A: That’s an amazing case! Cuba approached the United States with an offer to cooperate in combating terrorism and, in fact, the FBI sent people to Cuba to get information from the Cubans about it. The next thing was that Cubans who had infiltrated the terrorist groups in the United States were arrested. That is utterly shocking! Do you think it’s reported? Nobody knows about it. I mean, here are Cubans who are infiltrating illegal, terrorist organizations in the United States, which are violating US law and the infiltrators are arrested, not the terrorists. It’s astonishing. The US has refused intelligence cooperation with Cuba on terrorism because it would lead directly back to terrorist groups based in the United States.

A: …it's just not true that the population has swung to the right. The government has, the parties have, the media have, the public hasn't. And does that mean they can get a fair trial? Well, yeah, I tend to agree with Leonard Weinglass on that, it's possible. Not in Miami, of course. But can you get fair coverage of it? Well, that's really up to people like us. If there are delegations at the Boston Globe day after day saying why don't you publish some of this stuff, then chances are it'll get published. It's the same elsewhere. If there is public engagement and involvement, things change, otherwise, they don't. They'll keep drifting to the right, and the public will be somewhere else, with a huge gap between public opinion and public policy. It's startling, in fact, when you look at it.

Q:… Can you address the motivation for us to be so nasty to Cuba?
A:..Since Cuba liberated itself in January 1959, within months the Eisenhower administration formally decided to overthrow the government. And they began some sabotaging acts, but also an embargo, and they said exactly why, and now we know, since it's public. The idea is to punish the people of Cuba,…as the under secretary of state put it, "they are responsible for the government, therefore they had to suffer to get them to overthrow the government."

Well, Kennedy picked that up, immediately. The reasoning was made explicit, he picked up the same thing, yeah, the population has to suffer. Kennedy right off launched an invasion of Cuba, the Bay of Pigs. That was beaten back. The reaction of the Kennedy administration was, as it was described there by insiders, as savage. They needed a plan of action immediately, they couldn't tolerate this defeat. They instantly launched a major terrorist war.... The president's brother…was to "bring the terrors of the earth" to Cuba, so that the people would really suffer. … Well, they almost brought the terrors of the earth to the entire world.

And ever since then, both the embargo, which we haven't talked about, and the terror war continues right up to the moment.…

The Bush doctrine, Bush number 2, declares that any state that harbor terrorists is a terrorist state, and has to be treated accordingly by the civilized world, meaning by bombing, by invasion and so on. And it follows very simply from that, we ought to be calling on Washington to send the US Air Force to bomb Washington, because by Bush's declaration, this is a terrorist state and the civilized world ought to attack it….

I should say there is nothing ambiguous about this. Orlando Bosch was mentioned there.* He is not only one of the leading international terrorists, but he is so declared by the FBI and the Justice Department. The FBI accuses him for about 30 terrorist acts, many committed on US soil. The US Justice Department has demanded that he be deported as a threat to US national security. George Bush number one, in the face of that, granted him a presidential pardon. Another of his associate that was mentioned here,* Posada Carriles, he should be on the front pages right now. He is a notorious international terrorist, he is apparently the one who collaborated with Bosch in blowing up the Cubana Airliner, but that's the least of it. He was in the Bay of Pigs, he was an old CIA asset for years, he went to Venezuela, work with the secret police. He was in fact imprisoned for the Cubana Airline bombing. He miraculously escaped. I mean he escaped, and the US sent him to El Salvador, to the Ilopango Air Base, where he was involved with Oliver North in supplying the Contras, a major terrorist mercenary force which was carrying out another major terrorist war against Nicaragua…. But that's not considered a crime here. He went off to other activities....

Finally he got back into the United States. Venezuela asked for his extradition for the Cubana bombing over Venezuela. Well that came to the courts and the courts turned it down, it's now sort of in limbo. And if there is no protest about it, he will probably end up alongside his friend, Orlando Bosch in Miami, enjoying themselves in a major terrorist haven. That's another leading international terrorist. And there is no ambiguity about any of these things. All of this is completely public in the US documents, unchallenged.