Government-funded propaganda operation in Miami exposed - Part 2
More than 2,200 pages of documents obtained through FOIA
By Gloria La Riva and Benjamin Becker
More than 2,000 pages of contracts obtained by Liberation newspaper — between U.S. propaganda stations Radio and TV Martí and Miami journalists posing as independent press — reveal a close partnership between the U.S. government and extreme rightwing Cuban-exile reporters in Miami.
The Cuban Five are Cuban nationals who were on a mission in Miami to stop U.S.-based terrorism aimed at Cuba. They were arrested by the FBI in 1998 and imprisoned for trying to expose a new wave of violent acts against Cuba emanating from Miami. In seeking a trial outside that city, the Five cited the pervasive anti-Cuba prejudice in Miami. But the judge refused their numerous requests.
With the discovery — after the trial — of the U.S.-paid Miami journalists, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, Liberation newspaper, and the legal civil-rights organization Partnership for Civil Justice Fund began an investigation into how the anti-Cuba climate in Miami is financed and fostered by the U.S. government, even though it is barred by law from engaging in domestic propaganda.
The organizations have documented extensive media coverage by the government-paid reporters.
MIAMI JOURNALISTS WITH A TERRORIST RECORD
Some of the Miami journalists on the government payroll have a history of supporting armed attacks against Cuba. Others gave highly favorable coverage to Miami terrorist organizations that advocate violent overthrow of the Cuban government.
Miami has the unique distinction within the United States of harboring terrorist organizations and individuals with the full knowledge, and often support, of Washington. These groups have carried out numerous violent attacks against the Cuban people with complete impunity. More than 3,400 Cubans have been murdered by terrorist attacks.
Washington, through several government agencies, has a long history of arming and training anti-Cuba terrorists in Miami. It also, as it turns out, has a developed pattern of putting on the payroll of Radio and TV Martí individuals who have advocated and supported violent actions against Cuba.. The stations’ headquarters are in Miami, under the influence and direction of the Cuban extreme right living in Miami.
ENRIQUE ENCINOSA
Enrique Encinosa, who advocates the bombing of Cuban hotels, was employed by the U.S. government while he was working as an “independent” news director on the powerful right-wing Spanish-language radio station in Miami.
During the Cuban Five prosecution, Encinosa broadcast news regularly on Miami’s 50,000-watt WAQI Radio (“Radio Mambí”), and was a frequent commentator on their arrest and prosecution. He received $5,200 to host a weekly Radio Martí show from Oct.1, 2000, to Sept. 30, 2001, for a total of $10,400. The Cuban trial was within that time span, running from Nov. 27, 2000, to June 8, 2001.
Encinosa boasted in an Internet radio interview: “I arrived in the United States in 1961. I became involved in the anti-Castro paramilitary organizations when I was 16. I participated in a number of military and covert operations into Cuba as a very young man. I worked cloak and dagger in covert operations …” The interview was in 2010.
Earlier, in 2005, in an interview for the documentary, “638 Ways to Kill Castro,” Encinosa openly supported the bombings that shook Havana hotels in 1997, one of which killed Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo. In the film, Encinosa says: “I personally think it’s an acceptable method. It’s a way of damaging the tourist economy. The message that you, one, tries to get across is that Cuba is not a healthy place for tourists. So, if Cuba is not a healthy place for tourists because there’s a few windows being blown out of hotels, that’s fine.”
While the Five were monitoring the Miami terrorists’ plots in the late 1990s, Encinosa was co-hosting a clandestine shortwave radio station in Miami called “La Voz de la Resistencia.” It was beamed into Cuba on a weekly basis, and Encinosa would call for listeners to wage violent attacks on economic targets, as well as advocating assassinations of Cuban individuals.
The Five were engaged in an anti-terrorist mission and never possessed a weapon in Miami. But they were often falsely portrayed as supporting terrorism by the Miami journalists.
In an interview several days after the Cuban Five’s arrest, published Sept. 21, 1998, in El Nuevo Herald, Encinosa, who was cited as an intelligence expert, stated that the arrests occurred because U.S. intelligence “has detected or has indications that the information [supposedly gathered by the Five] is passing through terrorist organizations outside the United States.”
JULIO ESTORINO
Julio Estorino’s history includes membership in Junta Patriótica Cubana, which was formed in the early 1980s. It advocated the violent overthrow of the Cuban government.
Estorino’s resumé — from the BBG documents obtained by Liberation newspaper — shows his U.S. government employment by the BBG goes back to at least March 1998, several months before the Cuban Five’s arrest.
His resumé states clearly: “Employer: U.S. Government, Office of Cuba Broadcasting … Miami Florida.” It is not possible yet to know the total amount that Estorino received from the BBG because the agency has not yet produced documents from before November 1999. But the material obtained by Liberation newspaper shows he was paid $14,950 from Oct. 16, 2002 to Jan. 31, 2004.
During the same period that Estorino was employed by the U.S. government he was also 1) Executive director of the morning news show of a right-wing Miami radio station WACC; 2) Host of that station’s daily evening drive-time interview show, “El Portal,” and 3) Co-host of “Al Día,” a daily news and opinion show.
Since 1997, he has been a regular columnist for the Miami newspaper Diario las Américas. Within days of the Cuban Five’s arrest, Estorino wrote several articles for Diario las Américas on their case.
In an article on Sept. 18, 1998, headlined, “The spies of Havana and Washington’s intentions,” Estorino writes:
Throughout [Fidel Castro’s] lengthy reign of terror, many have known and almost all have assumed that certainly in this country and in Miami, amongst us, there are Castro agents moving about and performing different missions, none of which we can say are any good.”
When the Cuban Five were arrested on Sept. 12, 1998, a clamor began immediately by several of the most prominent U.S.-paid journalists for the Five to be indicted for the deaths of four pilots of Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR), who were shot down by Cuba when they invaded Cuban airspace. Cuba had warned the Clinton administration that further BTTR invasions into Cuban territory would no longer be tolerated.
From the time of the Feb. 24, 1996, shoot-down until the indictment of one of the Cuban Five, Gerardo Hernández, on May 8, 1999, on false charges of “conspiracy to commit murder,” the Miami coverage was virulent, beyond any semblance of objective reporting.
Some of the reporting also cast a guilty net over all the Cuban Five.
Estorino wrote in an article published in the Diario Las Américas on May 14, 1999, titled “With Malice Aforethought”:
The United States government has formally indicted a number of agents from Castro's dictatorship who were operating in South Florida, with conspiracy to commit murder, in relation to the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue airplanes and their tragic toll of four deaths on February 24, 1996.
All this should be proven and it shouldn’t be very hard to do it. …
The Cuban exiles have waited forty years for the beginning of a recognition, even an implicit one, that their denunciations about the vile and wicked nature of Fidel Castro and the system of government he has imposed on our people, have not been exaggerations, mistakes, or lies. This vileness and wickedness has already reached U.S. territory and its citizens and it's time for the consequent actions to be taken: that Fidel Castro be indicted as well, along with everyone who participated in this infamous crime.
It's time for justice to be done.
ALBERTO MÜLLER
Alberto Müller left Cuba for the United States in 1960 and formed a group called Revolutionary Students Directorate (DRE), which carried out terrorist attacks inside Cuba, including bombings in Havana. With training by the CIA, he infiltrated Cuba in 1961 to try to organize paramilitary actions in the Escambray mountains, just before the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Müller was caught and convicted of terrorist attacks. After serving 20 years in prison and being exiled to the United States, Müller became a Miami reporter.
The BBG contracts obtained by Liberation newspaper show government payments to Müller of $38,571 from Oct. 1, 2004, to March 31, 2010. Earlier, during the Five’s trial, he wrote incendiary articles about the Cuban Five and the BTTR plane shoot-down.
The BBG has so far failed to release information relating to its employment of Miami reporters before Nov. 1999.
On Feb. 20, 2001, Müller wrote a particularly venomous article titled “Assassins” in Diario Las Américas:
The last minutes in the life of four pilots downed in international waters by Castro's MiG planes were filmed and recorded for posterity.
What we needed to hear ... live ... shamelessly uninhibited, accented with bloody premeditated calculation ... the subordinates asking the commander in chief for the go-ahead to pulverize the defenseless airplanes of Brothers to the Rescue with a Soviet missile ... Five years have passed since the horrendous crime committed over international waters. That's why the matter should be put to the legal and humanitarian powers of every organization of human justice, from the International Criminal Court at the Hague to the Human Rights Commission at the United Nations.
The Criminal Confession ... in the very voice of the underling executioner ... we have finally heard it with absolute clarity ... during the trial of Castro's spies who infiltrated Miami. What more is needed now to make the decision to try Fidel Castro? What more is needed now to make the decision to seat Fidel Castro in the dock at an international legal trial? Well, nothing. All the elements of the inquiry are at hand.
No crime should remain unpunished ... but one that is executed in the open skies ... against defenseless human beings who were flying over international waters in search of Cuban rafters on the high seas deserves the strictest and unmistakable repudiation by all of humanity ... due to its filthy genocidal character. [Editor's note: Ellipses included in the original]
...
The act is so despicable by its nature as a crime against humanity that it suggests the accused should be in the dock, whether they are subordinate executioners or executioners among the maximum leadership.
NEWLY DISCLOSED DOCUMENTS AVAILABLE FOR PUBLIC REVIEW
Because of the strong interest in the thousands of pages of contract material for the Miami media that Liberation Newspaper obtained and is the basis for this analysis and series of reports, we are making the underlying documents available for public review and comment at www.ReportersforHire.org. We have scanned the materials and made them text searchable with optical character recognition.
These materials contain information on the BBG’s contracts with the Miami media, including, for example, the revelation that Enrique Patterson, a prominent Miami journalist, received $135,350 from the U.S. government between November 2002 and June 2007.
