Retired Cuban Master-Spy, Dr. Néstor García Iturbe: Why I Believe Trump Will Lift the Blockade 2

Dr. Néstor García Iturbe

Why I Believe Trump Will Lift the Blockade 

Dr. Néstor García Iturbe, GRUPO HERALDO

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann

November 16, 2016.

A few persons have contacted me regarding the interview that I offered to VOCES DEL MUNDO where I said that, in my view, Donald Trump will lift the commercial, economic and financial blockade that the United States has maintained against Cuba for more than fifty years.

The reasons I put forward for saying this were explained in the interview, but because of a problem, seemingly a time limit in the radio program, they only broadcasted the claim, but not the reasoning behind it, which has created a logical question among all those who read the interview.

CubaNews, edited by Walter Lippmann, was interested in the subject and that is why I write this article. After it is published by CubaNews, I will also publish it in El Heraldo and send it to other recipients, because Walter showed interested in the subject and I consider he should have priority in spreading what I think.

The commercial, economic and financial blockade was imposed hoping it would stifle the Cuban Revolution and at a certain point the Cubans would have to apologize to the United States so they would lift it and we could survive.

None of this has happened; the Cuban Revolution, with difficulties, has continued to live and advance expanding its trade relations with other countries, while the United States has been absent and has therefore lost many commercial and economic opportunities. Had the blockade not existed, they would have participation and now it is other countries that benefit from those opportunities.

The outgoing President Barack Obama has repeatedly raised the futility of the blockade at this point in time and, in addition, has expressed his opinion that it should be lifted. I believe that Obama’s opinion is the reflection of companies and corporations eager to start having commercial relations with Cuba and make profits that the blockade prevents them from obtaining.

In statements made by Obama and the instructions he gave after December 17, 2014 in order to create the best possible conditions for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba, he told his team that they should initiate talks with Congress aimed at lifting the blockade on Cuba. Something was done, but with no results.

In recent years, a small number of bills have been presented in the United States Congress aimed at releasing some aspects related to the blockade.

Feature continues here:  Dr. Néstor García Iturbe  

 

 

 

Dr. Néstor García Iturbe

 

 

22 Years is Long Enough – Give Cuba Backs its Mutinous Murderer 3

Cuban Navy Lieutenant Roberto Aguilar Reyes

By Chris Simmons

In the early years of the post-Cold War, 19-year old Cuban Coast Guardsman Leonel Macías González hijacked a boat and fled to Florida with 23 friends and family to escape an oppressive dictatorship. Or at least that’s the fairy tale we were told.

The refugees were rescued by the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Monhegan, who found the overloaded and leaking vessel 60 miles southwest of Key West. The cutter took the Cubans aboard and sank the boat as it had become a hazard to maritime traffic.

Questioned by U.S. officials, the refugees told authorities the exact same story – one provided to them by Macías, who had been a machinist on the commandeered vessel. Macías claimed the ship’s officer attempted to stop the hijacking and fired twice at him. He returned fire, but said he was uncertain if he had hit the navy lieutenant. Shooting back, Macías insisted, was self-defense. During the brief gunfight, the officer seemed to have lost his footing and fell overboard. At gunpoint, Macías then forced the remaining three crewmen to jump overboard before he piloted the small auxiliary vessel to shore, picked up his friends and fled north to Florida.

Unfortunately for Leonel Macías González, Cuban authorities had already notified the U.S. Coast Guard of the vessel’s hijacking and the murder of Cuban Navy Lieutenant Roberto Aguilar Reyes on August 8, 1994.

The innocent refugees were granted asylum by the United States on August 11. Macías, however, was held in detention and questioned at length about his alleged crimes. Havana demanded the gunman’s return and offered to turn over a copy of its investigation. The U.S. rebuffed the Cuban government and authorities debated whether a crime had even occurred. After a lengthy investigation that went nowhere, government bureaucrats freed the alleged murder and admitted military mutineer and boat pirate. Leonel Macías was granted political asylum on April 17th, 1995.

He should never have been allowed to stay in this country. Our government’s irrational and illegal decision to overlook compelling evidence and allow Leonel Macías Gonzalez to walk free cannot be justified as lingering post-Cold War politics. America is supposed to be an example to the world, especially with regard to respect for the law and human rights.

The Federal government should immediately ask Havana for a copy of its criminal investigation. While awaiting Cuba’s response, the FBI can begin building a criminal case against Macías,  centered on the numerous statements he previously provided the government.

The lawyers can argue whether or not Lieutenant Aguilar Reyes was murdered. However, several facts are irrefutable. First of all, Macías’ claim of self-defense is completely false. Lieutenant Reyes was armed, a fact well known to Macías. The officer was in command of a small auxiliary vessel in the Cuban Navy. The notion that someone – especially a service member – may use a weapon to hijack a warship and not expect the crew to fight back is an idea that defies civil and military law worldwide. Self-defense? Never. Secondly, Macías freely admitted commandeering the naval ferry, which I suspect authorities would now agree constituted international piracy. The key point is that Macías has already confessed to these crimes.

After receipt of the evidence from Havana, we would need to return Macías to face justice in a Cuba court. While the lack of an extradition treaty may seem problematic, it really isn’t. For years, Havana and Washington have regularly returned criminals. Last December, U.S. Marshals flew to Havana to bring fugitive Shawn Wegman back to face firearms charges. In April of this year, 11 Cuban criminals were returned. Furthermore, Macías’ request for political asylum was fraudulent, which by itself is sufficient grounds for the revocation/ termination of his political asylum. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have fled their homeland without using their escape as a license to kill. Leonel Macías González has evaded justice – with U.S. assistance – far too long. Harboring this fugitive is unforgiveable. It needs to end – NOW.

New JFK Assassination Theory: Cuban Double Agent Led Plot 7

                     Rene Dussaq

By Joshua Rhett Miller, New York Post

More than 50 years after President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, new evidence uncovered in the secret diaries of a Cold War spy and assassin implicates another clandestine figure believed to be working as a double agent for Cuba, an explosive new book claims.

The never-before-revealed diaries of Douglas DeWitt Bazata, a decorated officer for the United States Office of Strategic Services — the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency — claim that his longtime close friend and fellow spy, René Alexander Dussaq, was a “primary organizer and plotter” of Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

The diaries reveal that Dussaq might even have fired the fatal “shot or shots” that killed the 35th president of the United States, according to author Robert K. Wilcox’s latest book, “Target: JFK, The Spy Who Killed Kennedy?,” which goes on sale Nov. 14.

“Douglas Bazata was deeply embedded in the world of secrets, especially those surrounding JFK’s death,” Wilcox writes. “He was there at the birth of the CIA as an early and major player in that murkiest of worlds … He was an insider.”

In his diaries, Bazata wrote that the two men first met in Havana, Cuba, during the early 1930s, when Bazata, a US Marine, was given his first mission as a hitman: to assassinate a Cuban revolutionary. The mission failed, but the pair’s bond was sealed forever after Dussaq saved Bazata’s life.

The bond deepened in 1944, when both men were part of WWII’s Operation Jedburgh, in which more than 250 American and Allied paratroopers jumped behind enemy lines across France, the Netherlands and Belgium to fight against German occupation. Dussaq’s larger-than-life legend began here: He was nicknamed “Captain Bazooka” for demonstrating the Army’s new anti-tank rocket launchers to the Maquis, French resistance guerrillas. He’s also credited with bluffing a German general into believing he was surrounded by American troops, leading to the capture of up to 500 Nazis.

Dussaq — who was born in Buenos Aires and educated in Geneva and Cuba — became a naturalized US citizen in 1942. The son of a Cuban diplomat, he had tried to enlist after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor but was deemed a potential security risk. However, the US Army was desperate for infantrymen at the time and ultimately accepted him. Dussaq quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a lieutenant instructor for the elite 101^st Airborne Division, the “Screaming Eagles.”

One top-ranked OSS official told his counterparts in London that Dussaq, who spoke six languages, was an exceptional athlete and a master of “unusual and hazardous work of a physical nature,” references to earlier work as a deep-sea diver, treasure hunter and Hollywood movie stuntman.

Article continues here:  Cuban Double Agent Led JFK Plot

 

A New Cuban Connection to JFK’s Murder 1

By Robert K. Wilcox, American Thinker

Days after the John F. Kennedy assassination, top White House aides read an eyes-only report that Cuba was behind the shocking Dallas murder.  Castro had warned he’d retaliate if the Kennedy administration kept trying to kill him, and they continued.  New president Lyndon Johnson ordered the secret report buried.  If made public, the U.S. would have to attack Soviet-backed Cuba and thus start World War III.

It’s been 53 years since that terrible day in Dallas, and the “Cuban Connection” has resurfaced in newly revealed secret diaries of a deceased Cold War spy and assassin.  Douglas Bazata was a decorated OSS special forces “Jedburgh” in World War II and a celebrated freelance spy who, after the war, worked for the CIA, among other intelligence agencies.  His now decoded secret diaries tell for the first time the extraordinary story of his close friend, Rene A. Dussaq, a fellow “Jed” and larger-than-life clandestine, who, he says hatched the assassination plan and led it as a shooter in Dallas.  The fascinating story and evidence, pro and con, is in my new book, Target: JFK — The Spy Who Killed Kennedy?, a mystery story that could be the key to that famous murder.

Dussaq, Argentine-born and naturalized as an American in 1942, was the son of a Cuban diplomat.  While being educated in Switzerland, he spent summers in Cuba and considered himself Cuban.  Per the diaries, he hatched the assassination plan to free Cuba from U.S. domination – exploitation vividly illustrated in the movie The Godfather, when gangsters cut a cake shaped as Cuba.  Suave and fearless, Dussaq was an Olympic athlete, Cuban revolutionary, Hollywood stuntman, and deep sea diver and treasure hunter.  During WWII, he became the legendary “Captain Bazooka” in France, who helped the Maquis defeat the Nazis.  Almost singlehandedly, he captured a garrison of over 500 Germans.

Few in America have ever heard of Dussaq, although some of his exploits have been chronicled.  He kept a low profile as a successful post-WWII Los Angeles insurance agent while secretly working undercover for the FBI against Hollywood communists in the 1950s.  It also appears that he was a double, and perhaps triple, agent working ostensibly for the CIA, but also for Cuba, if not others.  Characteristically, the CIA will neither confirm nor deny that.  Bazata, too, after the war, worked for the CIA and was a good friend of William Colby, who headed the CIA from 1973 to 1976.  Because of who Bazata was and his level of access, his secret diaries must be taken seriously.

Dussaq and Bazata met in Cuba in the 1930s.  Bazata was a young marine assigned to assassinate a Cuban revolutionary.  The mission went awry, but Dussaq saved his life; therefore, Bazata was in his debt.  He also admired Dussaq for his intelligence and fearlessness.  As Jedburghs, both men jumped into occupied France, where their bond deepened.  After the war, writes Bazata, Dussaq grew angry at U.S. exploitation of Cuba, and once JFK became president, Kennedy’s administration’s Bay of Pigs invasion and continual attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro gave justification in Dussaq’s mind for implementing “Hydra-K,” the JFK kill-plot detailed in the diaries.

Read more: Target:  JFK