POWs AND THE CUBA PROGRAM
The Miami Herald has reported this past September 9 that a former American prisoner of
war during the Vietnam War has identified the leader of the Cuban interrogation team that
tortured him. The former American POW is Retired Air Force Colonel Ed Hubbard, and his
former torturer is none other than the Cuban General Fernando Vecino Alegret, who just happens
to be Cuba’s current Minister of Higher Education!
According to the Herald, Hubbard was beaten so brutally by the Cuban team that after
one interrogation session, a fellow POW found him unconscious on a cell floor; some of the
POWs are now considering suing the Havana government in American courts.
Why is this information not reported widely in the American media? Imagine, for
instance, if a person in an American Cabinet—or the Cabinet of any Western government—had
been identified as a former torturer of prisoners of war. The news would be in the front pages of
all mainstream American newspapers, plus in radio and TV news programs.
Yet, this story,
which is closely tied to a recent book on the suffering of American POWs in Vietnam, is being
kept out of the news.
The Miami Herald reported this past August about the Cuba Program, which is now
extensively documented in the book Honor Bound, by Stuart Rochester and Frederick Kiley. The
book makes use of previously classified documents from the Department of Defense’s Prisoner
of War, Missing Personnel Office. Some of these documents came to light in 1996 during
Congressional hearings, but were also ignored by the media and, I regret to say, I did not learn of
them.
The story is simple.
Cuba sent a team of interrogators to conduct psychological
experiments and worse to North Vietnam in 1967. They selected a random (and small) sample
of Americans for their experiments. Their goal was to achieve psychological surrender from the
POWs, so that they could be used for propaganda purposes. The methods are briefly described
below, as reported in the various Herald stories:
“[The leader] loved direct hits to the face with the tire strips that the POWs came to call
fan belts, one POW told his debriefer… [The leader’s] month long beatings of [Jim] Kasler were
among the worst sieges of torture any American withstood in Hanoi…[The leader] flogged him
until his buttocks, lower back and legs hung in shreds, and at the end [Jim] was in a semi-coma.”
Another POW died as a result of the beatings, and by the end of the Cuba Program, the team had
tortured 18 of the 20 Americans selected for it.
American investigators tried to determine the names of the Cubans in the Cuba Program
but were unable to do so. That is, until the Miami Herald published its original story in late
summer. Then, someone in the Cuban-American community who knew the identity of the leader
sent the Herald a picture of the now Cuban General and Minister of Higher Education—as this
person looked in the year 1958. This picture has allowed the retired American Air Force
Colonel to identify him as the leader, saying “I can state with 99 percent certainty that it is him.”
The Cuban General’s picture will be shown to the 16 surviving POWs who underwent the Cuba
Program for confirmation of the identity of the leading torturer.
The Miami Herald cannot avoid reporting this story, since the former American POW
held a news conference in the office of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is a Cuban- American and
a member of the United States Congress, representing the Miami area. But where is the rest of
the American press corps? American POWs who knew the story “obeyed Pentagon orders to
keep quiet, to protect POWs who might remain in Vietnam, and perhaps because [the leader’s]
identification as a Cuban was then only an unconfirmed allegation by the POWs.”
However, now a Department of Defense official has confirmed that the torturer was
indeed a Cuban, who Ed Hubbard identifies as the Cuban Minister of Higher Education!
How,
I repeat, can we explain the lack of coverage in the American media?
The problem is that the current Administration in Washington is trying to improve
relations with Cuba, and this piece of news would not play well with the American public. The
Cuban General is not just a soldier who committed atrocities on his own, but a high-ranking
dignitary in the Cuban government who has been doing the dirty work for it. The press and the
media do not want to rock the boat and tell everyone unpleasant news about the murderous
dictatorship found in Cuba.
Regrettably, the news will get to the people, but maybe too
late--once all the under-the-table deals have been made.
Nicolas Sanchez
September 13, 1999
13 Redcoat Road
Word Count: 789
Framingham, MA 01701
Tel. (508) 872-4205