• TEN years on from the operation unleashed by Miami’s FBI chief Héctor Pesquera at the request mafia ringleaders to eliminate Cubans infiltrated in their organizations, a new witch hunt is taking place in this city to foster hatred of the island, justify new operations against the Revolution and favor the interests of the Batista-loving Congress members in Florida.

On September 12, 1998, after spending the entire night involved in an operation just like those you find in the worst Hollywood movies, before he had even notified his own FBI bosses, Héctor Pesquera informed Cuban-American Congress members Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz-Balart of the arrest of a "network of spies" just as had been planned.

Pesquera, Díaz-Balart and the CIA network that supported them had commanded the operation take place, not just to the FBI but also to Attorney General Janet Reno and her group of collaborators.

Days after the arrest, the FBI chief for South Florida acknowledged that this case would never have existed if he had not directly insisted on it to Louis Freeh, then head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations. With respect to Reno’s advisors, he confessed to Miami Herald reporter Larry Lebowitz in December 2003 that "other people in the Justice Department didn’t want to touch this."

The reluctance of his own collaborators (reported in detail by investigative journalist Ann-Louise Bardach) and, evidently, by his immediate superiors, as well as objections from State Department specialists, carried little weight in the face of the manipulation mechanism of the intelligence organizations associated with his accomplices in Congress.

The Cuban anti-terrorist fighters were arrested in the middle of night, in a spectacle that was identical to those used for the very worst kind of criminals, without any consideration for the children who were witnesses to the intentional melodrama of the situation, and the men immediately vanished into the most secret cells of the Federal Detention Center in Miami. Against all national and international regulations. UN experts confirmed this when years later they demanded the Five’s release without success.

That same horde comprising the Díaz-Balart brothers and the underground mechanism of manipulation, not just of public opinion, but of the police-judicial apparatus and Mafioso politicking, organized a new anti-Cuban cabaret a few months ago in which the star of the show was one Christopher Simmons, an officer with the military intelligence reservists.

From Miami television’s most scandalous program "A Mano Limpia" presented by Dominican Oscar Haza, to the pages of the Herald which gave him exceptionally wide coverage, Simmons is able to attack reputations and launch threats with impunity. He is protected by the same McCarthy-ist apparatus that uses him as a showman to foster the climate of paranoia that favors its interests.

Retired lieutenant colonel and counterintelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserves, as well as being a former analyst with the military intelligence agency, Simmons commercialized his trade some years ago by registering the Cuban Intelligence Research Center in Leesburg, Virginia, a comfortable façade that also allows him to promote himself as a "Super Spy" and serve the interests of the extreme right.

He writes articles and books, proposes ideas for films and organizes conferences. His public addresses, always on the subject of "Castro’s spies" cost some $50,000 for audiences of "up to 25 people".

It is not known whether he charged the same amount when Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, currently the Republican leader on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives, took him to meet her colleagues in Washington.

What is certain is that the Mafioso politician took advantage of the circumstances to extend the subject to "the relationship between the Castro and Iranian regimes", a combination inspired by the anti-Iran discourse of the Bush administration and its Israeli friends who grease the palms of his campaign fundraisers.

The Cuban government is a "trafficker of intelligence" that provides sensitive information on the United States to its allies throughout the world, harped on Simmons for almost two hours during an interminable address to members of the House of Representatives, according to an EFE cable.

This alleged trafficking of information "places us in a very dangerous situation" affirmed Simmons.

In a statement to the press following this somewhat grotesque spectacle, Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart launched a harsh attack on Cuba to accredited journalists in Congress, stressing the "insufficient attention" paid by Washington to the relationship between Havana and Tehran.

At the Heritage Foundation, a cenacle of the U.S. extreme right, Simmons even talked about dozens of Cuban agents infiltrated at "the highest level" of the U.S. governmental apparatus, including "the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, Congress and the White House."

In this frenzy of outrageous declarations, the ineffable Roger Noriega – quoted by Fox News – even dared to suggest that "Cuban intelligence has whipped the backside of U.S. intelligence for decades."

This chain of interventions by Simmons that was unleashed some months ago is clearly aimed at maintaining an atmosphere of anti-Cuba paranoia in South Florida that also favors the interests of the Mafioso Congress members and allows them to justify any extremist action against the island, including terrorist attacks, the release of notorious terrorists and the arrests of innocent people. As well as ensuring that no appeal process for the Five would come to fruition.

Meanwhile, in Miami, where the Five were subjected to a long succession of maltreatment and abuse, from their arrest and rigged trial through to their unjust imprisonment, Luis Posada Carriles is freely driving around in his latest model Lincoln and his buddies are fiercely demanding the release of terrorist chief Eduardo Arocena.

Little has changed in the most retrograde city in the United States since the arrests of de René González, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino and Fernando González, that day in September 1998.

"We have done this to call the public’s attention," declared Héctor Pesquera at the time when he announced the capture of those he immediately described as a "network of spies, a description that in no way corresponded to the activities of the accused but was indeed convenient for a campaign of media terrorism.

Pesquera then asked for the public to call in and denounce the suspects. The radio stations of the anti-Cuba mafia were bombarded with calls denouncing their neighbors. Ninoska Pérez-Castellón led the press campaign with an out-of-this-world brand of fanaticism, urging people to call her radio program on WQBA-1140 AM directly.

What is certain is that today, like ten years ago, that same Mafioso network continues to dominate in Miami, in a widespread operation directed by the annexationist extreme right that reigns in Washington and sectors of the intelligence organizations in its service.