Don't Be Fooled By Castro

Frank Calzon
The Miami Herald, May 22, 2002

Carter in Cuba

Fidel Castro cannot conceive of honest political disagreements. He insists that those who think differently are neither opposition leaders nor political adversaries. They are ''lackeys of the imperialists'' -- and traitors.

But, like the Italian fascist Mussolini, Castro can be quite charming. To that David Rockefeller, Danielle Mitterrand, Gabriel García Márquez and now former President Jimmy Carter can attest. Castro also can be masterfully disingenuous.

In 1998, Castro was praising a Defense Department report that declared Havana posed no threat to the United States, calling it ``an objective report by serious people.''

The reports findings were revealed by Christopher Marquis, then writing for The Herald, and are now being cited by those campaigning to lift the U.S. embargo. The report stated that Cubas military had been greatly reduced and minimized any danger posed by chemical or biological weapons.

But last week, John Bolton, the top U.S. official responsible for arms control and international security, said the report was a clever treatise of disinformation by Castros intelligence service. The senior Cuba analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency ''who had a hand in drafting'' it was Ana Belen Montes, who pleaded guilty in March to spying for the Castro government.

That brings us back to Carter, one of the most decent fellows ever to sit in the Oval Office, whose human-rights crusade has brought hope to millions.

Less adroit at dealing with what President Reagan and now President Bush call ''evil'' regimes, Carter was not re-elected after the Iran hostage crisis. He went to Havana, where he said Castro has nothing to do with biochemical weapons.

Carter says the government expert who briefed him claimed ignorance of the subject. But Carter and his staff do not have to rely on classified information. The Carter Center has a copy of Ken Alibeks book, Biohazard, published by Random House in 1999, in which the former deputy director of the Soviet biochemical weapons program reported, "Cuba had an active biological weapons program.''

A few days before Carter's trip, The New York Times reported that, "José de la Fuente, the former director of research at Cubas Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, wrote in the journal Nature Biotechnology late last year that he was `profoundly disturbed about Cuban sales of dual-use technology to Iran.''

At a congressional hearing focusing on ''Combating Terrorism: Assessing the Threat of a Biochemical Weapons Attack'' last October, Alibek said that, after he was quoted in The Herald in 1999, the situation became quite confusing. "The State Department said that they had no information about any Cuban offensive biological-weapons program. But at the very same time, the Defense Intelligence Agency included Cuba in a group of countries involved in biological-weapons activity.''

Perhaps the confusion in the government had to do with the work of the now-notorious Montes. The history of the 20th century is replete with examples of well-meaning political pilgrims. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, also a very decent chap, returned home after Munich assuring everyone of Hitlers good intentions.

Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from The New York Times, dismissed the famine engineered by Stalin -- which took the lives of millions -- as anti-Soviet propaganda.

The long, sad litany proves not only how strong totalitarian regimes can become but also how willing Westerners are to leave skepticism behind when they travel abroad.

Still, Carter is neither Chamberlain nor Duranty. Some of what he has told the Cubans about freedom may, in the end, help to undermine Castro.

Frank Calzon is the executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.

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