Washington must show proof of payments in trial of The Five

HAVANA – The U.S. State Department in October will release documents that could demonstrate the federal government’s involvement in a press campaign prejudicial to five Cuban security agents during the trial against them.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) announced in its website that the State Department will have to turn over to it the materials related to the payment to journalists before and during the trial that sentenced to long prison terms five agents of Cuban security who infiltrated terrorist groups in Florida and helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation to foil a series of terrorist threats against Cuba.

The documents, created between 1998 and 2002, would prove that Miami journalists were paid in secret by government authorities to create an environment harmful to the Cuban agents, who the Cuban government considers as heroes and whose cause has mobilized an international campaign in their favor.

The PCJF requested access to the files in 2011. The State Department refused to hand over the documents, in violation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that authorized that request. Attorneys for PCJF had to go to court to sue under the FOIA.

The FOIA was issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson and amended after the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard M. Nixon. That law allows investigators and media personnel to have access to – and demand the declassification of – secret documents of the U.S. government.

“This is a major step forward in the effort to expose the truth about a terrible miscarriage of justice in this case,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the PCJF’s executive director. “The documents that the State Department was refusing to produce cover a critical time period for the Cuban Five. The documents that were requested would cover the U.S. government’s payments to Miami-based journalists at the very time the U.S. government was prosecuting the Cuban Five,”

Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo founded PCJF in 1994, as a nonprofit organization. It focuses on cases involving freedom of expression, the right of assembly and other issues of a political nature. The Washington Post described the founders as “the constitutional sheriffs for a new protest generation.”

The fund has worked pro bono (at no charge) in the case of The Five for the past four years, to expose the operation of covert domestic propaganda conducted by the U.S. Government against the Cubans in violation of the Due Process Law.

In 2010, the director of the National Lawyers Guild, Heidi Boghosian, denounced the way in which Miami journalists worked to “tarnish the judicial process” and influence the trial being held in that city.

In the case of The Five, “the defendants were deprived of the vaunted right” to the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees defendants the right to a fair trial and an impartial jury, Boghosian said at the time.

“There is no doubt that the deceitful and derogative articles written by reporters paid by the government had a direct impact on public opinion and the court,” Boghosian said.

It was learned at the time that the payments were made by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, through Radio-TV Martí.

The list of payees included, among others, Wilfredo Cancio and Pablo Alfonso of El Nuevo Herald; Ariel Remos of Diario de las Américas; Enrique Encinosa, director of Radio Mambí; Helen Ferré. editor of the opinion page of Diario de las Américas; Juan Manuel Cao, reporter for Channel 41, and syndicated columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner.

Ricardo Alarcón, former chairman of the Cuban National Assembly, recently reflected on this matter: “The Government of the United States engaged in the flagrant violation of the Constitution and the law to ensure the unfair sentencing of the five Cuban patriots who soon will serve 14 years of arbitrary and illegal punishment. It was not an isolated deed but a systematic effort that extended throughout the trial against The Five and consumed many millions of taxpayers’ money.

“Inasmuch as that conduct would obligate the authorities – both the courts and the Executive – to arrange for the immediate release of our comrades, Washington also conspired to conceal what it did, engaging in an additional crime – a cover-up,” Alarcón added.

A very thorough record of the plot hatched in Washington and executed by the communications media in Florida can be found in the Sworn Statement by Gerardo Hernández Nordelo’s attorney, Martin Garbus, submitted in August 2012.

Garbus’ affidavit sought “to set aside the conviction on the grounds that it was unconstitutionally obtained by illegal governmental misconduct, which interfered with the trial and persuaded the jury to convict Movant [Gerardo Hernández].”

The documents that will be turned over in October will contribute even more to clarify the illegal action against The Five and could lead to greatest emphasis on that aspect by the defense attorneys.

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