DID THE CUBAN REALLY TORTURE McCAIN ??
Elchinoboa...@gmail.com
Fidel said No. But He was not in a position to know. His secret
service which was one of the best in Third World Countries, they have
to be otherwise Cuba could not still exist as a Communist State, will
provide Him with deniability. Same as George W Bush can deny that He
even know about secret wiretapping/
Just like George W Bush, Tony Blair and Kackzinski , the President of
Poland who were deep into the extraordinary Rendition operation would
not have to know. They were provided deniability by the CIA, the MI6
and whatever shit the Pole had as their Intelligence service,
respectively. So that , respectively, so they might not have to face
War Crines Tribunals.
During the Nam War there was a strong support for the Vietkong by the
Cubans including Fidel Castro who went there before the final collapse
of Saigon. But believing that Fidel had some role in having his
sbires torturing the US POW is farfetched. It would serve him no
political advantage in any shape or form.
i.e., it would be unlikely that He will come into possession of any US
POW any time Soon, circa 1970, so the experience the Cubans might
have gathered by being allowed to interrogate the US POW would be
minimal.
But I would not be surprised that a few Cuban Operatives in Hanoi
would be allowed to look at the POW by their Vietkong Counterpart ,
i.e., the RSVN Military Intelligence who was in charge of the POW.
Allowed to look at but not to torture.
We Vietnamese had 4000 years of experience in dealing with torture
either as the recipient of which or as dispenser of which.
No need to be trained by the Cubans in the trade of torture here,
Sir! Thanks but No Thanks.
Up-to-now neither McCain nor any POW had declared being tortured,
personally, by Cubans.
The Vietkong has no need of apologizing for torture of POW the level
of their torture was certainly less than that used by the CIA to
potential Terrorists. They did not do Water Boarding
But The POW were not terrorists Sir !
Granted, but it is in the Vietkong 's interest to know how the Non
Terrorists US bombers -who were dispensing more generously
ammunition at least 1,000 times more firepower on both Vietnamese
Military AND Civilians than the Islamo Fascist were doining on the US
Military and Arab Civiliansd- were organizing their flight routes and
their unloading of bombs schedules so that they can deploy their DCA
and Sam Missiles accordingly to minimize loss of Vietnamese lives.
Same excuse that the CIA used for practice of water boarding.
Dai Uy
<662392e0-11b5-45de...@q65g2000hsd.googlegroups.
com>,
Elchinoboa...@gmail.com wrote:
> DID CUBANS TORTURE Mc CAIN ?
Begin quote of Bob Destatte's statement.
Testimony of Mr. Robert J. Destatte, (Senior Analyst, Research
& Analysis Directorate, (Defense Prisoner of War and Missing in
Action Office, (before the (Committee on International
Relations, (House of Representatives, Congress of the United
States (November 4, 1999
"The CUBAN Program": Torture of American Prisoners by Cuban
Agents"
Good morning Chairman Gilman and distinguished Committee
Members. I join Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Jones in
saluting the American heroes who shared with the Committee this
morning their experiences as victims of what has become known
as the "Cuban Program." Thank you for the opportunity to
present an overview of the historical record of efforts by the
Department of Defense and other Federal agencies to answer
questions about the "Cuban Program." I ask that my statement,
in its entirety, be entered into the record of this hearing.
I would like to begin with a brief description of the "Cuban
Program."
What Was The "Cuban Program"?
American POWs coined the term "Cuban Program" to describe a
program in which a small team of Caucasian interrogators
brutally beat and tortured 19 American aviators in a camp our
POWs nicknamed "the Zoo," in Hanoi, between July 1967 and
August 1968. One of the POWs, USAF Major Earl G. Cobeil,
eventually died from the beatings.
The Caucasian interrogators spoke English fluently, but with a
Spanish accent, and spoke knowledgeably about Central America
and the Southeastern United States. In an exchange with one of
our POWs, a Vietnamese guard referred to the Caucasian
interrogators as Cubans. These and other factors led many POWs
and analysts, including me, to believe that the interrogators
were Cubans, possibly Cubans who had lived in the United States.
The POWs nicknamed the chief Caucasian interrogator "Fidel."
They nicknamed his principal assistant "Chico."
Several days before the "Cuban Program" ended a third man the
POWs nicknamed variously "Pancho" and "Garcia" appeared to
replace "Fidel."
The POWs observed another man who might have been Cuban working
as an electrical technician in the POW camp during the closing
months of the program. They also heard the voice of a woman
they believed was Cuban on the camp radio for about two weeks
near the end of the program.
When did the Department of Defense first learn about the "Cuban
Program"?
The DOD first learned about the "Cuban Program" in March 1973
when the reports of the first post-homecoming debriefings began
arriving at DIA's POW/MIA office.
How did the Department of Defense respond to these first
reports?
By 19 March 1973, nearly two weeks before the last POW was
released, the DIA s POW/MIA Office had brought this issue to
the attention of senior DOD officials.
By the 23rd of March, the US government had established a
coordinated effort to learn the identity of the "Cubans".
That effort involved the DIA, each of the Armed Services, the
National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Senate Internal
Security Subcommittee s Chief Investigator.
In April 1974, the CIA informed the Defense Intelligence Agency
that CIA analysts had tentatively identified the interrogator
nicknamed "Fidel" as one Luis Perez, also known as Luis Perez
Jaen, a Captain in the Cuban Ministry of Interior. This Captain:
was in Hanoi during the "Cuban Program,"
had a history of interrogating foreigners in Cuba, and
was in the US during 1956-1957, buying and shipping arms to
Cuba.
possessed most of the physical and personality traits of
"Fidel" that our POWs had described.
The CIA provided DIA a copy of a photograph of Luis Perez Jaen
that was published in the Cuban newspaper "Oriente" on 25
February 1959. The photograph, which we have shared with the
Committee, depicts Perez Jaen wearing a military cap and a full
beard.
Between November 1975 and mid-1976 US Air Force investigators
asked seven victims of the "Cuban Program" to examine this
photograph of Luis Perez Jaen. Six of these men could not state
positively that he was the interrogator they nicknamed "Fidel,"
primarily because the photo depicts him wearing a full beard.
One of the seven men, Colonel Donald Waltman, wrote in a 16
April 1976 note to a US Air Force investigator: "I say yes,
that's Fidel; or at least a guy who looks too much like him. I
have to try to imagine him clean shaven, and when I do its him.
(Maybe because I'd like to I.D. him so damn bad). Its the most
look like Fidel picture I have seen."
Also in April 1974, the CIA informed the DIA that "Chico" might
be a Cuban named Veiga (first name unknown), an employee of the
Cuban Department of State Security. Reportedly, Veiga had
studied at Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, during 1958-59.
An extensive follow up investigation by US Air Force
investigators failed to confirm the identity of this person.
Other names have been suggested over the years; however,
subsequent investigations either ruled them out or proved
inconclusive. For example, the DIA POW/MIA Office provided
historical information about the "Cuban Program" to the FBI
when it investigated a 1987 report that a Cuban employee of the
United Nations might be one of the Cuban interrogators. The FBI
worked closely with returned POWs in that investigation;
however, the POWs could not positively identify the Cuban at
the United Nations as one of the men who tortured them in Hanoi.
Recent news stories suggest that the Cuban Minister of
Education, Fernando Vecino Alegret, is the interrogator our
POWs nicknamed Fidel. Fernando Vecino Alegret first came to our
attention shortly before he visited the U.S. in November 1978.
At that time federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies
examined the possibility that he was the interrogator named
Fidel. We have been searching our historical files for any
record we might have received from those agencies concerning
Fernando Vecino Alegret. Two days ago we discovered a still
classified September 1973 report that described Fernando Vecino
Alegret as an engineering graduate who studied at the
University of Havana during 1962-1965. The report also stated
that he founded the Cuban Military Technical Institute (ITM) in
September 1966, and that he was its director from September
1966 until January 1973. We have not yet had time to confirm
the origin and reliability of that report; however, if the
information in the report is accurate, there is little chance
that Fernando Vecino Alegret could be the interrogator "Fidel."
Among the names we have received, the two names the CIA
suggested in April 1974 remain the most likely candidates for
the interrogators nicknamed "Fidel" and "Chico."
What Was The Purpose Of The "Cuban Program?"
The only information we have concerning the purpose of the
Cuban Program comes from the American POWs who were victims and
two Vietnamese military officers.
The preponderance of information in our files suggests that the
"Cuban Program" was a Cuban assistance program that went awry
and that the Vietnamese terminated the program shortly after
the interrogator nicknamed "Fidel" beat Major Cobeil into a
near catatonic state from which he never recovered.
Has The Department Of Defense Kept The Congress Informed?
The Department of Defense has kept the Congress informed about
the "Cuban Program" from the very beginning. For example, the
DPMO's predecessor office, the Defense Intelligence Agency's
Special Office for POW/MIA Affairs, presented testimony about
the "Cuban Program" to the Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee during hearings on 2 July 1973, about three months
after the last American POW was released. A former POW who was
a victim of the program, US Navy Lieutenant Commander Larry
Spencer, also testified before the subcommittee.
Later, the DIA's POW/MIA office provided historical information
to the subcommittee s Chief Investigator, Mr. Alfonso L.
Tarabochia, who conducted an independent effort to identify the
interrogators.
By September 1974, Mr. Tarabochia had tentatively concluded
that "Fidel" possibly was a Cuban named Pedro Fumero.
Unfortunately, the returned POWs who were victims of "Fidel"
could not identify Fumero as one of their interrogators.
The DPMO s DIA predecessor office also provided an appraisal to
the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on 6 October
1977. More recently, the DPMO provided updates on the "Cuban
Program" to Congressman Dornan on 23 March 1987, 22 August
1996, and 11 and 17 September 1996.
Has the Department of Defense kept the public informed about
this issue?
The story about the "Cuban Program" is not new. For example, I
have here eight news articles about the "Cuban Program"
published in 1973, 1977, and 1981 in Washington, DC, New York,
Baltimore, Denver, and Des Moines. These articles are based on
information released by the DPMO's predecessor, the DIA's
POW/MIA office, and personal accounts by POWs who were victims
of the program.
What about the recent article in the Miami Herald?
I would like to comment briefly for the public record about
recent press reports about the "Cuban Program." News reports
published in the Miami Herald on 22 August 1999 and the Seattle
Times on 28 October 1999 suggested that this issue was
"Concealed for decades by official U.S. secrecy and &the full
story of Fidel and the so-called Cuba Program is finally
becoming public." The same articles speculated that the reason
the story has drawn little attention is "Perhaps &because most
POWs obeyed Pentagon orders to keep quiet, to protect POWs who
might remain in Vietnam and perhaps because Fidel's
identification as a Cuban was then only an unconfirmed
allegation by the POWs."
The facts are that Department of Defense officials asked the
POWs who were returning during Operation Homecoming in 1973 to
not speak out publicly about the torture until after the last
POW was released. The last POW was released on 1 April 1973.
The first stories by returned POWs about the "Cuban Program"
appeared in American newspapers the next day, on 2 April 1973.
Some of the sources cited in the articles portray DPMO's role
incorrectly. We are not a counterintelligence office or a law
enforcement office. Our mission is humanitarian. It is to
account for American servicemen who were lost while serving
abroad. All American victims of the "Cuban Program" are
accounted for.
Successive Administrations, the Congress, the Department of
State, the DIA, the DPMO, the Pacific Command s Joint Task
Force Full Accounting, the U.S. Army Central Identification
Laboratory, the National League of Families--literally
thousands of Americans--have worked hard for many years to
build and sustain programs that today are allowing us to
account for Americans lost in the old Soviet Union, North
Korea, Southeast Asia, and other areas in the world.
As DASD Jones stated earlier, our mission is humanitarian and
it is worldwide. Our ability to accomplish our mission is
dependent wholly on the willingness of foreign governments to
allow our POW/MIA specialists to have access to their citizens,
records, and territory.
Suggestions that DPMO should investigate war crimes risk
undoing the results of years of hard work and jeopardize our
ability to accomplish our humanitarian mission.
What Is DPMO's Role With Regard To The "Cuban Program"?
DPMO is a central repository for historical information
concerning the American POW/MIA issue. As DASD Jones stated
earlier, DPMO stands ready to share historical information and
knowledge about the program with appropriate US agencies.
Conclusion: The history of this issue is that the POW/MIA
office informed senior Department of Defense officials
immediately upon learning about the actions of the presumably
Cuban interrogators. Those officials immediately directed
appropriate intelligence and investigative agencies to try to
identify those interrogators. In 1974 CIA analysts tentatively
identified two Cuban officials as the interrogators nicknamed
"Fidel" and "Chico." Their victims, however, were not able to
confirm the identities. We also have kept the Congress and
public informed. We will remain a repository of historical
information about all aspects of the POW/MIA issue, and remain
ready to share that historical information with appropriate
federal intelligence or investigative offices. However, as DASD
Jones stated earlier, we believe that DPMO should not become
involved in efforts to investigate the "Cuban Program" and
jeopardize our accounting mission.
End quote of Bob Destatte's statement.
blue...@gmail.com
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7240460.stm
McCain didn't phrase the question as you did. That's the implication
of political rhetoric and he knew for sure that culprit alias "Fidel"
had tortured his fellow POW's in Hanoi Hilton. Whereas Fidel Castro
did not elaborate the existence of Cuban in Vietnam for building
HoChiMinh trail during that time.
The North Vietnamese -Viet Cong- officials had no knowledge or control
of this scenario. They just said NO to resonate with its red brother
Castro.
tuna,
---- excerpt from soc.cuture.cuba
------
9/8/99 -- 6:18 PM
Ex-Vietnam POW says captor nicknamed `Fidel' beat him
MIAMI (AP) - The worst of many beatings Ed Hubbard endured as a
Vietnam
prisoner of war took place in a shuttered room, where a captor
nicknamed
``Fidel'' spent four hours lashing him with strips cut from rubber
tires.
``He beat me to the point where I couldn't remember my own name,'' the
retired
Air Force colonel, who now lives in Fort Walton Beach, recalled
Wednesday. ``He
dragged me up on a stool and said, `Now I want you to sign an
unconditional
surrender statement.'''
Woozy and bloodied from that 1967 torture, Hubbard signed the
statement.
These days, Hubbard wants the Defense Department to declassify
documents
relating to three suspected Cuban agents who beat him and 17 other
POWs in
their Hanoi prison camp.
He spoke out Wednesday at a news conference by U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-
Lehtinen,
who plans to meet with defense officials Thursday to discuss the
documents. She
also wants a congressional investigation into what has become known as
the Cuba
Program.
Luis Fernandez, a spokesman with the Cuban Interests Section - a
diplomatic
position in Washington - acknowledged Cuba maintained moral support
for North
Vietnam during the war. However, he denied that Cuban officials ever
participated in either combat or the interrogation of POWs.
Hubbard, a POW from 1967 to 1973, admitted that ``Fidel'' - named
afterFidel
Castro - and two other captors the prisoners nicknamed ``Chico'' and
``Garcia''
never identified themselves as Cuban and never spoke Spanish.
But the captors were Caucasian, not Asian, and ``spoke with what I
would call
an Hispanic accent,'' he said.
Other signs that led the POWs to believe ``Fidel'' was Cuban included
knowledge
of cities in the southeastern United States, from Miami to the
Carolinas, and
the fact he always knew the hour in New York City, which lies in the
same time
zone as Cuba.
The three captors arrived at the camp in August 1967 and sequestered
two groups
of Americans for daily interrogations and beatings. Prisoners would be
brutally
whipped by the rubber strips, or held in solitary confinement for up
to two
weeks.
One Navy POW, F-105 pilot Earl Cobeil, died in captivity after a month
of
almost daily beatings.
The Cuban government has not made any public statement about the
allegations,
nor has there been any mention of the issue in government-controlled
media
outlets. Phone calls to the Office of the Cuban Foreign Ministry were
not
returned Wednesday.
Documents from the Defense Department's Prisoner of War, Missing
Personnel
Office (DPMO) released in 1996 for congressional hearings say
``Fidel'' was a
Cuban who tortured U.S. POWs without Hanoi's official approval, the
Miami
Herald reported last month.
Among the declassified documents was a 1975 U.S. Air Force analysis
which
called the Cuba Program the ``first and only time that non-Vietnamese
were
overtly involved in the exploitation of American prisoners.''
In addition, the newspaper said, a DPMO official said two North
Vietnamese army
colonels confirmed to him in 1992 that ``Fidel'' was Cuban and had
tortured
U.S. POWs without Hanoi's official approval.
Other nonmilitary involvement by Cuba during the Vietnam conflict has
been well
documented.
In May 1972, Havana radio reported that a 15-member medical brigade
served with
North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam.
Two years earlier, the Cuban newspaper Granma reported that a Spanish
psychiatrist living in Cuba interviewed Navy Lt. Cmdr. John
SidneyMcCainIII,
now a U.S. senator from Arizona and presidential candidate, when he
was a
prisoner in Hanoi.
McCain was shot down in October 1967 while flying a fighter-bomber
over
North
Vietnam.
Copyright 1999 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
---
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y99/ago99/23e2.htm
Torturers' aim was 'total surrender'
By Juan O. Tamayo, Herald Staff Writer
Published Sunday, August 22, 1999, in the Miami Herald
Savage beatings bent captives to will of man dubbed
'Fidel'
FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. -- Retired Air Force Col. Ed
Hubbard says he holds no hate for ``Fidel, the Cuban
government agent who viciously tortured him and 17
other U.S. prisoners of war in North Vietnam three
decades ago.
Almost daily for one year, the man the POWs nicknamed
Fidel whipped them with strips cut from rubber tires
until their buttocks ``hung in shreds, and trussed
them in ropes and wires to tear at limbs and cut into
flesh.
Fidel was one of three Cubans sent to North Vietnam by
Havana to deal with American POWs, in what became
known as the Cuba Program.
He whipped and kicked one POW so fiercely in 1968 that
the American went into a catatonic state and later
died, in what a new book on U.S. POWs in Vietnam calls
``one of the most heinous and tragic atrocity cases.
Hubbard himself was beaten so brutally by ``Fidel''
during one 1967 interrogation session that fellow POW
Jack Bomar recalled finding him afterward unconscious
on a cell floor, ``a bleeding, broken, bruised mass.
Concealed for decades by official U.S. secrecy and the
shadows of a war that many simply wanted to forget,
the full story of Fidel and the so-called Cuba Program
is finally becoming public.
Honor Bound, a book published in April with Department
of Defense assistance, devotes 13 pages to the
``unusually intensive and prolonged operation that
monopolized the [prison's] torture machinery for much
of the year.''
A two-inch-thick stack of documents declassified by
the Defense Department's Prisoner of War, Missing
Personnel Office (DPMO) for a string of congressional
hearings in 1996 provide extensive and gruesome
details on the Cuba Program.
And a DPMO official has now reported that two North
Vietnamese army colonels confirmed to him in 1992 that
``Fidel'' was indeed Cuban and had tortured American
POWs -- but without Hanoi's official approval.
DIFFICULT TO FORGET
Some former POWs consider suing Cuba
``I've moved on with my life, said Hubbard, a
motivational speaker living in Fort Walton Beach who
uses his POW experiences to celebrate the human
spirit. Then he smiles and adds: ``But if I see
`Fidel' again, maybe I'd turn him over to Bomar.
He knows that Bomar has not forgotten the broken nose,
broken cheek and busted eardrum he suffered in one
particularly brutal beating by ``Fidel'' after he
insulted Cuban-Argentine guerrilla Ernesto ``Che
Guevara.
``I would kill him, said Bomar, another former Air
Force colonel who, like his fellow POWs, was
handpicked by ``Fidel and two Cuban ``good guy
interrogators, ``Chico and ``Garcia, for what they
dubbed the Cuba Program.
Some former POWs angry with the DPMO's handling of the
Cuba case say they may even file suit against Havana,
following the example set in Miami by relatives of
three Brothers to the Rescue pilots killed by Cuban
MiGs in 1996.
``I don't mind admitting it -- I want to harass the
Vietnamese, said Mike Benge, a former POW who was not
part of the Cuba Program but has long accused the DPMO
of failing to properly investigate allegations that
Chinese and Soviet officers interrogated U.S. POWs.
DPMO officials in Washington declined to comment to
The Herald on ``Fidel,'' the Cuba Program or the many
controversies surrounding the agency's handling of the
case.
------------------------
Sketchy versions of the story of ``Fidel'' appeared in
a handful of U.S. publications from 1973, soon after
Hanoi began freeing American POWs, until mid-1977, but
the tale drew little attention.
Perhaps that was because most POWs obeyed Pentagon
orders to keep quiet, to protect POWs who might remain
in Vietnam, and perhaps because Fidel's identification
as a Cuban was then only an unconfirmed allegation by
the POWs.
But now the newly released DPMO documents, the book
Honor Bound by Stuart Rochester and Frederick Kiley,
and Herald interviews with Hubbard, Bomar and three
other Fidel victims provide the fullest account yet of
a significant chapter in the history of Vietnam-era
POWS.
``This marked the first and only time that
non-Vietnamese were overtly involved in the
exploitation of American prisoners, said a 1975 U.S.
Air Force analysis of the Cuba Program declassified in
1996.
------------------------
When Fidel and Chico showed up around August 1967 at
the POW camp known as ``The Zoo,'' a former French
movie studio on the southwestern edge of Hanoi, it was
clear to the 50 prisoners there that they were no
ordinary visitors.
While the camp's North Vietnamese commandant rode a
bicycle to work, Fidel arrived in a car chauffeured by
a Hanoi army officer and always sat to the
commandant's right, a position of honor, Bomar said.
Debriefed after they returned home, POWs held at The
Zoo described Fidel as about six feet one inch tall,
in his early 30s, muscular, ramrod-straight, swarthy
and handsome enough to be compared to movie star
Fernando Lamas.
They described Chico as more light-skinned, almost
blond and in his 40s. He liked to play
Spanish-sounding songs on the camp's organ, and often
wore a beret with a visor, the type then popular in
Cuba.
Both spoke good if accented English, but while Fidel
had full command of American slang and even
obscenities, Chico struggled with words like Piper
Cub, pronouncing it ``peeper koob,'' according to
excerpts from the debriefings.
Fidel interviewed POWs and soon selected Hubbard,
Bomar and eight other Air Force and Navy pilots or
navigators shot down over North Vietnam, segregating
them in a block of four cells that the POWs nicknamed
``Stable.''
That, the POWs said, is when the torture began, after
a few cursory questions -- such as whether they liked
Mexican food -- apparently designed less to elicit
intelligence information than to provide an excuse for
beatings.
BEATEN SENSELESS: Navy pilot Earl Cobeil died a
captive.
------------------------
While Chico always played the ``good guy, Fidel was a
savage torturer one day and a friend the next, a man
who would ``hammer one POW, then play Frank Sinatra
tapes and offer chewing gum to the next.
``Under different circumstances, Fidel might have been
an interesting guy to talk to, former Zoo POW Allan
Carpenter told The Herald. ``But I can't have anything
but loathing for him.
Level of violence worsens
As days passed, Fidel notched up the torture. ``He
loved direct hits to the face with the tire strips
that the POWs came to call fan belts, one POW told his
debriefer.
Fidel placed POWs awaiting interrogation in cells next
to his torture room, to make sure they heard their
predecessor's screams. He threw POWs he had just
finished torturing with new roommates, so they saw the
results.
``Fidel could get you squirming without even touching
you, former Zoo POW Robert Daughtry told The Herald. A
debriefer quoted one POW as saying, ``Anticipation of
beatings became more of a threat than actual beatings.
Nervous to the point of loosening of bowels when heard
the key in the lock.
One by one, the POWs gave way before Fidel.
By Christmas 1967, all but one had been tortured into
``surrendering'' -- which meant any sign of submission
that Fidel arbitrarily set, from bowing to a
Vietnamese guard to accepting an unwanted cigarette or
making written or tape-recorded statements that could
be used by the North Vietnamese propaganda machine.
Some of the 10 were still beaten occasionally --
``just a reminder, to keep us in line, Bomar said --
but they received better meals, more mail and more
time in the sunlight, outside their dark and
bug-infested cells.
A confident Fidel began to select a second group of 10
POWs in January 1968. One, aware of Fidel's
reputation, ``surrendered'' swiftly. Two others won
the POWs' admiration by engaging Fidel in
conversations that averted torture.
But then Fidel ran into Jim Kasler, sent to The Zoo
after withstanding tortures at another prison, and
Earl Cobeil, a Navy F-105 pilot who acted crazy and
may indeed have suffered a head injury when he was
shot down.
Fidel's monthlong beatings of Kasler were ``among the
worst sieges of torture any American withstood in
Hanoi, the book Honor Bound said. Fidel flogged him
``until his buttocks, lower back and legs hung in
shreds, and at the end he was in a semi-coma. He
eventually recovered.
Worse still was the onslaught against Cobeil, accused
by Fidel of faking his craziness to avoid torture.
Bomar recalls Fidel angrily vowing to other POWs,
``I'm going to break this guy in a million pieces.
Bomar recalled that during one all-day torture session
in May 1968, ``Fidel took a length of black rubber
hose . . . and lashed it as hard as he could into the
man's face. The prisoner did not react. He did not cry
out or even blink.
After a month of almost daily beatings, Bomar told his
debriefer, Cobeil ``was bleeding everywhere, terribly
swollen, a dirty, yellowish black-and-purple from head
to toe.
Another POW's debriefing said Cobeil ``was beaten to
the point where he was incapable of surrender. Was
completely catatonic. He was later transferred out of
The Zoo and is listed as having died in captivity.
By July 1968, Fidel appeared to have grown frustrated,
flying into rages and beating POWs without apparent
purpose. He was seen drunk around the camp, and
complained of worsening liver problems.
Fidel, Chico and Garcia, also nicknamed ``Pancho,'' a
fat, always sloppily dressed man in his mid-30s who
had arrived at the camp around June, suddenly vanished
in mid-August, never to be seen again by the POWs.
By the end of the Cuba Program, Fidel had tortured 18
of the 20 POWs selected for the Cuba Program. Two
apparently were never beaten. All but Cobeil had
``submitted.''
ENGLISH INSTRUCTORS?
A Vietnamese version of Cubans' presence cited
Fidel left behind a crucial question: What had been
the goal of the Cuba Program?
DPMO analyst Robert Destatte, in an e-mail message
written July 2, 1996, reported that he had received
one answer from two Vietnamese colonels he interviewed
in 1992 as part of his research.
``According to the Vietnamese, . . . the Cubans sent a
team of three English-language instructors to provide
instruction in basic English to [North Vietnamese
army] personnel working with American prisoners,
Destatte wrote.
``At the working level, the three Cubans persuaded
their Vietnamese colleagues to allow them to
demonstrate the effectiveness of Cuban interrogation
techniques, he added. ``Information about the
mistreatment eventually filtered up to the Vietnamese
decision makers and they terminated the . . . program.
``The Vietnamese explanation is plausible and fully
consistent with what we know about the conduct of the
Cubans, concluded the note, leaked to the House
Subcommittee on Military Personnel as it held several
hearings on POW and missing-in-action issues in
mid-1996.
Kasler
------------------------
Destatte presented the same argument to the committee
in a closed-door session. But the DPMO's own Cuba
Program expert, former POW Chip Beck, later told the
committee in open session that it was ``professionally
incompetent.
While Fidel and Chico did indeed run English classes
for Vietnamese interrogators for a few months, Beck
and Fidel's POW victims insist that the Cuba Program
was clearly something more than a language class.
Goal of `total surrender'
Foremost among Fidel's goals, they say, was to break
the POWs so fully that they would always do his
bidding with little need for further torture, instead
of the usual rounds of torture-surrender,
torture-surrender.
``Fidel's aim was to convince us that absolute and
total surrender was the only possible outcome. He told
you that flat out in your first meeting, said Hubbard,
a 29-year-old B-66 navigator when he was captured.
One POW debriefer wrote: ``Once the prisoner
surrendered, he remained submissive, as the [torture]
experience was so memorable and painful that he did
not care to repeat it.
The book Honor Bound notes that unlike Vietnamese
interrogators, the Cubans ``relied on more controlled
and orchestrated mingling of physical torture and
psychological pressures, suggesting that theirs was a
more conscious experimental program with an emphasis
as much on assessing the efficacy of tactics as on
achieving results.
Some victims of the Cuba Program suspect it was also
designed to select candidates for ``early release --
prisoners who could be counted on to make statements
favorable to North Vietnam once freed.
Still others believe Fidel was searching for POWs who
would agree to participate in a conference in Havana,
which took place six weeks after he disappeared from
The Zoo, on the U.S. ``genocidal war in Vietnam.
``He wanted a few tamed POWs he could bring to this
propaganda extravaganza, former POW Benge said. Some
of the ``confessions signed by POWs at The Zoo were in
fact made public at the Havana conference, he added.
WHO WERE TORTURERS?
They didn't acknowledge any role as Castro agents
The other major question left unanswered when Fidel,
Chico and Garcia walked out of The Zoo in 1968 was
their real identity.
FLASHBACKS: Jack Bomar can't shake the awful memories.
------------------------
Long before Destatte's e-mail message confirmed they
were Cubans, the POWs who suffered at their hands had
concluded that they were agents of Fidel Castro's
government, although the trio never admitted that
directly.
Bomar, who came up with the nickname Fidel, recalled
that a Vietnamese guard once referred to him as
``Cuba, and that Chico had once slipped and told a POW
that ``Fidel'' used to pilot a small plane over
Havana.
``Fidel'' spoke knowledgeably about Cuba's sugar crops
and Che Guevara, and a POW once found a lapel pin in
the shape of Cuba on the floor of a prison bathroom.
More intriguing are hints that Fidel may have lived in
the United States for a significant period.
His command of American slang and swear words was
almost native-born, and his knowledge of U.S. cars up
to 1956 models, especially Fords, was astounding, said
Bomar, who raced stock cars before he was sent to
Vietnam.
Fidel seemed to have personal knowledge of many cities
in the southeastern United States, from Miami to the
Carolinas, Hubbard said, and knew enough about U.S.
paratrooper terminology and tactics to make many POWs
suspect he had attended a U.S. Army course at Fort
Benning, Ga.
No solid identification
Based on such slim evidence, U.S. intelligence
agencies launched an intensive campaign in 1973 to try
to identify Fidel and his cohorts. An Air Force report
dated June 14, 1973, lists some of the efforts:
The National Security Agency produced the names of all
Cubans known to have traveled to North Vietnam in the
1960s. POWs were shown ``the entire CIA photographic
holdings of Cuban personalities. The Defense
Intelligence Agency checked the list of pre-Castro
Cuban military officers who received U.S. military
training.
But the searches proved fruitless, even after some of
the POWs were sent to police and military artists, who
sketched eight portraits of Fidel alone, based on the
POWs' descriptions.
Hubbard said he and two other POW investigators spent
a week in Miami in early 1974, trolling Little Havana
restaurants and bars for any exiles who might have
heard anything about Cubans in Vietnam.
An FBI agent visited Hubbard in 1979 to show him a
half-dozen surveillance photographs of a Cuban
Education Ministry official who had just toured
Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
returned to Havana.
``If you replaced some hair and took 20 to 25 pounds
off, it very easily could have been this guy, Hubbard
told The Herald.
Hubbard could not recall the man's name, but documents
declassified by the DPMO identified the visitor as
Fernando Vecino Alegret, today Cuba's minister of
higher education. A military specialist in
anti-aircraft defenses in the 1960s, he is known to
have visited North Vietnam around 1967.
DPMO documents declassified for the 1996 congressional
hearings noted that there had been several other
``possible and ``unconfirmed identifications of Fidel,
although none amounted to more than passing mentions.
Speculation on names
An Air Force intelligence report in 1973 mentioned
``Cacillio Moss or ``Moller. A 1976 Defense
Intelligence Agency report mentioned ``Luis Perez
Jaen. A congressional report in 1992 referred to
``Eduardo Morejon Estevez or ``Morjon Esievez.
Benge believes it might be Raul Valdez Vivo, Cuba's
ambassador to North Vietnam in the 1960s and author of
a 1990 book about Cuba's involvement in the Vietnam
War, The Great Secret: Cubans on the Ho Chi Minh
Trail. The book makes no mention of torturing American
POWs.
``I'm not sure it's him, but if he's not, he must know
who it was, said Benge, a civilian U.S. Agency for
International Development employee captured in South
Vietnam who spent five years as a POW, including 27
months in solitary confinement.
``Some people have forgotten these atrocities. Some
want to forget, said Benge, now an AID employee in
Washington still battling the CIA, DPMO and DIA to
declassify more documents on the Cuba Program. ``I
don't forget.
Bomar would also like to find Fidel, if not for
revenge, at least to end his flashbacks to Hanoi,
circa 1967.
``I wake up at night and I am in a situation back
there,'' he said. ``Sometimes I am trying to bail out
of my airplane, or sometimes it might be Fidel there,
waiting to hammer me.
DPMO investigator Chip Beck put it another way in an
e-mail to Destatte just days before he left the DPMO
in 1996 and went public with complaints that the
agency was concealing reports of Cuban, Chinese and
Soviet involvement in POW tortures.
``The Cubans have never been adequately held to task,
Beck wrote. ``As long as we remain, I hate to say it,
but, smug in our opinion that we know all that
happened, we will continue to fool ourselves at the
same time as the intelligence apparatus of these
countries continue to fool us.
e-mail: jta...@herald.com
Copyright 1999 Miami Herald