Last weekend I watched Shoot Down, the recently released documentary about the February 24, 1996 shoot down by Cuban MiGs of two, unarmed, U.S. civilian Brothers to the Rescue airplanes with three U.S. citizens and one U.S. resident on board. The documentary was well done both with regard to its content and the quality of its presentation. Shoot Down recently received a well deserved award for best documentary at the Sonoma Film Festival and I highly recommend it to all of you.
Two things that come across in the documentary and which I continue to find striking until this day are:
(i) The level of impunity with which the Cuban government acted on that day without regard to international law or protocol for engaging civilian aircraft, particularly civilian aircraft that were operating over international airspace
While the Castro regime has seldom been shy about acting with impunity in oppressing its own people and while it also has a long record of hostile behavior funding and supporting communist and oppressive movements in Latin America and Africa, not since the Cuban Missile Crisis had Cuba carried out an act of such overt aggression directly against the U.S.
(ii) The Clinton administration's lukewarm reaction to what many considered an act of war against the U.S.
While a number of alternatives were considered, President Clinton’s ultimate reaction to the shoot down was to sign Helms Burton into law and condemn Cuba’s actions, but many thought the reaction by the Clinton administration should have been much more forceful.
Why do you think the Castro government decided to gamble by exercising an act of such open aggression against the U.S.? Do you think the Clinton administration acted appropriately in its response to the shoot down?
For those of you who have watched Shoot Down, what are your thoughts about the documentary?
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8 comments:
I haven't watched it but i think it is reprehensible that the United States government stood idly by when four innocent men were massacred in cold blood. I can't help but believe that had they had last names like Smith rather than Costa or Alejandre, our nation would have been compelled to retaliate. As i mentioned, i have not seen the video nor do i know how it is being distributed or shown, but I think it would be best to target the larger community rather than just have Cuban-American audiences who already know Fidel Castro is an SOB be the only ones watching.
fully agree the incident was a bastardly act by the castro's regime, which didn't recieve enough public damnation.
do think the US government's reaction was limited by the plane having flown over havana. it was, in this respect, invading another country's airspace.
What do you think the response of the Clinton's would have been if her daughter Chelsea would have been in any of the US planes that were shot down?
On another note, I comend the people that made the documentary, and brothers to the rescue for helping the balseros.
Viva Cuba Libre!
The Cuban regime committed that dastardly act because they knew they'd get away with it, without facing significant consequences from the US. Like a previous commentator stated, these pilots didn't have American surnames and thus, sadly, there was never a major outcry in the US media, their story never evoked significant outrage in the American public and has since been forgotten except in the Cuban-American community.
And to be clear, while one of the planes did briefly enter Cuban airspace, it never flew over Havana or any Cuban territory that fateful day. Territorial waters and airspace extend many miles off shore.
But the larger point is that these were civilian aircraft, with a stated humanitarian purpose (to locate those lost at sea), and they were all flying over international waters when they were engaged and vaporized by the Cuban MiGs.
Patriot08,
Thanks for your comment. The documentary is currently being shown in movie theaters in Miami, LA, Chicago and a number of other cities in Florida and elsewhere. I imagine it may also be released in additional cities in the future. The website for the movie is www.theshootdown.com if you want more info.
-Regards
To add to Pablo's comment regarding the trajectory that the planes followed on that day...only the plane being flown by Jose Basulto, head of Brothers to the Rescue, very briefly entered Cuban airspace which extends 12 miles north of the shores of Cuba. His plane was the only one of the three flying that day that was not shot down. The radar screens show that Basulto's breach of the airspace was minimal and occurred as his airplane turned west to fly parallel to the 12 mile line of demarcation between Cuban and international airspace. The radar screens are on the Shoot Down website and are also described as part of the documentary.
There had been a previous more pronounced breach of Cuban airspace on another day when Brothers to the Rescue dropped leaflets over Havana.
The facts of Feb 24, 1996 were such that international law and aviation protocol could, at most, have called for the MiGs to fly next to the Brothers to the Rescue planes to communicate with them visually or over radio, but never to shoot them down.
After 12 years of extensive research, my NEW BOOK is about to be released – it's called Betrayal: Clinton, Castro & The Cuban Five. (Non-fiction)
Betrayal was co-authored with three time Pentagon and former White House appointee, Thomas Van Hare. Thomas is also the former Director of Operations with Brothers to the Rescue and Chairman of Freedom Flight International, the same group for which I served as Director of Special Projects for during the early 1990's when we flew rescue missions looking for Cuban rafters.
Our book reveals the truth behind the shootdown and attempted cover up of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft in 1996. Betrayal is timely; in highlighting that Cuban spies were involved. Since their convictions, The Cuban 5 have been fighting for their freedom for over 10 years, and denied retrials twice by the appellant courts. These very agents - one sentenced to two life terms for murder - have been recently granted the opportunity to petition the Supreme Court, by January 30th 2009.
Just how important are these spies to Cuba? On December 18th, 2008, Raul Castro suggested during a meeting in Brazil that perhaps the new Obama administration would be willing to negotiate their release and repatriation in exchange for Cuban political prisoners as a "gesture of good faith" towards normalizing relations with Cuba.
This overture was no doubt made in anticipation of Governor Bill Richardson's confirmation as Secretary of Commerce. Critically, our book bears evidence that he may have known of the coming attack on the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft up to 14 days before it happened... and he did nothing to prevent it!
Our book details:
1) How Cuban spies infiltrated the Brothers organization, what roles they played as double agents working with the FBI, and how they communicated information to the Cuban government to set up the fatal flight.
2) The part played by Ana Belen Montes, DIA’s senior most analyst in charge of all U.S. intelligence about Cuba - who was arrested in 2001 for her 16 years as a spy for the Cuban government, called Cuba's "Queen of Spies".
3) The Federal trial evidence and final reports from ICAO and the OAS which found Cuba guilty of murdering four U.S. pilots.
4) Naming names of those in the Clinton Administration who, evidence shows, may have had extensive information in advance of the shootdown-and did nothing to stop it - Sandy Berger, Governor Bill Richardson, Richard Nuccio, Anthony Lake and a host of retired military and diplomatic corps personnel.
5) Governor Bill Richardson's role in personally meeting with Fidel Castro during the weeks before the shootdown and him returning with political prisoners ten days prior to the shootdown, with consideration from Fidel.
6) We expose the Cuban government's preparations for the shootdown including MiGs making monitored practice runs over Cuba - all under the watchful eye of the U.S. Government.
7) We detail a timeline and provide a translation of the transcripts of the pilots' conversations during the shootdown - including the words of the MiG pilots as they murdered the four men and the transcript of the intercom on board one of the Brothers to the Rescue airplanes.
8) We reveal that the U.S. Military watched the shootdown live and yet never gave the order to scramble U.S. interceptors that were standing by at Homestead AFB, Florida. We reveal that the order to launch never came even when two Cuban MiG-23s chased one remaining Brothers to the Rescue aircraft north of the 24th parallel and into our Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).
9) We provide the sworn testimony of Major Jeffery Houlihan's lone "911" call to Tyndall AFB warning of what was taking place-and how he was told, "we're handling it, don't worry…."
10) We expose and fully document the attempted cover-up initiated by Cuba and our own government in Washington, DC.
Was it a conspiracy or government ineptitude? You decide - we have provided all of the data, documentation, references and information in the first ever book of its kind.
The Obama administration is already hinting at negotiations with Cuba. Betrayal: Clinton, Castro & The Cuban Five stands to remind Americans of our past mistakes in dealing with the Castro's and brings to light many of the mistakes made by the Clinton administration in doing so.
With President-elect Obama’s current staffing, this subject stands to be one of the top five in his term.
Matt Lawrence & Thomas Van Hare, Author
Betrayal: Clinton, Castro & The Cuban Five
www.mattlawrencebooks.com
Listen to our interview on the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down from KTOK radio today.
http://www.ktok.com/cc-common/podcast.html
BETRAYAL: Clinton, Castro & The Cuban Five in bookstores and online soon! www.mattlawrencebooks.com
OUR BROTHERS are not forgotten.
Thomas Van Hare
Matt Lawrence
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