April 9, 2001
MIAMI — The trial here of five men accused by the FBI of spying for the Cuban government in southern Florida during the 1990s is nearing its fifth month. Recent testimony by witnesses called by the defense has shed further light on Washington’s policy of providing a base of operations on U.S. soil for counterrevolutionary forces carrying out provocations against Cuba.
In 1998 the FBI announced the arrests of 10 people in Miami, whom it accused of spying for Havana. One defendant, Gerardo Hernández, is also charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Hernández is accused of being the main leader of what the government calls the “Wasp Network.”
For the last two years, statements by U.S. authorities, articles in the big-business press, and the prosecution case have been used by Washington to further its unrelenting “cold war” against Cuba.
April 9, 1976
Documents from supersecret FBI files forced into public view by the SWP’s lawsuit have revealed that the bureau repeatedly broke into offices and campaign headquarters of the Young Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party. Similar operations have been aimed at other political groups, Black organizations, and trade unions.
The government claims that the burglaries were halted in mid-1966. However, FBI Director Clarence Kelley admitted that didn’t eliminate “foreign counterintelligence operations where there was a grave impact on the security of the nation.” The FBI has never explained precisely which groups fall under the “foreign counterintelligence” category.
It is obvious that the full truth about these crimes won’t be known until all the files of the government’s secret police bodies are opened.
April 9, 1951
After three months of the “Great Debate,” the Senate adopted a resolution approving the shipment of four U.S. army divisions to Europe. The American people are being flim-flammed, their expressed wishes brazenly flouted. The latest Gallup poll shows that the majority are convinced “that the Truman administration is not doing as much as it should to head off” war.
The attempts to stampede the American people were underscored last week by the deliberately timed “warning” of Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn that the U.S. is already faced with “maybe the beginning of World War III.”
Neither the administration nor the Republican opposition will protect the people’s interests. An aroused people must assert itself and demand that it settle through a national referendum the whole issue of peace and war, including the sending of troops abroad.