Al Kamen Misses the Mark on Alan Gross
Who doesn't love Al Kamen's "In the Loop" column in The Washington Post? His scoop is always well researched and substantive, while bringing a little bit of much-needed levity to the news about town. So naturally I chuckled when i read today's bit on Cuba, which began thus:
"He may be the last one to figure it out, but Fidel Castro's recent observation to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic that the Cuban economic model "doesn't even work for us anymore'' was nonetheless stunning."
But while Al Kamen keeps us in the loop on so many matters, he was a bit off the mark in the case of Alan Gross, the American who traveled to Cuba on a USAID sub-contract, and, as Kamen writes, remains "imprisoned in Cuba for the crime of distributing cellphones and laptops in Cuba's tiny Jewish community."
To better understand the circumstances around Mr. Gross's plight (he's been in prison since last December), Kamen need have looked no further than the September 3rd edition of the venerable Jewish weekly The Forward (or visit its sister publication, The Daily Forward). In it, Arturo Lopez Levy, a Cuban Jew who immigrated to the United States via Israel several years ago but still maintains close contacts with Cuba's Jewish community, wrote:
"Gross was not arrested because he is Jewish, nor is it likely that he was imprisoned because of his efforts to help Cuba’s Jewish community with communications technology. Rather, Gross appears to be a victim of failed American policy toward Cuba and a paranoid Cuban government that is holding him without trial.
The Bush administration had issued a pair of reports urging a package of irresponsible measures to move the moderate and independent activities of Cuban civil society toward the regime-change strategy outlined by the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. Helms-Burton called for support of Cuban NGOs under the rubric of “democracy-building.” Congress budgeted tens of millions of dollars annually to use USAID contracts for this purpose.
Gross was the recipient of one of these USAID contracts. As such, he was perceived by Cuba’s government as a participant in an asymmetric political war between America and Cuba, a promoter of regime change caught in enemy territory."
Lopez Levy's thoughtful piece deserves a read in its entirety.
It's been said here many times: Alan Gross should have the right to know and face the charges against him in Cuba, and better yet, he should simply be given a humanitarian release by the Cuban government, with a stern, and loud, warning to the United States that perhaps the next unwitting USAID contractor won't necessarily be so lucky. The State Department has already grasped this fact, of course, as this consular warning regarding travel to Cuba demonstrates (h/t to Phil Peters at the Cuban Triangle):
"Cuba’s Law of Protection of National Independence and the Cuban Economy contains a series of measures intended to discourage some types of contact between foreign nationals and Cuban citizens to prevent and discourage opposition to the Cuban Government. The law provides for jail terms of up to 30 years in aggravated cases. U.S. citizens, including press and media representatives, traveling in Cuba are subject to this law."
Connecting the dots, Peters adds:
"That would be a reference to Cuba’s Law 88, which contains penalties for anyone who “distributes or participates in the distribution of financial, material, or other resources that come from the United States government, its agencies, subordinates, representatives, functionaries, or private entities” pursuant to the U.S. Helms-Burton law."
What I don't understand is if our State Department knows - and now even publicly acknowledges - that Americans are subject to this law, why does the U.S. government continue to pay Americans to go into Cuba with the express purpose of violating it? Seems me to like the kind of question Al Kamen would ask.
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About the Author
Anya Landau French is the Director of the New America Foundation’s U.S. – Cuba Policy Initiative and the editor of The Havana Note. Previously, Landau French was a Senior Fellow with the Lexington Institute, where she published Options for Engagement: A Resource Guide for Reforming U.S. Policy toward Cuba.