On December 4, 1998, authorities in Cartegena, Colombia, seized a ship headed to Cuba with 71/2 tons of cocaine for distribution in the United States and Europe. But soon reports surfaced that the U.S. Embassy in Colombia urged the Colombian government not to publicize the seizure to avoid disrupting U.S. initiatives to improve relations with Cuba. Immediately the Castro spin machine went into operation. Agence France-Presse reported that Castro was pledging to “investigate” this matter, and insisting that the Cuban authorities would have fully cooperated with Colombian authorities if they had been notified of the narcotics trafficking.

On January 14, 1999, Representative Dan Burton (R-IN), chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, released a statement indicating that he had sent a letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright requesting a full accounting of the reports of U.S. embassy suppression of the seizure. “Fidel Castro’s offer to help investigate the 71/2 ton cocaine seizure by the Colombian National Police is part of a concerted public relations campaign waged by the Cuban Government in an attempt to cover up their complicity in drug-trafficking,” Rep. Burton charged. “I hope that no one in the international community is fooled by Castro’s transparent offer to help investigate drug-trafficking. It is clearly an effort by his regime to make it appear that Cuba is tough on drug trafficking when just the opposite is true.”

Chairman Burton then cited a litany of evidence showing that Fidel Castro is neck deep in drug trafficking:

In 1993, a Miami grand jury indicted Cuban General Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and Cuba’s First Vice President of the Council of State, on drug-trafficking charges. The Clinton Administration has remained curiously silent on this matter.

Ileana de la Guardia, the exiled daughter of Cuban Col. Antonio de la Guardia, has said that drug-trafficking in Cuba, “was a matter of state, organized by the highest echelons of power in the country … it was impossible that Fidel Castro was unaware of this.”

Over the last two years, law enforcement officials have increasingly complained that they have followed speed boats and aircraft stuffed with illegal drugs to the edge of Cuba’s territorial waters and airspace, only to be forced to give up the chase because of Castro’s refusal to help. These drug smugglers are then safe within the territory of Cuba, and the Cuban government has done nothing to stop them. A Miami television station has aired video from a US National Guard helicopter chasing a speed boat into Cuban waters. I personally gave this tape to General Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton’s Drug Czar, yet nothing has been done.

Sources close to the American Embassy in Bogota have informed me that officials at the U.S. Embassy asked the Colombian National Police not to publicize their seizure of cocaine which was destined for Cuba because it could hurt Clinton Administration efforts to improve our relationship with Castro. If this is true, then the Clinton Administration is placing a higher priority on normalizing relations with Castro than on drug trafficking. This is just deplorable.