According to one of the Cuban TV tapes of the Ochoa trial, it is precisely on April 24, 1989, the day after the conviction of the Ruizes, that Captain Miguel Ruiz Poo got a call from Major General Abelardo Colomé, a close collaborator of Raúl Castro, who is now Minister of Interior and at that time was head of MINFAR intelligence, inquiring on what was going on. In his testimony, Colonel de la Guardia stated that he tried to calm down Captain Ruiz Poo by explaining that General Colomé was inquiring about the status of collections from the operation.
It is this conversation that led to the dramatic testimony seen later on in the TV program covering the trial, showing Captain Ruiz’ pathetic effort to save himself by referring to comments by other accused officers about higher ups being involved in the drug operation. After Captain Ruiz started sobbing uncontrollably in the witness stand, he is hurriedly removed from the court and the next day he is not allowed to expand on his clarification by the prosecutor, while other witnesses are brought to deny that any involvement at the highest level was ever discussed and to question that anybody had grounds to even think of such a possibility. The reaction to the highly emotional revelation of a clearly terrified witness reveals that the higher ups involvement issue was central to the rationale for the trial.
One version of the Ochoa trial, which reached Radio Martí at the time, was that Ochoa was preparing to challenge Castro. He had discrete encouragement from the Soviets, Gorbachev had visited the island earlier in 1989, and was not very pleased with Castro's defiant stance towards Glasnost and Perestroika. General Ochoa twice attended Soviet military schools and developed close links with Soviet generals when he commanded Cuban forces in Ethiopia and Angola. Under this version, knowing about Castro’s plans to cooperate with the drug cartels in exchange for massive investments in Cuban tourism, Ochoa sent his aide Captain Martínez, also later executed by Castro, to meet Pablo Escobar in Colombia to get evidence for the challenge he was planning.
Another, much more plausible version, emerges from the Norberto Fuentes report. It reveals that Ochoa was distrusted by Raul, who sent General Leopoldo Cintras Frias as Ochoa’s deputy in Angola to try to control him. In a preview of the trial that took place later on, on May 28, 1989, Raul gave Ochoa a dressing down, while already under preliminary arrest, in the presence of Grals Ulises Rosales del Toro and Abelardo Colome. Raul raised with Ochoa, for the first time, the issue of sexual orgies, while adding as factors under consideration that he:
i) openly disobeyed Fidel’s orders in waging the last phase of the war in Angola;
ii) was developing too close a relationship with Soviet generals there (at a time when Fidel had given orders to Minister Abrantes to start watching Soviet contacts with Cuban officials);
iii) had supported the attack on La Tablada garrison in Buenos Aires by Argentine guerrillas without having cleared it with his superiors; and,
iv) more worrisome of all, had established his own connection to Pablo Escobar to engage in drug operations.
This last issue involved a project to build a coca laboratory in Angola in association with Pablo Escobar; for which, Ochoa had asked Tony de la Guardia to take charge of developing a marketing network in the US and Western Europe. Up to that time, the drug smuggling operations undertaken by Tony de la Guardia on behalf of the Ochoa/Escobar group, which had started early in 1987, had generated small amounts of money, the rate was about $1,200 per kg of coca, and were aborted on several occasions due to sabotage, apparently encouraged by Castro. As a result, Ochoa was moving to set up his own smuggling operation independent of the MININT MC Department.
From the Fuentes report, it is evident that Castro was engaged in many simultaneous drug smuggling arrangements. In the end, Fidel emerges as a distant Godfather, always in the background, having the final say in deals with Vesco, Ledher and others. Some of the deals proposed involved substantial amounts. For example, through one of Tony de la Guardia subordinates, Lt. Col. Rolando Castañeda Izquierdo, Carlos Ledher proposed a $ 7 million a week arrangement for regular shipments. That would generate a flow of $ 364 million dollars a year. It is deals of this magnitude that could explain how Cuba finances the gap in its balance of payments. In another such deal, Abrantes, under Fidel orders, instructs Tony de la Guardia to find buyers in Europe for $ 50 million dollars of coca.
Of all the sins of Ochoa, challenging Castro as the Cuban Godfather, was his worst offense. It was not only a threat to Castro’s absolute rule, it also endangered his careful efforts at covering up Cuba’s involvement in drug smuggling. The Ruizes sentence precipitated events.
With his obsession to give a legal cover to the most arbitrary actions he wants to undertake, Castro decided to orchestrate a trial to eliminate the threat Ochoa presented to his leadership of the regime and, in the process, to cleanse himself from any involvement in drug traffic. To ensure their silence, he executed the four that not only knew about his entanglement with drug trafficking, but were closely involved in Ochoa’s operations.
Later on, he would also get rid of the Minister of Interior, Jose Abrantes. Abrantes was dismissed as Minister of Interior as a result of the Ochoa trial, but not because he was involved with Ochoa. Quite the contrary. He was the executor of the Castro orders in relation to drug operations. It is quite possible that Raul saw in the whole mess the opportunity of bringing the MININT under this control. He was able to do so by placing Gral. Abelardo Colome, one of his most trusted officers, in charge of the MININT.
After his dismissal, Abrantes was tried and sentenced to prison for omission in preventing the corrupt activities of his subordinates. While in prison in Guanajay, on January 18, 1991, he had a confrontation with Gral. Patricio de la Guardia, Tony’s twin brother, one of the defendants at the Ochoa trial sentenced to prison. According to the Fuentes report, Abrantes told Patricio that Fidel had authorized everything. Patricio was indignant upon the confirmation that his brother was executed for having undertaken tasks ordered by Fidel. On January 21, 1991, three days later, Abrantes died in prison. +Granma reported he had a heart attack. Actually, it is reported he died as a result of an overdose of a heart medicine he needed, a frequent outcome in Castro’s jails.
Those defendants in the Ochoa trial serving time in prison got a warning: revealing the involvement of Castro in the drug operations could be a fatal indiscretion. Meanwhile, as recent events reveal, Castro continues tolerating drug traffic through Cuba, the crime for which he executed Ochoa, free of any local competition in his role as Godfather.
For example, in January, 1996, Jorge Gordito Cabrera, was arrested in the Florida Keys and charged with importing 6,000 pounds of cocaine. At the time of his arrest, El Nuevo Herald reported he was carrying a photo of himself with Fidel Castro. Later that year, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 19 years in prison. To make the matter more bizarre, during the campaign finance scandal, it was revealed that three weeks before his arrest, in December, 1995, Mr. Cabrera had pictures taken of him with the First Lady, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, at a White Hopuse Christmas party.
Before meeting with Hillary Clinton he had pictures taken with Vice-President Al Gore at a Miami fund raising party. It turned out Mr. Cabrera had made a $20,000 contribution to the Democratic Presidential campaign at the urging of Mrs. Vivian Mannerud, a pro-Castro activist in Miami who owns a company that provides travel services to Cuba. She had approached him during a visit both had made to Havana earlier in 1995. The funds were returned, of course, but the scandal remains.
A more recent drug incident took place on December 3, 1998 in Cartagena, Colombia. That day the Colombian police seized 7 tons of cocaine bound for Cuba to be transshipped later to Europe and the United States. According to the head of the Colombian National Police, drug runners Aare employing a new trend of loading cocaine into containers transported initially to Cuba for distribution in smaller shipments to the United States and other international consumer markets.
In this case, the shipment was made under the disguise of raw materials for a plastic factory owned by two Spanish investors in a joint venture with a Cuban government enterprise, which had 51 per cent ownership. Later on, the Colombian police announced records of the firm involved revealed that there have been seven or eight earlier shipments following a similar pattern.
Castro was enraged at the Colombians over making this incident public. In a speech in January, 1999, he quoted drug arrests statistics to prove how hard Cuba is fighting drugs. That Cuba is fighting drug smuggling is another theme of Cuba’s current propaganda. Unfortunately, there are some in the US Government who believe that. They are even willing to share with Castro US drug smuggling intelligence. However, others, in Colombia, claim that those Castro is arresting are from rival cartels.
This idea is not as farfetched as it may appear. At the trial of the Mexican Drug Czar, who was arrested two weeks after being praised as an honest man by US Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey, it was revealed that the Drug Czar, General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was using Mexican Army and Air Force resources to help drug capo Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the so-called King of the Skies, eliminate his competitors.
That means that the sophisticated equipment the US provided to the Mexican army to fight drug smuggling was actually used by one of the capos against his competition. Since, as is commented further down, Carrillo Flores had close links with Castro, it is quite likely that the recent Castro efforts to reach an agreement to have access to US intelligence and equipment were intended to replicate that experience.
Castro’s drug-running links Part 3
