaign in Miami
declaring: "I am certain in my heart I will be the first American president to
step foot on the soil of a free and independent Cuba."
She has since lobbied successfully for the release of several exiles convicted
of terrorist offences held in US jails but who now live freely in Miami.
Most controversially, at the request of Jeb, Mr Bush Sr intervened to release
the convicted Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch from prison and then granted him US
residency.
According to the justice department in George Bush Sr's administration, Bosch
had participated in more than 30 terrorist acts. He was convicted of firing a
rocket into a Polish ship which was on passage to Cuba. He was also implicated
in the 1976 blowing-up of a Cubana plane flying to Havana from Venezuela in
which all 73 civilians on board were killed.
CIA memorandums strongly suggest, according to Bardach's book, that Bosch was
one of the conspirators, and quotes the then secretary of state, Henry
Kissinger, as writing that the "US government had been planning to suggest
Bosch's deportation before Cubana airlines crash took place for his suspected
involvement in other terrorist acts and violation of his parole".
Bosch's release, often referred to in the US media as a pardon, was the result
of pressure brought by hardline Cubans in Miami, with Jeb Bush serving as their
point man. Bosch now lives in Miami and remains unrepentant about his militant
activities, according to Bardach.
In July this year, Jeb Bush nominated Raoul Cantero, the grandson of Batista, as
a Florida supreme court judge despite his lack of experience. Mr Cantero had
previously represented Bosch and acted as his spokesman, once describing Bosch
on Miami radio as a "great Cuban patriot".
Other Cuban exiles involved in terrorist acts, Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio
Paz Romero, who carried out the 1976 assassination of the Chilean diplomat
Orlando Letelier in Washington, have also been released by the current Bush
administration.
The current administration also maintains a hard line on the continuing Cuban
embargo despite the urgings of many in Mr Bush's own party to end it. The
president's adviser, Karl Rove, "has urged him to fully accommodate hardliners
in return for electoral victories for both his brother and himself", Bardach's
book says.
For their help, many hardline Cuban-Americans have received plum jobs in the
current administration: Mel Martinez, the Orlando Republican who arranged for
the shipwrecked Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, to visit Disney World, was made
housing secretary, while Otto Reich was awarded a one year recess appointment
for the western hemisphere in the state department.