The Longest Romance (23 page)

Interestingly,
The Huffington Post's
bio on Margarita Alarcon discloses that “she has not been back [to the U.S.] since 2003.”

No reason to single out
The Huffington Post,
however. CBS has also run Margarita Alarcon's articles, describing her innocuously as a writer for Havana's Casa de
las Americas.
Castro's intelligence services are widely touted as among the world's best. So Margarita Alarcon is probably good at her job. But
The Huffington Post
and CBS (those noisy proponents of full disclosure by Republicans) could be more forthcoming about what that job is.

CHAPTER 14

“Medical care was once for the privileged few. Today it is available to every Cuban and it is free.... Health and education are the revolution's great success stories.”
(Peter Jennings, “World News Tonight,” April 3, 1989)

 

“Castro has brought great health-care to his country.”
(Barbara Walters, ABC, October 11, 2002)

 

“Frankly, to be a poor child in Cuba may in many instances be better than being a poor child in Miami, and I'm not going to condemn their lifestyle so gratuitously.” (Newsweek's
Eleanor Clift on “The McLaughlin Group,” April 8, 2000)

 

“One of Cuba's greatest prides is its health care-system. And, according to the World Health Organization, the country has much to boast about.”
(PBS's Ray Suarez reporting from Havana, December 22, 2010)

 

“Cuba could serve as a model for health-care reform in the United States.”
(Morgan Neill, CNN, August 2009)

 

For more than a quarter-century, we have struggled unsuccessfully to guarantee the basic right of universal health care for our people .
..
but Cuba has superb systems of health-care and universal education.”
(Jimmy Carter, University of Havana, May 14, 2002)

T
he voice on the phone sounded frantic, which surprised me. It was George Utset, pioneer Cuban-American blogger and a normally composed fellow. “ABC sold us out,” he sputtered. “We got the videos out and everything was going perfectly. But the regime gotword about them somehow. Now it looks like ABC wimped out.”

Years earlier the Castro regime had bestowed on ABC a coveted Havana bureau, its only bureau in Latin America outside of Mexico City. Most importantly, ABC employs Fidel Castro's most famous and frequent interviewer, Barbara Walters.

“I asked them to give us [the 9/11 workers featured in
Sicko
] the same care they give their own Cuban citizens,” assures Michael Moore in his film. “No more, no less. And that's exactly what they did.” Cubans watching it felt like retching. And some resolved that this outrageous lie would not stand. Hence the secret videos, the original pledge from ABC, and the desperate call from George.

The videos that so agitated my friend George had been snuck out of Cuba via the diplomatic pouch of an East European embassy to Mexico, and had then made their way to Miami where George held them at the time of his call. “Many Cubans took great risks to make them and get them out,” he reminded me. “Now it looks like it was all for nothing.”

As a reminder, the Cuban constitution prohibits private ownership of media or any independent exercise of journalism. Speech, print or video issuing from the island is perfectly permissible—so long as it “conforms to the aims of a socialist society.” “Enemy propaganda” and “unauthorized news” meet with severe penalties.

Michael Moore's
Sicko
not only made Castro's cut but was shown free throughout Cuba, as had been Moore's
Farenheit 9/11.
This obvious partnership with the Castro regime enraged many
Cuban dissidents and provoked the smuggled videos held by George Utset, about which he was calling me.

But amazingly, Michael Moore's parroting of Castro's claims in
Sicko
gagged even some in the mainstream U.S. media. An ABC producer had earlier been shocked by pictures smuggled out of
genuine
Cuban hospitals and posted on George Utset's website,
therealcuba.com
. When he saw
Sicko
he was revolted by Moore's shameless propagandizing. The revolted party (who requested that I not use his name here) is no “right-winger” or Cuban exile. He's simply someone who takes his profession seriously.

So he decided to counter Sicko by using ABC's Havana bureau to interview Cuban dissidents. These would then reveal the actual conditions in Cuba's hospitals on an ABC special. When this producer ran the idea by ABC's Havana bureau the folks there shuffled nervously, but reluctantly agreed. First, however, they'd naturally have to ask the Castro regime's permission for such an interview.

The permission was not granted. Can you believe that? Thwarted by their own Havana bureau, the ABC producer enlisted some allies within the network. They resolved to get their hands on any evidence regarding genuine conditions in Cuba's hospitals, and produce a blockbuster report about a topic much in the news at the time.

For this they went to George Utset, whose website and pictures had originally impressed them. George now turned to contacts inside Cuba. The evidence was to come from the very belly of the beast, in the form of smuggled videos. Michael Moore's reputation inside Cuba greatly helped the clandestine project. In September 2005 Fidel Castro had hailed Michael Moore as “that outstanding American!” while
Fahrenheit 9-11
was repeatedly featured on Cuba's state TV. Castro's subjects were as appalled by Moore as their oppressors were enamored. Then
Sicko
confirmed the worst.

The American millionaire “documentarist” struck many Cubans as a simple accomplice to their oppression—one of many. Worse, the Castroite propaganda in
Sicko
was obviously reaching
millions worldwide. So, imagining that the truth could reach millions of Americans via ABC's “20/20,” Cubans risked their lives by using hidden cameras to film conditions in Cuban hospitals—but only those hospitals that were genuinely Cuban, meaning that they served Cubans.

Ninety-nine percent of Cubans have no more experience with a hospital like the one featured in
Sicko
than Michael Moore has with a Soloflex. Most Cubans view a hospital like the one featured in
Sicko
the way teenage boys used to view
Playboy
magazine or husbands view a Victoria's Secret catalog: “Wow! If only...!”

But getting the truth out isn't easy. In 1997 Cuban doctor Dr. Dessy Mendoza was on the phone with a Miami radio-station reporting an outbreak of Dengue fever in eastern Cuba, near Guantanamo, when Castro's police stormed his house and arrested him. He was charged and sentenced for “spreading enemy propaganda.” The Cubans who collaborated with Michael Moore are obviously immune to this charge.

“Self-censorship is a very common practice,” wrote Spanish TV correspondent Vicente Botin about the daily habits of foreign correspondents in Cuba. “No one on the island can write the truth of what happens there.” The regime is suspected by most foreign correspondents of “electronically monitoring their phones, cars and homes,” and keeping close tabs on their “political ideas, their preferences, their tendencies and above all their weaknesses like drugs, sex, alcohol.”
¹

Lapses in this self-censorship are quickly addressed. In March 2007 Gary Marx of
The Chicago Tribune,
Stephen Gibbs of the BBC, and Cesar Gonzalez-Calero, of the Mexican newspaper
El Universal,
were all booted from Cuba. The regime cited their “lack of objectivity.” They got off easy.

In September 2011 Spanish filmmaker Sebastian Martinez was arrested by Castro's police and sentenced to seven years in prison. Martinez had produced a film on Cuban child prostitution. But
he managed it without the regime guidance and help so valued by Stephen Soderbergh, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Moore, Robert Redford, Oliver Stone, etc. The Castroites learned of Martinez's documentary only when it ran on Spanish television. On his very next visit to Cuba they nabbed Martinez and threw him in the KGB-designed prison complex named Villa Marista.

Robert Redford, on the other hand, before releasing
The Motorcycle Diaries
, held a private screening in Havana for Fidel Castro and Che's widow Aleida. Redford got an appreciative go-ahead from both. On his frequent subsequent visits to Cuba, this fervent Hollywood proponent of artistic freedom has always found himself feted by the Stalinist regime that has jailed and exiled more writers and filmmakers than any in the Western Hemisphere.

Cuba's “Law of National Dignity” mandates jail sentences of three to ten years for “anyone who, in a direct or indirect form, collaborates with the enemy's media.” And as you might guess, the definition proves quite broad and elastic. Joke-maker Chevy Chase didn't seem to be joking when he gushed that “Socialism works. I think Cuba proves it.”
²
But this working Cuban socialism means that Cubans who chose Chevy's (or Jon Stewart's, Bill Maher's, Kathy Griffin's, Whoopi Goldberg's, etc.) line of work are either unemployed or rotting in Cuban jails. The prison sentences for criticizing or ridiculing not only the Cuban president but any member of the Council of State or National Assembly can reach three years. And unlike apartheid South Africa or Pinochet's Chile, for instance, Cuba puts its prisons strictly off-limits to inspection by any international organization like the Red Cross or Amnesty International.

Cuba's Law of National Dignity also provides jail sentences for “anyone who, in a direct or indirect form, collaborates with the enemy's media.” You'll note that whenever CNN, ABC, PBS or NBC interviews a Cuban man-on-the-street, the interviewee has always “requested that we not use his last name.” Outside of
regime apparatchiks and pampered tourists, the “Law of National Dignity” has made Cuba a nation of first names, at least as reported by the media.

The Cuban hospitals showcased by Michael Moore exclusively serve rich foreigners and high Communist party officials. Watching Moore reading from Castro's cue-cards by claiming these hospitals served average Cubans, knowing this propaganda would be spread worldwide and swallowed by many if not most, was more than many Cubans could stomach.

So, at enormous risk, two hours of shocking, often revolting, footage was obtained with tiny hidden cameras and smuggled out of Cuba by diplomatic pouch. The man who assumed most of this risk was Cuban dissident Dr. Darsi Ferrer, himself a medical doctor, who also talked on camera, narrating many of the video's revelations. Dr Ferrer worked in the real Cuban hospitals daily, witnessing the truth. More important, he wasn't cowed from revealing this truth to America and the world.

Alas, with the videos finally in their hands, ABC started getting cold feet. The “20/20” segment kept getting smaller and smaller. The impending explosion made a Havana press bureau seem that much more precious, especially to ABC whose Havana staff, as mentioned, had already whimpered their objections to the health-care expose. They were unaware of the smuggled videos but many of their colleagues stateside apparently ”felt their pain.” They knew such a show would not make their Cuban hosts happy.

So more cutting and more paring ensued. On September 12, 2007 “20/20” ended up running a tiny segment on the matter, barely five minutes long and with almost none of the smuggled video footage.

Even so, viewer response was thunderous. “20/20” was deluged with congratulatory e-mails. ABC announced a follow-up show. The Cuban regime followed up also. The Cuban Communist party's central committee called a meeting to discuss the issue, then called in ABC's Havana bureau for talking-to.

Bottom line: John Stossel's follow-up shows on
Sicko
included no mention of Cuba's health-care.

Enter Fox News, and Sean Hannity in particular. After hanging up with George Utset I got on the phone with Fox News and notified them of the smuggled videos. They immediately requested a look. Two days later Hannity's producers were busy editing, translating and subtitling. On October 10, 2007 they ran huge segments of the smuggled videos. Fox viewers saw naked patients covered with flies while lying on hospital beds consisting of a bare mattress. They saw hospital buildings that would be condemned by the health board of any U. S. municipality. They saw and heard Dr. Darsi Ferrer along with other Cubans who described their inability to obtain something as basic as aspirins.

Greed was the motif of Michael Moore's
Sicko
. Among the highlights of the smuggled videos, Fox viewers saw Cubans being told by regime officials that aspirins and other medicines just might be available to them—but only if they paid in U.S. dollars, not the Cuban pesos they held out in desperation.