Shame on Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and those who turn a blind eye to her hypocrisy
That Ileana Ros-Lehtinen works at Akin Gump, Washington’s largest lobbying firm, and one that does business with Cuba, would not be very important to report under normal circumstances. But, let’s face it, Ileana is not just another employee, and this can’t be considered normal in the city where she once terrorized persons who dared show any sympathy towards Cuba and its people, including those who might simply be sending money to a needy mother.
This is the Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who in 1990, with the help of Jeb Bush and a few others, lobbied hard to get Orlando Bosch, who the New York Times referred to as “a Cuban pediatrician known more for bombings than medicine,” out of jail allowing the convicted terrorist to spend his last years freely walking the streets of Miami. President George H.W. Bush made their wish a reality.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen retired last year from Congress after 29 years representing South Florida. And like so many retired members of that once august body, she accepted a job to lobby the same people she had worked with —many who were cohorts for almost three decades. This, in fact, could easily be an issue to write about — the revolving door that has institutionalized corruption legalizing it among members and former members of Congress.
But that decadent revolving door I talk about is not the reason for mentioning Ileana’s new job.
It is the hypocrisy that angers me. And it is also the fact that except for Michael Putney and Channel 10 News in Miami, who first reported this, not one other TV station, or the Miami Herald (of course!), has dared challenge Ms. Ros-Lehtinen regarding her new job.
The “big bad wolf”, as Fidel Castro once called her, and a name she reveled in, is now working for big time lobbyists with interests in Cuba. This is the same woman who over a more than 30 year career in Washington and Tallahassee tried to make life miserable for anyone who dared do business with anything related to Cuba.
But times have changed and she’s now making probably more than a quarter million a year for a Washington outfit that does business with Cuba. The money’s better than it was as a member of the House of Representatives; and she had to do something since how can she live on the meager six-figure retirement salary she gets from the federal government… So in her shifty eyes, it’s OK. She even told Michael Putney that she had nothing to do with Cuba, that’s another division of the company.
Also of note, if you check out Ileana’s page on the Akin Gump website, you will read several pages of her accomplishments in Congress and the State Legislature. The interesting part of the search is that for a woman whose main issue as a politician was Cuba, the word Cuba is NOT mentioned once in her Akin Gump resumé. Again, call it what you want. I call it hypocrisy.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen could care less about Cuba, or Cubans, or the black beans and rice she was raised on. During her years in politics she found Cuba to be her way to get elected and reelected in a city full of hatred and rancor against anything Cuban. Cuba also became her kind’s cash cow where they skillfully created a system that handed them government money (millions) that flowed to Miami — meant for Havana…
Shame on Ileana. Her hypocrisy knows no bounds.
But greater shame on Miami, its leaders and media outlets, and others who have cuddled the “big, bad wolf” as if she were a timid lamb. With this new episode in hypocrisy, many in South Florida have again demonstrated the Cuba double standard we’ve lived under for more than half a century.
