Saul Landau on the Cuban Revolution and How the U.S. Directly Aided Anti-Castro Militants
As the United States moves to normalize relations with Cuba, we rebroadcast our 2012 interview with the late filmmaker Saul Landau, who made more than 45 films and wrote 14 books, many about Cuba. We spoke to him about his film "Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up." He discussed the history of the Cuban Five and U.S. support for a group of anti-Castro militants who have been behind the bombing of airplanes, the blowing up of hotels and assassinations. Today they are allowed to live freely in the United States. "What did Cuba do to us?" Landau asks. "Well, the answer, I think, is that they were disobedient, in our hemisphere. And they did not ask permission to take away property. They took it away. They nationalized property. And the United States ... has never forgiven them."
AMY GOODMAN: The failed U.S. policy against Cuba, which has for more than half a century stifled relations between these neighboring countries and inflicted generations of harm upon the Cuban people, may finally be collapsing. On December 17th, the two countries announced a series of moves to normalize relations. Cuba released Alan Gross, a U.S. government contractor, and a Cuban named Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, who spied for the CIA. The United States released the three remaining jailed members of the Cuban Five.
The Cuban Five were arrested in the late '90s on espionage charges here in the U.S., but they weren't spying on the U.S. government. They were in Miami infiltrating Cuban-American paramilitary groups based there that were dedicated to the violent overthrow of the Cuban government.
President Obama announced the thawing in U.S.-Cuban relations.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Over many months, my administration has held discussions with the Cuban government about Alan's case and other aspects of our relationship. His Holiness Pope Francis issued a personal appeal to me and to Cuba's President Raúl Castro, urging us to resolve Alan's case and to address Cuba's interest in the release of three Cuban agents who have been jailed in the United States for over 15 years.
Today, Alan returned home, reunited with his family at long last. Alan was released by the Cuban government on humanitarian grounds. Separately, in exchange for the three Cuban agents, Cuba today released one of the most important intelligence agents that the United States has ever had in Cuba, and who has been imprisoned for nearly two decades. This man, whose sacrifice has been known to only a few, provided America with the information that allowed us to arrest the network of Cuban agents that included the men transferred to Cuba today, as well as other spies in the United States. This man is now safely on our shores.
AMY GOODMAN: Cuban President Raúl Castro also spoke about the move to normalize relations.
PRESIDENT RAÚL CASTRO: [translated] As a result of a dialogue at the highest level, which included a phone conversation I had yesterday with President Obama, we have been able to make headway in a solution of some topics of mutual interest for both nations. As Fidel promised on June 2001, when he said, "They shall return," Gerardo, Ramón and Antonio have arrived today to our homeland. The enormous joy of their families and all of our people, who have relentlessly fought for this goal, is shared by hundreds of solidarity committees and groups, governments, parliaments, organizations, institutions and personalities who, for the last 16 years, have made tireless efforts demanding their release. We convey our deepest gratitude and commitment to all of them. President Obama's decision deserves the respect and acknowledgment of our people.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the late award-winning filmmaker Saul Landau, who made more than 45 films, wrote 14 books, many about Cuba. He died in 2013 of cancer at the age of 77. His film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up, exposed U.S. support for violent anti-Castro militants.
DANNY GLOVER: Excuse me, sir. Do you know who the Cuban Five are?
CALIFORNIA MAN 1: Weren't they those guys thatthat played the U.S. in the semi-finals of the Pan American Games in the basketball tournament?
DANNY GLOVER: Do you know who the Cuban Five are? The Cuban Five are five men who were defending their country against terrorism.
CALIFORNIA MAN 2: Oh, yeah, the Cuban Five. Aren't they that salsa band?
CALIFORNIA MAN 3: Americans?
DANNY GLOVER: No, they're Cuban.
CALIFORNIA MAN 3: Cubans.
CALIFORNIA MAN 2: Why haven't I ever heard about that?
CALIFORNIA WOMAN 1: The Cuban Five? They're that rock band, right?
CALIFORNIA MAN 4: Hey, Danny.
DANNY GLOVER: Hey.
CALIFORNIA MAN 4: What are you doing out here, man?
DANNY GLOVER: Iman, you know who the Cuban Five are?
CALIFORNIA MAN 4: Not really.
DANNY GLOVER: Well, you want to find out?
CALIFORNIA MAN 4: No, no, no, no. Don't take a picture of me, please. OK.
DANNY GLOVER: Alright. The police looking for you?
What they did was they infiltrated terrorist groups in Miami, of exiles, which had been planning attacks on the Cuban people and foreign citizens inside Cuba. The Cuban Five have a right to defend the Cuban Revolution.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the acclaimed actor and activist, Danny Glover, in a clip from the documentary, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up, by the late filmmaker Saul Landau. This is another clip from the documentary, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up. It begins with retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Look at the draconian sentences that they got. Two life sentences plus 15 years? And this is supposed to be because of the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown and so forth, which I have absolutely no way of knowing the truth about, because our government, the Cuban-American community and others have so clouded the facts and so obfuscated all of the available material on it.
LOCAL 10 REPORTER: Speaking on his own behalf, Gerardo Hernández said, "It is necessary for some countries to send their sons and daughters to defend themselves, to carry out dangerous missions, be they in Afghanistan or in South Florida."
NINOSKA PÉREZ CASTELLÓN: It's not whether they were sent here because acts of terrorism were beingwere happening in Cuba. You do not send people to spy in other countries because you think that they are committing or you say they're committing acts. Those five that areyou know, try to be painted as heroes, are murderers.
FOX NEWS REPORTER: All the men were given maximum sentences, kept in solitary confinement for more than a year, barred from seeing certain family members, and what they believe was the most prejudicial, they were not granted a change of venue out of Miami.
LEONARD WEINGLASS: Well, there was ample evidence of intimidation of the jury. And, in fact, some of the jurors, during the voir dire process, when they were being selected, specifically said that they were afraid for their families if they reached a verdict in this case that was not acceptable to the exile community in Miami.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I do not understand why the trial proceeded in Dade County, Florida. A change of venue, to me as a layman, is something that is demanded when there is absolutely no chance of the defendant or defendants getting a fair trial in the area where they're going to be tried.
REP. GEORGE MILLER: Not all terrorists are treated the same. Clearly, those that are favored by the administration can operate with impunity inside the United States. People who went to partake in violent acts against Cuba are protected. And yet you see individuals who were trying to stop those acts of terrorists, to try to make American law enforcement aware of these activities, are the people who end up being prosecutedI mean, people who end up in jail. And those who blow up airliners, those who blow up hotels, those who conduct acts of violence are freethey're the toast of the townbecause the administration is paralyzed by their own policy with respect to Cuba, with their own policy with respect to the war on terror. And what you see is a level of duplicity that is incredible.
AMY GOODMAN: In
June 2012, I sat down with Saul here in New York to talk about his most recent film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up, about U.S. support for violent anti-Castro militants. I started by asking him why he made the film.
SAUL LANDAU: Well, I went to Cuba in 1960 when I was a student, because I was curious. I was curious to see how a guy who was so disobedient, Fidel Castro, and his other revolutionaries were going to last. I didn't think they could, and I went out toI went down to Cuba to check it out. And I met people my age who were running government ministries and sleeping three hours a night and using a lot more of their brains than I was using. And I was impressed by watching people making history. And I think, like many other people who went down there at the time, this place seemed really different, that they were going to make a different kind of a revolution, and it was going to have its impact. And I think it did have its impact on the world. But that's how I got there in the first place. And pretty soon, I was working to stop the United States from invading Cuba, like a lot of people who had gone down there.
And the firstone of the first talks I gave was in New York City at Town Hall. And as I came out, a guy tried to cut me on the back with a razor, a Cuban exile. I guess he took freedom of speech more seriously than I did. And subsequently, I made a film with Fidel Castro in 1968 for public television. It went on '69. And then the theatrical release was supposed to happen in New York in 1970 at the Fifth Avenue Cinema. And I think it would have happened if somebody hadn't put two bombs in the theater. So, that ended the opening in New York. So we were going to open it in Los Angeles, and the day before it was screened, the theater was burned down. The police determined it was arson. Nobody was caught in either case. Then Sandra Levinson, who was at that time a new director at the Center for Cuban Studies, was going to show it there. And the Center for Cuban Studies was bombed. This would have been 1973.
AMY GOODMAN: In New York.
SAUL LANDAU: In New York City. My next encounter with the Cuban terrorists was when my two colleagues, Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt were assassinated in Washington, D.C., by Cuban exiles working for the Chilean secret police now. Soand over the years, I've hadhow should I say itmy share of credible death threats.
AMY GOODMAN: Orlando Letelier was a Chilean diplomat under Salvador Allende.
SAUL LANDAU: Yes, he had been the Chilean ambassador in Washington. That's where I first met him. And I had invited him to come to the Institute for Policy Studies, where I was working. And he did. And he wasn't even there a year, and he was blown up in his car on Sheridan Circle, three-quarters of a mile from the White Housevery audacious act of terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: And you had been with him very close to the time he was killed.
SAUL LANDAU: I had dinner with him on Sunday night. He was killed on Tuesday morning. And on that Sunday night, we had come outmy wife and I had come out of his house, and I remember talking outside with our elbows on his car, which was parked in the driveway, not knowing, of course, there was a bomb underneath the car.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it was there at that point, Sunday night?
SAUL LANDAU: Well, according to the witnesses who later testified, they had put the car on late Saturday nightactually, early Sunday morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Had put the bomb there.
SAUL LANDAU: They had placed the bomb on the car then.
AMY GOODMAN: And they hadn't used it until Tuesday.
SAUL LANDAU: Yeah, they missed him Monday somehow, and so they got him on Tuesday.
AMY GOODMAN: Yet this relates to Cuba, because the assassins...
SAUL LANDAU: The assassins came from a Cuban group in northern New Jersey, in Weehawken, called the Cuban Nationalist Movement. Sometimes they went under the name of Omega 7. And the FBI had infiltrated them and knew from early on in their investigation that they had been the actual perps who did the thing, under the auspices of the Chilean secret police, who had ordered the assassination.
AMY GOODMAN: If the FBI had infiltrated them, did they know before that Orlando Letelier was under such threat?
SAUL LANDAU: No, theywell, according to what we know from the FBI agents and from the FOIA stuff, they found out afterwards. The assassination was on a Tuesday. I think Friday or Saturday their informant called up and said that it was the Cuban Nationalist Movement who did the job, and then he named the people who did it: Guillermo Novo Sampol and his brother Ignacio and Alvin Ross and José Dionisio Suárez. They were all arrested by the FBI very quickly and held in contempt for refusing to testify. Then they were tried and convicted, three of them. And two later were caught and convicted. But then the Novos got out, because the prosecutor made a procedural error. And in the second trial, their lawyers apparently learned more than the prosecutors, and they got off. And it was at that point Guillermo Novo, in the hall, just right after the trial, looked at me and then, in Spanish, he said, "And now we're going to get the rest of those commie SOBs." And I, you know, thoughtvery modestly, I responded by holding my finger up. And he advanced toward me very threateningly, and the FBI came between us. And then, very shortly afterwards, I was told I was on his target list, that I washe had put a hit on me.
AMY GOODMAN: The late filmmaker Saul Landau in a 2012 interview. When we come back, we'll talk more about his film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up.
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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. As the United States and Cuba move toward normalizing relations, we return to the late filmmaker Saul Landau. I interviewed him in 2012.
AMY GOODMAN: Saul, your film is called Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up, and there's a very interesting review of your film by the former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, who also appears in your film. He says what surprised him most was the pro-Cuba aspect of the film. That "stunned" him. And he said, "it was clear that this pro-Cuba aspect was not conjured by the filmmaker but by history. Perhaps," Wilkerson said, "I told myself, I knew much of this history, intellectually, academically. But I had never seen it so graphically put before me, in such a tight, cinematic package that seemed to leap off the screen almost in synch with the beating of my pulse." Explain that history between the United States and Cuba, this history of terrorism and who the real terrorists are.
SAUL LANDAU: Well, I think that Cuba, in a sense, belongs in The Guiness Book of Records for disobedience, becauselet me go back to a little story. There was ain 2006, I was in Cuba with Gore Vidal and John Burton, who was the president of the California Senate, had just retired. He was termed out of office, actually. And we were meeting with a person from the United States interest section in Cuba, which is the equivalent of an embassy, but it isn't an embassy because we don't have formal relations with Cuba. And Burton asked the man from the interest section, the U.S. diplomat, "So, like, what did Cuba do to us, again?" And the man says, "Well, they violate human rights." And Burton says, "Aw, come on." He says, "The Chinese killed thousands of Americans in Korea. The Vietnamese killed thousands of Americans in Vietnam. They've both got single-party commie governments with stinking human rights records. So what did Cuba do to us, again?" And the man went on and on about Cuba violating human rights. Burton stormed out of the house.
But there it is. What did Cuba do to us? Well, the answer, I think, is that they were disobedient, in our hemisphere. And they did not ask permission to take away property. They took it away. They nationalized property. And the United States, on the one hand, has never forgiven them. And on the other hand, it has hosted a strange kind of lobby. Maybe after 1981, we had an anti-Castro lobby in this country, that was formed in part through the intervention of AIPAC, the American Israel Political Action Committee, who sort of taught them how to do it. And this is another
AMY GOODMAN: Why did AIPAC care? In fact, Israel has relations with Cuba.
SAUL LANDAU: Well, they don't havethey have economic relations with Cuba. Israeli investment is obvious in Cuba, especially in citrus. They don't have diplomatic relations. But I think in thethe Reagan White House asked the AIPAC people to help the Cubans do this. I don't think it was their own initiative.
AMY GOODMAN: Yet it's fascinating that it was anti-Castro Cubans who attempted to assassinate President Reagan, as you show in your film.
SAUL LANDAU: Yes. They have used violence consistently over 50 years, even though it hasn't worked. I mean, if anything, the violence has helped consolidate Fidel Castro's rule and then the subsequent government. But they continue to use it. And if you ask them why they use it, they really can't tell you. I mean, if you ask Orlando Bosch why he was violent, he says in the movie, well, he's crazy. Another guy, Basulto, takes credit for all kinds of things. And Luis Posada Carriles simply denies that he did anything.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain who these men are.
SAUL LANDAU: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: José Basulto.
SAUL LANDAU: José Basulto formedwell, he had been a CIA agent infrom 1959 on. He was recruited by a fellow named David Atlee Phillips, who recruited quite a few people in that time. He also recruited Antonio Veciana. Veciana was the CIA's top pick to kill Castro over the years.
AMY GOODMAN: Who you feature in the film, as well.
SAUL LANDAU: He's in the film, as well. Anyway, Basulto, also working for the CIA and sometimes working for himself, fired some cannon at a hotel in 1962, so that he could prove there were Russians in Cuba, because the Russians then complained that their people had been fired at. José Basulto then formed an organization called Brothers to the Rescue, which was originally to save the lives of rafters who were leaving Cuba after the Soviet Union disappeared. He would radiohe and his pilots would radio their positions to nearby ships. But when the U.S. and Cuba signed a migration accord, he lost his mission, because there were no more rafters. They were being picked up by the Coast Guard and returned to Cuba. So he took a new mission. He was overflying Cuba.
The Cubans got word that he was going to fire a weapon or drop a weapon on them. And they notified the United States that future overflights would meet the gravest of consequences, meaning they would get shot down. And Basulto was told by the U.S. government that future flights would be very dangerous. In fact, the U.S. government sent a note to the Federal Aviation Agency saying, "Take their licenses away." And the head of the FAA sent a note to the FAA chief in Miami, saying, "Take their licenses away. Don't let them fly." But the FAA chief in Miami did not follow orders. And they flew, February 24th, 1996, and two of theirof the three planes were shot down, pilots and co-pilots killed. And this brought about
AMY GOODMAN: Basulto escaped and flew back to Florida.
SAUL LANDAU: Basulto miraculously escaped. Clinton responded by signing the Helms-Burton bill, which drastically tightened the embargo and also codified it. That is, he transferred power from the executive to Congress, something that was very rarely done in the 20th century.
AMY GOODMAN: So that was José Basulto.
SAUL LANDAU: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And then you mentioned Luis Posada Carriles.
SAUL LANDAU: Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch had teamed up in 1976 in October to knock down a Cuban airliner in the air, a passenger plane, which their agents successfully did over the island of Barbados. The agents were caught, and they ratted on Posada Carriles and on Orlando Bosch. They were both arrested in Venezuela. And then there was a long, complicated judicial process in which very little really happened. And then one of them was freed and came to the United States. President Bush, the first, brought him in, despite the complaints by the FBI and the Justice Department saying, "Don't let this guy in. He's a dangerous terrorist." Bush ignored them and let him in.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip of your film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up. And this is that moment that the Cubana Airlines, with 73 passengers on board, is hit.
CUBANA AIRLINES PILOT: Cubana 455.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: Cubana 455, [inaudible].
CUBANA AIRLINES PILOT: We have had explosion. We are descending immediately. We have a fire on board.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: Cubana 455, are you returning to the field?
CUBANA AIRLINES PILOT: This is Cubana 455. We are requesting immediately, immediately landing. Close the door! Close the door! It's getting worse! Crash landing into the sea!
CBS EVENING NEWS: This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
WALTER CRONKITE: Good evening. Nine days ago, a Cuban passenger jet en route from Barbados to Havana crashed into the sea following an onboard explosion. Seventy-three persons, 57 of them Cuban, were killed.
AMY GOODMAN: You're listening to and watching an excerpt of Saul Landau's film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up. So, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles blow up this airliner, and they ultimately live freely in Miami.
SAUL LANDAU: Yes, and the United States hadand we know this now from declassified documents from the CIA and the FBI, that they had nailed them, that Posada had told a CIA official there that "Orlando has all the information. We're going to get an airplane." It's there, right in theand I think we put it on the screen. And the first thing they did was try to raise money off this event. And it occurred to me that this might have been, down deep, the real motivation for all this terrorism, because it didn't reallyI mean, how is blowing up an airplane going to change the government of Cuba? Or how does even placing a few bombs in hotels? Or trying to assassinate? The real fact is that after all of these terrorist acts, these guys go door to door and saying, "Hey, you know, you heard what we did lately, huh? And you, you got a nice store here." And they raise money. So this is how they ended up making a living. Otherwise, it makes no sense doing any of the things they did.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, going on with Lawrence Wilkerson's
review of your film, the man who was the chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell, worked with him for years, Colonel Wilkerson. He talks about Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. He says, "Clearly shown and vividly documented was the fact that the United States sponsors terrorism. In Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch alone, there are overtones of Osama bin Laden and Aman al-Zawahiri, the nefarious leadership of al-Qa'ida. In the film, Carriles and Bosch as much as tell us this in their own words. Moreover, they seem to rejoice in it."
SAUL LANDAU: Yes. Yeah, that's who they were. That's their vocation. And they ultimately got proud of it. You know, asOsama bin Laden's objective wasn't to take power in the United States. He had another motive for bombing the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And I think these guys didn't hope to take power in Cuba. They had another motive. And that is, to make a living.
AMY GOODMAN: There were over 600 assassination attempts on Fidel Castro's life that the U.S. was involved with?
SAUL LANDAU: Well, they werethe United States governmentor, the CIA was involved in lotsI don't know how many, but according to a British filmthey had pretty good documentation from the Cubansthere were 628 attempts on Castro's life. The CIA was involved in more than half of them.
AMY GOODMAN: Why did they want Fidel Castro dead?
SAUL LANDAU: Well, I think, in the U.S. government, it was thought that as soon as Fidel was gone, the Cuban Revolution was gone, and they would get Cuba back. It would be back in their pocket as they had it before. I mean, if you look at Cuba before the revolution, it was an economic colony of the United States. And I think the U.S. government felt a sense of loss, a sense of humiliation almost. Who lost Cuba? I mean, this was a discussion way back in the 1960s. Who was it responsible for losing Cuba? And Eisenhower was blamed, and Kennedy was blamed. But the thought was, look at all those corporations that used to own the islandthe sugar companies, King Ranch and other huge American corporations who had huge assets there. And they were all expropriated. Oil companies, Texaco.
AMY GOODMAN: They all worked with Batista, the former dictator.
SAUL LANDAU: Oh, Batista was a brutal dictator. He killed, according to the Cuban figures, 20,000 people over a period of five years and practiced routine torture. And he was supported by the U.S. government until quite late in the game.
AMY GOODMAN: So how did this scrappy group of insurgentsFidel Castro, Che Guevarahow did they overthrow Batista?
SAUL LANDAU: Well, I think theyCastro and his group used a combination of guerrilla war which they fought from several mountainsthat is, the Sierra Maestra and the Sierra Cristal, the two mountain ranges in the eastern province, in Oriente, in Cuba, and then there was another group fighting from the Escambray Mountainsand they tried to coordinate their activities with an urban guerrilla or urban, if you like, revolutionary group that was also causing the repressive forces to put a lot of attention and men into them. They were creating sabotage, propaganda. And Batista, by 1958, was an extremely unpopular leader. Havingbecause he had been a sergeant and not one of the old guard army people, he really wasn't in bed with the old Cuban aristocrats and didn't owe them any loyalty. He was in bed with the mafia. He was on good terms with them, for their gambling and the prostitution and all their stuff. So he didn't feel any kinship with the upper middle class or the aristocracy, many of whose kids were being picked up by the cops and tortured or even killed. So he lost a lot of popularity. And when the revolutionaries won, they won with overwhelming popular supportthat didn't last, of course. As soon as the revolution showed that it was serious about class things and distributing wealth, the upper class moved out, and they moved to Miami. And this was pretty well completed by late 1960. The richest people in Cuba had left the island.
AMY GOODMAN: So, tell us who the Cuban Five are.
SAUL LANDAU: The Cuban Five were intelligence agents who were part of a larger web of intelligence group called Wasp. And 12 of them either got pleas or fled, and got away.
AMY GOODMAN: And they were charged with things like what?
SAUL LANDAU: They were charged with failing to register as foreign agents and false identity.
AMY GOODMAN: Has the U.S. ever done that?
SAUL LANDAU: The United States has never tried anybody for failing to register as a foreign agent, because Americans are doing that all over the world. And they don't want to get arrested. They don't want to set a precedent for that.
AMY GOODMAN: Generally, they'd deport people like that?
SAUL LANDAU: They deport people. They arrest them and say, "Go home." And they expect that to happen if Americans are caught, let's say, in a foreign country, in eastern Europe, say, having infiltrated some terrorist cell in Chechnya or wherever. This is what thethis is what this kind of intelligence is all about, and everybody understands it. False identification? Of course you have false ID, or else you're going to get known. So these aren't really serious charges. I mean, they do have, you know, legally, penalties that are associated with. But these guys were charged with heavier crimes. They were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder. And, you know, reallyand these carried heavy sentences. And the judgethe judge went overboard. I mean, she gave Gerardo two life sentences plus 15 yearsalmost unheard of. And some of the sentences, by the way, were reversed by an appeals court, which said these sentences are ridiculous, and they lessened them. They forced the judge to resentence. And one of the Cuban Five, by the way, is now on parole in South Florida, but he is not allowed to travel outside of South Florida. Anybody else would simply be deported and sent back home.
AMY GOODMAN: The other three, outside of Gerardo, how many years do they still have to serve?
SAUL LANDAU: One of them has a life sentence. One will be out in about four, five years, and another in about eight or 10.
AMY GOODMAN: So, murderers and rapists get far more lenient sentences.
SAUL LANDAU: Yes. Yeah, these guys have gotten maximumsuper-maximum sentences.
AMY GOODMAN: Saul Landau, is there any deal being made behind the scenes to free the Cuban Five in exchange forwho is Cuba holding that the U.S. would be interested in releasing?
SAUL LANDAU: Well, the Cubans caught a man named Alan Gross, who was working as a contractor for a company that was contracted with AID, the State Department. And their job, essentially, was to promote regime change in Cuba. And it says so in the legislation, and they got the money to do this. Alan's job was to set up dissidents with super-sophisticated satellite communication systems that would work through satellite phones and laptops that were untrackable and impenetrable. And I really don't think that he was trying to keep the Cubans from learning our secret matzo ball recipe. The excuse is, he's innocent; all he was trying to do was help the Jewish community get better Internet access. This is total nonsense.
AMY GOODMAN: That was being alleged.
SAUL LANDAU: Yes, and they're stillI mean, Hillary Clinton is still saying this, that he's innocent. Even his wife says now he was guilty.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
SAUL LANDAU: Well, Hillary says all he was trying to do was help the Jewish community get Internet access. This is nonsense.
AMY GOODMAN: Why is the wife saying he's guilty? Did he have an affair in prison?
SAUL LANDAU: No. His wife's saying he's guilty because, I think, she's changing strategy. Alan Gross's defense has been he's innocent. Then came an article in the Associated Press by Desmond Butler, mid-February of this year. Somebody leaked to him his trip reports. That is, Alan had madethis was his fifth trip to Cuba. In each one, he details how he smuggled in illicit equipment using other Jews who were going down on religious missions. He had asked them to put little pieces of the equipment in their backpacks to get it through customs in Cuba, which he then reassembled. And he bought a SIM card, which made the system untrackable. In other words, these people could communicate with each other without Cuban counterintelligence finding out where they were. That's why I said I don't think it was just to protect our matzo ball recipe. This was something deeper. Alan had done this in Iraq, and he had done it in Afghanistan. So, he had a track record. Did he know what he was doing in terms of what the ultimate goal was? Who knows? I don't know, and I don't think it's relevant. But he knew he was violating Cuban law. The Cubans got his laptop. They got his hard drive. They got his flash drive. Then they got all his equipment.
AMY GOODMAN: But then they follow him all through Cuba, so that they could track all the people he was talking to, before ultimately they arrested him when he was leaving at the airport.
SAUL LANDAU: Alan was picked up after the first agent he talked to. The first Cuban he talked to was a state security agent masquerading as a religious person. And that was it. He was picked up. He was picked up. And the Jewish community that he went to once immediately calls the cops on him. So Alan was identified, and the Cubans followed him everywhere he went and got a list of all the people he visited, and now will have all of his equipment to boot. So I think that something that's possible thathow should I say itreciprocal humanitarian gestures are now possible. The Cubans could free Alan Gross, and President Obama could free the Cuban Five.
AMY GOODMAN: The late filmmaker Saul Landau in a 2012 interview, talking about his film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up. He died last year at the age of 77. When we come back, we go to Havana, Cuba, to speak with René González, the first freed member of the Cuban Five.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
:Fidel is definitely smiling. There is a sweet irony about it all of which he would be savouring. He was of course part of the negotiations along with Raul and others. 