Next Shoe to Drop in Clinton’s Ominous Caribbean Initiative

A Visa for Castro’s Terrorism Chief in Washington?

By J. Michael Waller

As President Clinton granted clemency to the Puerto Rican terrorists, the White
House was
pushing to allow Fidel’s terrorism coordinator to set up shop in Washington.

A mysterious White House push to allow one of Fidel Castro’s top covert operatives to set up
shop in Washington adds a new twist to the deepening controversy about President Clinton’s
August decision to free members of two Cuban-backed Puerto Rican terrorist groups.

Insight has learned that while the White House prepared to grant clemency to 16 imprisoned
terrorists, it pressured the State Department to grant a visa to Fernando Garcia Bielsa, a
high-ranking Cuban Communist Party official in charge of supporting the very terrorist groups to
which the prisoners belonged. The visa would allow Garcia Bielsa to work under diplomatic
cover at the Cuban Interests Section on 16th Street in Washington, just blocks from the White
House.

Garcia Bielsa is not a typical gray apparatchik. As chief of the America Department of the
Cuban
Communist Party Central Committee, he is responsible for the party’s covert operations —
including agent-of-influence activity and support for Puerto Rican terrorism against the United
States.

The America Department, known by its Spanish initials DA, long has been Castro’s main
instrument for coordinating terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. A 1975 Senate investigation
on Cuban support for terrorism found that the DA began directing terrorist operations in Puerto
Rico and in the Midwestern and Eastern United States in 1974. Senate hearings in 1982 revealed
that Cuban intelligence “organized” the Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation,
known by its Spanish acronym, FALN. The terrorists Clinton recently freed belonged to the
FALN and a related group, the Boricua Popular Army-Macheteros, or the Macheteros.

A 1981 State Department report says the DA was created “to centralize Cuban
control over
covert activities” in support of revolutionary groups in the hemisphere. Castro’s
KGB-like
state intelligence service, the General Intelligence Directorate, or DGI, is a separate organization
also used for terrorist support.

Under U.S. law, State cannot independently issue visas to foreigners believed to be
entering
the country for the purpose of hostile intelligence activity. The Immigration and
Nationality
Act requires that such cases also must have the approval of the attorney
general. And
Attorney General Janet Reno — a native of Miami with years of knowledge of how the Cuban
regime works — has not rushed her decision. But officials opposed to Garcia Bielsa’s visa are
concerned that Reno will cave in. A Justice spokeswoman, Kara Peterman, told Insight at press
time that she had no information on the issue.

Before the Clinton administration took the reins of the federal government, the Cuban
Interests
Section contained 24 staff, nearly all of whom were intelligence agents, according to a
Cuban-American National Foundation study by Rex A. Hudson. Today, the espionage presence
there is
nearly double that number, according to a congressional source, while U.S. intelligence presence
at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana is “meager” by comparison.

An intelligence source tells Insight that Garcia Bielsa personally oversaw the funding and
direction of the Macheteros, a clandestine militant organization that seeks to convert Puerto Rico
into an independent, Marxist-Leninist state. Machetero members offered clemency were serving
time in connection with the 1983 armed robbery of a Wells Fargo armored truck in Connecticut
to finance their terrorist activity.

A 1988 federal report on terrorism signed by then-vice president George Bush, who headed
the
Task Force on Combating Terrorism, termed the Macheteros “a tightly controlled and extremely
violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that has targeted primarily U.S. military personnel and
Puerto Rican police…. The stated position of the group is that they have ‘declared war’ on the
United States.”

* * *

Cuba also continues to provide asylum to FALN fugitives, including
bomber William
Morales, who escaped in 1979 while serving a 99-year sentence for bombing and murder, fled to
Mexico where he killed a policeman and was granted asylum by the Castro government. Clinton
granted clemency to Morales’ common-law wife, Dylcia Noemi Pagan, who was serving time for
illegal weapons possession and seditious conspiracy.

After Machetero-attributed bombings rocked Puerto Rico in connection with radical protests
against privatization of the telephone company in 1998, Garcia Bielsa flew to the island to meet
with Machetero leaders and order them to desist. “He appears to have directly intervened to stop
recent violent actions committed by the Macheteros in Puerto Rico,” according to a U.S.
government source. “After that meeting, the violence abruptly ceased.”

The meeting was not necessarily an act of mercy on Garcia Bielsa’s part. Studies of Latin
American revolutionary groups by Michael Radu of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, David
Nolan of the University of Miami and others show that the Cuban Communist Party
leadership historically has intervened with guerrilla and terrorist groups to stop their
violent activity if the acts are strategically or tactically counterproductive.

“Castro and his people are desperate to bring Fernando Garcia Bielsa to
Washington,” a
government source tells Insight. “They view this administration as their last hope. To them,
it is vital to bring their highest-[ranking] intelligence coordinator to Washington so he can
better run the networks under his direction.”

* * *

That emphasis might explain why Garcia Bielsa pressured the Macheteros, for the time
being, to
stop bombing in Puerto Rico. But it doesn’t explain the pressure to free imprisoned terrorists.
Calls to the National Security Council were not returned.

Communist Cuba, with a very capable network of intelligence services trained and equipped
by
the former Soviet Union, continues to wage a massive espionage campaign against the United
States, according to FBI sources. The Cubans have proved so adept at the craft that, like the old
East German Stasi, they have foiled most U.S. attempts to recruit their people as agents. “The
Cubans very substantially infiltrated U.S. intelligence in the Cuban area and therefore are able to
influence U.S. thinking through false information or muddying the waters,” says William Ratliff
of the Hoover Institution.

* * *

The State Department continues to classify Cuba as a state sponsor of international terrorism.
It
places Cuba “on par with Iran and North Korea for engaging in terrorist activity themselves or by
providing arms, training, safe haven, diplomatic facilities, financial backing, logistic and/or other
support to terrorists.” The report, issued last year, adds, “Although there is no evidence to
indicate that Cuba sponsored any international terrorist activity in 1997, it continues to provide
sanctuary to terrorists from several different terrorist organizations. Cuba also maintains strong
links to other state sponsors of terrorism.”

The secret White House campaign to bring Garcia Bielsa to Washington has met opposition
from
career officials in the government bureaucracy. The effort comes at a time when the FBI is
hunting for Cuban penetration agents with access to top U.S. officials. The FBI strongly objects
to granting Garcia Bielsa entry. But sources say the State Department, under White House
pressure, protested so strongly that the bureau dropped its objection, apparently paving the way
for Garcia Bielsa to work at the Cuban mission just up the street from the White House.

U.S. counterintelligence has reason to believe that the Castro government has
placed agents
under its control to influence policy decisions on issues affecting the regime. Among
those
decisions, sources tell Insight, is Clinton’s baffling clemency to the FALN terrorists, who until
their September release had been serving stiff federal sentences for their involvement in terrorist
campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s.

The White House isn’t helping to clear the air. Rather than allay concerns about espionage
and
Cuban influence operations, it has quashed congressional inquiries about the decision-making
process behind the president’s unusual clemency offer.

Many political observers following the clemency issue, particularly Republicans, have
assumed
that the decision was designed to help first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton curry favor with ethnic
Puerto Rican voters in New York City for her anticipated Senate campaign. Evidently,
there
was more to it than that.