Latin-America "Expert"- or Castro Agent?

Say a “Mid-East expert” at the Heritage Foundation thanked 9/11 terrorists Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari in the acknowledgments to his book. Say the tribute read: “In (terrorist-sponsoring) Syria many people spent long hours with me, helped open doors I could not have pushed through myself, and offered friendship and warmth to myself during research trips to this (terrorist-sponsoring) nation…Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari championed this (book) project.”

Say this Mid-East expert then became a conservative media darling, quoted reverently and at length. Might a media scandal ensue?

Well, change the Heritage Foundation to the Council on Foreign Relations, Mid-East expert to Latin-American expert, and terrorist-sponsoring Syria to terrorist-sponsoring Cuba. Then change conservative media to MSM. Then change Islamic terrorists Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari to Castro-Communist terrorists Elsa Montero and Jose Gomez Abad.

Make these changes, and we’ve had the actual scenario for several years–along with a major non-scandal.

Friends in low places: Sweig and Castro

Before the shrieks of “Witch-Hunts!” and “McCarthyism at Breitbart!” erupt I’ll calmly offer the evidence (please follow links.) Julia Sweig is The Council on Foreign Relations “Latin America expert,” an MSM darling on all matters Cuban, and the recent facilitator for The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg’s interviews with Castro that catapulted him back into the media spotlight. The following passage appears inside the acknowledgments of Julia Sweig’s book, Inside the Cuban Revolution:

In Cuba many people spent long hours with me, helped open doors I could not have pushed through myself, and offered friendship and warmth to myself during research trips to the island…Elsa Montero and Jose Gomez Abad championed this project.

“OK. But who are these two?” you ask.

They’re Castroite terrorists whose bomb plot to incinerate and entomb thousands of New York Holiday shoppers was foiled in the nick of time by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Here are pictures of Ms. Julia Sweig’s future friends and champions, shortly before the FBI slapped on their handcuffs.

A little background: On Nov. 17, 1962, the FBI cracked a plot by Cuban agents that targeted Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The massive attack was set for the following week, the day after Thanksgiving. Macy’s get’s 50,000 shoppers that one day. Full details and documentation here. Had those detonators gone off, 9/11’s death toll would have almost certainly taken second. The intent and will by Castroite terrorists to commit mass-murder was certainly present, only our FBI foiled it.

Terrorist sponsor (and subsequent Julia Sweig friend, as admitted by Jeffrey Goldberg) Fidel Castro handed his orders to willful terrorists (and subsequent Julia Sweig friends, Elsa Montero and Jose Gomez Abad, as admitted by Julia Sweig herself) short weeks after Nikita Khrushchev foiled Castro’s plans for an even bigger bang against the U.S.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg’s recent interviews with Fidel Castro in Havana were arranged by Julia Sweig. Goldberg himself described Ms. Sweig as “a friend at the Council on Foreign Relations…a preeminent expert on Cuba and Latin America.”

“We shook hands,” writes Goldberg about meeting Castro. “Then he greeted Julia warmly. They (Castro and Sweig) have known each other for more than twenty years.” Seeking light on Fidel Castro’s “stunning!” (to those abysmally ignorant of his regime’s history, i.e. most MSM “reporters”) comment to him that “the Cuban Model doesn’t even work for us,” a perplexed Jeffrey Goldberg turned to nearby Julia Sweig for illumination.

In true Carnac the Magnificent mode the CFR’s “preeminent Cuba expert” seemingly held the envelope to her tilted head … “what does Castro really mean?” Then she ripped it open, blew into it, and revealed:

He wasn’t rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under ‘the Cuban model’ the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country.

Ms. Sweig indeed holds preeminence in one field. No “scholar” in modern American history thanks six different Stalinist spies and terrorists in the acknowledgments to their book, three of whom were expelled from the U.S. for terrorism and/or espionage. And no other scholar’s website references as an authority a Communist spy convicted for the same crimes as Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and currently serving 25 years in a U.S. maximum security prison.

Regarding the latter: “In 1998, a comprehensive review by the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Cuba does not pose a threat to U.S. national security.” This from the Council on Foreign Relations (Julia Sweig’s employer) website.

Perhaps overlooked by the CFR is that this “1998 comprehensive review” was authored by the Clinton Defense Department’s Ana Belen Montes, who dodged the fate of the Rosenberg’s only with a plea bargain and currently serves 25 years in a U.S. federal prison for the crime of espionage. The Montes case ranks as the most damaging (for us) spy case since the “end” of the Cold War.

“Ana Montes compromised our entire program against Cuba, electronic as well as human,” admitted Joel F. Brenner, National Counterintelligence Executive.

Now regarding the former: In her book’s acknowledgments, Julia Sweig also thanks Ramon Sanchez Parodi, Jose Antonio Arbesu, Fernando Miguel Garcia, Hugo Ernesto Yedra and Josefina Vidal for their “warmth, their friendship and their kindness in opening Cuban doors.”

All the above rank as veteran officers in Castro’s KGB and STASI-trained intelligence service.

“Says who?!” some snort.

Says the retired Defense Intelligence Agency officer with a key role in nabbing Ana Belen Montes herself, that’s who. His name is Lt. Col. Christopher Simmons. He made the above allegations against the Cuban spies and Sweig accomplices and in fact alleges that Sweig herself qualifies as a “Cuban-agent-of- influence.” In 2003 Lt. Col. Simmons helped root out 14 Cuban spies who were promptly booted from the U.S. One was Julia Sweig accomplice, Josefina Vidal.

Needless to say, you won’t get this ultra-documented data regarding our national security from the MSM. So just thought Breitbart readers should know.