One of the casualties of the September 11 terrorist attacks is Rep. Jeff Flake's courageous bid to end the ban on travel to Cuba by Americans. Right now, U.S. citizens who visit the island and spend more than $10 can be fined $55,000 by their own government.

In the wake of the Elian Gonzalez affair, "I think a lot of people saw that the Cuban-American community was just over the top," Flake told the Associated Press on September 10 following a three-day visit to the island.

Flake predicted that Americans could freely travel to Cuba by the end of this year. But in the wake of the terrorist attacks, Flake's amendment to the Treasury appropriations bill was shelved as "divisive."

You might say that U.S. policy toward Cuba was itself hijacked by terrorists. It is a familiar story, dating back to the late fifties, when Vice President Richard Nixon played the role of Victor Frankenstein in creating a monster in south Florida.

"The Cuba Project was an overreaching program of clandestine warfare, offhanded military adventures, sabotage, and political and economic subversion," according to William Turner and Warren Hinckle, authors of "Deadly Secrets." Turner is an FBI veteran, and Hinckle founded the 1960's muckraking journal "Ramparts."

While many of the plots against Castro are well known -- ranging from standard assassination scenarios to bizarre and twisted schemes like making Castro's beard fall out, or convincing Cubans of the second coming of Christ -- much of the information in "Deadly Secrets" remains unknown to the general public, including biological and weather warfare against Cuban farmers.

The problem is not merely that "the CIA's Cuba Project adventures violated, in addition to the agency's own enabling legislation, the Neutrality Act, the Firearms Act, and the Munitions Act, IRS, FAA, Customs, and Immigration regulations, and laws in a half dozen states..." A CIA operation of this magnitude and funding is hard to turn off.

Veterans of the Cuba Project have turned up in criminal enterprises from Watergate to Iran-Contra to terrorist organizations such as CORU (Commando of United Revolutionary Organizations). Founded by Orlando Bosch and other Cuban exiles in 1976, "partly at the instigation of the CIA," CORU claimed "seventy-six murders in its first four months of existence." A leading suspect in the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airlines flight that killed 73 people, Bosch is living in comfort today in Florida.

James Bamford, America's leading expert on the supersecret National Security Agency, has uncovered new information on the military's obsession with overthrowing Castro that will shock the most jaded critic of U.S. policy. His new book, "Body of Secrets," came out this May.

"According to secret and long-hidden documents obtained for 'Body of Secrets,' the Joint Chiefs of Staff [circa 1962] drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of anticommunism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba," writes Bamford.

"Codenamed Operation Northwoods, the plan... called for innocent people to be shot on American streets... for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked."

Although President Kennedy had authorized aggressive paramilitary action against Cuba, his attitude softened. Operation Northwoods was rejected, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was denied a second term.

But the Cuban embargo and travel ban remain, perverse legacies of a Cold War Frankenstein.

David L. Winkler is a East Valley, Arizona resident. His email address is mediamaven@home.com.

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