Last Sunday, September 17, Reuters reported the arrest in Cuba of ex-CIA agent Frank Terpil. Frank Terpil fled the U.S. in 1980, when he was accused of selling 10,000 automatic weapons to covert agents of the U.S. government. Terpil had been also accused of training terrorists in Libya. A few months ago, in May, Robert Vesco, the American financier who faces charges of embezzlement and narcotrafficking, was also arrested in Cuba. It's public knowledge that Robert Vesco has lived in Cuba, under Fidel Castro's protection, and apparently that has also been the case with Terpil, who for many years could have been giving Fidel Castro valuable information on the U.S. intelligence services. Since Vesco and Terpil served Castro, they believed they could trust him. They didn't look at Fidel Castro's track record: his treatment of presidents Urrutia and Dorticos, of communist leaders Anibal Escalante and Joaquin Ordoqui, of generals Arnaldo Ochoa y Tony la Guardia, of the Minister of the Interior Jose Abrantes and of so many in the armed forces, the Ministry of the Interior, the Communist Party, who were used and then thrown to jail, pushed into suicide, executed, or doomed to oblivion when it served the personal interests of Fidel Castro, who today has a single goal: staying in power.

Those who today are members of the National Assembly, or have high positions in the armed forces, the Ministry of the Interior, the Cabinet, or the Communist Party, would do well to learn the lesson. They feel as safe in their positions as did all those who were sacrificed to Fidel Castro's morbid ambition. Those people should take care; their turn might come too.

But the man who today has Robercorrt Vesco and Frank Terpil under arrest, isn't he the Fidel Castro who gave them protection and guarantees for so many years? Isn't this the Fidel Castro who for more than twenty years trained guerrillas and terrorists of all nationalities and who sponsored violence in the four corners of the world? Isn't this the Fidel Castro to whom all signs point during the Vietnam years brought to Cuba American youths from the Venceremos Brigade, trained them, then sent them back to the U.S. where they participated in riots? Isn't this the Fidel Castro who keeps in high positions people who have been indicted in Florida for complicity and participation in drug trafficking? Isn't this the Fidel Castro who all signs point to as the one responsible for using Cuba as a bridge in drug trafficking to the United States, with the triple aim of personal gain, financing his international policies and corrupting American youth, thus weakening the United States? Isn't this the Fidel Castro who nationalized, without compensation, enterprises legitimately established by foreign investors -enterprises where tens of thousands of Cubans worked-, on grounds that these companies exploited the country, and who now offers incentives to investors, saying that they are indispensable for reactivating the country's economy? Who is this man that now worries about serving the interests of justice and arrests men wanted by American courts? Is this the same Fidel Castro? Yes, it's the same one, and there is no variation or contradiction in his behavior. Yesterday, as today, the objective has been the same: to do whatever is necessary to stay in power.

And now, those who receive assurances and guarantees are foreign investors, under the law on investments, discussed at the National Assembly on September 5. Of those investors, many build tourist hotels, where Cubans are not allowed, and those business people advertise about the "escorts" that one can get in Cuba, thereby exploiting in the effort the Cuban girls that the Government throws on the road of prostitution so that Castro can receive in exclusive stores the dollars they earn by selling their bodies. These investors who will not restore the country's economy, but will simply give Castro the means to keep his repressive regime afoot, keeping him in power for a little longer and thus prolonging the agony of the Cuban people, are on the road to disaster. They run the risk that from one day to the next the laws change, for Fidel Castro enacts laws and rescinds them according to what is convenient for his staying in power; and most important, they run the certain risk of offending the Cuban people. There now exists momentum for the idea of declaring an economic crime the foreign investment that gives Castro the means to stay in power, and to prolong the suffering, the misery and the agony of the Cuban people. Let these prospective investors have no doubts: after Castro's fall the people will go against them with claims that will cost them their investments, plus damages. After Castro, the people will call for foreign investment and will offer genuine opportunities to multiply one's capital in the efforts to reconstruct the country. But those who collaborated with Castro will have to suffer the consequences of having contributed to the oppression of the Cuban people. Robert Vesco's and Frank Terpil's turns have arrived. Those investors who help Castro will have theirs, too.

From Washington spoken to you by Emilio-Adolfo Rivero.

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New Cuba Coalition
P. O. Box 14077
Washington, D. C. 20044-4077
Dr. Emilio-Adolfo Rivero — President
Ernesto Díaz-Rodríguez — Vice President
e-mail: cuba@idt.net