Exile group: Not enough money getting to Cuban dissidents

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Thu, May. 15, 2008
Exile group: Not enough money getting to Cuban dissidents
BY ALFONSO CHARDY

In an already charged election year when U.S. policy toward Cuba remains a key campaign issue, a prominent exile group is calling on the Bush administration to change how it operates Cuba democracy programs so that millions of dollars can reach dissidents on the island.

In the 21-page report to be released Thursday, the Cuban American National Foundation says that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ''direct, on-island assistance.'' The bulk of the money, the report says, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.
(snip)

Francisco ''Pepe'' Hernández, the foundation president, said the report was not meant as an attack on the U.S. program. ''I have been connected to these programs and these ideas from the very beginning,'' said Hernández, who wrote an opinion column published Thursday in The Herald. ``These programs have been misused, and to see that only a small amount is reaching the island certainly drives us to do something about it.''

At least two of the organizations that receive USAID money blasted the report and said it would help Cuba's communist regime.

The Cuban Democratic Directorate, or Directorio, called the report a ``smear campaign.''
''We are profoundly disappointed and dismayed that CANF has chosen this time in history to attack and lie about a fellow Cuban pro-democracy organization,'' said Orlando Gutierrez, the Miami group's national secretary.

Frank Calzón, a former foundation official who now runs the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, accused the foundation of harboring a communist spy.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/534166.html

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Also, relative to the subject is an earlier post by magbana,

Agent Kolar, Bush’s new hope for destabilizing Cuba
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x3730

[Mika]

1. Gotta love Frank Calzon's typical gusano retort to suggesting dialog - commie spy at the CANF.

:hi:


He could easily fit in with DU's Cubaphobic contingent.

Nothing new in this story to many of us who follow the history of the various US funded anti Cuba foundations, commissions, think tanks, and study groups. They're money laundering scams, who's primary goal is to spin their taxpayer funding into financial support for the campaigns of the various congresscritters who fund their special anti Cuba foundations, commissions, think tanks, and study groups.

Unfortunately, much of this will continue no matter which of the three remaining presidential candidates gets to be the POTUS.


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