April roundup

Filed under Monthly roundup by on May 6, 2013 at 5:53 am {4 comments}

Two Florida lawmakers protested USAID’s plans to cut its budget for democracy programs in Cuba from $20 million to $15 million.
Sen. Marco Rubio on Wednesday called it “a terrible precedent, a terrible idea” and urged the agency to reconsider.
The planned reduction is “way out of proportion…for a program of this small scale,” Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 24.
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah defended the cuts, saying:

…on Cuba, again, the goals there are support for civil society and democracy with some small humanitarian efforts. And we have worked closely with our partners. We believe the administration’s budget of $15 million reflects an appropriate investment that they have the capacity to implement.
We recognize and take some faith in the fact that GAO reviewed our approach to implementing this program and very strongly commented on the effective reforms we’ve put in place, to have a clear and compelling implementation strategy for this effort.

Shah says USAID’s partners “have the capacity to implement” $15 million in programs. One Capitol Hill source who is knowledgeable about USAID’s programs told me in 2011 that USAID sometimes has trouble spending all the money it is given for Cuba programs. He said:

If you’re sitting at AID at a desk and someone hands you $20 million and says, ‘All right, go spend it on Cuba and none of it can touch the government’ — $20 million in a year is a lot of money to spend that way.

shovelDevising ways to spend the money became tougher after Cuban authorities arrested American development worker Alan Gross in December 2009. After his arrest, USAID stopped funding programs aimed at smuggling high-tech communications gear into Cuba, the source said, but that created a new problem. He said:

Now you’ve got to figure out—where do we spend all that money that we used to spend on technology? In some ways this is a shoveling-the-money-out-the-door operation.

Even when USAID spent only $9 million per year on Cuba programs, it was “very difficult” to find productive ways to spend the money, the source said.
The source it was especially difficult for USAID in 2008 when it suddenly had to spend some $45 million Cuba programs. He said:

According to everyone at the State Department, that was the year that the programs just…broke down completely. It’s very difficult to spent that much money, so how do you spend it? You basically give it to people in the United States and say, ‘OK, try to go do some good with it.’

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said more money is needed for democracy activists, not less. During an April 25 budget hearing, she told Shah:

I continue to be concerned over the administration’s attempts to cut much needed democracy programs to the Cuban people. Forty pro-democracy activists remain on hunger strikes in Cuba to call attention to the dozens of Cubans who are being detained by Castro’s state security forces. These brave heros are risking their lives yet we are cutting their support, which is not prudent, especially at a time when the crackdown by Castro’s thugs is actually on the rise on the island.

Rubio blamed Secretary of State John Kerry for the $5 million cut. He did not mention Kerry by name, but recalled that Kerry, as senator and chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, once froze funding for democracy programs in Cuba.
Rubio said Kerry and other lawmakers “held up this program with endless questions about it.”
Kerry now oversees both the State Department and USAID and is in a position to adjust the budget for the democracy programs. Said Rubio:

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this was reduced. I just hope that this will be reversed. I think it’s a terrible precedent. It’s a terrible idea.

Critics of U.S. policy toward Cuba hope Kerry is taking a new approach toward Cuba. Arturo Lopez-Levy, a lecturer at the University of Denver, said Kerry’s experiences in “Vietnam, where visceral ideological attitudes prevailed over rational analysis, prompted the future senator to advocate for a more realistic course for U.S. policy.” Lopez-Levy wrote:

Once public opinion turned against the war in Vietnam, the political leadership in the U.S. found it had no choice but to follow suit. Kerry is better positioned than anyone to be a leader and see that point of departure when it comes to U.S. policy and Cuba.

Kerry has spoken out against U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba. In 2009, he wrote:

For 47 years, our embargo in the name of democracy has produced no democracy at all. Too often, our rhetoric and policies have actually furnished the Castro regime with an all-purpose excuse to draw attention away from its many shortcomings.

As Lopez-Levy sees it, lifting sanctions – including the ban on unrestricted travel to the island – would be “a catalyst for change” in Cuba.

Supporters of sanctions say the embargo must remain in place to force the Cuban government to make democratic reforms.

March roundup

Filed under Monthly roundup by on April 2, 2013 at 5:43 pm {no comments}
concept-drawing

A drawing from an Alan Gross memo

New details emerged in the case of Alan Gross in March. A statement filed in federal court showed that Gross:

  • Reported his weight was 144, down 110 pounds from the 254 he says he weighed when he was jailed in December 2009.
  • Continues to dispute the allegations against him and “the validity of my conviction.”
  • Had spent the decade before his arrest working in information and communications technology, setting up and managing about 150 “fixed-earth stations to increase Internet access.” (more…)

February roundup

Filed under Monthly roundup by on March 11, 2013 at 7:01 am {no comments}

John_Kerry_headshot_with_US_flagIncoming Secretary of State John Kerry vowed earlier this month to boost U.S. engagement abroad as a way to “prevent conflict and prevent failed states.” In a Feb. 15 speech to employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development, he said:

This challenge deserves more focus and more attention, not less. This is not a time for the United States of America to retrench and to retreat.
This is a time to be more engaged.

Kerry, the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also cited the importance of transparency and accountability. He said he wanted to work with USAID personnel “in the smartest way we can together to get the best return on this investment for the American taxpayer that we can get.”
And he said foreign aid is a “paltry” 1 percent of the federal budget, a “tiny component of what we do overall compared to the military budget, compared to all of our budget.” (more…)

January roundup

Filed under Monthly roundup by on January 28, 2013 at 8:50 pm {2 comments}
kornbluh

Peter Kornbluh

Development Alternatives Inc. warned this month that a Maryland worker’s lawsuit against the private contractor and the U.S. government “could create significant risks to the U.S. government’s national security, foreign policy, and human rights interests.”
Alan Gross and his family sued DAI and the federal government for $60 million in November 2012, alleging that they failed to prepare him for a dangerous mission to Cuba, where he was captured in 2009 and later sentenced to 15 years in jail.
In a Jan. 15 reply to the lawsuit, DAI asked a federal judge to throw out the suit and said documents revealed in the case could damage U.S. national security and other interests.
That sort of veiled threat amounts to “graymail,” a way to pressure the Obama administration to negotiate the release of Gross, according to Peter Kornbluh, a Cuba specialist at the non-profit National Security Archive at George Washington University.
DAI is essentially warning the U.S. government that if it doesn’t get Gross out of prison, then the lawsuit could reveal “unwelcome details of ongoing U.S. intervention in Cuba,” according to Kornbluh, who met with Gross in late November.
DAI’s reply to the lawsuit included a confidential company memo and other documents that spoke of U.S. officials’ desire to keep the Cuba project secret while projecting an illusion of transparency. See “Secrecy, politics at heart of Cuba project” and “Alan Gross and his descent into hell.”
The documents sparked a new flurry of debate over U.S. democracy promotion programs. (more…)

December roundup

Filed under Monthly roundup by on January 15, 2013 at 6:20 am {no comments}

1-1-IMG_1222-copyJailed contractor Alan Gross asked the U.S. government to sign a “non-belligerency pact” with Cuba as a first step toward negotiating his release, according to a Cuba specialist who met with the American development worker.
Peter Kornbluh, a Cuba expert at the National Security Archives, a nonprofit research center in Washington, D.C., met with Gross on Nov. 28 at the Havana military hospital where he is being held, NBC News reported first on Dec. 3. Kornbluh said Gross urged his government to “step up” and negotiate with Cuba.

He’s angry, he’s frustrated, he’s dejected. His message is that the United States and Cuba have to sit down and have a dialogue without preconditions. … He told me that the first meeting should result in a non-belligerency pact being signed between the United States and Cuba.

The blog On Two Shores said the contractor’s predicament highlights contradictions in U.S. policy toward Cuba. In a post entitled, “Alan Gross reduced to try to formulate a rational Cuba policy from prison…since his own government isn’t,” the blog stated:

Nobody can blame Gross for feeling abandoned by his government, although a solution to his case has been a constant demand of the State Department… What’s ridiculous is how we got to this point, with a slew of inefficient and dangerous programs put in place to placate a small but vocal minority and their representatives in Congress. As a result we have a desperate prisoner stating the obvious: a policy of confrontation is only likely to result in more confrontation. (more…)

November roundup

Filed under Monthly roundup by on December 5, 2012 at 6:17 am {2 comments}

Alan Gross. iPhone photo by Peter Kornbluh

Jailed American development worker Alan Gross sued the federal government and the private company that sent him to Cuba for $60 million, saying they should have done more to train and prepare him for a high-risk mission to Havana.
Their suit, filed on Nov. 16 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said Maryland contractor Development Alternatives Inc., or DAI, showed “willful disregard for Mr. Gross’ rights and safety.” (Download lawsuit).
The lawsuit said DAI failed to disclose the risks that Gross faced, put profits before safety and did nothing even after Gross repeatedly “expressed concerns about the operation.” (more…)

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