BUSHES AND MIAMI CUBANS

after September 11 Cubans convicted of terrorist offences were being released from US jails with the consent of the Bush administration

Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana, by Ann Louise Bardach, who has covered Cuban and Miami politics for the New York Times and Vanity Fair

to 1984 when Jeb Bush began a close association with Camilo Padreda, a former intelligence officer with the Batista dictatorship




Jeb Bush, chairman of the Dade county Republican party and Padreda its finance chairman. Padreda had earlier been indicted on a $500,000
embezzlement charge along with Hernandez Cartaya charges were dropped CIA stated that Cartaya had worked for them

Padreda later pleaded guilty to defrauding the housing and urban development department of millions of dollars during the 1980s.

The president's younger brother was also on the payroll in the 80s of the prominent Cuban exile Miguel Recarey, who had earlier assisted the CIA in attempts to assassinate President Castro.

Recarey, who ran International Medical Centres (IMC), employed Jeb Bush as a real estate consultant. Jeb Bush did, however, lobby the Reagan/Bush administration vigorously and successfully on behalf of Recarey and IMC

In 1985, Jeb Bush acted as a conduit on behalf of supporters of the Nicaraguan contras with his father helped arrange for IMC to provide free medical treatment for the contras. Recarey was later charged with massive medicare fraud but fled the US before his trial and is now a fugitive.

Jeb Bush sealed his popularity with the Cuban exile community as campaign manager for another prominent Cuban-American, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen



at the request of Jeb, Mr Bush Sr intervened to release the convicted Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch from prison and then granted him US residency. Bosch had participated in more than 30 terrorist acts, 1976 blowing-up of a Cubana plane, Bosch's release result of pressure brought by hardline Cubans in Miami, with Jeb Bush serving as their point man

Jeb Bush nominated Raoul Cantero, the grandson of Batista, as a Florida supreme court judge. Mr Cantero had previously represented Bosch.

Other Cuban exiles, Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero, who carried out the 1976 assassination of the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier have also been released by the current Bush administration.

many hardline Cuban-Americans have received plum jobs, Mel Martinez was made housing secretary, Otto Reich was awarded a one year recess appointment for the western hemisphere in the state department.

http://www.campaignwatch.org/more1.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3335.htm
http://motherjones.com/politics/1992/09/bush-family-value