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Carter Coddles Castro Former President Reveals Classified Information to Cuban Communist It has been a long-standing policy of the United States not to negotiate with terrorists‹let alone provide them with top-secret U.S. intelligence. However, during his recent visit to Fidel Castro’s island prison, former president Jimmy Carter shamelessly violated this policy, putting U.S. national security at risk. In meetings with Castro, Carter passed on sensitive classified information regarding Cuba’s biological weapons program information that was supposedly given to him during a meeting he had with U.S. intelligence experts. Furthermore, after a cursory review of a Cuban biotech facility, Carter attacked America’s claim that Castro was developing biological weapons and proliferating this capability to enemies of the United States. In a recent speech to the Heritage Foundation, John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, singled out Iraq, Syria and Libya as potential co-conspirators with Cuba. All three were visited by Castro last year. Though Carter may claim no evidence exists that Cuba has developed a biological warfare program and provided this technology to other rogue states, the U.S. government which ought to know better, believes differently. "There is no way someone like Jimmy Carter, who has no bioweapons experience, can go to Cuba for two days and determine that Cuba has no bioweapons program," said Ken Alibek, the Russian defector who once directed the Soviet Union’s biological warfare program, in an interview with Judicial Watch. Alibek went on to say that after his boss, General Yury Tikhonovich Kalinin, returned from a trip to Cuba in 1990, "he told me that he was convinced Cuba had an active biological weapons program." General Kalinin served as Chief of the Russian BW production facility Biopreparat. The former president’s subversion of U.S. national security and foreign policy did not stop with the release of intelligence reports. Carter also called for an end of the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba, a request intended to openly challenge the Bush Administration. "It is time for us to change our relationship and the way we think and talk about each other," Carter said in a May 13th speech to an audience that included Castro. Less than one week later, President Bush ignored Carter’s plea and reaffirmed his commitment to the trade embargo at least until Cuba moves towards political and economic reform. This move underscores the Administration’s schizophrenic approach to the Cuba problem. On the one hand, Bush allowed Carter to go to Cuba. Yet on the other, Bush upholds the embargo and even flirts with the notion of indicting Castro for his role in shooting down two planes from a Miami-based humanitarian group. And less than a week after Carter¹s trip, the State Department reaffirmed Castro¹s Cuba was a state sponsor of terrorism. "The Administration’s policies towards Castro have so far been erratic and confused," said JW President Tom Fitton. "Carter¹s coddling of Castro, though not surprising, is a national disgrace. Castro is a ruthless terrorist that deserves a consistent and unyielding response from the U.S. government." JW has lawsuits against Castro on behalf of Jose Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue (see interview page 6 & 7). Castro ordered the Cuban Air Force to fire on three Brothers to the Rescue planes on a humanitarian mission in the Florida Straits. Four individuals were killed in the attack.
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