Castro questions timing of Cuban spy arrests

Fidel Castro called the case of two Americans accused of spying for Cuba "strange" Saturday and questioned whether the timing of their arrests was politically motivated.

In an essay read by a newscaster on state television, the former Cuban leader noted that the retired Washington couple were taken into custody just 24 hours after the Organization of American States voted to lift a decades-old suspension of Cuba's membership in that group.

Though the U.S. ultimately supported the OAS vote Wednesday, the administration of President Barack Obama initially wanted to see more democratic reforms on the communist island before Cuba was readmitted.

Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn, were arrested Thursday in Washington after a three-year investigation that began before Myers' retirement from the State Department in 2007.

The U.S. government says they had been spying for Havana for 30 years, recruited by Cuba after a 1978 trip there. Myers received his orders by Morse code, and he and his wife usually hand-delivered intelligence, sometimes by exchanging carts in a grocery store, according to court documents.

"Doesn't the story of Cuban spying seem really ridiculous to everyone?" Castro asked, without commenting on its validity.

If the couple had been watched that long, "why were they not arrested before?" Castro asked.

Court documents say the two were such valued spies, they once had a four-hour meeting with Castro, whom Myers described as one of the great modern political leaders.

Fidel Castro meets with 3 visiting US lawmakers
By WILL WEISSERT
April 7, 2009

HAVANA – Signaling its willingness to discuss improved relations with the Obama administration, Cuba on Tuesday granted three visiting members of the Congressional Black Caucus the first meeting with Fidel Castro by American officials since he fell ill in 2006.

[snip]

"Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., current head of the 42-member caucus, said at a news conference in Washington after the group's return that lawmakers met for nearly two hours with Fidel Castro and found him 'very healthy, very energetic, very clear thinking.'

Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., who also met Fidel with Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said Castro 'looked directly into our eyes' and asked how Cuba could help Obama in his efforts to change the course of U.S. foreign policy. Richardson said she had the impression that 82-year-old Fidel wants to see changes in U.S.-Cuba relations in his lifetime.

Raul Castro, added Lee, 'said everything was on the table.' ..."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090407/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_us
________________________________________________________

Roland Burris and Rep. Bobby Rush (speaking)
at a Chicago news conference announcing
Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointment of
Burris to the U.S. Senate Dec. 30, 2008.
CBS
________________________________________________________

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
PROFILE: BOBBY RUSH:

* Democratic Member of Congress

* Member of the radical Progressive Caucus

* In 1968, went AWOL from the U.S. Army

* Co-founder of the Illinois branch of the Black Panther Party

* In 1969, served six months in jail for an illegal weapons conviction

* Advocates reparations for African Americans

"Bobby Rush has described his involvement with the Black Panthers as part of his maturation process, as a youthful indiscretion that he abandoned immediately after Hampton's death. He described his role mostly as running the Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast for Children program.

But Bobby Rush served six months in jail for a 1969 illegal weapons conviction and, even after his release, in 1971 his comrades were still describing him as the 'Deputy Minister of Defense' for the Black Panther Party in Illinois. In 1992 the socialist magazine In These Times praised fledgling congressional candidate Rush, writing that he 'has continued to support progressive policies and has never disavowed his Panther past...."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1198
________________________________________________________

From the Maoist Internationist Movement:
[1960s/original] Black Panther Party [BPP] Archives
From the article: REVOLUTIONARY HEROS

"On May 1st, May Day [1969], the day of the gigantic Free Huey rally, two of Alioto's top executioners vamped on the brothers from the Brown Community who were attending to their own affairs. These brothers, who are endowed with the revolutionary spirit of the Black Panther Party defended themselves from the racist pig gestapo.

Pig Joseph Brodnik received his just reward with a big hole in the chest. Pig Paul McGoran got his in the mouth which was not quite enough to off him.

The revolutionary brothers escaped the huge swarm of pigs with dogs, mace, tanks and helicopters, proving once again that "the spirit of the people is greater than the man's technology."

To these brothers the revolutionary people of racist America want to say, by your revolutionary deed you are heroes, and that you are always welcome to our camp."

Source: Maoist Internationist Movement
Article: REVOLUTIONARY HEROS (May 11, 1969):
http://web.archive.org/web/20041230150623/http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/bpp/index.html
________________________________________________________

Barbara Lee
Member of the U.S. House of
Representatives from California's
9th district Incumbent
Assumed office April 7, 1998

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
PROFILE: BARBARA LEE:

* Democratic Member of Congress, co-chair of the radical Progressive Caucus

* Former agent of Black Panther leader and convicted killer Huey Newton

* Collaborated with the Marxist dictatorship of Grenada to deceive the U.S. Congress

* Voted against using military force against terrorists following the 9/11 attacks

* Has consistently voted against U.S.-led military action, regardless of circumstances

"While attending Mills College in Oakland, California during the early 1970s, Lee worked as a volunteer for the local chapter of the Black Panther Party's Community Learning Center. She also worked on the 1973 Oakland mayoral campaign of Panther co-founder Bobby Seale, and she served as a confidential aide to the Panthers' 'Minister of Defense,' Huey Newton."

[snip]

In the 1980s she worked as a staff member for the radical Left Democratic congressman Ron Dellums, who headed the House Sub-Committee on Military Installations. Aided by Lee, Dellums used his authority to impede U.S. foreign policy with regard to the Communist dictatorship of Grenada, where many Soviet bloc advisers, in conjunction with Cuban military personnel, were busy constructing an airport capable of accommodating Soviet military planes. As the ranking Democrat member of the House Armed Services Committee, Dellums traveled to Grenada to conduct an on-site "fact-finding" tour and on his return whitewashed the Grenadian dictatorship:

"Based on my personal observations, discussion and analysis of the new international airport under construction in Grenada, it is my conclusion that this project is specifically now and has always been for the purpose of economic development and is not for military use…. It is my thought that it is absurd, patronizing and totally unwarranted for the United States Government to charge that this airport poses a military threat to the United States' national security."

What legislators did not know at the time was that Dellums, before testifying to Congress, had previously submitted, through his emissary Barabara Lee, his prepared report (about the airport) to Grenada's Communist dictator for the latter's approval and/or revisions. The minutes of a Politburo meeting attended by that dictator and his military command stated:

"Barbara Lee is here presently and has brought with her a report on the international airport that was done by Ron Dellums. They have requested that we look at the document and suggest any changes we deem necessary. They will be willing to make the changes."

When Dellums retired in 1998, Barbara Lee won his vacated congressional seat and has held it ever since.

In June 2002, Lee joined 30 fellow members of Congress (including such notables as John Conyers, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Cynthia McKinney, and Maxine Waters) in filing a federal lawsuit to block President George W. Bush from withdrawing the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which had been signed in 1972 with the old Soviet Union. The lawsuit named Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as defendants.

[snip]

Author and political commentator David Horowitz has called Lee "an anti-American communist who supports America's enemies and has actively collaborated with them in their war against America."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=936
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From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
"FBI files from 1976, recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm the connections between Weatherman, Havana, and Moscow. Weatherman leaders like Mark Rudd traveled illegally to Havana in 1968 to engage in terrorist training. There, camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine were educating Westerners both in Marxist philosophy and urban warfare."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808

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