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Tablet: Late last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which became deservedly famous in the 1980s for combating violent white-power hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, published a list of 15 individuals it labels as particularly threatening anti-Muslim extremists. It is sad but telling that the SPLC’s so-called field guide to Muslim-haters is not a list of violent extremists—who certainly do exist—but is instead a blacklist of prominent writers whose opinions on a range of cultural and political issues are offensive to the SPLC. The SPLC blacklist list contains practicing Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, foreign-policy think-tankers like Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes, and right-wing firebrands like David Horowitz—none of whom could be reasonably described as anti-Muslim bigots.
I spoke to Nawaz on the phone in London to ask for his reaction. “A bunch of first-world, comfortable liberal Americans who are not Muslims have decided from their comfortable perch to label me, an activist who is working within his Muslim community to push back against extremism, an anti-Muslim extremist.”
On the face of it, it’s difficult to understand why Nawaz was listed as such. As he told me, he’s a proud Muslim. “I learned Arabic in order to read my holy book,” he said. “In an Intelligence Squared debate, I defended the proposition that Islam was a religion of peace. This was the same week that the man who attempted to bomb Times Square was sentenced so it wasn’t the friendliest New York audience. I hosted Morgan Freeman in a mosque for his documentary The Story of God.”
Nawaz takes the SPLC blacklist seriously, he told me, because he believes that it has put his life in danger. “They’ve put a target on my head,” he said. “This is what putting people on lists does. When Theo Van Gogh was killed in the Netherlands, a list was stuck to his body that included Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s name. It was a hit list. When Bangladeshi reformers were hacked to death by jihadist terrorists, they were working off lists. Only fascists produce lists.”
It’s not easy to understand how the SPLC got here. The organization started in 1971 as a civil-rights law firm designed to combat white-supremacist groups. In 1981 it won a civil suit against the Klan for $7 million that bankrupted the United Klans of America. In 1991, it used the same tactics to win a $12 million judgment against the White Aryan Resistance. It won a $6.5 million case against the Aryan Nations in 2001. Co-founder Morris Dees’ career was dramatized in a TV movie, Line of Fire.
For SPLC’s efforts against violent white supremacists, its members were frequently targeted for reprisal. Yet now, the SPLC is putting bounties on the heads of Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, who are opposed to Muslim extremism. Where the SPLC was once able to win legal battles through careful, often dangerous research that could stand up in court, the organization now identifies the Center for Security Policy, a hawkish right-wing think tank, as a hate group, right alongside the Ku Klux Klan. Where the organization once pushed for freedom for all regardless of race or creed, now it aims to silence those whose opinions it finds objectionable. In doing so, it makes it hard for any impartial observer to place much confidence in future claims about groups and individuals that may actually be dangerous.
Perhaps in spite of the number of white supremacists who have moved into the light with the nomination of Donald Trump, the SPLC no longer has the resources to tackle those who threaten violence and act on it. Instead, it’s spending its time on Google and Twitter—and hoping to raise money by going after writers and intellectuals who get its goat.
What’s more troubling are the suggestions contained in the report that the SPLC no longer thinks that political violence and hate are a bad thing, or even real—as long as the people committing such acts are Muslims. Complaints against radical Islamist violence, the report bizarrely suggests, are
propaganda, the vast majority of it completely baseless, produced and popularized by a network of anti-Muslim extremists and their enablers. These men and women have shamelessly exploited terrorist attacks and the Syrian refugee crisis, among other things, to demonize the entire Islamic faith.
Sadly, a shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go uncontested.
Interestingly, the document fails to list the man who, according to this description, is the world’s most influential anti-Muslim extremist—President Barack Obama, who told the Atlantic that young people in the Middle East are only thinking about how to kill Americans.
Obama isn’t a violent anti-Muslim extremist any more than the 15 people named here. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an outspoken critic of Islam and has a compelling personal narrative that reflects the story of millions of women and men who have suffered in the name of Islam. David Horowitz is a pugnacious right-wing intellectual who often engages in sharp propaganda. Daniel Pipes is a fierce adversary of Islamic extremism and a knowledgeable scholar of the Middle East. There is much to disagree with in what they and others identified in the SPLC write or argue. I find the work of a small number of the people listed in the report to be puerile. But neither they, nor anyone on this list, deserve to be listed alongside white supremacists who threaten or actually employ violence.
In reality, the SPLC’s field guide has little to do with real anti-Muslim extremism, the red-hot center of which these days is not America but Syria—where so-called secular dictator Bashar al-Assad has teamed up with Iran and Russia to slaughter nearly half a million Sunni Arabs. The SPLC document is simply an enemies’ list, of the kind that fascists, Stalinists, and other totalitarian thinkers can’t help producing. So it’s hardly surprising that the ghost of Stalin makes an appearance. In a paper nominally highlighting anti-Muslim sentiment, David Horowitz is chided for questioning why one professor identifies Paul Robeson as a “model of [American] patriotism.”
That the SPLC document seeks to re-litigate the case of Paul Robeson, who openly admired Stalin, is evidence that the field guide is simply a blunt instrument used to attack the enemies, personal and institutional, of the paper’s four contributing institutions—Southern Poverty Law Center, Media Matters for America, the Center for New Community, and ReThink Media. (Regarding the Robeson issue, perhaps it’s the pet project of SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok who has contributed to the People’s World, a publication affiliated with the Communist Party of the United States of America.)
Nor does the SPLC hide the fact that the purpose of its publication is to blacklist and silence its enemies. The field guide recommends to its consumers in the media that they, “research the background of extremist spokespeople and consider other sources, and if they do use anti-Muslim spokespeople, point out their extremism.”
Why is a liberal organization like the SPLC now using fascist tactics to blacklist enemies? Maajid Nawaz believes the organization has targeted him for a very specific reason. “The left is no longer about advancing progressive values,” he said. “For them, it’s now about tribal identities, and any internal critique is seen as treachery.” Nawaz also believes there may be another reason—the activists at the SPLC, he suggested, “may be influenced by Islamists themselves.” And there is evidence in the paper to suggest that Nawaz’s contention may have some truth to it.
The field guide attempts to rewrite history of the Muslim Student Association, for one. In its dossier on Horowitz, the SPLC complains that he
placed an ad in an April 2008 issue of a campus newspaper, The Daily Nexus, claiming that the Muslim Student Association was “founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the godfather of Al Qaeda and Hamas, to bring jihad into the heart of American higher education.” In fact, it had worked with Jewish campus groups, according to faculty members.
Whether or not some chapters of the MSA worked with Jewish campus groups (while the University of California at Irvine chapter shouted down guest speaker Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in 2011), it’s established that Brotherhood members played a role in founding the MSA.
Even more telling is the rationale for blacklisting Nawaz. Among others, he “tweeted out a cartoon of Jesus and Muhammad—despite the fact that many Muslims see it as blasphemous to draw Muhammad. He said that he wanted ‘to carve out a space to be heard without constantly fearing the blasphemy charge.’ ”
That Nawaz tweeted out a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad in an effort to change the minds of Muslims who might automatically declare such an action to be blasphemy is the act not of an anti-Muslim extremist but a Muslim reformer. That the SPLC itself accuses him of blasphemy belongs not to the tradition of an American Civil Rights organization, but rather to the ideology of a religious fundamentalist organization, of the type that inspired the ISIS cadre that executed the staff of Charlie Hebdo.
The fact is that more than 40 years after its founding, the Southern Poverty Law Center is now aggressively defending the kind of violent supremacists it had once sought to prosecute, and attacking types like Nawaz it had once defended against violence. The suggestion that the organization has in fact switched sides will likely cause violent extremists of all shades and types to breathe a sigh of relief. It is also sign that there is something deeply wrong with our political culture.
****
In 2015:
(CNSNews.com) – John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, announced Wednesday that the Justice Department is creating the new position of domestic terrorism counsel to combat the “real and present threat” of domestic extremism.
Carlin praised groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center “that dedicate themselves to examining what the threat is, observing it, and reporting on it,” adding that the work of the SPLC was “very important.”
The SPLC says it places groups — including conservative, Christian groups — on its “Hate List” based on their beliefs, not their propensity for violence.
“Homegrown violent extremists can be motivated by any viewpoint on the full spectrum of hate — anti-government views, racism, bigotry, anarchy and other despicable beliefs,” Carlin told a gathering at George Washington University. The discussion was co-hosted by SPLC. “When it comes to hate and intolerance, no single ideology governs.”
Carlin was asked about the value of SPLC’s work in helping DOJ deal with the threat of domestic terrorist extremism.
“I can say, based on our briefings, that as I said in my opening remarks, we very much think that the domestic terrorism threat is a real and present threat that demands to be addressed in new, creative ways,” he replied emphasizing that “Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups in this space are very important.”
The SPLC’s website features a “hate map” that lists the conservative. Christian Family Research Council (FRC) as a “hate group” because of its defense of traditional marriage. The “hate map” was cited by convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins in his decision to attack the FRC in 2012 when he shot and wounded a security guard before being subdued. More here from CNS
Northwest Mexico Erupts in Violence in Next Generation Cartel Wars
InSight: A bloody cartel war raging in the state of Baja California Sur hints at the new strategies and alliances forming as Mexico‘s fragmented underworld reorganizes.
A Zeta magazine investigation into drug war violence in the city of La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur, has revealed how a spate of macabre murders is connected to a campaign waged by a new alliance between the Jalisco Cartel– New Generation (CJNG) and the remnants of the Tijuana Cartel against Los Dámaso, a network connected to the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to Zeta, the CJNG and Tijuana Cartel factions are operating under the name the Tijuana Cartel– New Generation (CTNG) and have been kidnapping, torturing and murdering rivals in an attempt to seize control of local drug sales and distribution.
Their targets, according to a Zeta source from the local Public Security Coordination Group (Grupo de Coordinación de Seguridad Pública), are rival hitmen, operatives that have switched sides, plaza chiefs linked to the Sinaloa Cartel and local drug distributors. Their aim is not only to remove these people but also to obtain information on the large scale Sinaloa distributors that continue providing drugs to the region.
However, the source said, identifying the relationship between the local criminal cells and larger cartels is difficult due to the fragmented nature of the current underworld and the constantly shifting allegiences of local networks.
InSight Crime Analysis
The battle for La Paz reflects a new dynamic in the Mexican underworld, as fragmented remains of once all-powerful cartels confront or ally themselves with new players as they compete for control of local as well as transnational criminal markets.
The relatively new CJNG has been one of the most expansionist groups in Mexico in recent years, and it is little surprise that it has now moved into Bajo California Sur. It was once believed to be in alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel, but there are now growing signs the organization is looking to capitalize on what appears to be a fragmentation of the Sinaloa Cartel in the wake of the capture of the cartel’s most prominent leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
In contrast, the Tijuana Cartel has been in long term decline, and so an alliance with an up-and-coming group such as the CJNG represents the remaining cartel factions’ best chance of clinging on to some level of criminal power.
As highlighted by Zeta’s source, these national actors are increasingly dependent on alliances with local criminal cells that have more autonomy and less loyalty to larger organizations than in the past. This makes for a much more complex and often chaotic dynamic in this latest generation of Mexico‘s cartel wars.
***
Juan Cedillo : Improvised armored vehicle captured from the Zetas cartel.
As Mexican gangsters shot it out with troops in the border city of Reynosa this month, residents posted warnings on social media of where not to drive. Not only was the gunfire itself a problem but cartel gunmen had covered some roads with perilous spikes that they call ponchallantas or “tire punchers.” The hazard can appear suddenly as the cartels have customized vans with tubes that eject the spikes. If a car drives into them too fast, it can spin into a lethal crash. Gangsters also set grounded vehicles on fire, creating more debris in the way of security forces.
The tire punchers used in the April 17 firefight, in which soldiers arrested an alleged kingpin called José Tiburcio Hernández, are the latest example of the homemade battle technology developed by Mexico’s cartels. Gangsters have also built fighting vehicles with four inch-thick armor, sometimes referred to as “monsters” or “narco tanks.” And in October, police in the western state of Jalisco even busted a clandestine factory where traffickers assembled their own assault rifles.
The development of this narco technology south of the Rio Grande has grabbed the attention of U.S. security thinkers such as Robert Bunker, an external researcher for the U.S. Army War College. He compares it to the homemade war tools used by insurgent forces round the world. “Each battle technology has been adapted to both the conflict environment and the ideological and illicit economic motivations of the irregular forces,” Bunker says. “Caltrops and spike traps have been a component of warfare going back to the ancient Greeks. In many ways, we can think of them as pre-modern landmines.”
While there is no declared war in Mexico, fighting between rival cartels and the security forces has claimed more than 83,000 lives since 2007, according to a count by Mexico’s federal intelligence agency. Gangsters use traditional weapons, including Kalashnikovs, which are often smuggled from the United Sates. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms has traced 73,684 guns seized in Mexico to U.S. gun sellers since 2009. Cartels also have rocket-propelled grenades, which may be stolen from Central American military caches.
However, it is harder for them to buy actual military vehicles leading to them inventing their own. The Zetas cartel, which was led by former soldiers, first developed its own armored vehicles, both converting regular trucks and building others from scratch. Their “monsters” resemble machines from the fantasy road wars of Mad Max, with gun turrets, battering rams and walls of armor.
The Mexican army has taken many of these makeshift tanks off the road, holding more than 40 of them in its base in Reynosa. But some are still at large and causing havoc. Last year, a Zeta monster attacked a hotel in the border town of Ciudad Mier, where executives from the oil services multinational Weatherford were staying. (The executives were shaken but unscathed).
Furthermore, vigilante groups that formed to fight cartels also built their own armored vehicles. “We were going into heavy gunfire and we needed protection. So we made these monsters of our own, based on the vehicles that the Zetas had built,” said Francisco Espinosa, a cattle rancher turned vigilante. With the help of local metal workers, they also used thick layers of armor, and added some of their own features such as mobile sand trenches.
The gun factory busted in October belonged to rising gang called the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The cartel has gained infamy for a series of attacks on Mexican officials, including an ambush on April 7 that killed 15 policemen. Hidden in two farm houses in the tequila-producing region, the factory used industrial metal cutters and blow torches to assemble AR15 rifles from components. “It’s highly sophisticated machinery with very precise software that allows them to make the cuts to finish the guns, which work perfectly,” Jalisco Attorney General Luis Carlos Najera said.
The factory likely uses gun parts that are sold on line, producing untraceable AR15’s, says Bunker, the security scholar. “I consider it conceptually sophisticated but not technologically sophisticated. The next step in this process will be the addition of a 3D metal printer. I’m sure this will come in time as more of these improvised arms factories spring up, metal printer technology matures, and prices for them drop.”
The cartels’ ability to make their own guns, customized vehicles and spike ejectors make them difficult for Mexico’s government to wipe out. Under President Enrique Pena Nieto, troops have arrested a string of cartel leaders, including the head of the Zetas and Sinaloan chief Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman. This has helped reduce the total number of homicides, which went down from a peak of more than 22,000 in 2011 to 15,649 last year, according to a police count. But incidents such as the chaos in Reynosa and ambushes in Jalisco continue to shake the nation.
Bunker warns that cartels may keep on developing their battle tech. They could use drones for surveillance in the near future, giving them a fighting edge. Mexican gangsters have also used small car bombs, and could potentially harness bigger improvised explosive devices like those in the Middle East. “One area that we should keep an eye on is car bomb and IED use potentials,” Bunker says. “I could envision IEDs being placed in a city or town under certain circumstances.”
Clinton’s connections in the Sunshine State are about loyalty and longevity — and Bill.
Oct. 19, 2016By Adam C. Smith Tampa Bay Times Political Editor
Hillary Clinton’s relationship with Florida, not unlike an enduring but exacting marriage, is long and complex.
Consider her journey from idealistic law student at Yale sticking up for Florida migrant workers to presidential frontrunner chatting up the corporate elite who paid $50,000 a plate to dine with her on Miami Beach’s Star Island.
In July 1970, 22-year-old Hillary Rodham, an intern for a children’s advocacy group in Washington, was sent to monitor Walter Mondale’s Senate committee hearings about terrible working conditions on corporate-owned farms in Florida.
Some Yale classmates with internships at big law firms saw the hearings as proof that agribusinesses needed better PR. But Clinton, who had babysat migrant children in Illinois, had a different take.
“I suggested that the best way to do that would be to improve the treatment of their farm workers,” Clinton wrote in an autobiography. She threw herself into studying how laws affect children.
Fast forward 20 years. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton launches a bid for president with his lawyer-wife at his side and they target Florida as key to winning the Democratic nomination.
They seek the money and support of sugar baron Alfonso “Alfy” Fanjul, whose family-owned company faced numerous lawsuits alleging mistreatment of Jamaican guest workers cutting cane in South Florida’s muck. No matter. Fanjul becomes co-chairman of the 1992 Clinton campaign.
Getty Images
Sugar magnate Alonso “Alfy” Fanjul of Palm Beach, here at a 1999 White House state dinner for Argentina’s president, has been an adviser and major donor to the Clintons since they first started campaigning in Florida in 1991. His brother, José “Pepe” Fanjul, is a major GOP donor who helped Marco Rubio this cycle.
Four years later, an embarrassing political footnote: President Clinton was in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky when he had a 22-minute phone call with Fanjul, whose industry enjoyed special protections under Clinton’s NAFTA deal.
Today, most of the cane cutters are gone from the Fanjul fields in South Florida, replaced by machinery. But the Fanjul family remains tight with the Clintons, donating at least $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Records show Alfy Fanjul met numerous times privately with Secretary of State Clinton. In August, shortly after the Democratic National Convention, Fanjul, his wife, Raysa, and former Ambassador Paul Cejas and his wife host a $100,000-per-couple dinner at Cejas’ Miami Beach mansion for the Democratic nominee who decries the unfair clout of the rich.
Call the Clinton-Fanjul ties irony, or even hypocrisy. Ultimately, the story of Hillary Clinton and her relationships in Florida is one of longevity.
“It’s not anything new with the Clintons’ calculus,” said Gregory Schell, a Palm Beach County lawyer who has spent decades fighting for farm workers — and suing the Fanjuls. “Everything about them is bottom line and the ends justify the means. They want to win.”
Schell plans to vote for her.
Associated Press, 1992
The Clintons speak outside the Tampa Convention Center on the eve of sweeping “Super Tuesday” states, including Florida, and effectively clinching the Democratic nomination in 1992.
Relationships matter
Every serious presidential candidate develops allegiances to Florida, especially South Florida because it’s a silver mine for votes and a gold mine for campaign checks.
The Clintons’ Sunshine State ties, however, are wider and deeper than any modern presidential nominee not named Bush. Florida is a mega state where relationships still matter in politics, and Bill and Hillary have cultivated friendships, personal bonds and crony connections for decades.
“This couple has been part of our lives for a quarter of a century,” said Miami lawyer Ira Leesfield, who has raised or donated millions of dollars for multiple Clinton campaigns, the presidential library and the foundation. He raised money for Barack Obama, too, but much more for the Clintons, who have kept in touch with him and his wife: “If you have a family member or close friend who needs something, you generally respond more generously when it’s someone you deeply care about and like.”
The state is loaded with men and women who have known Hillary Clinton for years, even say they adore her, though they acknowledge they’re not close to her.
Associated Press, 1997
Hillary Clinton attends “One Voice for Children Day” in Tallahassee in April 1997. Here she greets 4-month-old Sara Heuler and her mother, Victoria Heuler, at an advocacy training session.
“She’s just quite cordial and warm, but Bill is the one who really gathers people around him,” said former Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, who hosted Hillary Clinton at her home for a fundraising reception in December. Sink has known her since the mid 1980s when she and late husband Bill McBride attended “Renaissance Weekend” retreats of business and political leaders in Hilton Head, S.C. “Honestly, I never felt I could just go up and strike up a conversation with her.”
Floridians who have spent hours with Bill Clinton — in the White House, on golf courses (he’s regularly on the links in Florida), private planes, and in hotel suites — have colorful stories about interacting with a once-in-a-generation politician who can remember every detail of their lives, or become petulant during late night Oh Hell card games.
The more disciplined, more reserved Hillary Clinton, 68, doesn’t play golf. She will drink with friends but doesn’t stay up late gabbing. And she connects with individuals much easier than with crowds.
Chris Korge, a Miami investor, former lobbyist, and one of America’s top Democratic money-raisers, probably knows the woman behind the guarded persona as well as almost any Floridian besides her brother, Coral Gables resident Hugh Rodham.
“Hillary is one of the most misunderstood people I’ve ever met,”
Korge said. “She’s funny, she’s clever, she genuinely likes people. She doesn’t have that natural gift that President Clinton does of remembering every minute detail of everybody, but I’ll tell you what — and I’ve said this to his face — she’s even smarter than he is.”
Associated Press, 1994
During the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami, the first lady visits with nurse Therese Coyne and 5-year-old Keona Turner at Jackson Memorial Pediatric Mobile Center.
Before Korge and his wife divorced, the former first lady, whose marital problems played out so publicly, would talk to him about the importance of marriage counseling. “She was almost like a big sister, really caring. She would offer advice,” he said.
U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Delray Beach Democrat, first met Clinton in the 1970s when she worked at the Children’s Defense Fund and he was a juvenile court judge. Decades later he would spend hours with both Clintons at the White House and on Air Force One for two trips to Israel.
She has an easy laugh and genuine interest in and compassion for people that, he said, is more apparent in one-on-one settings than it is with either President Obama or President George W. Bush.
“She’s just regular, is the best way to put it, even though it doesn’t always come across that way to people,”
said Hastings, who recently joined Clinton for a meeting with black mothers whose children died in gun violence. “I can tell you there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.”
Associated Press
Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, introduces Clinton at the Trayvon Martin Foundation’s Circle of Mothers gala in Fort Lauderdale in May.
A package deal
State Rep. Joe Geller, a former Miami-Dade Democratic chairman, for years heard about Bill and Hillary Clinton while attending Young Democrats of America conventions. Delegates from Arkansas boasted about their progressive, Rhodes Scholar governor and his brilliant, idealistic wife.
“That was part of his appeal,” said Geller, an attorney. “He wasn’t another old-fashioned macho governor but a modern guy with a wife involved and just as impressive.”
Courtesy of Nan Rich, 2003
Former state Sen. Nan Rich of Broward County worked with Clinton on the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters program.
Nan Rich’s bond with Clinton goes back to 1985, when an aide to the first lady of Arkansas phoned, asking Rich to come to a conference on early childhood learning in Little Rock. Clinton had recently been in Miami representing her husband at a Southern Governors’ Conference and clipped out a Miami Herald article about a preschool program Rich and the National Council of Jewish Women had just started in Miami-Dade.
Clinton wanted to bring it to Arkansas, which at the time did not even have mandatory kindergarten.
“She was so much fun and so gracious and really excited about getting that program started,” recounted Rich, a former state senator.
Jorge Perez, a billionaire Miami developer and fundraiser, first met Hillary Clinton when he flew to Little Rock to meet with the governor. They talked about affordable housing, health care, Gabriel García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and then Hillary Clinton joined them spontaneously and the three of them had lunch. “I was totally taken,” said Perez. He described her as smart — an operative and a surrogate.
Arthenia Joyner, veteran civil rights activist and state senator from Tampa, met Bill Clinton when she led the National Bar Association for black lawyers. Her bond with Hillary Clinton began at a 1992 rally in downtown Tampa, when Clinton had to kill time before her husband’s plane arrived.
“She spoke for 20 minutes. Did not look at a single note,” Joyner said. “It was so impressive to me as a woman to see this governor with a woman whose abilities, and intellect, are equal or better to his.”
Times files, 2008
State Sen. Arthenia Joyner of Tampa, one of the Clintons’ closest friends in Florida, cheers for Hillary at a debate watch party in January 2008.
Miami Beach businessman Philip Levine came to know President Clinton during Al Gore’s 2000 campaign and became one of his closest friends in Florida. Levine has traveled the world with President Clinton, including traveling home from Australia with the former president by military cargo jet because America was under attack on 9/11.
Then-Sen. Clinton met them at the airport at 3 a.m., and Levine slept on their couch in Chappaqua, N.Y.
Levine is among those loyalists who say the Clintons remain incredibly close, even through years of doubts about their marriage.
“I know whenever I’m with President Clinton, they’re talking constantly through the day. She’s calling him, and he’s calling her,” Levine said. “I don’t get into someone else’s personal relationships, but I know what I’ve observed.”
Associated Press, 1998
The Clintons watch the space shuttle Discovery rise off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral in October 1998.
Political instincts
Few Democrats 25 years ago saw much chance of beating President George H.W. Bush in the state that had gone Democratic in just one presidential election since 1964 (Jimmy Carter in 1976).
But the Clintons instinctively understood Florida’s multiple personalities — rural, urban, suburban, southern, northern, midwestern.
“In a state that sometimes seems as complicated as a U.N. meeting, they had comfort levels with all the various components of Florida that other candidates would spend years trying to develop,” said longtime Clinton adviser Craig Smith, noting that they lived in Arkansas, were educated in the northeast and she grew up in the Chicago suburbs.
Focused on the Democratic primary, Clinton’s team set its sights on a Florida Democratic Convention in December 1991 that included a nonbinding straw poll for more than 2,300 delegates. The campaign saw a big opportunity to stand out in a field that included Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas, Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder, former California Gov. Jerry Brown and, potentially, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
Times files, 1996
Hillary Clinton and Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles visit the Florida delegation breakfast at the Democratic National Convention in 1996.
Few voters knew anything about Bill Clinton back then, but he had established important political contacts throughout Florida.
In 1985, Clinton and then-Sen. Lawton Chiles helped establish the Democratic Leadership Council, which aimed to move the party toward the center after three presidential campaign losses. Sen. Bob Graham and Clinton were mutual admirers from when both were progressive southern governors.
“Remember, Bill Clinton was head of the National Governors Association, so he was going to Florida and meeting people for years before he ran for president,”
said Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, himself a top money-raiser for both Clintons with deep Florida family ties.
Chiles said he had too many friends in the race to lead Clinton’s Florida campaign, but Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay was happy to take the helm.
In November 1991, Clinton and Craig Smith flew into Tallahassee to meet with MacKay and Democratic state legislators. MacKay sent the state trooper assigned to his detail, 25-year-old Kendrick Meek, to pick up the governor. Meek kept quiet as he overheard the two men mentioning U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek of Miami as one of the influential Florida Democrats they wanted to court. They didn’t know that’s his mother.
Clinton asked to stop at the Suwannee Swifty on the way to the state Capitol to buy some deodorant. The governor unbuttoned his shirt and rolled it on in the parking lot, as Meek watched for potential security threats.
Associated Press, 2007
Then-Rep. Kendrick Meek and his mom, former congresswoman Carrie Meek, join Clinton in the Liberty City area of Miami for her first presidential campaign appearance in Florida in February 2007.
The straw poll
The Clintons represented a break from the liberal Democratic Party establishment, a modern, pro-business, socially conscious couple. Bill was the candidate, but Hillary was at his side or never far behind.
Together, the Clintons could cover a lot of ground. Hillary Clinton took campaign swings through Florida that fall, meeting with prominent political players.
Former Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chairman Geller remembers driving to the Broward School Board building to pick her up. She spotted the golf clubs in the trunk of his Mercedes. Oh, you have to meet my brothers in Miami, Tony and Hugh, who love golf, she gushed.
The Democratic convention weekend kicked off in mid December, and the Clinton campaign owned the event from start to finish. They commandeered the hotel phone system so that a recorded message from Gov. Clinton greeted every delegate. While Harkin, Kerrey and Tsongas worked the crowd, none could match the relentless two-person charm offensive from Bill and Hillary.
Associated Press, 1991
Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton speaks at the Florida Democratic Convention in December 1991 before winning a straw poll that helped make him a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
He would hit the African-American caucus, while she met with the disability caucus.
Other times they tag-teamed undecided delegates.
“I would bring them to the hallway outside the connecting suite and give them a talking to, including the basic talking points as to why we thought Gov. Clinton was by far the best choice for a nominee. Then I would take them into one of the rooms, and there was Hillary,” Geller recounted. “She would turn on the charm and give them the full treatment, all the policy reasons and everything else. Then she’d pass them through the connecting door to the governor, as soon as he’d finished with who he was in with, and he would close the deal. … We had almost an assembly line going.”
At the final dinner, delegates found fortune cookies at their plates that read, “There’s a Clinton in your future.”
“Nobody had ever seen anything like this before. The Clintons just flat out-organized everybody else,” said Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, who was part of their organizing team that weekend.”
Clinton won the straw poll with 54 percent support, blowing out the better-known Harkin, who drew 31 percent.
“It really started here in Florida,” declared Clinton when he returned to Tampa a month later as the Democratic frontrunner. “Until the Florida straw poll, no one outside of my own state had ever voted for me for anything.”
Saving the campaign
Particularly novel for a Democrat at the time was Clinton’s aggressive outreach to Miami-Dade’s overwhelmingly Republican Cuban-American community. A riot by hundreds of refugees at a military training facility in Arkansas helped cost Clinton re-election as governor in 1980, so he was attuned to Cuba policy issues.
Hard-line anti-Castro sentiments were common among DLC Democrats, and Hillary Clinton’s sister-in-law — Hugh’s wife, Miami attorney Maria Arias — was a native of Cuba. She and several prominent Cuban-American businessmen, including developer Jorge Perez, investor Paul Cejas, Florida Democratic Party Chairman Simon Ferro and Fanjul, the sugar company magnate, remained close advisers to Clinton for years.
Associated Press, 1992
Few Democrats 25 years ago saw much chance of beating President George H.W. Bush, but Bill Clinton did. The Democratic hopeful greets a crowd at a town hall meeting at Florida A&M University during the 1992 campaign.
Perez said he opposed the embargo back then, but urged Clinton to back it.
“I told Clinton to be hard-line on Cuba. I told him he should be more hard-line than the Republicans,
even if I hated that, because that’s how you win the hearts and minds of Cuban-Americans and take Florida,” said Perez, who later helped host a reception for Clinton at Victor’s Cafe in Miami that attracted Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the Cuban-American National Foundation.
“That group actually saved the Clinton campaign,” said Mitchell Berger, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and a prolific Democratic fundraiser. He recounts how Clinton supporters and donors across the country thought Clinton’s campaign was sunk after Gennifer Flowers emerged in early 1992 saying she had a long-term affair with the governor.
“Right after that first woman story came out, they flew to Little Rock and brought the campaign like $100,000 — which was real money back then. Jorge Perez led that effort.”
Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman remembers watching the 60 Minutes interview on Jan. 26, 1992, with the Clintons answering to the Flowers controversy.
She had not yet met Hillary Clinton but was excited to see a modern feminist, a smart and accomplished leader at Clinton’s side. “It was so refreshing, almost kind of like a validation,” Freedman said. “It was like a sister.”
Gov. Clinton recovered with a second-place “comeback kid” finish in New Hampshire and went on to win the nomination. The campaign invested little money in Florida during the general election, seeing it as a long shot, but Hillary Clinton made at least half a dozen campaign trips to the state that year.
Bill Clinton lost Florida by less than 2 percentage points.
Associated Press, 1992
Hillary Clinton greets supporters after a speech at the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union convention in Miami Beach.
First-state treatment
The Florida flirtation of 1992 turned into a full-fledged relationship after the Clintons moved into the White House.
More than merely being prescient about the state’s political potential, the Clintons recognized Florida as a top-tier, top-priority state.
Circumstances ensured the White House’s immediate attention.
A flood of Haitian boat people headed to South Florida prompted the president to abandon a campaign pledge to give Haitians asylum. Post-Hurricane Andrew rebuilding remained a top priority, and Clinton vowed to unclog bureaucratic logjams on funding and released $76 million for flattened Homestead Air Force Base.
Associated Press, 1993
The Clintons arrive in Miami for Labor Day weekend in 1993.
Top appointments included Janet Reno of Miami as attorney general (recommended by Hugh Rodham, who worked with the state attorney establishing a drug court in Miami-Dade) and Florida Secretary of Environmental Regulation Carol Browner as EPA administrator. Some top Cuban-American supporters received ambassadorships: Cejas to Belgium and Ferro to Panama.
Both Clintons visited the state regularly for official and political business,
and Floridians including Geller, Freedman, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Democratic fundraiser Dick Batchelor of Orlando, Gov. Chiles, fundraisers Ira and Cynthia Leesfield, and state Sen. Daryl Jones slept in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom. Or tried to.
“I didn’t sleep at all. They had an electric blanket on the bed in July, and I had never used one and didn’t know how to turn the darn thing off,” Freedman recounted with a chuckle. “I pushed it off the bed, but the bed was so hot I couldn’t sleep. I did get to read the Gettysburg Address about 20 times, since it was sitting on Lincoln’s desk.”
The Clintons’ first visit to Florida that term was to check on Hurricane Andrew recovery efforts. As they walked through the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, their entourage included Trooper Kendrick Meek.
President Clinton “turned around as we’re all walking through the hallway and says, ‘Kendrick, we’re a long way from the Suwanee Swifty.’
The fact that he could remember that — I mean of course I would remember a governor putting on deodorant in the parking lot of the Suwanee Swifty — but I have never met another person who has that mind of memory bank,” Meek marvelled.
In many respects, the Clintons raised Florida’s stature, treating the budding battleground state as more than a vacation spot. He is the only sitting president to address both chambers of the Florida Legislature.
“They always took Florida seriously. Florida mattered to them from day one,”
said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Broward County, who became a leading advocate for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and later Democratic National Committee chairwoman. Amid this year’s email controversy, she stepped down.
“Yes, her brother lived in Florida and she had that family tie, but more than that. They made Florida a regular fixture in their lives. Major appointments, consistently major events that they came down for. They didn’t treat us like they were checking a box, it’s almost like they made Florida a home state,” said Wasserman Schultz. “And Hillary established herself in her own relationships in her own way. She built a base of support in Florida that she enjoyed herself, not just that was his.”
Miami Herald, 2008
Sen. Hillary Clinton arrives for a fundraiser at Lucky Strike Lanes on South Beach a couple of days before the 2008 Florida presidential primary. From left, she’s with Anthony Kennedy Shriver, Philip Levine and then-Miami Mayor Manny Diaz.
Among the biggest gifts President Clinton showered on Florida during his first term was choosing Miami to host the 1994 “Summit of the Americas.” Countless Floridians, from MacKay and Chiles to the Rodham brothers, had lobbied him intensely.
More consequential for Florida’s future was how the state fared during the Department of Defense’s 1993 military base closings. The Pentagon protected MacDill Air Force Base and Homestead Air Force Base from big hits and chose Miami as the new site for the Panama-based Southern Command military.
“We are being treated by the Clinton administration as a first-order state, really for the first time in our history. I think we’re now being treated like California and New York,” crowed Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay in the summer of 1995, when Democrats started to openly discuss how they might carry the state for the first time since 1976.
The president and first lady seemed to take keen interest in the 1996 re-election campaign.
“When we would do the trip calls, it was always very clear how closely involved the Clintons were,” said Karl Koch, the Florida director, recalling that the first lady campaigned in the state regularly.
“You’d get on the phone with somebody saying, ‘Mrs. Clinton’s going to Pensacola,’ or ‘the president’s going to Panama City,’ and you’d scratch your head and say, ‘Well, okay, that wouldn’t be our first choice, but we’ll make it work.’ Little Rock would say, ‘I know, but this is where they want to go.’”
To help fire up the Florida campaign team, someone printed T-shirts featuring a quote — “It will be a cold day in hell when a Democrat wins Florida” — from Republican operative J.M. “Mac” Stipanovich of Tallahassee.
Clinton carried Florida over Bob Dole and Ross Perot with 48 percent of the vote.
Associated Press, 1994
President Clinton and the first lady answer questions at a health care forum in March 1994 attended by residents of Century Village East.
The brothers
The Tampa Bay Times recently called a phone number we found for Hugh Rodham’s law office. It turned out to be the cell phone of his law partner, Gary Fine.
“Hello?”
“Hi, I’m trying to reach Hugh Rodham.”
Laughter. “Good luck with that,” Fine said, even before confirming it wasn’t a prospective client on the line.
Hillary Clinton’s younger brother is her closest and most long-standing tie to Florida,
but the campaign declined to make him available for an interview. Nor did he return multiple phone messages, or respond to a note left on his front door in Coral Gables.
“I see Hugh when the president comes to golf once in awhile, but he’s sort of disappeared,”
said Gene Prescott, who runs the luxurious Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables and has been close to the Clintons and their extended family for decades. Friends say Hillary Clinton relied on Prescott to keep an eye on “the boys” and help steer them from controversy.
Associated Press, 1996
Bill Clinton regularly plays golf in Florida, and a favorite spot to stay is the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. Here, in 1996, President Clinton rests his shoulder on Tony Rodham as Hugh Rodham takes a swing.
Hugh, 66, and Tony, 62, moved to Miami-Dade in the early 1980s, and lived in obscurity until Bill Clinton became president. “The boys,” as Clinton aides often called them, shared an apartment until 1986 when Hugh married Maria Victoria Arias, whom he met when she interned at the public defender’s office.
A respected real estate lawyer, Arias, 58, came to Miami with her family after Fidel Castro took over Cuba. The former Republican appeared regularly on Hispanic radio on behalf of the Clintons, flew to the White House to advise on Cuba matters, and to this day gives them a direct line to Miami’s exile community.
Hugh was an assistant public defender when his big sister hit the presidential campaign trail. Tony, who never graduated college, was a private investigator and process server who had worked as a corrections officer, insurance salesman and repo man. Bill Clinton was his ticket into a career common among the politically connected: business consultant.
Friends and acquaintances describe the brothers as engaging and bright, but often blind to conflicts of interest as they tried to capitalize on their Clinton connections.
Tony was the ladies man forever aiming to make a big business score, while Hugh was frequently likened to Norm from Cheers.
“She’s devoted to them, but she was harder on them than Bill seemed to be. Bill was more understanding about them being a little — how do I put it — footloose and fancy free,”
said Prescott, who partnered on one of Tony’s consulting ventures.
Associated Press, 2001
Bill Clinton plays golf with Hugh Rodham at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables in 2001.
Once Clinton secured the Democratic nomination in 1992, Tony, then 39, went to work for the Democratic National Committee in Washington on constituency outreach. At a bash held by Paul Newman in East Hampton, he met Nicole Boxer, the 26-year-old daughter of California’s new senator, Barbara Boxer.
He moved to Virginia and married Nicole at the White House in May 1994. Dade Circuit Judge Peter Capua, a golfing buddy, presided.
Tony and Nicole had a son in 1995 and divorced in 2000. In 2002 and 2007, she took him to court to collect tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid child support and alimony, according to several news reports. “HILL’S BROTHER A DEADBEAT,” read the New York Post headline.
Even before Clinton’s first inauguration, the Rodham brothers began generating negative headlines.
The Wall Street Journal revealed they were soliciting corporations to pay for a series of inaugural parties, which they had to scrap amid public outcry.
Hugh started positioning himself to run for U.S. Senate against popular Republican incumbent Connie Mack III barely nine months into Clinton’s rocky first year in office. Almost nobody in Florida Democratic politics or the White House encouraged him, but few serious candidates wanted to challenge the president’s brother-in-law.
Tony returned to Florida to help his brother, whose campaign immediately ran into trouble. Hugh struggled to explain why, after living in Florida nearly a decade, he first registered to vote for the 1992 election. No candidates had impressed him, he explained, breezily insulting Graham, Chiles and a host of other prominent Florida Democrats.
Hugh had a falling out with his campaign manager after the fellow’s resume turned out to be largely fiction. He also failed to raise much money, never demonstrated depth on issues and faced constant mocking by pundits. “Billy Carter with a law degree,” Republicans called him.
The good news? “I’ve lost 29 pounds in two months,” the former Penn State backup quarterback quipped in May 1994. “My sister said if nothing better comes out of the campaign than that, she’ll be happy.”
Hillary and Bill Clinton showed up at a sparsely attended rally late in the campaign, but Mack won in a landslide with nearly 71 percent of the vote.
Associated Press, 1994
Hugh Rodham challenged popular Republican incumbent Sen. Connie Mack III in 1994, and his sister came down to campaign with him.
Hugh tried talk radio, but that failed to take off. Next, the former assistant public defender who had to take the bar exam multiple times before passing started working on the tobacco lawsuit talks alongside some of America’s most pre-eminent lawyers.
John P. Coale, a Washington lawyer married to TV personality Greta Van Susteren, recruited Hugh. The men denied at the time that political connections landed Hugh the job, though he participated in settlement talks at the White House.
How much Hugh earned from the $1.25 billion settlement in 2002 is unknown, but friends say it ensured he is financially set for life.
That same year, he and his wife upgraded to an $850,000, four-bedroom home in Coral Gables, though any number of solo ventures, or joint ones with his jet-setting salesman brother, could have helped pay for that.
As the clock ticked down on the Clinton administration, the Rodham brothers in 1999 entered into a $118 million venture to export and grow hazelnuts in the Republic of Georgia, partnering with Aslan Abashidze, an archrival of Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. Under pressure from an embarrassed White House, they pulled out. Abashidze was later sentenced to 15 years in prison for embezzlement.
Soon after the Clintons left the White House, an uproar ensued over revelations that Hugh had been paid $400,000 to successfully lobby for a presidential pardon for Miami Beach dietary supplement marketer Glenn Braswell, convicted of mail fraud and perjury in 1983, and a prison commutation for California cocaine trafficker Carlos Vignali.
The Clintons said they knew nothing of the lobbying efforts by Hugh, who denied any wrongdoing but agreed to return the $400,000 at the request of his sister and brother-in-law.
“You know, he’s my brother. I love my brother. I’m just extremely disappointed in this terrible misjudgment that he made,” Hillary Clinton said in one of her earliest press conferences as a U.S. senator in 2001.
The brothers periodically accompany their sister on the campaign trail, but they no longer talk to the press.
They were last photographed with her in April, campaigning in Scranton, Pa., where their father grew up and they spent summers.
The campaign declined to comment on Clinton’s brothers.
Associated Press, 1994
First Lady Hillary Clinton joins her brother Hugh Rodham at a fundraiser for his U.S. Senate campaign in Miami.
‘You have been there’
The Clintons cherish loyalty, though their poor decisions can put supporters’ loyalty to the test.
MacKay, who did as much as anyone to help Clinton in Florida, needed the president badly in 1998 when he ran against heavy favorite Jeb Bush for governor. The president agreed to campaign and raise money for MacKay, but then the Monica Lewinsky scandal exploded.
On the day independent counsel Kenneth Starr delivered his report to Congress, Clinton came to Florida. Most Democrats stayed away, but Buddy and Anne MacKay stood by their friend that September afternoon in downtown Orlando.
“I don’t think I had a shot anyway at that point, but I had hoped we might be able get some momentum,” recounted MacKay, who quoted Martin Luther King Jr. before introducing Clinton. “In the end, we remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”
Associated Press, 1993
Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles and Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay were close with the Clintons. Here they are with Hillary Clinton at a Florida Democratic Party conference in Orlando in 1993.
Before the crowd in a hotel ballroom, MacKay told the president, “Whenever this state has needed you — through fire, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes — you have been there. We don’t forget that.”
The president looked moved.
“If God lets me live to be an old man, I will never forget what Buddy MacKay said today from this platform when he could have said nothing. And so I hope you will just indulge me for a minute while I say that I thank you for that. I have been your friend. I’ve done my best to be your friend, but I also let you down and I let my family down and I let this country down. But I’m trying to make it right. And I’m determined never to let anything like that happen again.
And I’m determined — wait a minute, wait a minute,” Clinton said, cutting the applause. “I’m determined to redeem the trust of people like Buddy and Anne who were with me in 1991. A lot of the rest of you were, too, when nobody but my mother and my wife thought I had a chance to be elected.”
And then came the 2000 election decided by 537 Florida votes.
To this day, friends of Al Gore and the Clintons variously swear that the Clintons lost the election for Gore or that Gore lost it by distancing himself from President Clinton and his record with the economy.
Gore allies maintain Clinton scandal fatigue made him poison with swing voters,
so they had no choice but to keep him away. What’s indisputable, though, is at a time when the president could have been focused on ensuring Gore’s election, the priority was Hillary Clinton winning her U.S. Senate race in New York. (She raised more than $300,000 from just over 500 Floridians for that race.)
Berger hosted Bill Clinton’s first Florida fundraiser in 1991, and is Gore’s closest friend in Florida. It’s no accident that in the 2008 Democratic primary, he raised money first for John Edwards and then for Obama.
Associated Press, 1994
The Clinton-Gore ties, celebrated here at the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami, frayed during the 2000 campaign. Gore allies maintain Clinton scandal fatigue made him poison with swing voters.
‘Political malpractice’
South Florida is essentially New York’s sixth borough, and Clinton sometimes seemed like Florida’s third senator as she moved toward her presidential run.
She headlined Democratic Party fundraising galas in Orlando and Broward County. She and her husband campaigned for gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride, Sen. Bill Nelson and many more Florida Democrats.
She lamented John Kerry’s loss to Florida fundraisers, privately saying the party had to stop nominating candidates who had little experience or understanding of working-class Americans.
She co-sponsored Nelson’s bill to create a national catastrophic fund to alleviate property insurance costs for Floridians.
And, in 2005, the Clintons attended the Mar-a-Lago wedding of a supportive constituent, Donald Trump.
Getty Images, 2005
Sen. Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton celebrate Donald Trump and his bride, Melania, during their January 2005 wedding reception at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach.
In 2008, Florida looked like solid Clinton country.
Obama had few Florida ties, and the vast majority of elected Democrats — including prominent African-Americans — lined up behind Clinton. Her strength with women, Hispanics and Jewish voters made her the clear frontrunner for the Democratic primary if not the general election.
“I never for one second thought Hillary Clinton could lose Florida to Barack Obama, and no one else did either,”
said Dan Gelber, a former state senator from Miami Beach and prominent Obama supporter during the 2008 primary.
“I think there really is, probably more than any other state except maybe New York and Arkansas, a real connection between Florida and the Clintons,” said Gelber, noting that his mother, like many Jewish mothers and grandmothers across South Florida, has a picture of herself and Hillary Clinton prominently displayed in her home.
Times files, 2006
HIllary Clinton headlined Democratic Party fundraising galas across Florida as a senator from New York, including this one at the Wyndham Westshore in Tampa.
A fateful decision helped cost Clinton the nomination.
Democratic activists in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina resented Florida stealing their spotlight by scheduling its primary earlier than allowed under national party rules. They asked the candidates to sign a pledge not to campaign for Florida’s primary, rendering the vote officially meaningless because no delegates would be awarded. Obama’s campaign helped craft the deal knowing Clinton would be tough to beat here.
Clinton signed the pledge, effectively boycotting Florida’s Democratic primary. It was another Clinton calculus: Better to snub Florida’s Democratic voters and activists temporarily, than risk alienating party regulars in all-important Iowa and New Hampshire who could really derail her campaign. She and her campaign advisers assumed they’d dispatch Obama anyway and the Florida question would be moot.
Except she lost the Iowa caucuses.
“Political malpractice,” former Clinton campaign adviser Mo Elleithee said recently of that decision.
Suddenly in deep trouble after the Iowa loss, and with her husband causing distractions by periodically popping off angrily on TV, Clinton phoned U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek. She needed a favor.
“She said, ‘Bill needs someone to travel with. You like him, he likes you, and you two would be good together,’” recalled Meek,
who for months accompanied the former president on his primary state travels, helping keep him grounded during long days on the trail and long nights playing cards.
Clinton overwhelmingly beat Obama in Florida’s officially meaningless primary, which meant she received no delegates.
Months later, the Clinton-Obama race became a fight for every delegate and Clinton suddenly wanted to stand up for the rights of “disenfranchised” Florida Democrats who voted in the primary. The DNC awarded her some delegates from Florida, but not enough to help her overcome Obama.
Associated Press, 2008
When the 2008 Democratic primary dragged out between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, she wanted to stand up for the rights of “disenfranchised” Florida Democrats and get their votes to count. A candidate boycott rendered the primary meaningless.
Not new at all
Eight years is a long cooling off period. Passions over past campaigns are gone.
“Everyone has moved on, and everyone is working together now,” said Berger, who hosted a Clinton fundraiser earlier this year.
The Clintons never ceased being a part of the fabric of Florida politics, building new relationships — and burnishing old ones.
Bill Clinton campaigned tirelessly for Meek when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2010, and stayed by his side when Meek declined to step aside for Charlie Crist. He also campaigned for Alex Sink for governor in 2010 and for Crist for governor in 2014.
Octavio Jones | Times
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and former Gov. Charlie Crist listen as HIllary Clinton addresses supporters in July at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa.
Three decades have passed since Hillary Clinton introduced herself to Florida
as part of a couple representing a fresh, new direction for the Democratic Party. That was before the Internet, before the Florida recount, before Jeb Bush and the GOP took over Florida politics, before the war on terrorism and before reality TV.
Democrats are nearly irrelevant in Tallahassee these days, but favored to win their third Florida presidential election in a row.
“I’m not new to this area or its concerns,” Clinton told supporters at St. Petersburg’s Coliseum in August, reminding them that she had rallied supporters at the same venue 20 years before.
Not new at all. By now, Clinton knows Florida about as well as anyone. Many Floridians know her, too, or at least think they do. If she loses this state in November it won’t have anything to do with unfamiliarity.
Times researchers Caryn Baird, Carolyn Edds and John Martin contributed. Contact Adam C. Smith at [email protected]. Follow @adamsmithtimes. Designed by Lauren Flannery. Photo editing by Patty Yablonski.
Octavio Jones | Times
Days before she would become the first woman nominated for president by a major party, Hillary Clinton shook hands with supporters at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa.
Hillary Clinton’s Florida connections
JACKSONVILLE
Alvin Brown: Bill Clinton stayed loyal to his former aide, campaigning repeatedly for him when he won election as Jacksonville’s first black mayor in 2011.
OCALA
Buddy MacKay: The former lieutenant governor came to know Bill Clinton through education reform efforts in the 1980s and chaired his Florida campaign in 1992.
ORLANDO
Richard Swann: He is a longtime Democratic fundraiser whose daughter is married to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, another top Clinton money-raiser and ally.
Dick Batchelor: The consultant and former legislator was among the earliest Clinton supporters in 1991.
Jim Pugh: Another veteran Democratic fundraiser and longtime Clinton backer.
Bill Nelson: He and his family bonded with the Clintons over Renaissance Weekends in the 1980s and a prayer group the senator’s wife, Grace Nelson, helped lead in Washington.
TAMPA
Arthenia Joyner: The state senator and civil rights pioneer has known the Clintons since the 1980s through the National Bar Association.
Bob Buckhorn: This Tampa mayor was among the earliest Bill Clinton supporters in Florida in 1991.
Sandy Freedman: This Tampa mayor was also among the earliest Bill Clinton supporters in Florida in 1991.
Ana Cruz: The Democratic operative has been with the Clintons from the start. She helped lead a stealth Hillary Clinton primary campaign in 2008 when the candidates were shunning Florida because its primary was scheduled earlier than allowed by the national party.
SARASOTA
Doug Band: The former Sarasota resident and University of Florida grad interned in the Clinton White House and then became an adviser, assistant and gatekeeper to Bill Clinton. He helped found and oversee the Clinton Foundation, and now is a wealthy New York-based business consultant.
PALM BEACH
S. Daniel Abraham: The billionaire behind the Slim-Fast line is another longtime and generous pal of the Clintons.
Alfonso “Alfy” Fanjul: The wealthy sugar magnate was an early and longtime friend of the Clintons.
Alcee Hastings: The congressman is a longtime Clinton friend and ally.
BROWARD COUNTY
Joe Geller: Used to lead Miami-Dade’s Democratic Party and was a key organizer for Clinton in 1991.
Nan Rich: The former legislator has known Hillary Clinton since she helped the first lady set up a pre-K program in Arkansas.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz: A longtime Clinton ally and supporter, she was one of Hillary’s top campaign surrogates in 2008 and eventually was tasked with trying to unite hurt Clinton supporters behind Barack Obama.
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY
Hugh Rodham: Hillary’s brother, a former public defender and an unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate in 2004.
Ira Leesfield: The former Academy of Trial Lawyers chief and his wife, Cynthia, have been pals with the Clintons from the start.
Kendrick Meek: The former state trooper and congressman is almost like a son to Bill Clinton and was a top adviser to Hillary Clinton in 2008.
Chris Korge: No one is closer to the Clintons in Florida and almost nobody in America has raised more money for Hillary Clinton.
Alex Heckler: At 40 one of the youngest of Hillary Clinton’s Florida pals, Heckler became a top tier money-raiser in 2008.
Elaine Bloom: The former legislator and liberal stalwart was one of the earliest Clinton supporters in 1991.
Philip Levine: The businessman and Miami Beach mayor became close friends with Bill Clinton after he left office and has traveled to countless countries with him.
In part from CubaToday: Diaz-Balart, a member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said Cuba shares intelligence with Russia and Iran, among others. Earlier this year, Gen. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Cuba was among four countries that pose the greatest espionage threat to the United States. The others were Russia, China and Iran.
“The threat from foreign intelligence entities, both state and non-state, is persistent, complex and evolving,” Clapper testified in a February hearing on “Worldwide Threats.” “Targeting collection of U.S. political, military, economic and technical information by foreign intelligence services continues unabated.”
Over the course of five decades, Fidel Castro built one of the world’s most active intelligence services, whose missions included spying on U.S. military facilities in South Florida and infiltrating leading Cuban exile organizations in Miami. More here.
Now it appears, Barack Obama is not finished with his new friends in Cuba and handing off gifts to them.
Today, I approved a Presidential Policy Directive that takes another major step forward in our efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. This Directive takes a comprehensive and whole-of-government approach to promote engagement with the Cuban government and people, and make our opening to Cuba irreversible. Read more here.
Presidential Policy Directive — United States-Cuba Normalization
October 14, 2016
SUBJECT: United States-Cuba Normalization
I. Introduction
On December 17, 2014, I announced that the United States would chart a new course with Cuba, ending an outdated policy that had failed to advance U.S. interests and support reform and a better life for the Cuban people on the island over several decades. Under the new policy, the United States expands and promotes authorized engagements with Cuba to advance cooperation on areas of mutual interest, and increase travel to, commerce with, and the free flow of information to Cuba. The objective of the new policy is to help the Cuban people to achieve a better future for themselves and to encourage the development of a partner in the region capable of working with the United States to confront regional challenges, such as climate change, disease, and illicit trafficking.
Endogenous changes underway in Cuba offer opportunities to advance U.S. interests and shift away from an embargo, which is an outdated burden on the Cuban people and has impeded U.S. interests. My Administration has repeatedly called on the Congress to lift the embargo. United States policy is designed to create economic opportunities for the Cuban people; promote respect for human rights; further advances on regional security and defense issues, such as health, law enforcement, and migration; and pursue cooperation with the Cuban government that can strengthen our leadership in the hemisphere. We recognize Cuba’s sovereignty and self-determination and acknowledge areas of difference. We seek to address such differences through engagement and dialogue, and by encouraging increased understanding between our governments and our peoples.
The large Cuban-American community in the United States has an integral role to play in normalization, and in reconciliation between members of the diaspora who left Cuba and those who remain on the island. Normalization necessarily extends beyond government-to-government rapprochement — it includes rebuilding bridges between individuals and families.
This directive: (1) describes the U.S. vision for normalization with Cuba and how our policy aligns with U.S. national security interests; (2) assesses progress toward normalization; (3) describes the current and foreseen strategic landscape; (4) describes priority objectives for normalization; and (5) directs actions required to implement this PPD.
II. Vision for United States-Cuba Normalization
The vision of the United States for U.S.-Cuba normalization is guided by the following national security interests, as described in the 2015 National Security Strategy:
The security of the United States, its citizens, and U.S. allies and partners.
A strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity.
Respect for universal values at home and around the world.
A rules-based international order that promotes peace, security, and opportunity.
Our vision for U.S.-Cuba normalization reflects my Administration’s support for broad-based economic growth, stability, increased people-to-people ties, and respect for human rights and democratic values in the region. In the long-term, the United States seeks the following end-states:
1. Enhanced security of the United States and U.S. citizens at home and abroad. We seek to ensure U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba are safe and secure and the United States is protected from: those seeking to exploit increased connectivity for illicit ends, irregular migration, and natural or man-made hazards. Our policy advances bilateral cooperation in areas of mutual interest, including diplomatic, agricultural, public health, and environmental matters, as well as disaster preparedness and response, law enforcement, migration, and other security and defense topics. Our policy also supports increased cooperation with Cuba on regional initiatives on behalf of these interests.
2. A prosperous, stable Cuba that offers economic opportunities to its people. Increased travel and economic interconnectedness supports improved livelihoods for the Cuban people, deeper economic engagement between our two countries, as well as the development of a private sector that provides greater economic opportunities for the Cuban people. Efforts by the Cuban authorities to liberalize economic policy would aid these goals and further enable broader engagement with different sectors of the Cuban economy. United States policy helps U.S. businesses gain access to Cuban markets and encourages the sustainable growth of the Cuban economy. The U.S. private sector, scientific and medical researchers, agriculture industry, foundations, and other groups have new avenues for collaboration that can provide opportunities for Cuban entrepreneurs, scientists, farmers, and other professionals. At the same time, increased access to the internet is boosting Cubans’ connectivity to the wider world and expanding the ability of the Cuban people, especially youth, to exchange information and ideas. The United States is prepared to support Cuban government policies that promote social equality and independent economic activity.
3. Increased respect for individual rights in Cuba. Even as we pursue normalization, we recognize we will continue to have differences with the Cuban government. We will continue to speak out in support of human rights, including the rights to freedoms of expression, religion, association, and peaceful assembly as we do around the world. Our policy is designed to support Cubans’ ability to exercise their universal human rights and fundamental freedoms, with the expectation that greater commerce will give a broader segment of the Cuban people the information and resources they need to achieve a prosperous and sustainable future. In pursuit of these objectives, we are not seeking to impose regime change on Cuba; we are, instead, promoting values that we support around the world while respecting that it is up to the Cuban people to make their own choices about their future.
4. Integration of Cuba into international and regional systems. We seek Cuban government participation in regional and international fora, including but not limited to, those related to the Organization of American States (OAS) and Summit of the Americas to advance mutually held member objectives. We believe that a Cuba that subscribes to the purposes and standards of such fora will benefit, over time, from bringing its domestic economic and political practices in line with international norms and globally accepted standards. Our policy strengthens the U.S. position in international systems by removing an irritant from our relationships with our allies and partners and gaining support for a rules-based order.
III. Progress Toward United States-Cuba Normalization
Since the United States announced on December 17, 2014, that it would chart a new course with Cuba, we have re-established diplomatic relations and have made progress toward the normalization of our bilateral relationship. We opened our respective embassies, six U.S. cabinet secretaries visited Havana, four Cuban ministers visited the United States, and I became the first sitting U.S. President to visit Cuba since 1928. We established a Bilateral Commission to prioritize areas of engagement, and we concluded non-binding arrangements on environmental protection, marine sanctuaries, public health and biomedical research, agriculture, counternarcotics, trade and travel security, civil aviation, direct transportation of mail, and hydrography. We launched dialogues or discussions on law enforcement cooperation, regulatory issues, economic issues, claims, and internet and telecommunications policy.
Given Cuba’s proximity to the United States, increased engagement by U.S. citizens, companies, and the nongovernmental sector holds extraordinary promise for supporting our national interests. Bearing in mind the limits imposed by the Cuban Liberty and Democratic (LIBERTAD) Solidarity Act of 1996 (“Libertad Act”) and other relevant statutes, the Departments of the Treasury and Commerce implemented six packages of regulatory amendments to the Cuba sanctions program, easing restrictions on travel, trade, and financial transactions. United States individuals, firms, and nongovernmental organizations are availing themselves of these regulatory changes to visit Cuba, and authorized travel to Cuba increased by more than 75 percent from 2014 to 2015. Future U.S. citizen travel will be supported by scheduled air service, which began in August 2016, and the first U.S. cruise liner visited Cuban ports in May 2016. We also commenced direct transportation of mail between our two countries, and U.S. telecommunications firms established direct voice and roaming agreements with Cuba. For its part, the Cuban government has continued to pursue incremental economic reforms and launched more than 100 public Wi-Fi hotspots across the island.
These developments lay the foundation for long-term engagement with Cuba that advances U.S. interests. But we have a great deal more to do to build on that foundation based on a realistic assessment of the strategic landscape surrounding normalization.
IV. Strategic Landscape
Cuba is experiencing several transitions in areas such as leadership, the economy, technological development, civil society, and regional and global integration. Cuba’s leaders recognize the need to transition to the next generation, but they prioritize gradual, incremental changes to ensure stability.
Cuba has important economic potential rooted in the dynamism of its people, as well as a sustained commitment in areas like education and health care. Yet the Cuban government faces significant economic challenges, including eliminating its dual-exchange-rate system, making its state-run enterprises more efficient and transparent, developing a financial system that provides expanded services to individuals and the private sector, and reducing its reliance on foreign subsidies. Cuba remains highly dependent on food and energy imports, yet must cope with limited sources of hard currency to pay for import needs. Significant emigration of working age Cubans further exacerbates Cuba’s demographic problem of a rapidly aging population.
A series of statutes limits U.S. economic engagement with Cuba, precluding a complete lifting of restrictions on U.S. travel to Cuba, prohibiting United States Government export assistance and the provision of U.S. credit for Cuban purchases of agricultural commodities, and requiring that the embargo not be suspended or terminated unless the President determines that a transition or democratically elected government has come to power in Cuba.
Due to Cuba’s legal, political, and regulatory constraints, its economy is not generating adequate foreign exchange to purchase U.S. exports that could flow from the easing of the embargo. Even if the U.S. Congress were to lift the embargo, Cubans would not realize their potential without continued economic reform in Cuba. Cuban government regulations and opaque procurement practices hamper transactions with U.S. companies that would be permitted under U.S. law.
Normalization efforts have raised Cubans’ expectations for greater economic opportunities. With an estimated 1 in 4 working Cubans engaged in entrepreneurship, a dynamic, independent private sector is emerging. Expansion of the private sector has increased resources for individual Cubans and created nascent openings for Cuban entrepreneurs to engage with U.S. firms and nongovernmental organizations. We take note of the Cuban government’s limited, but meaningful steps to expand legal protections and opportunities for small- and medium-sized businesses, which, if expanded and sustained, will improve the investment climate.
Cuba is not a member of international financial institutions (IFIs), such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank, which could provide expertise and potentially finance economic reforms and viable investment projects.
Although Cuba has reached agreement with several creditor nations on bilateral debt relief through restructuring and forgiveness, it remains in default to the United States Government on pre-Cuban revolution bilateral debts and does not participate in international capital markets. Cuba and the United States are both members of the World Trade Organization (WTO); however, neither country applies the agreement to the other because of the U.S. embargo toward Cuba.
Rapprochement has enabled us to increase our engagement with Cuba on regional issues such as the Colombia peace process and healthcare in Haiti, and has undermined an historic rallying point for regimes critical of the United States. Although Cuba has expressed no interest in participating in the OAS, it did attend the Summit of the Americas in 2015. We also welcome engagement between Cuba and other U.S. allies from around the world, including our European and Asian treaty allies. At the same time, we recognize that Cuba and the United States will continue to have differences on many regional and global issues.
U.S. engagement with the Cuban government will also be constrained by Cuba’s continued repression of civil and political liberties. We anticipate the Cuban government will continue to object to U.S. migration policies and operations, democracy programs, Radio and TV Marti, the U.S. presence at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, and the embargo. The United States Government has no intention to alter the existing lease treaty and other arrangements related to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, which enables the United States to enhance and preserve regional security.
In this strategic environment, the policies and actions the United States pursues to advance our vision for U.S.-Cuba normalization will significantly shape the future of bilateral and regional relations, as well as our shared security and prosperity.
V. Six U.S. Objectives for the Medium-Term U.S.-Cuba Relationship
To advance the four end-state goals associated with our strategic vision for U.S.-Cuba normalization, the United States will move concurrently on the following six priority objectives:
1. Government-to-Government Interaction
We will continue high-level and technical engagement in areas of mutual interest, including agriculture, the economy and small businesses, transportation, science and technology, environment, climate, health, law enforcement, migration, national security, disaster preparedness and response, and counterterrorism. Through the Bilateral Commission, we will identify and prioritize areas of collaboration and engagement that advance our end-state goals. Stronger diplomatic ties will enable constructive engagement on bilateral differences, including our democracy and broadcasting programs, while protecting our interests and assets, such as the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. We will utilize engagement to urge Cuba to make demonstrable progress on human rights and religious freedom. As the United States and Cuban governments build trust through more frequent engagement, we will increasingly conduct working-level interactions between Cuban ministries and U.S. agencies and departments that lessen the need for high-level conversations on routine matters. Given the lack of diplomatic relations over the past several decades, we will seek broad engagement across the Cuban government, including ministries and local officials. When appropriate and legally available, we will engage with Cuba to normalize trade relations fully.
2. Engagement and Connectivity
The United States will continue to encourage people-to-people linkages through government and privately sponsored exchanges, including those involving educational, cultural, business, science, environment, technology, and sports. As permitted by law, we will continue to support the development of scheduled and chartered air service and maritime links, including ferries. An ongoing partnership with the Cuban-American community is of particular importance given Cuban-Americans’ strong family and socio-cultural ties, as well as their natural role as citizen-ambassadors. We will facilitate opportunities for Cuban-Americans to rebuild and create new bonds with family to support reconciliation. To facilitate Cuba’s goal of increasing its internet access from 5 percent to 50 percent of the population by 2020, we will seek the establishment of a bilateral working group to expand internet connectivity. We will seek opportunities that enable U.S. foundations and universities to establish linkages with Cuba.
3. Expanded Commerce
The United States Government will seek to expand opportunities for U.S. companies to engage with Cuba. The embargo is outdated and should be lifted. My Administration has repeatedly called upon the Congress to lift the embargo, and we will continue to work toward that goal. While the embargo remains in place, our role will be to pursue policies that enable authorized U.S. private sector engagement with Cuba’s emerging private sector and with state-owned enterprises that provide goods and services to the Cuban people. Law enforcement cooperation will ensure that authorized commerce and authorized travelers move rapidly between the United States and Cuba. Although we recognize the priority given to state-owned enterprises in the Cuban model, we seek to encourage reforms that align these entities with international norms, especially transparency.
United States regulatory changes have created space for the Cuban government to introduce comparable changes. In tandem with the Department of the Treasury’s regulatory change to expand Cuba’s access to the U.S. financial system and U.S. dollar transit accounts, the Cuban government announced in early 2016 plans to eliminate the 10 percent penalty on U.S. dollar conversion transactions, subject to improved access to the international banking system. We will sustain private and public efforts to explain our regulatory changes to U.S. firms and banks, Cuban entrepreneurs, and the Cuban government.
4. Economic Reform
While the Cuban government pursues its economic goals based on its national priorities, we will utilize our expanded cooperation to support further economic reforms by the Cuban government. Recent exchanges among financial service institutions and regulators have provided greater mutual understanding of our respective financial system and economic priorities. We will undertake government-to-government dialogues to discuss options for macro- and microeconomic reform, with the goal of connecting the changes in U.S. policy with Cuban reforms in a manner that creates opportunity for U.S. firms and the Cuban people.
If and when the Congress lifts the embargo, my Administration will engage with the Congress and stakeholders on preparatory commercial and economic exchanges and dialogues. My Administration would then similarly engage the Congress on the substance and timing of a new bilateral commercial agreement to address remaining statutory trade requirements.
5. Respect for Universal Human Rights, Fundamental Freedoms, and Democratic Values
We will not pursue regime change in Cuba. We will continue to make clear that the United States cannot impose a different model on Cuba because the future of Cuba is up to the Cuban people. We seek greater Cuban government respect for universal human rights and fundamental freedoms for every individual. Progress in this area will have a positive impact on the other objectives. We will encourage the Cuban government to respect human rights; support Cuba’s emerging, broad-based civil society; and encourage partners and nongovernmental actors to join us in advocating for reforms. While remaining committed to supporting democratic activists as we do around the world, we will also engage community leaders, bloggers, activists, and other social issue leaders who can contribute to Cuba’s internal dialogue on civic participation. We will continue to pursue engagements with civil society through the U.S. Embassy in Havana and during official United States Government visits to Cuba. We will seek to institutionalize a regular human rights dialogue with the Cuban government to advance progress on human rights. We will pursue democracy programming that is transparent and consistent with programming in other similarly situated societies around the world. We will utilize our increased ability to engage regional partners, both bilaterally and through regional bodies, to encourage respect for human rights in Cuba. We will consult with nongovernmental actors such as the Catholic Church and other religious institutions. Finally, we will work with the European Union and likeminded international organizations and countries to encourage the Cuban government to respect universal values.
6. Cuban Integration into International and Regional Systems
We will expand dialogue with Cuba in the organizations in which it already holds membership, such as the WTO and the World Customs Organization (WCO), and we will encourage Cuba to move toward rules-based engagement, subject to statutory requirements. We will encourage Cuba to bring its legal framework, particularly its commercial law, in line with international standards. We will encourage Cuba to meet WCO standards for supply chain security. To the extent permitted by and consistent with applicable law, we will facilitate integration into international bodies, including through the use of technical assistance programs. We will pursue cooperation with Cuba on regional and global issues (e.g., combating the Ebola outbreak and the Colombia peace process). Ending the embargo and satisfying other statutory requirements relating to trade will allow the United States to normalize trade relations with Cuba.
VI. Policy Implementation
1. Roles and Responsibilities
To facilitate the effective implementation of this directive, departments and agencies will have the following roles and responsibilities, consistent with the relevant legal authorities and limits:
The National Security Council (NSC) staff will provide ongoing policy coordination and oversight of the implementation of this PPD and the overall Cuba strategy as necessary.
The Department of State will continue to be responsible for formulation of U.S. policy toward and coordination of relations with Cuba. This includes supporting the operations of Embassy Havana and ensuring it has adequate resources and staffing. Other responsibilities include the issuance of nonimmigrant and immigrant visas, refugee processing, promotion of educational and cultural exchanges, coordination of democracy programs, and political and economic reporting. State will continue to lead the U.S.-Cuba Bilateral Commission and coordinate a number of dialogues, such as the Law Enforcement Dialogue, annual migration talks, and meetings to resolve outstanding claims.
State will continue to co-lead efforts with the U.S. Agency for International Development to ensure democracy programming is transparent and consistent with programming in other similarly situated societies. State will coordinate efforts to advance science and technology cooperation with Cuba. State will support telecommunications and internet access growth in Cuba and provide foreign policy guidance to the Departments of Commerce and the Treasury on certain exports, financial transactions, and other license applications.
The U.S. Mission to the United Nations (USUN), in coordination with State, will oversee multilateral issues involving Cuba at the United Nations. USUN will identify areas of possible collaboration with Cuba that could help foster a more collaborative relationship between the United States and Cuba at the United Nations. The USUN will also participate in discussions regarding the annual Cuban embargo resolution at the United Nations, as our bilateral relationship continues to develop in a positive trajectory.
The Department of the Treasury is responsible for implementation of the economic embargo restrictions and licensing policies. The Treasury will continue its outreach to help the public, businesses, and financial institutions understand the regulatory changes. The Treasury will continue to review and respond to public questions and feedback on regulations and public guidance that could be further clarified and to discuss with State any novel license requests that the Treasury receives from the public to determine whether such requests are consistent with the regulatory changes and existing law. The Treasury will make use of available channels for bilateral dialogue to understand Cuba’s economic and financial system and encourage reforms and will continue to engage in dialogue with the Cuban government about our regulatory changes.
The Department of Commerce will continue to support the development of the Cuban private sector, entrepreneurship, commercial law development, and intellectual property rights as well as environmental protection and storm prediction. If statutory restrictions are lifted, Commerce will promote increased trade with Cuba by providing export assistance to U.S. companies. In the meantime, Commerce will continue a robust outreach effort to ensure that U.S. companies understand that U.S. regulatory changes provide new opportunities to obtain licenses or use license exceptions to increase authorized exports to Cuba, including to Cuban state-owned enterprises that provide goods and services to meet the needs of the Cuban people. Additionally, Commerce will continue to engage in dialogue with the Cuban government about our regulatory changes, as well as the need for simplification of the Cuban import process, transparency in Cuban business regulations, and other steps that will lead to full realization of the benefits of our regulatory changes.
The Department of Defense (DOD) will continue to take steps to expand the defense relationship with Cuba where it will advance U.S. interests, with an initial focus on humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and counternarcotics in the Caribbean. The DOD will support Cuba’s inclusion in the inter-American defense system and regional security and defense conferences, which will give Cuba a stake in hemispheric stability. The DOD will continue to make contingency preparations and support the capacity of the Department of Homeland Security and State to address mass migration and maritime migration issues pursuant to Executive Orders 12807 and 13276 and consistent with other applicable interagency guidance and strategy.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will engage, together with the Department of Justice, with the Cuban government to combat terrorism and transnational organized crime. In support of U.S. security and foreign policy objectives, DHS will develop protocols for investigative cooperation with Cuba in coordination with other departments and agencies. The DHS will strengthen the security and efficiency of cross-border supply chains and travel systems in support of people-to-people engagement and authorized U.S. trade with the Cuban private sector. The DHS will safeguard the integrity of the U.S. immigration system, to include the facilitation of lawful immigration and ensure protection of refugees. The Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States Government lead for a maritime migration or mass migration, with support from the Secretaries of State and Defense, will address a maritime migration or mass migration pursuant to Executive Orders 12807 and 13276 and consistent with applicable interagency guidance and strategy.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) will engage, together with DHS, with the Cuban government to combat terrorism and transnational organized crime. The DOJ will work with Cuba to expand security and law enforcement cooperation, increase information sharing, and share best practices with Cuban counterparts. This work will build upon, and strengthen, current law enforcement cooperation with Cuba under the umbrella of the U.S.-Cuba Law Enforcement Dialogue and its various working groups, which focus on counterterrorism, counternarcotics, cybercrime, human trafficking, and other areas of criminal activity.
The Small Business Administration (SBA) will continue to engage with the Cuban government, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and cooperative enterprises. The SBA will support exchanges with the Cuban government in areas of mutual interest, particularly on formalization of small businesses and to spur the growth of new enterprises.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative will provide trade policy coordination in international fora and, consistent with statutory requirements and restrictions, prepare for negotiations to normalize and expand U.S.-Cuba trade.
The Department of Agriculture (USDA) will work to increase U.S. food and agricultural exports to Cuba by building market opportunities, improving the competitive position of U.S. agriculture, and building Cuba’s food security and agricultural capacity, while protecting plant, animal, and human health. USDA will work with the Government of Cuba to advance cooperation outlined in the U.S.-Cuba agricultural memorandum of understanding signed in March 2016. The USDA will build the U.S.-Cuba trade and development relationship to the extent permitted by and consistent with applicable law.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in accordance with the June 2016 memorandum of understanding between HHS and the Ministry of Public Health of the Republic of Cuba, will collaborate with Cuban counterparts in the areas of public health, research, and biomedical sciences, including collaboration to confront the Zika virus, dengue, chikungunya, and other arboviruses. The HHS will promote joint work, such as development of vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics; partner with Cuba to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks; collaborate in the field of cancer control, treatment programs, and joint research; and exchange best practices related to access to healthcare.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will coordinate with departments and agencies the United States Government’s response to unplanned environmental occurrences, such as natural or manmade disasters. The USAID will co-lead efforts with State to ensure that democracy programming is transparent and consistent with programming in other similarly situated societies.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) will continue to develop air and surface transportation links between the United States and Cuba in support of transportation providers, authorized travelers, and commerce, while providing required regulatory and safety oversight of transportation providers and systems.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) will support broader United States Government efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, with Intelligence Community elements working to find opportunities for engagement on areas of common interest through which we could exchange information on mutual threats with Cuban counterparts.
The Department of the Interior (DOI) will continue cooperation with Cuba on marine protected areas and continue to engage Cuban counterparts to finalize arrangements on wildlife conservation, terrestrial national protected areas, and seismic records.
2. Congressional Outreach
Strong support in the Congress for U.S.-Cuba normalization would contribute to the speed and success of the aforementioned goals, particularly with respect to the embargo and adequate embassy staffing. We will seek to build support in the Congress to lift the embargo and other statutory constraints to enable expanded travel and commerce with Cuba and accelerate normalization. We will regularly engage with Members of Congress and staff on challenges and opportunities in Cuba, advocate for United States Government policies and sufficient staff and resources to implement the aforementioned goals and policy priorities, and encourage and facilitate congressional travel to the region.
3. Monitoring and Oversight
The Interagency Policy Committee (IPC), or its future equivalent, will have primary responsibility for coordinating and overseeing the implementation of this policy. The NSC staff will convene regular IPC and Deputies Committee meetings as necessary to monitor implementation and resolve obstacles to progress. The following departments and agencies will designate senior individuals responsible for managing policy implementation in their agency: State, the Treasury, Commerce, DOD (Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff), DHS, DOJ, USDA, HHS, DOT, USUN, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, USAID, SBA, and DNI.
4. Previous Guidance
Executive Order 13276, Delegation of Responsibilities Concerning Undocumented Aliens Interdicted or Intercepted in the Caribbean Region, dated November 15, 2002, and Executive Order 12807, Interdiction of Illegal Aliens, dated May 24, 1992, remain in effect.
U.S. Identifies Key Player in ISIS Attacks on Europe
Frontline: Almost a year after Islamic State terrorists killed 130 people in Paris, U.S. intelligence agencies have identified one of the suspected masterminds of that plot and a follow-up attack in Brussels.
U.S. counter-terror officials said the man, who goes by the name Abu Sulaiyman al Fransi (Abu Sulaiyman, the Frenchman) is a 26-year old Moroccan who once served in Afghanistan as a soldier in the French Foreign Legion. He did prison time for drug running before going to Syria in 2014 and joining ISIS, according to U.S. officials and French court documents. His real name is Abdelilah Himich, according to U.S. counter-terror officials.
Despite his relative youth, Himich’s military experience and knowledge of France have made him a key figure in the Islamic State’s external operations unit, which has led a terror campaign against Europe, officials said. He is thought to be in Syria.
“We believe he is one of the top guys involved in spearheading the Paris attack and the Brussels attacks,” a U.S. counter-terror official said. “He was involved in creating that infrastructure” of the external operations unit.
U.S. and European counter-terror officials were interviewed for this story as part of a report by ProPublica and FRONTLINE about terrorism in Europe.
Officials acknowledged that they have struggled to pin down details about the identities and activities of the ISIS planners. U.S. and European counter-terror officials note that several Islamic State fighters have used the nom de guerre Abu Sulaiyman al Fransi. (The nickname is spelled in a number of ways, U.S. officials say.) In the past, he has variously been described by European officials and media reports as a blond convert and a former physical education teacher.
But U.S. officials said there was strong evidence indicating that the senior French fighter in question is Himich. They said French intelligence has been informed of that assessment and agrees with it.
European counter-terror officials interviewed by ProPublica earlier this year said they also suspect that a militant known as Abu Sulaiyman the Frenchman helped to plan the Paris and Brussels attacks. But they did not disclose his full identity.
Officials said that months of investigations and intelligence work in Europe and the Middle East have begun to shed light on the command structure of what the Islamic State calls external operations. The predominantly Arab leaders of ISIS have given senior and mid-level European fighters considerable autonomy to select targets and decide details of plots in their home turf, according to Western counter-terror officials.
Nonetheless, the ISIS unit that plots attacks overseas is also quite bureaucratized, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The unit exerted increasingly direct control over plots in Europe starting in 2015, according to Western counter-terror officials, and is part of an ISIS intelligence structure known as the Enmi.
“ISIS-directed plots in Europe have usually involved several planners and organizers who might change for each project,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, the chairman of the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism in Paris, who has been studying the unit. “It’s more a team process than a single mastermind’s plan.”
Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, a Syrian who served as a spokesman for the Islamic State, was a top figure overseeing external operations, counter-terror officials say. A U.S. drone strike killed Adnani in August.
There is hard evidence that another ISIS militant in Syria, a man known as Abu Ahmad, played a hands-on role in the Paris and Brussels cases, according to European counter-terror officials. A laptop computer recovered by Belgian police after the Brussels bombings in March contained encrypted communications detailing Abu Ahmad’s direct role in the plot.
During the four months after the Paris attacks, Abu Ahmad discussed targets, strategy and bomb-making techniques from Syria via encrypted channels with survivors of the terrorist cell who were hiding in Brussels. The fugitive suspects referred to Abu Ahmad as their “emir,” or leader, according to Belgian counter-terror officials.
The communications in the laptop indicate that the original plan was to hit France again, European officials say. When Belgian police closed in, however, Abu Ahmad told the fugitives to strike in Brussels instead, officials said. The suicide bombings killed 32 people at the airport and a subway station on March 22.
Abu Ahmad was described by two captured ISIS fighters as a lead planner of the Paris massacre as well. The suspects, an Algerian and a Pakistani, told interrogators that Abu Ahmad chose and prepared them for the plot last fall, and sent them to Europe posing as Syrian refugees, according to European counter-terror officials.
When the two landed in Greece in October, however, Greek border guards discovered they were not Syrian, and held them for a few weeks, according to European and U.S. counter-terror officials. After being released, the duo communicated with Abu Ahmad, who sent them money and instructions not to join the rest of the attackers, according to officials. The two suspects were arrested in Austria in December.
The men described Abu Ahmad as a Syrian, according to European counter-terror officials. But the recovered clandestine communications with the plotters in Europe indicate clearly that he speaks French, raising questions about his true nationality, the officials said.
“He has to be French, or speak French well,” a European counter-terror official said. “They use French slang.”
The investigation shows that Abu Ahmad worked with the senior fighter known as Abu Sulaiyman al Fransi, according to European and U.S. counter-terror officials. During the massacre at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, witnesses overheard gunmen talk to each other about calling a person named Abu Sulaiyman, according to European and U.S. officials.
Himich, the man identified by U.S. intelligence as Abu Sulaiyman, has an unusual story. He was born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1989, according to U.S. counter-terror officials and French court documents. His family emigrated when he was an adolescent to Lunel, a southern French town about 20 miles from Montpellier, officials say.
Lunel has a population of about 25,000 and a rich history as a Jewish cultural center in medieval times. The town has a large population of Muslim descent as the result of immigration from North Africa beginning in the 1960s.
In 2006, Himich’s name appeared in a Lunel high school newspaper as the author of an article about teenage drinking. Although he went to school in France, he remains a Moroccan citizen, according to officials and court documents. In 2008, he joined the French Foreign Legion, a legendary and hard-nosed force whose soldiers come from all over the world.
Himich “distinguished himself during various missions in Afghanistan,” according to the court documents. In 2010, however, he deserted, according to the officials and documents.
“Wanting to attend the burial of his father, he left his post without authorization,” the documents say. “After his return to France, he did vocational training to work in the security field and also considered becoming a nurse.”
A year later, he got in trouble with the law. French customs police intercepted him arriving on a train from Amsterdam at the Gare du Nord station in Paris on Dec. 13, 2011, according to court documents. Police discovered he was carrying a backpack containing 2.6 pounds of cocaine with a street value of about $55,000. He also tested positive for cocaine and marijuana.
Himich testified that he had met a Senegalese man at a hookah bar in Paris, and told him he needed money because he had left the Foreign Legion. Himich said the man hired him to bring a package from Rotterdam, offering to pay $1,600. Himich, whom the documents describe as “adopting an arrogant attitude” during a court hearing, denied knowing that the package contained drugs.
Himich spent five months in jail. He was convicted in April 2013, and sentenced to three years in prison with a year suspended, according to the documents, though it appears he did not spend much more time behind bars. It was his first criminal conviction. He appears to have followed a classic trajectory from crime into radicalization.
Despite its picturesque setting, Lunel has made headlines as a hub of extremism. By 2015, at least two dozen young people — of North African descent as well as Muslim converts — had left Lunel to fight in Syria, where at least six of them died.
Himich joined that exodus in early 2014, according to U.S. counter-terror officials. He rented a car and drove via Italy, Greece and Turkey to Syria, according to Brisard. That route is popular with Syria-bound jihadis who travel with their families, according to Italian police. Himich has a wife and two children, officials said.
In Syria, Himich first fought in an Al Qaeda-linked group, officials say. Then, like many extremists in Syria, he moved to the increasingly powerful Islamic State. He soon became a battlefield commander, according to U.S. officials and Brisard, the French counter-terror expert.
“He was quickly promoted by ISIS to lead one of its fighting brigades in the first half of 2014,” Brisard said. “His rapid rise within ISIS could be explained by his military service in the French Foreign Legion.”
France and Interpol have issued warrants for Himich’s arrest on suspicion of terrorist activity, according to U.S. officials.
Investigators believe Himich is among a group of ISIS militants in their 20s and 30s, predominantly Francophones, who plot against Europe. The group also includes two Muslim convert brothers from Toulouse, Fabien and Jean-Michel Clain, according to counter-terror officials. Fabien Clain is believed to be the Frenchman who read the official statement in which the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks, officials say.
The Clain brothers surfaced in an investigation in 2009 of a French-Belgian extremist network. Suspects in that case had been investigated for a bombing in Cairo and, according to investigators, told Egyptian interrogators they had discussed a potential attack on the Bataclan, the nightclub that was hit in 2015. The suspects allegedly saw the Paris concert hall as a Jewish target because the owners were Jewish and the venue had hosted pro-Israel events.
Given his military experience, Himich’s stature is likely to grow after the recent deaths of Islamic State leaders in U.S. air strikes, officials said.
“He’s probably one of the most important Frenchmen in ISIS, especially after the death of Adnani,” the U.S. counter-terror official said.
