'Cold warrior' at heart of US Cuba policyA Profile of Otto Reich
U.S. policy toward Cuba is dominated by one man, a scandal-plagued Cold War
relic who has no business being President Bush's chief adviser on Latin
America.
That's what U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who heads the
Senate Intelligence Committee, has to say about Otto Reich.
"He's known as a hard-liner, not only with regards to Cuba, but Colombia,
Venezuela and other areas in the hemisphere," Roberts told the
Journal-World. "I just don't think Mr. Reich is the man for the job. Mr.
Reich, I think, is still back in the Cuban Missile Crisis era."
Roberts is a Bush administration ally, though he differs with the president
in favoring relaxed relations with Cuba. Bush critics have worse things to
say about Reich. But critics and friends alike agree the fierce
anti-Castroite who left Cuba at age 15 has been key in the administration's
crackdown on Cuba and Americans who travel there.
"Otto Reich," Roberts said when asked why the federal government -- after
decades of mostly looking the other way -- has begun prosecuting Americans
who travel to Cuba.
Travel crackdown
"I think it is fair to say that Otto Reich is driving this policy of
basically trying to end all relations, all contacts, everything between the
United States and Cuba," said Ann Louise Bardach, an investigative reporter
who spent 10 years researching a book about U.S.-Cuban relations.
The White House press office did not cooperate with the Journal-World's
requests to reach Reich for an interview.
Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts says Reich, who has ties to the Iran-Contra scandal,
is not the right man for the job.
The administration's stepped-up enforcement of the travel ban has created a
wave of fines against about 2,000 Americans, including everyone from an
Indiana missionary who distributed Bibles in Cuba, to Bob Augelli, a
Lawrence man whose travels resulted in an art exhibition on the island.
Reich has been an administration lightning rod. His appointment was
controversial not only with Roberts and fellow senators but across Latin
America.
Recess appointment
When Bush named him assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere
affairs, the choice was so unpopular Bush did it while the Senate was in
recess, an acknowledgment that Reich's appointment would not be confirmed.
He served about a year at the State Department before Bush named him to a
newly created post on the National Security Council and made him his chief
Latin American envoy and adviser.
Reich's elevation drew immediate rebuke from across Latin America.
Oscar Arias, the former Costa Rican president awarded the 1987 Nobel Peace
Prize for his efforts to end war in Central America, wrote an open letter
characterizing Reich as a "hawkish" propagandist whose history of
involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan years made him
untrustworthy in the eyes of Latin American leaders.
"Virtually every country in Central and South America and Mexico has
complained officially or unofficially" about Reich, Bardach said. "The guy
is very, very far right, and Latin America has had a very decided shift. All
of Latin America is lurching to the left, and who do you have handling Latin
America for the administration? Otto Reich. You've got to say to yourself:
What is this administration thinking of except a few votes in Dade and
Broward counties?"
Cuban family feud
Bardach was referring to the south Florida counties that decided the 2000
presidential election. The counties are the major stronghold of the Cuban
exile community in the United States and are predominantly anti-Castro.
Bardach said Reich was appointed with the backing of Cuban-American
Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, whose district includes Dade and parts of
Broward counties, and his brother, Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, who
represents another Miami district heavy with Cuban-Americans.
The father of the Diaz-Balarts was interior minister for Fulgencio Batista,
the Cuban dictator overthrown by Fidel Castro's revolution. The
Diaz-Balarts' aunt was Fidel Castro's first wife and the mother of Castro's
oldest son. When she and Castro separated, there was a bitter custody battle
over the boy, according to Bardach, who has interviewed both Castro and the
senior Diaz-Balart.
"On one level this is very much a blood feud," Bardach said of the animosity
between the Castro regime and the Cuban-American exiles. "The Diaz-Balarts
fought very hard to put Otto Reich in this position."
Bardach said her research convinced her that Lincoln Diaz-Balart aimed to
succeed Castro as Cuba's leader once the dictator was toppled. The
congressman did not respond to the Journal-World's requests for an
interview.
Reich's background
Reich is one of several Cuban-Americans appointed to key positions in the
Bush administration.
He first gained national attention in 1983 working at the State Department,
reporting directly to Oliver North. Reich was in charge of the propaganda
effort aimed at winning support for Reagan's policies supporting the Contras
in Nicaragua. His office was shut down after the U.S. Comptroller General
concluded it had "engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities,"
using tax dollars for illegal public relations and lobbying.
But there were bigger fish in what came to be called the Iran-Contra
scandal, and Reich was named ambassador to Venezuela, a post he held from
1986 to 1989.
Six weeks after Reich presented his credentials as ambassador, according to
Bardach's book "Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana,"
convicted anti-Castro terrorist Orlando Bosch was freed from a Venezuelan
prison. Bosch had been jailed for his alleged role in the bombing of a Cuban
airliner that left 73 people dead. His surprise release was criticized by a
former Venezuelan president familiar with details of the case, who asserted
Bosch's file "had been tampered with."
Campaign issues
Bardach said her review of State Department documents showed Reich had
cabled his superiors that Bosch had been "absolved" and asked about Bosch's
eligibility to return to the United States, where in 1968 he had been
convicted of firing a bazooka at a Polish freighter in Miami Harbor. Bosch
returned and was arrested for parole violation. The FBI considered him a
dangerous terrorist. But he was a freedom-fighting hero in the eyes of
Miami's Cuban exile community.
The campaign for Bosch's pardon and release became a central focus of the
1988 campaign of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American elected that year to
Congress. She lauded Bosch as a hero and patriot. Her campaign manager was
Jeb Bush, son of the then president and brother of the current president.
Jeb Bush is now Florida's governor.
Bardach reported in her book that the first President Bush overrode his own
Justice Department's recommendation and interceded to grant Bosch U.S.
residency
--------------------------------------------- also worth reading :
Friends of terrorism Bush's decision to bring back Otto Reich exposes the hypocrisy of the war against terror
by Duncan Campbell
8 February 2002
The Guardian
His name may sound like that of a character from a Mel Brooks musical but Otto Reich is real enough. He has just been appointed by President Bush as assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs -- and both the manner of his appointment and the role he will now play have profound implications for a part of the world often disregarded since September 11.
Over the last year President Bush has attempted to bring back into office people who were discredited during the US interventions in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s. One such appointment was that of Elliott Abrams, who had two convictions in 1991 for misleading Congress about the so-called Iran-contra affair. He was pardoned by President Bush's father in 1992 and now enjoys the title of head of the "office of democracy and human rights". Another was John Negroponte, the former US ambassador to Honduras, who was accused by his predecessor of turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed there against leftists because it was felt necessary to remain on good terms with the Honduran government. Negroponte was quietly confirmed as US ambassador to the UN shortly after September 11. But the third appointment is by far the most controversial and potentially divisive.
Otto Reich is a rightwing Cuban American whose key policy objective is the overthrow of Fidel Castro's regime and whose support base is the Cuban-American community in Florida. President Bush's brother, Jeb, is depending on this community's votes and backing as he runs for re-election as governor of the state later this year.
Otto Reich came to prominence during the Reagan administration when he was appointed head of the office of public diplomacy within the state department. According to the national security archives, Reich used this role to pursue his own agenda to such an extent that in 1987 the Comptroller-General of the US, a Republican appointee, found that some of the efforts of his office were "prohibited, covert propaganda activities ... beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities". A letter of September 30 1987 concluded that Reich's office had violated "a restriction on the state department's annual appropriations prohibiting the use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorised by Congress".
He staffed his unit with CIA and Pentagon "psychological warfare" specialists and discredited journalists whose work the Reagan administration did not like. His office wrote bogus editorial pieces under the names of Nicaraguan contras and got them published in the mainstream media. He reported directly to Oliver North.
Reich also served as US ambassador to Venezuela and was alleged to have used his influence to try and get a US visa for a convicted terrorist, Orlando Bosch, jailed in Venezuela in 1976 for the bombing of a Cubana airliner with 73 people on board. Bosch had already been convicted of a terrorist attack in Miami on a Polish merchant vessel bound for Cuba and jailed in the US.
According to US justice department records: "the files of the FBI and other government agencies contain a large quantity of documentary information which reflects that, beginning in the early 1960s, Bosch held leadership positions in various anti-Castro terrorist organisations ... Bosch has personally advocated, encouraged, organised and participated in acts of terrorist violence in this country as well as various other countries."
Amazingly, Bosch was granted a pardon by George Bush senior in 1990 and is now in Florida, apparently untroubled by the current president's commitment to rooting out terrorism in all its forms. Although many countries seek Bosch's extradition he remains free, protected by the same government that warns other countries that they are either for or against terrorism.
The Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee had already made it clear that they would oppose Reich's appointment, not least because of the Bosch factor. So President Bush made a "recess appointment" at the beginning of January, which meant that he could side-step the Senate confirmation and avoid the damaging questions which Reich would be asked.
That a terrorist (by any definition of the word) such as Bosch should receive a blessing from the Bush family is revealing enough. That President Bush has decided to protect Reich from questioning on the subject by avoiding exposing him to the Senate foreign relations committee is just as disturbing. So what has Reich's relationship with Bosch actually been?
Ann Louise Bardach, who knows as much about this area as any journalist in the US, writes about Reich in her forthcoming book, Cuba Confidential: "a half dozen declassified CIA and state department cables leave little doubt that Reich used his position to lobby for Orlando Bosch, a man who the Bush justice department had concluded had participated in more than 30 terrorist actions."
When the Guardian reported the allegations about the Reich-Bosch connection last year, the US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage wrote to deny the report, insisting Reich had advised that Bosch was ineligible. "It is unfair and destructive to the US democratic process that the president's nominees be pilloried," wrote Armitage. The letter must have made Reich chuckle since he himself was a master of the art of pilloryinghis opponents through the dishonest use of his office.
But the whole point of the Senate hearings was that these cables and Reich's role in them would have been exposed. Reich has been extremely coy about his relationship with Bosch. In response to the Senate foreign relations committee's question, "Do you consider Orlando Bosch to be a terrorist?", Reich wrote: "I do not have sufficient knowledge of Mr Bosch's criminal activities to pass judgment on his legal status." This is impossible to believe.
Reich later moved into the corporate lobbying business to work on behalf of Bacardi rum, which has paid him $600,000, according to the New York Times. Bacardi has an enormous financial stake in the overthrow of Castro, as it would allow them to take over their old distilleries. Although Reich is no longer employed by Bacardi, you do not have to be a cynic to see a dangerous conflict of interest. He also participated in drawing up the Helms-Burton legislation which has fiercely tightened the US embargo on Cuba, a mean-spirited operation that strips Cuba of copyright protection and is opposed by almost every other country in the world.
The contra war which Reich so heartily endorsed was an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government, often using attacks on civilian targets. The Bosch affair also highlights the strange double standards involved in condoning terrorism against Cubans while abhorring it elsewhere. The US has chosen to keep al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners in Cuba at their Guantanamo Bay base. So while men accused of terrorism are kept on land acquired in an old colonial war and held by force, a safe haven is given to a man happy to promote terrorism against Cuba.
Colombia, Argentina and Peru are in crisis. There are plenty of qualified Latin American hands who could have filled Reich's post and helped build bridges. President Bush's choice is a sad echo of the shabby days that so discredited his father's and Ronald Reagan's administrations in their dealings with Latin America.
duncan.campbell@guardian.co.uk
Copyright © 2002 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Reprinted for Fair Use Only.