Miami TV Invites Terrorists to Talk Openly About Attacks on Cuba and Venezuela

Cap. Luis Garcia, the first military officer to publicly rebel against President Chavez, poses for the camera at a trainning camp in Homestead, Florida. Garcia is a member of the Junta Patriotica Venezolana Credit: comandosf4.org

June 11, 2004.- Cuban television tonight broadcasted remarkable segments of a one hour program on Miami TV Channel 41 in which known paramilitaries from the Florida based Comandos F4 (www.comandosf4.org) organization openly spoke of their preparation for an armed attack against Cuba.

In moments of near-hysteria, the leader of Comandos F4, Rodolfo Frometa, said that his organization has people inside and outside Cuba ready to carry out armed acts against the Cuban government. Dressed in fatigues, as were the others of his organization present in the studio, Frometa said that his group trained with AK47 semi-automatic weapons–arms, he said, that were legally obtained in the United States although he admitted he had no paperwork to prove it.

The program was hosted by Oscar Asa, the nephew of former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista was responsible for the murder of thousands of Cubans until he was forced out by revolutionary forces in 1959. Asa seemed to enjoy posing provocative questions relating to assassination in what critics on Cuba’s nightly televised Round Table classed as openly violating US federal law.

It is illegal in the US to defend terrorist actions on TV. The promotion of the assassination of another nation’s leader is also illegal under the US Neutrality Act. Nonetheless, commented round table participants, these men were able to openly sit in a studio dressed for war and happily discuss the different armaments they were using to train paramilitaries to attack Cuba, and get away with it. There couldn’t be better proof of the US government’s complicity with such would-be terrorists.

Adding weight to recent accusations of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, former Venezuelan army captain Eduardo Garcia was also present in full uniform to discuss the help Comandos F4 were giving in his efforts to bring down Chavez by force. Chavez has frequently charged that Miami Cuban-American terrorist organizations are involved with Venezuelans seeking to assassinate him.

The host of the Round Table program, Randy Alonso, simply asked viewers to form their own conclusions after seeing such an astonishing program, commenting that the message that Frometa gave was clear: his paramilitary organization was ready and trained–it just needed the money. And, said Alonso, the money is there–$36 million recently earmarked by the US government to support such groups.

Originally published by CounterPunch Wire