Ex-FBI chief tells of cop-killer swap that Cuba rejected

Kelly: Ex-FBI chief tells of cop-killer swap that Cuba rejected
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2015, 11:11 PM
BY MIKE KELLY

Years before Joanne Chesimard was placed on the FBI's list of most
wanted terrorists and the bounty for her capture was increased to $2
million, federal authorities secretly reached out to their Cuban
counterparts with a plan to bring the convicted cop killer back to New
Jersey.

It was the fall of 1998. The FBI drew up a proposal to trade five
captured Cuban spies for Chesimard, who had been convicted two decades
earlier of killing a New Jersey state trooper in a turnpike gunfight but
had broken out of jail and fled to Cuba, where she was granted political
asylum.

The proposed 1998 trade, which has never been publicly acknowledged by
either the United States or Cuba, was described in detail in two recent
interviews with The Record by one of its originators, former FBI
Director Louis Freeh.

Why the plan failed may offer insight about the obstacles facing the
state police, the FBI and a host of political figures as they renew
efforts to bring back Chesimard. The story also illustrates the legacy
of suspicion that permeates U.S.-Cuban relations.

In New Jersey, however, the renewed discussion of Chesimard's fugitive
status has reopened old wounds that date to an unsettling time in
America — a time that was punctuated by a horrific confrontation on the
New Jersey Turnpike between state troopers and members of the Black
Liberation Army who were calling for an armed revolution.

Just before midnight on May 2, 1973, Chesimard, then 25, was traveling
south with two male compatriots when two troopers stopped their car.
Within minutes a wild gunbattle broke out, leaving Trooper Werner
Foerster dead and his partner wounded.

Chesimard, who also was wounded, was later caught, charged with murder
and sentenced to a life term. But in 1979, she escaped from the state
women's prison in Clinton and disappeared, only to turn up five years
later in Cuba.

Chesimard, 67, and reportedly living in the Havana area under the name
Assata Shakur, is regarded as a criminal by U.S. authorities. Cuba has
never shown any inclination to rescind her political asylum, which was
granted by Fidel Castro in the mid-1980s.

In the fall of 1998, however, Freeh thought he saw an opening for U.S.
authorities to get their hands on Chesimard.

As outlined by Freeh in two interviews with The Record, the FBI hoped to
start talks to extradite Chesimard and possibly other American
fugitives, including William Morales, a Puerto Rican nationalist who was
implicated in a series of U.S. terror bombings, including one at
Manhattan's Fraunces Tavern that killed a Fair Lawn resident.

Freeh, who grew up in North Bergen and was a student at Rutgers Law
School in Newark in the mid-1970s, said he had long harbored a special
interest in the Chesimard case. And with the September 1998 arrest of
the five Cuban spies in Florida, Freeh, who became FBI director five
years earlier, said he figured he might have enough leverage to persuade
the Cubans to return her.

"It always occurred to me that exchange would be a good one," he said,
recalling his enthusiasm.

But Freeh, who now runs a private security consulting firm, said the
Cubans wouldn't consider even the most ordinary of discussions.

"The response was no response," he said.

Today, that message from Cuba appears unchanged.

Days after President Obama announced plans on Dec. 17 to restore
diplomatic relations with the communist nation, Cuba's foreign ministry,
in response to questions from journalists in Havana, defended
Chesimard's status.

"Every nation has sovereign and legitimate rights to grant political
asylum to people it considers to have been persecuted," said the
ministry's head of North American affairs, Josefina Vidal.

"We've explained to the U.S. government in the past that there are some
people living in Cuba to whom Cuba has legitimately granted political
asylum," she said.

In a recent interview, Guillermo Suarez, a counselor at Cuba's U.N.
mission, said extradition of Chesimard was not part of the talks to
reestablish diplomatic ties with the U.S.

Suarez said Cuban officials were "quite surprised" to learn that the
announcement of Cuban-American détente was greeted with demands from law
enforcement officials and political figures in New Jersey and elsewhere
for Chesimard's return. He added that the $2 million bounty for her
capture made Cuban officials "very nervous" about whether an influx of
tourists would include bounty hunters.

By the fall of 1998, Cuban-American relations had grown very tense.

In February 1996, Cuban Air Force fighters shot down two civilian planes
and killed four members of the Miami-based anti-Castro group Brothers to
the Rescue, whose planes patrolled waters off Cuba to spot people trying
to escape to the United States. Although the Cubans maintained that the
planes had entered Cuban territory on the day they were shot down, an
investigation showed they were attacked in international airspace.

In June 1998, FBI agents flew to Havana at the invitation of Cuban
authorities to hear complaints about bombings in Cuba that had been
allegedly orchestrated by anti-Castro dissidents supported by Florida's
large exile community.

Three months later, when FBI agents in Miami arrested the five Cuban
spies who had reportedly infiltrated that exile community, Freeh saw an
opening.

The arrest of the spies, known as the Cuban Five or the Miami Five,
confirmed what the FBI and anti-Castro Cuban-Americans had long
suspected: Cuba's intelligence service had numerous operatives in the
United States. One of the alleged spies was later charged with passing
along information about Brothers to the Rescue flights.

Freeh sensed that the spies' capture might also offer an opportunity to
gain access to Chesimard. He approached U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno
with the idea of a trade.

Freeh said Reno approved the plan, which called for him to reach out to
his contacts in a nation with friendly ties to Cuba and the United
States. That nation, which Freeh declined to identify, agreed to
communicate the proposal to Cuba.

Because the plan was in its early stages, Freeh said neither he nor Reno
contacted the White House or the State Department.

"What I did is I contacted the chief of service in another country's
security service," Freeh said "We asked them to contact their
counterparts in Cuba to see if they were interested in a conversation
where we would exchange Chesimard for one or more of the Cuban Five. The
answer came back: 'No. Not interested.'Ÿ"

Freeh, who has never publicly discussed the rejected offer until now,
said he was doing so to raise awareness of the importance of extraditing
Chesimard. Reno could not be reached for comment.

Why the Cubans so hastily rejected Freeh's overture to trade for
Chesimard may have had something to do with how angry they were about
the timing of the spies' arrests — which came only months after the June
1998 meeting with the FBI in Havana to discuss concerns over violence by
anti-Castro dissidents.

"When these spies were arrested, from the Cuban point of view, they had
just been betrayed," said Stephen Kimber, a Canadian journalist who
wrote a book about them. "Why would they have been interested in a deal
at that point?"

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat and former chairman of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has emerged as a vocal critic
of Obama's plan to restore ties with Cuba, said he was surprised the
Cubans had not agreed to exchange Chesimard for the spies.

"The Cuban government placed a high value on the spies," said Menendez,
the son of Cuban immigrants, noting that for years Cuba has campaigned
for their return. "If there had been a deal more than a decade ago that
they could have achieved the same thing, for them to say no just tells
you what Chesimard means to them."

Menendez called Chesimard "an enemy of the United States."

"We see her for what she is — a cold-blooded murderer, who had her day
in court and was convicted," Menendez said. "They see her in some
broader struggle for liberation. For them, she is a great propaganda claim."

Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the
National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute in
Washington, D.C., said the Cubans viewed the granting of political
asylum to Chesimard as a matter of sacrosanct honor.

"I've discussed these cases, particularly Joanne Chesimard," said
Kornbluh, who returned from Cuba recently. "Their focus is that they
made the political commitment of political asylum to her. They made the
decision to give her political asylum and they are not going to revisit
the issue."

Lennox Hinds, Chesimard's attorney and a professor of criminal justice
at Rutgers University, said he had been assured by Castro that his
client would not be sent back to the United States under any circumstances.

"In my view, Assata would not be viewed as someone who they would trade
off," Hinds said, using the name Chesimard calls herself

Freeh, who left the FBI in 2001, months before the 9/11 attacks, has not
given up on bringing back Chesimard.

"The issue is, will there be a point where they are willing to consider
exchanging her?" he said. "They clearly did not want to do that when we
contacted them."

Source: Kelly: Ex-FBI chief tells of cop-killer swap that Cuba rejected
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