September 17, 2002

 

BY FAX & U.S. MAIL

 

President George W. Bush                                                Honorable Colin Powell

The White House                                                            Secretary of State

1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW                                                U.S. Department of State

Washington, DC 20500                                                2201 C Street, NW

                                                                                    Washington, DC 20520

 

Honorable Paul H. O’Neill                                                Honorable John D. Ashcroft

Secretary of the Treasury                                                Attorney General

U.S. Department of the Treasury                                    U.S. Department of Justice

1500 Pennsylvania Ave., NW                                                935 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20220                                                Washington, DC

 

Honorable Otto Reich                                                            Honorable R. Richard Newcomb

Assistant Secretary of State                                                Director

      for Western Hemispheric Affairs              Office of Foreign Asset Control

U.S. Department of State                                                U.S. Department of the Treasury

2201 C Street, NW                                                            1500 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20520                                                Washington, DC 20020

                                   

 

 

Re:  Complaint to Revoke License to Conduct Trade Exhibition in Cuba.

 

Gentlemen:

 

            Judicial Watch, Inc. (hereinafter, “Judicial Watch”) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse. Judicial Watch, in the interests of the American public, requests that the U.S. Department of the Treasury and its subordinate Office of Foreign Asset Control (“OFAC”) revoke the license granted to PWN Exhibicon to conduct a “U.S. Food & Agribusiness Exhibition,” in Havana, Cuba from September 26 – September 30, 2002.

 

            Cuba is a U.S. State Department-designated state sponsor of terrorism.  The U.S. Department of State report entitled “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” dated May 21, 2002, states:

 

Since September 11, Fidel Castro has vacillated over the war on terrorism. In October, he labeled the US-led war on terrorism "worse than the original attacks, militaristic, and fascist."

When this tactic earned ostracism rather than praise, he undertook an effort to demonstrate Cuban support for the international campaign against terrorism and signed all 12 UN counterterrorism conventions as well as the Ibero-American declaration on terrorism at the 2001 summit. Although Cuba decided not to protest the detention of suspected terrorists at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, it continued to denounce the global effort against terrorism—even by asserting that the United States was intentionally targeting Afghan children and Red Cross hospitals.

Cuba’s signature of UN counterterrorism conventions notwithstanding, Castro continued to view terror as a legitimate revolutionary tactic. The Cuban Government continued to allow at least 20 Basque ETA members to reside in Cuba as privileged guests and provided some degree of safe haven and support to members of the Colombian FARC and ELN groups. In August, a Cuban spokesman revealed that Sinn Fein’s official representative for Cuba and Latin America, Niall Connolly, who was one of three Irish Republican Army members arrested in Colombia on suspicion of providing explosives training to the FARC, had been based in Cuba for five years. In addition, the recent arrest in Brazil of the leader of a Chilean terrorist group, the Frente Patriotico Manuel Rodriguez (FPMR), has raised the strong possibility that in the mid-1990s, the Cuban Government harbored FPMR terrorists wanted for murder in Chile. The arrested terrorist told Brazilian authorities he had traveled through Cuba on his way to Brazil. Chilean investigators had traced calls from FPMR relatives in Chile to Cuba following an FPMR prison break in 1996, but the Cuban Government twice denied extradition requests, claiming that the wanted persons were not in Cuba and the phone numbers were incorrect.

Numerous US fugitives continued to live on the island, including Joanne Chesimard, wanted in the United States for the murder in 1973 of a New Jersey police officer and living as a guest of the Castro regime since 1979.[1]

 

            President Bush stated on September 20, 2001, “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”[2]  Clearly, Dictator Fidel Castro has chosen terrorism as the path for communist Cuba.  During a 2001 tour of Iran, Syria and Libya, Castro was quoted by many of the world’s media outlets as saying: “Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees.  The U.S. regime is very week and we are witnessing this weakness from close up.”[3]

            Mr. Otto Reich, the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for the Western Hemisphere has spoken forthrightly concerning the inadvisability of OFAC’s licensing of American businesses to conduct activities and business with the communist controlled, state sponsor of terrorism – Cuba.  As reported on September 7, 2002, Mr. Reich stated, “It is not in our interests to have a hostile terrorist state continue in power 90 miles from our shores.  And it would be one of the greatest ironies in history if the wealth of the American private sector is what keeps that failed government from finally collapsing.”[4]  In the same interview, Mr. Reich reminded the American public that Castro is a “self-declared enemy of the United States,” and that Cuba has “a potentially offensive bioweapons capability, that we can’t ignore.”

            Despite the President’s stated position on state sponsors of terrorism, Mr. Reich’s counsel on behalf of the State Department, and the documented, horrific history of Cuba’s terrorist crimes and human rights violations, the Treasury Department’s OFAC elected to issue a license for a U.S. corporation to conduct an “agribusiness” exhibition for the first time since 1959.  This action is incomprehensible and irresponsible in light of the terrorist attacks of September 11th.

            While we acknowledge that provisions within the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 envision and permit very limited trade embargo exceptions for food and medicine exports, the planned “U.S. Food & Agribusiness Exhibition,” in Havana is a frivolous and harmful promotional event.   The U.S. government’s active endorsement and licensure of such activity, by U.S. corporations, in the capital of a terror state, during a time of war, is inconsistent foreign and trade policy – as well as prime propaganda fodder for Castro and his terrorist allies.  How can the Bush administration support a trade show in the terror state of communist Cuba, while American soldiers put their lives on the line to pursue terrorists who murdered thousands of innocent civilians on September 11th?

The Internet web site for the exhibition[5] features a press release that identifies the U.S. corporate sponsors and participants.  The press release states:

Archer Daniels Midland Company (Illinois) is confirmed as a sponsor (with multiple booths) of the U.S. Food & Agribusiness Exhibition. Riceland Foods (Arkansas), Radlo Foods (Massachusetts), Gold Kist (Georgia), Marsh International (Indiana), United Food and Pharmaceutical (Missouri), Perdue Farms (Maryland), Cargill (Minnesota), Boston Agrex (Massachusetts), PS International (North Carolina), Bushel 42 Pasta Company (North Dakota), North Dakota Farm Bureau (North Dakota), Reuven International USA (New Jersey), The Rice Company (California), Hormel Foods Corporation (Minnesota), Bunge (New York), Northarvest Bean Growers (Minnesota), Tyson Foods (Arkansas), and Georgia Department of Agriculture (Georgia) are among the companies, organizations, and state offices, planning to participate in the U.S. Food & Agribusiness Exhibition. Many exhibitors will be preparing and distributing product samples.[6]

 

            Several of the corporations identified above have very active political lobbying programs, and are well known through media reports as large contributors to both major political parties and their candidates for public office, at both the state and federal level.  During the 1998 elections, agribusiness interests dispensed nearly $43.3 million to federal candidates and parties.[7]  Both Republicans and Democrats cater to agribusiness corporations seeking ways to lawfully circumvent the Cuban embargo.  This may explain how the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000, that was signed into law by President Clinton in October, 2000, somehow takes precedence over the Bush administration’s “war on terror.”  Campaign contributions cannot be allowed to trump our national security.

            It is not too late to correct this grave error.  We call upon the Bush administration to take immediate action and to revoke the OFAC license granted to PWN Exhibicon for its trade show.  Allowing the exhibition to proceed is a disgrace to the honor of our country, a slap in all of the faces of the victims and survivors of September 11th, and a betrayal of the trust of the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Sincerely,

JUDICIAL WATCH, INC.

 

 

 

 

Larry Klayman                                                            Thomas Fitton
Chairman & General Counsel                                                President             


[1] Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, U.S. State Department,  “Patterns of Global Terrorism: Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism,” May 21, 2002.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Judicial Watch, “Fatal Neglect: The U.S. Government’s Continuing Failure to Protect American Citizens from Terrorists,” Washington, DC, 2002, page 88, (Attached).
 

[4] Rob Hotakainen, “Administration Advises Ventura: Don’t Visit Cuba,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, September 7, 2002.

[5] http://www.cubaexhibitions.com/pressrelease.htm

[6] Ibid.

[7] Center for Responsive Politics, “The Big Picture: The Money Behind the 1998 Elections,”

http://www.opensecrets.org/pubs/bigpicture2000/industry/agribusiness.ihtml