By Humberto Fontova
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Last month Dan Rather's new gig as host of HDNET's "Dan Rather Reports"
found him, as so often during his CBS days, "reporting" from Cuba. From
Dan we heard of "dramatic changes" down there, of a "remarkable
transformation." "The door (to the U.S.) is open, "explained Dan. "The
best time to talk is now."
Dan was chanting a familiar tune, one we've heard almost nonstop from
the MSM's pet "Cuba Experts'" for the past 21 months.
As usual when dealing with Cuban matters, a sober look behind the
carefully constructed and dutifully reported Castroite facade, shatters
almost everything coming over the Mainstream Media's mics, cameras and
wires. The Heritage Foundation, for instance, in its recently published
Index of Economic Freedom, ranks Cuba as more economically repressive
this year than before Castro's "resignation." Under Raul Castro's
nominal rule, Cuba slipped down 1.1 notches to number 155 -- where it
ranks almost neck to neck with North Korea.
With Dan Rather, however, recent history shows that simple ignorance of
Castroite practices wont cut it as an alibi.
Recall the Elian Gonzalez tragedy and Dan Rather's 60 Minutes interview
with Elian's father, Juan Miguel. America saw an innocent, bewildered
and heartsick father simply pleading to be allowed to have his
motherless son accompany him back to Cuba, his cherished homeland. How
could anyone oppose this? How could simple decency and common sense
possibly allow for anything else?
Well, ask those wicked Miami Cubans. Their political showboating was
thwarting the desperate father every step of the way, for motives to
shame Ebeneezer Scrooge, Benito Mussolini, Judas Iscariot and Bruno
Hauptmann (the Lindberg child kidnapper.)
"Did you cry?" the pained and frowning Dan Rather asked the "bereaved"
father during the 60 Minutes drama.
"A father never runs out of tears," Juan (actually, the voice of Juan's
drama school-trained translator) sniffled back to Dan. And the "60
Minutes" prime-time audience could hardly contain their own sniffles.
Polls at the time showed that 70% of the American public took Juan
Miguel's pleas (as transmitted by Dan Rather) to heart and sided with
his wishes for Elian's return to Stalinist Cuba.
Here's what America didn't see:
"Juan Miguel Gonzalez was surrounded by Castro Security men the entire
time he was in the studio with Rather." This is an eye-witness account
from Pedro Porro, who served as Dan Rather's translator during the
famous interview. Dan Rather would ask the question in English into
Porro's earpiece whereupon Porro would translate it into Spanish for
Elian's heavily-guarded father.
"Juan Miguel was never completely alone," says Porro. "He never smiled.
His eyes kept shifting back and forth. It was obvious to me that he was
under heavy coercion. I probably should have walked out. But I'd been
hired by CBS in good faith and I didn't know exactly how the interview
would be edited -- how it would come across on the screen."
"The questions Dan Rather was asking Elian's father during that 60
Minutes interview were being handed to him by attorney Gregory Craig,"
continues Pedro Porro. Clinton crony Gregory Craig, you might recall,
flush from his fame getting Bill Clinton off the Lewinsky rap, was at
the time acting as Juan Miguel's (read Fidel Castro's) attorney.
"It was obvious that Craig and Rather where on very friendly terms,"
says Porro. "They were joshing and bantering back and forth, as Juan
Miguel sat there petrified. Craig was stage managing the whole thing --
almost like a movie director. The taping would stop and he'd walk over
to Dan, hand him a little slip of paper, say something into his ear.
Then Rather would read the next question into my earpiece straight from
the paper."
Midway through watching that "60 Minutes" broadcast, "I felt like
throwing up," said Porro. "My stomach was in a knot." His worst fears
were confirmed.
The Craig/Rather "60 Minutes" soap opera was a major hit. As polls
showed, America ate it up. Craig, after all, had come to Castro highly
recommended. And he performed magnificently, employing a major media
outlet as aides, props and publicists for Castro's case. Fidel Castro,
of course, is an old pro at this. To cap it all, at that time Craig
worked for the law firm Williams & Connolly -- that also represented
CBS. Gregory Craig now serves as the Obama campaign's chief advisor on
Latin America.
Some of the sources featured on Rather's recent HDNET program also merit
closer scrutiny. Throughout his program denouncing (however subtly) the
U.S. "embargo" of Cuba and touting her dramatic "opening," Rather
interviews Phil Peters, described as a "former Reagan-Bush State dept
official." (See!? See!? He's no Castro-loving pinko!) and as Vice
President of the Washington D.C. based Lexington Institute, a
free-market think tank (See?! See!? Again!)
Much as during the Elian episode, America (actually, the minuscule
portion that views Hdnet) might have benefited from a "behind the
scenes" view of Dan's source, Phil Peters, who serves as a "consultant"
to a Canadian Corporation named Sherrit International. This Canada-based
mining company derives much of its profits from criminal activities.
Applying legal standards recognized from the code of Hammurabi to even
Janet Reno's Justice Department, Sherrit qualifies as a trafficker in
stolen property and an accessory to theft.
In a joint venture with Cuba's Stalinist regime, Sherrit occupies and
operates the Moa nickel mining plant in Cuba's Oriente province, stolen
at Soviet gunpoint from its U.S. managers and stockholders in July 1960
(when it was worth $90 million) by Castro gunmen. Here's a legal memo
uncovered as part of a recent court case discovery by intrepid bloggers
at Babalu Blog, and posted on their site:
From Robert L. Muse:
"Canada's Sherritt works quietly in Washington...recently it has given
money to a former State Department employee, Phil Peters, to advance its
interests. The money to Peters goes through contributions to the
Lexington Institute, where Peters is a Vice-President. Because the
Lexington Institute is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, there is no public
record of Sherritt's funding. This has allowed Peters to advise and
direct the Cuba Working Group (a Congressional anti-embargo cabal) in
ways beneficial to Sherritt while presenting himself to the Group as an
objective think-tank scholar with a specialization in Cuba."
But Sherritt's criminality hardly stops there. Sherritt's workers are
chosen and assigned by the Cuban regime who sets their wages and
dictates the payment schedule. After Sherritt pays these wages (not to
the workers, but to the Cuban regime) the latter dribbles .5% of the
total to the workers, pocketing the rest. As dreadful as they make life
for their subjects, the Red Chinese and Red Vietnamese regimes dictate
nothing of the sort when hosting western companies as business partners.)
By the way, prior to the glorious revolution, which is to say, during
Cuba's unspeakable tenure as a playground for Yankee land-barons,
robber-barons, playboys, gangsters,racists, fascists, and other such
swinish exploiters, Moa nickel plant's workers enjoyed the 8th highest
industrial wages--not in the hemisphere--but in the world, higher than
those in Britain,France and Germany. And these wages were paid in Cuban
dollars, convertible, in those dark and dreadful ages,one to one with
the U.S. dollar. Humberto Fontova is the author of Exposing the Real Che
Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him. Visit www.hfontova.com
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