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The CIA, Cuba and Operation Peter Pan

By SAUL LANDAU and NELSON P. VALDES | December 16, 2011

“Los niños nacen para ser felices.”

– José Martí

On November 19, 2011 NPR broadcast “Children Of Cuba Remember: Their Flight To America.” Reporter Greg Allen claimed the 1960-62 journey from Cuba to the United States of 14,000 plus Cuban children “was made possible because of a deal a priest in the Miami diocese [Father Bryan Walsh] … worked out with the US State Department. The agreement allowed him to sign visa waivers for children 16 or under.” Allen then interviewed several right-of-center Cuban Americans to offer “objective” perspective on the facts surrounding Operation Peter Pan.

Curiously, Allen omitted the CIA from his report, although ample evidence shows the Agency in the early 1960s conspired with the Church to spirit kids out of Cuba.

Once inside the nurturing borders of the greatest country in the world “Pedro Pan kids have done well,” Allen concluded, without explaining what “well” means. Now adult Pedro Pan kids remain “firmly opposed to any normalization of relations with the Castro regime, the regime that was responsible for breaking up their families and forcing them from their homeland.”

NPR staff might have discovered a more complex and sinister story – had they looked. The CIA refuses to release Peter Pan documents, but abundant testimony shows the Agency forging documents and spreading lies, with Father Walsh and the regional Catholic hierarchy. Their goal: separate elite children from parents (a Cuban brain drain) and generate political instability.

One Operation Peter Pan conspirator, Antonio Veciana, now living in Miami, told us how Maurice Bishop (aka CIA official David Atlee Phillips) recruited him in 1960 “to wage psychological war — to destabilize the government.” Veciana described how the Agency forged a law to make affluent Cubans believe the revolutionary government planned to usurp parental control. Bishop’s agents in Cuba spread this rumor, backed by a forged simulation of the supposed law, to members of the professional and propertied classes. The forgery “declared that parents would lose control of their kids to the state.”

Veciana recounted how “CIA agents claimed they’d stolen the document from the Cuban government.” This false document “created tremendous panic.” On October 26, 1960, CIA-controlled Swan island radio station, south of Cuba, broadcast breaking “news.” Cuba’s government, the radio asserted, planned to remove children from parents so as to indoctrinate them. Radio Swan reported another lie: the Cuban underground had obtained a copy of the forthcoming “law.”

Minimal research would have revealed that Leopoldina and Ramón Grau Alsina, niece and nephew of former Cuban President Ramón Grau San Martín, had confessed to Cuban security officials after being arrested in 1965 to having printed the false law in Havana, circulated it clandestinely and then lied to parents.

Article 3 of the apocryphal document stated: “When this law comes into effect, the custody of persons under 20 years of age will be exercised by the state via persons or organizations to which this power has been delegated.” Priests and CIA agents both recruited kids and persuaded parents to “trust us. The US government will care for them.”

The clergy circulated the phony document among their Cuban upper middle-class flock. Catholic school officials feared Castro’s rapidly expanding public instruction program would undermine their virtual educational monopoly among moneyed sectors.

In March 1960, President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to overthrow the Cuban government. Agency plotters designed Peter Pan to run alongside political propaganda and economic strangulation policies. These parallel tracks would weaken Castro’s government while US trainers prepared a Cuban-exile invasion force, which, in turn, would coordinate with CIA-backed urban terrorists and guerrillas.

Operation Peter Pan (recall the Disney film?) used Cuban kids and parents to further their goal: overthrowing the revolutionary government. NPR’s claim of “no evidence” of CIA involvement would have dissolved had they asked Veciana or questioned why the CIA still refuses to release its 1500 plus documents on that Operation  — while de-classifying archives on the Bay of Pigs and the 1962 Missile Crisis?

Writer Alvaro Fernandez’ father Angel Fernandez Varela, recruited by the CIA in Havana, taught at the Jesuit run Colegio Belen. Before he died in Miami, wrote Alvaro, Angel told his family “he had been one of those responsible for drafting the false law that gave rise to the hysteria.”

NPR’s report doesn’t ask: who obtained the kids’ visas, airplane tickets and contacts abroad and why did KLM and Pan American Airlines issue Peter Pan kids free tickets?

Nor does NPR Allen follow up. The US government didn’t maintain contact between parents and children, nor grant visas to most of the parents that remained in Cuba. The UN High Commissioner tried to reunite parents and children, but Washington didn’t back him.

Veciana helped facilitate this dirty trick, but later mused: “Afterward I wondered: was this the right thing to do? Because we did create panic about the government, but we also separated lots of kids from their parents.”

In fact, Cuba has won accolades for its treatment of children. “In Cuba, there are no children on the streets, no children out of school, no children without access to health services or culture, and there are no unprotected children without opportunities for development,” said Jose Juan Ortiz, UNICEF representative in Cuba.

Paradoxically, the CIA attributed its own objective to the Cuban government: separating children from their parents. Maybe, if NPR staff thought ironically they would’ve done a more accurate report on Operation Peter Pan.

~

Saul Landau’s WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP — available on dvd from cinemalibrestore@gmail.com. Counterpunch published his BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.

Nelson Valdes came to Florida in Operation Peter Pan and is Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico.

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December 16, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Corporate Crime of the Century Portrayed as Conspiracy Theory

NPR Ombudsman Says No Response Allowed to Mass Transit Mess Up

By RUSSELL MOKHIBER | May 3, 2011

The NPR Ombudsman says that no response will be allowed to a story about mass transit in Los Angeles.

On April 21, 2011, NPR’s All Things Considered ran a story about how – after a fifty year absence – light rail is coming back to Los Angeles.

NPR reporter Mandalit Del Barco reported that eighty years ago, electric mass transit dominated the city.

“By the roaring 1920’s, more than 1,000 miles of electric trolley lines and train rails ran through the ever-expanding Los Angeles,” Del Barco reported.

But then in the middle of the century, the electric trolley cars disappeared.

Why?

“LA replaced the last of its streetcars with a web of freeways and bus lines,” Del Barco reported. “That led to conspiracy theories that the streetcars were dismantled by private companies who stood to profit – General Motors, Standard Oil and tire companies. That villainous plot figured into the 1988 movie ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.'”

In fact, it was more than just conspiracy theories.

It was an actual federal crime that led to the destruction of the nation’s electric mass transit.

The companies involved were indicted, convicted, and fined for destroying the nation’s electric mass transit systems.

Del Barco says she was familiar with the criminal history of the case, but didn’t report it.

We asked the NPR Ombudsman’s office to investigate and issue a clarification – at least tell NPR’s listeners that it wasn’t just a conspiracy theory – that it was an indicted and convicted federal crime.

The Ombudsman office said they would look into it.

Then, late last week, we got an e-mail from the NPR Ombudsman’s office.

“Our office talked to the reporter and editor of the piece,” wrote Lori Grisham of the NPR Ombudsman’s office. “They understand your concerns, but do not believe a correction is warranted. Time is one of the main constraints when it comes to producing a radio story and they were trying to condense a great deal of history into a small amount of time.”

Grisham passed along this from Jason DeRose, NPR’s Western Bureau Chief:

“The piece makes clear there had been better public transit in LA and that it was dismantled. We chose not to describe that demise in detail. There were many, many unproven allegations of conspiracy and two official fines. We chose to characterize the numerous unproven allegations as conspiracy theories to lead into the Roger Rabbit tape.”

Grisham ends her e-mail: “I apologize that NPR will not run a correction. Thank you again for taking time to contact us.”

And thank you Lori Grisham for looking into this.

But that’s just bad form – and one reason why America is angry with NPR.

We sent you the documented proven history of the criminal activity.

And still, Jason DeRose says that there were “many, many unproven allegations of conspiracy and two official fines.”

What gives?

This was proven and convicted criminal conduct.

There was nothing unproven about it.

In fact, the destruction of the nation’s electric mass transit system was perhaps one of the most egregious – and underreported – corporate crimes of the century.

Brad Snell is also not happy with the NPR Ombudsman’s decision.

Snell is in the final stages of writing a history of General Motors.

It will be published in 2013 by Knopf.

“Under our celebrated system of laws, the US Justice Department’s allegation of conspiracy by defendants General Motors, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tire to monopolize the sale of buses, fuel, and tires by eliminating electric transit was transformed from theory to fact upon their conviction by a Chicago jury in US District Court on March 19, 1949,” Snell told Corporate Crime Reporter. “That judgment was affirmed on appeal (186 F.2 562 (7th Cir. 1951)) and a further appeal by defendants to the US Supreme Court was denied (cert den. 341 US 916), leaving the judgment and convictions in National City Lines as final matters of settled fact and law.”

“In 1990, the Honorable George E. MacKinnon, Senior Judge of the US Court of Appeals in Washington DC, had occasion to review the entire trial record in the National City Lines case,” Snell said.

His conclusion appeared in the Washington Legal Times on May 7, 1990.

“That Chicago trial resulted in criminal conspiracy convictions of the General Motors Corp., Standard Oil of California, and the Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. for their concerted effort to replace electric streetcars with buses in numerous large and small cities,” Judge MacKinnon wrote.

“It is not a theory,” Snell said. “These are not ‘unproven allegations of conspiracy.’ It has been settled judicial fact for more than half a century. Beyond a reasonable doubt, as affirmed by the federal courts, and after denial of further review by the Supreme Court of the United States, it is an established and incontrovertible fact that General Motors, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tire conspired to replace electric transit in cities throughout America in order to effect a monopoly in the sale of buses and related products.”

“To suggest otherwise is to debase and mock our revered and time-honored system of American jurisprudence,” Snell said.

It is unconscionable that the NPR Ombudsman will not even consider running a response.

Russell Mokhiber edits the Corporate Crime Reporter.

Source

May 3, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Environmentalism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

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