Reply #43: Reinstating the Miami Mafia has ALWAYS been the goal

[Say_What]

just ask dead Jorge Mas Canosa former founder and head of the CANF. He aspired to being president of Cuba and employed methods of intimidation, murder, bombing, and other acts of terrorism to maintain the hard line against Cuba. This guy took out a contract on his own brother!! Mas Canosa and the CANF terrorist group along with more anti-Cuba fanatics are all nicely detailed in the book Cuba Confidential by Ann Louise Bardach who has been going to and writing about the island for more than 10 years.

Meanwhile here's some info on the NED funded CANF and their Congress connections.

<clips>

A panel of judges in Florida's Third District Court of Appeals is now considering the case of an outspoken retired diplomat who is seeking not only personal justice but also is fighting for a fundamental principle of democracy against an organization that seems bent on destroying free speech in the United States under the guise of establishing it in Cuba. While Smith vs. Cuban American National Foundation appears to be a routine defamation case in which Wayne S. Smith, former head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, is appealing a Miami jury's verdict against him, it actually is a complex web involving bare-knuckle Washington politics, an article in a national opinion magazine, and ultimately the First Amendment.

The combatants in the case are long-standing political adversaries in the contentious debate over U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba. In one corner is the Cuban American National Foundation, a tax-exempt foundation that represents the interests of the right wing of the Cuban exile community and is a strident opponent of the government of Fidel Castro. The late Jorge Mas Canosa, CANF's founder and chairman until his death from cancer earlier this year, was a veteran Castro hater who aspired to be the next president of Cuba. With the substantial financial backing from other wealthy exiled businessmen and a willingness to brand opponents as Communist sympathizers, Mas Canosa and his organization became feared and effective players in the corridors of power in Washington. The controversial Mas Canosa and other foundation leaders frequently appeared in the media or testified before congressional committees advocating tough measures against the Castro regime and have been extraordinarily successful in pushing both Republican and Democratic administrations to strengthen the U.S economic embargo on Cuba. Their goal, they contend, is to bring freedom and democracy to their homeland.

Equally vocal is Wayne Smith, formerly head of the Cuban desk at the State Department and of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba until he retired from the foreign service in 1982, disgruntled with the Reagan Administration's confrontational approach to dealing with the Castro government. Smith, who now teaches at The Johns Hopkins University and is a fellow in a Washington think tank, the Center for International Policy, has since become a leading critic of U.S. policy toward Cuba and especially CANF's influence on that policy. He often writes for major newspapers and appears on television skewering Washington policymakers, Mas Canosa and others who he believes are blocking a rational dialogue over the Cuban problem.

That outspokenness is what got him in trouble, at least with Mas Canosa. in 1992 Smith was interviewed by filmmakers from the University of West Florida for a documentary titled "Campaign for Cuba," which aired on PBS that year. Smith's statements on that program formed the basis of CANF's lawsuit against him. In a 20-second sound bite, he summarized an article by John Spicer Nichols that appeared in The Nation in 1988. The article, titled "Cuba: The Congress; The Power of the Anti-Fidel Lobby," reported that the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental institute that funnels U.S. tax dollars to projects intended to support democracy abroad, signed contracts with CANF from 1983-1988 awarding the foundation grants totalling $390,000 for the purpose of supporting a European organization also seeking to marshal opposition to the Castro government.

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/98-3NRfall98/Nichols_SLAPP.html