{"id":11132,"date":"2012-02-27T00:17:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T05:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=11132"},"modified":"2012-02-27T00:17:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T05:17:00","slug":"the-cia-cuba-and-operation-peter-pan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2012\/02\/the-cia-cuba-and-operation-peter-pan\/","title":{"rendered":"The CIA, Cuba and Operation Peter Pan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Where’s Captain Hook in NPR’s Fairy Tale?<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

by SAUL LANDAU and NELSON P. VALDES<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLos ni\u00f1os nacen para ser felices.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed<\/span><\/p>\n

On November 19, 2011 NPR broadcast \u201cChildren Of Cuba Remember: Their Flight To America.\u201d Reporter Greg Allen claimed the 1960-62 journey from Cuba to the United States of 14,000 plus Cuban children \u201cwas made possible because of a deal a priest in the Miami diocese [Father Bryan Walsh] \u2026 worked out with the US State Department. The agreement allowed him to sign visa waivers for children 16 or under.\u201d Allen then interviewed several right-of-center Cuban Americans to offer \u201cobjective\u201d perspective on the facts surrounding Operation Peter Pan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Curiously, Allen omitted the CIA from his report, although ample evidence shows the Agency in the early 1960s conspired with the Church to spirit kids out of Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once inside the nurturing borders of the greatest country in the world \u201cPedro Pan kids have done well,\u201d Allen concluded, without explaining what \u201cwell\u201d means. Now adult Pedro Pan kids remain \u201cfirmly opposed to any normalization of relations with the Castro regime, the regime that was responsible for breaking up their families and forcing them from their homeland.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

NPR staff might have discovered a more complex and sinister story \u2013 had they looked. The CIA refuses to release Peter Pan documents, but abundant testimony shows the Agency forging documents and spreading lies, with Father Walsh and the regional Catholic hierarchy. Their goal: separate elite children from parents (a Cuban brain drain) and generate political instability.<\/span><\/p>\n

One Operation Peter Pan conspirator, Antonio Veciana, now living in Miami, told us how Maurice Bishop (aka CIA official David Atlee Phillips) recruited him in 1960 \u201cto wage psychological war \u2014 to destabilize the government.\u201d Veciana described how the Agency forged a law to make affluent Cubans believe the revolutionary government planned to usurp parental control. Bishop\u2019s agents in Cuba spread this rumor, backed by a forged simulation of the supposed law, to members of the professional and propertied classes. The forgery \u201cdeclared that parents would lose control of their kids to the state.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Veciana recounted how \u201cCIA agents claimed they\u2019d stolen the document from the Cuban government.\u201d This false document \u201ccreated tremendous panic.\u201d On October 26, 1960, CIA-controlled Swan island radio station, south of Cuba, broadcast breaking \u201cnews.\u201d Cuba\u2019s government, the radio asserted, planned to remove children from parents so as to indoctrinate them. Radio Swan reported another lie: the Cuban underground had obtained a copy of the forthcoming \u201claw.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Minimal research would have revealed that Leopoldina and Ram\u00f3n Grau Alsina, niece and nephew of former Cuban President Ram\u00f3n Grau San Mart\u00edn, had confessed to Cuban security officials after being arrested in 1965 to having printed the false law in Havana, circulated it clandestinely and then lied to parents.<\/span><\/p>\n

Article 3 of the apocryphal document stated: \u201cWhen this law comes into effect, the custody of persons under 20 years of age will be exercised by the state via persons or organizations to which this power has been delegated.\u201d Priests and CIA agents both recruited kids and persuaded parents to \u201ctrust us. The US government will care for them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The clergy circulated the phony document among their Cuban upper middle-class flock. Catholic school officials feared Castro\u2019s rapidly expanding public instruction program would undermine their virtual educational monopoly among moneyed sectors.<\/span><\/p>\n

In March 1960, President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to overthrow the Cuban government. Agency plotters designed Peter Pan to run alongside political propaganda and economic strangulation policies. These parallel tracks would weaken Castro\u2019s government while US trainers prepared a Cuban-exile invasion force, which, in turn, would coordinate with CIA-backed urban terrorists and guerrillas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Operation Peter Pan (recall the Disney film?) used Cuban kids and parents to further their goal: overthrowing the revolutionary government. NPR\u2019s claim of \u201cno evidence\u201d of CIA involvement would have dissolved had they asked Veciana or questioned why the CIA still refuses to release its 1500 plus documents on that Operation \u2014 while de-classifying archives on the Bay of Pigs and the 1962 Missile Crisis?<\/span><\/p>\n

Writer Alvaro Fernandez\u2019 father Angel Fernandez Varela, recruited by the CIA in Havana, taught at the Jesuit run Colegio Belen. Before he died in Miami, wrote Alvaro, Angel told his family \u201che had been one of those responsible for drafting the false law that gave rise to the hysteria.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

NPR\u2019s report doesn\u2019t ask: who obtained the kids\u2019 visas, airplane tickets and contacts abroad and why did KLM and Pan American Airlines issue Peter Pan kids free tickets?<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor does NPR Allen follow up. The US government didn\u2019t maintain contact between parents and children, nor grant visas to most of the parents that remained in Cuba. The UN High Commissioner tried to reunite parents and children, but Washington didn\u2019t back him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Veciana helped facilitate this dirty trick, but later mused: \u201cAfterward I wondered: was this the right thing to do? Because we did create panic about the government, but we also separated lots of kids from their parents.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, Cuba has won accolades for its treatment of children. \u201cIn Cuba, there are no children on the streets, no children out of school, no children without access to health services or culture, and there are no unprotected children without opportunities for development,\u201d said Jose Juan Ortiz, UNICEF representative in Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paradoxically, the CIA attributed its own objective to the Cuban government: separating children from their parents. Maybe, if NPR staff thought ironically they would\u2019ve done a more accurate report on Operation Peter Pan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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