You'll Never Guess What Happens When You Give the Feds More Power Over Your Very Freedom of Movement

If you are an American who travels to Cuba, legally or illegally, you are expected to fill out a detailed report listing every place you spent money, and every Cuban you came into contact with. This is one of many ingenius methods we have for finally overthrowing that rat bastard Castro. When I traveled illegally to Cuba, for example, the Treasury Department's hideous Office of Foreign Assets Control sent me a threatening note, indicating I'd better name names or else possibly face time in the pokey. I declined; pointed out (accurately) that the money I spent there originated from my non-American wife, and luckily that knock never came on my front door. But that was back in the anything-goes '90s, and in any case, I wasn't a politically controversial exile Cuban who'd dared to change his mind about supporting the U.S. embargo.

In Sunday's Los Angeles Times, Ann Louise Bardach spells out just how these flagrantly illiberal (and I believe unconstitutional) regulations can be rained down on the head of one individual to score cheap and injurious political points. She writes of the case of Alberto Coll, "a military expert of impeccable pedigree who is a dean at the U.S. Naval War College," a "former deputy assistant secretary of Defense during the George H.W. Bush administration," and a lifelong Republican "anti-Castro hard-liner" who was persuaded after Pope John Paul II's 1998 visit to the island that the embargo wasn't working. "Hence," Bardach writes, "Coll had to be destroyed."

The opportunity came in January, about six months after his 18-year-old daughter died in a car accident, which by all accounts left Coll devastated. Coll visited Cuba, as he has done legally over the years for research and to visit relatives. He noted on his visa that he would be visiting an aunt, which he did.

But he also had a romantic liaison with a childhood friend while seeking "a shoulder to cry on," his lawyer says. Coll did not note the rendezvous on his visa. It is the kind of semi-lie of omission committed routinely by thousands of Cuban exiles since the Bush administration instituted onerous restrictions on travel to the island last year.

Nevertheless, Coll's enemies pursued a vigorous yearlong prosecution—one that may well have cost taxpayers $1 million. Sources close to Coll believe that his liaison was discovered through secret wiretaps by the Justice Department at the behest of influential Cuban hard-liners. […]

With legal bills close to $100,000 and overwhelmed at having to face a protracted trial, Coll agreed to plead guilty to making a false statement on a federal form. He faced five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but an incredulous judge reduced the fine to $5,000 and gave him one year of probation.

Still, he will lose his security clearance because he is now a felon, which also effectively sabotages his future with the military.

Whole shameful thing here.

Comments

[thoreau]

Why does Matt Welch hate freedom?

(just kidding)

Seriously, though, I have no idea how this is supposed to bring down Castro.

[phocion]

All this for the votes of one generation of one community in South Florida. Kinda like keeping subsidies for a handful of sugar beet farmers in West Minnesota. Gee, if libertarians all moved to the same place and concentrated on one issue, maybe we could get pot legalized.

[Xboy]

“Flagrantly illiberal?” What the hell else did you expect from this administration?
To all you libertarians who chose Bush over Gore because he promised tax cuts — I hope you spent the money wisely.

[Not David]

Seriously, though, I have no idea how this is supposed to bring down Castro.

Well obviously it shows serious we are about the whole thing. We are really really serious. Just look how friggin’ serious we are! Castro is reading this blog right now thinking “Oh my god! Those Americans really ARE serious! I believe I will resign immediately!”

If this doesn’t work, we’ll try accompanying it with some vigorous finger-wagging. Then that rat bastard will be sorry.

[phocion]

Gore was going to lift the embargo?

[joe]

phocion,

The enthusiasm with which Bush is pushing these initiatives suggests to me not a cynical vote-buyer, but a true believer.

[joe]

Bush has done a lot more than maintain the status quo, which would have been the worst case scenario under Gore.

[thoreau]

I think it’s safe to say that no administration will lift that embargo as long as Cuba is Communist. The question is how illiberal an administration will be in the enforcement. The Bush administration has proven itself to be pretty awful, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that any administration will go easy on this sort of thing. The differences will be marginal, not profound.

[pidgie]

Fair enough on the notion that nothing more than marginal changes will be made as long as Cuba is Communist. But the zeal with which the Bush administration sytematically tries to ruin lives in order to make nasty political points such as this, be it out of true belief or vindictiveness, is repugnant. I sincerely doubt that Gore and many of the cronies he might have appointed were made of such stuff, save for the lunatic fringe in South Florida.

[keith]

You folks can laugh all you want and insult the Bush administration’s crack-down on lazy American hippie pinkos going to Cuba, but keep this in mind: very shortly after the US government decided to play hardball with people illegally going to Cuba, what happened? That’s right, Fidel Castro tripped and fell during a speech.

So clearly, the policy is working.

[thoreau]

keith-

Good point!

I’ll bet we could cause Castro to have a heart attack by announcing summary executions of anybody who goes to Cuba.

As an added bonus, that would provide us with a final solution to the problem of what to do with those guys we’re keeping in Gitmo!

;->

[Ayn_Randian]

Yes joe, it’s very hard to believe that a Democratic Administration would go after a Republican hard-liner, isn’t it?

Overall though, just shameful acts of government…as usual.

[joe]

Huh?

We’re assuming that a Gore administration would have gone after Coll? That they would have prosecuted him for violating regulations that the Gore administration wouldn’t have created in the first place?

Hey, just as long as you can squeeze out a “Gore would have been worse,” I guess that’s all that matters.

[Seamus]

Anyone who thinks that Al Gore wasn’t just as eager as Bush to pander to the Cuban vote in south Florida just hasn’t been paying attention. Gore all but blamed Clinton and Reno for losing him Florida (and therefore the nation) in 2000 by pulling the Elian Gonzalez raid.

[pidgie]

Joe:
I’m with you on the contorted “Gore would have been just as bad or worse” tripe. I doubt it, at least in this case.
Seamus:
Yes, Gore would have pandered to the anti-Castro crowd in south Florida, just as Kennedy ran to the right of Nixon on that issue and suffered for it, but I question the notion that as a sort of central pillar of his policy, Gore would have gone after folks such as this poor Coll fellow with such zeal. I think that’s the point. It’s an unsettling pattern among the Bushbots. Again, this pattern of ruining the lives and twisting the knife into those who don’t toe the line goes beyond mere political pandering.

[R C Dean]

Seamus has the political calculation down cold. Gore would have been at least as eager to go after Coll, because he would have had more to prove to a (perceived) essential pressure group.

[pidgie]

“Gore would have been at least as eager to go after Coll, because he would have had more to prove to a (perceived) essential pressure group.”

I disagree. It’s far more politically expedient to throw red meat to your base with such actions than to your enemies or critics. In this case, had Gore won the election, he would have been far more interested in pandering to a more significant baser. South Florida ant-Castro Cubans tend to be pretty hard to maintain as a support base.

[mediageek]

I think it’s safe to say that no administration will lift that embargo as long as Cuba is Communist.

The problem with that line of thinking is that the more heavy-handed the US is with embargoes, visitors, etc. the more it galvanizes the Communists.

[metalgrid]

The problem with that line of thinking is that the more heavy-handed the US is with embargoes, visitors, etc. the more it galvanizes the Communists.

Agreed. There’s no better way to bring down such a regieme than by tempting the populace with the promises of capitalism. Pour in the tourist dollars, make more people there able to afford tv, satellite, internet, etc. and just watch as the population works towards liberating itself. If we’d really wanted to convert the middle east, we just need to give the people there better access to technology and the outside world. IMO, nothing strikes harder against repression than exposure to the freedoms present elsewhere.

[joe]

Back in the real world, Al Gore served in an administration that did nothing to tighten the Cuban embargo, and caught enormous amounts of crap for it from Jesse Helms.

[pidgie]

How did Al Gore come up? Oh…I had almost forgot–that childish need play the equivalency game and get those digs in.

[Is Al Gore still relevant?]

Actually, pidgie, I believe Xboy was the first to mention Gore, followed by Joe, followed by you, followed again by Joe.

[pidgie]

Why yes irrelevant A. G. I was being fecetious (was typo but works just fine). Will cease and desist from mentioning him any more.

[The Real Bill]

Oh, how I love when people use the term “rat bastard”! Thank you, Matt, you magnificent bastard!

[David Woycechowsky]

Didn’t Gore have some brew-haha about accepting Chinese contributions? If so, maybe he would just be have marginal Taiwan problem in place of marginal Cuba problem. Ipso facto.

[lipshitz]

I don’t follow…who is being persecuted as a result of Gore’s Chinese connection? Whose contitution being trampled? What’s with the pinning-things-on-losers-of-elections-past obsession in this thread?

[Eddy]

Thoreau, isn’t it obvious that by not letting people go to Cuba and only allowing ex-pats to send great wads of cash there and by solidly standing by a policy of non-favored trade status for all communist countries the whole Cuban economy will collapse and the last surviving commie regime will fall just like France, Russia, China and N. Korea before them…or something like that.

[Fidel Castro]

If even a man like Alberto Coll can be brought down by the imperialist policies of the Yanquis, then I finally have no choice but to conclude that my cause is a hopeless one. The Yanqui imperialists have won. I hereby resign.

All I ask is that you free Alberto Coll. What? You don’t negotiate with dictators?

Well, then, I revoke my resignation. Viva La Revolucion!

[McClain]

Adulterer not stoned to death?
Sounds pretty liberal to me….
😉

[tropical]

It has been extensively reported by he Spanish media how the Castro government no only arranges romantic randevous, but videotapes your hotel suite. The celebrity or US Governemnt person like Alberto Coll is then blackmailed. Nothing goes on in that sland that state security is not awere of. Do you want your countr?cret compromised? I certainly don’t. Coll knew this. He got what he deserved.