FBI Questions American Travelers To Cuba

[Mika]

Instead of chasing down and busting Miami based terrorists (who still run ops into Cuba on a semi regular basis) here we have Americans who are volunteering their services in Cuba being interrogated by Obama's thugs.

FBI Questions American Travelers To Cuba
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/30/travelers-to-cuba-are-bei_n_519215.html

At least 10 Americans who recently traveled to Cuba through cultural exchange programs have been questioned by FBI agents, either at home or over the phone, lawyers for the groups tell Huffington Post.

Most of those who claim they were questioned traveled to Cuba through the Vencermeos Brigade, a group which sends up to 100 people to Cuba each year to participate in exchange programs, perform volunteer work and meet Cuban artists.

Several of the travelers were visited at home by agents, who inquired about their trip to the island nation, which is subject to a decades-long embargo by the U.S. government.

Most travel to Cuba by Americans is prohibited and violators who are caught usually get a stern letter from the Treasury Department's Office Of Foreign Assets Control, warning them of penalties, which are rarely assessed. But FBI involvement is even more rare, prompting questions about the purpose of the visits. Both countries have accused each other of spying and have occasionally arrested their own citizens. Last year, Kendall Myers, a retired State Department official, and his wife Gwendolyn were arrested and charged with passing U.S. secrets to Cuban agents.

Groups advocating for greater openness with Cuba expressed surprise and disappointment at the FBI involvement, considering that the Obama administration has eased restrictions by allowing travel by relatives of Cubans and decriminalizing Web contact.

In one case, a traveler living in the NYC area was questioned by two agents. "They produced photographs, taken off the Internet and asked them, "Do you recognize this person?" said Center for Constitutional Rights lawyer Anjana Samant, who said she is planning to file a freedom of information act request with the Justice Department to learn more about the rationale for the bureau's interest in recent visitors to Cuba.

In another case, an FBI agent informed the person they were questioning that the agents are part of a special task force, says Michael Tarif Warren, an attorney for the Venceremos Brigade, who speculated that the agents may be operating under a new directive from the Justice Department.

A spokesman for the FBI declined comment.

According to Warren, at least six people in the New York City area have been contacted by FBI agents. When the travelers refused to answer questions, the agents left their cards without explaining the purpose of the questions or indicating whether there would be more visits, says Warren. Other recent visitors who have been questioned live in the Washington, D.C. area and in Minneapolis, says Samant.

The involvement of the FBI surprised CCR President Michael Ratner, who used to represent members of the Venceremos Brigade. He said that such visits were most prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s and dropped off during the 1990s and at the end of the Bush administration. "Every once in a while, I'd be told about a visit to the home or sometimes their workplace, which was horrifying for them, and they'd be asked, 'What did you see?' and 'Who did you talk to?'"

Ratner said that none of those questioned were ever arrested and that he advised travelers not to talk to the agents: "Talking to the FBI is like eating potato chips -- once you start, you won't stop."

---

[Judi Lynn]

1. Cool! Going to read this later this evening. Thanks. Rec.

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[EFerrari]

2. Another uptick.

What are they doing.

[bemildred]

3. Routine intimidation of the disobedient masses.

"You are being watched!11!!"

[Peace Patriot]

4. Well, we had that USAID/CIA operative taking money/technology to rightwing groups in Cuba.

That's the "tip of the iceberg," I think, as to this so-called "opening" to Cuba. It is not well-intended. Honduras and Colombia have given the lie to President Obama's stated objectives of "peace, respect and cooperation" in Latin America. Those instances of U.S. meddling and truly bad intentions say it all, about continued Bushwhack policy in Latin America. Nothing has changed. And the loosened rules for travel will be used to spy on, destabilize and overthrow Cuba's government, if possible.

I have been wary of the loosened travel rules from the beginning, because very early on I was picking up signals from the Obama administration that it would be the "same old same old" U.S. meddling and bloody-mindedness (and bloody handedness). During his very inauguration week, President Obama took the trouble to go on Spanish TV and repeat CIA/corporate bullshit about Hugo Chavez. Such peace! Such respect! Such cooperation! I tried to write that off to bad advisers. Then came Honduras. Then came the secretly negotiated U.S./Colombia military agreement for Pentagon occupation of Colombia (adjacent to oil rich Venezuela and Ecuador). I can't write it off any more. Either Barack Obama has no control over U.S. policy in Latin America, or he is on board for these and possibly worse horrors. Chavez said, of Obama, that he is "the prisoner of the Pentagon." That may be a charitable interpretation.

Tens of thousands of union leaders, human rights workers, community activists, peasant farmer leaders, teachers and others have been slaughtered by the Colombian military (with $7 BILLION in U.S. aid!) and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads. (Amnesty International and the UN attribute the bulk of these murders to the Colombian military and its death squads, in equal proportions). The slaughter is on-going--with a mass grave of recent vintage containing up to 2,000 bodies just discovered in La Macarena, Colombia. And the carnage of the U.S. coup in Honduras is now up to about 300 murders of leftist activists. Honduras is going the way of Colombia. These are the U.S./Obama administration's closest "friends and allies" in Latin America!

This is how the U.S. operates, whoever is president--by official and unofficial murder and vast corruption. So I think we can be quite sure that this is the U.S. intention in Cuba. They are probably making lists (as in Honduras). They want to know whom to target when the inevitable U.S. coup attempt occurs. They are also looking for Cuban operatives to help carry out their dire plans. This may be why the FBI is asking questions of U.S. travelers--to get the names, addresses and opinions of Cuban targets or potential operatives. Another purpose may be terror--to scare any U.S. citizens who are in sympathy with the Cuban people and government. And it is one of the horrors of the Bushwhack era that there is no line, any more, between domestic and foreign policy, as to surveillance and police powers. The FBI is the CIA is the NSA is the U.S. Air Force is the U.S. Navy is the U.S. Army is Dyncorp is Blackwater is...you name it. It is all one, now, and we, the people who pay their goddamned salaries and benefits, and who enrich these war profiteer and other multinational corporations, are as much the targets of their "war on terror" as the targeted peoples of other countries.

This is scary shit, truly. And the scariest part may be that it doesn't matter whom we elect, or who we THINK we elect. The infrastructure for massively spying on us and oppressing us has been locked into place. It operates on its own, and by leave of those who are permitted by this powerful "military-industrial" establishment to hold office. Our office-holders are severely curtailed--and hold only apparent power--or are in direct collusion with our real rulers--the military/corporate profiteers.

I hate to speak such depressing truths and not suggest a remedy. And so here it is, Remedy No. 1: Get rid of the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines! Transparent vote counting is THE essential condition needed to even begin reform. It is the bottom line of democracy. We have lost control of vote counting to one of the worst, most far rightwing corporations--ES&S, which just bought out Diebold, and now has an 85% monopoly of U.S. voting systems. We MUST change this. We MUST!