Clinton’s Terrorist Jailbreak
by William F. Jasper
The President’s clemency for FALN thugs opens the door to new acts of violence
and exposes the hypocrisy of his
supposed tough stance against terrorism.
The September 10th release from prison of 11 of this nation’s most notorious
terrorists was Clintonian audacity at its
deadly, stunning worst. The granting of presidential clemency to the unrepentant
terrorists of the Puerto Rican FALN
stirred a storm of outrage in law enforcement circles and elicited fiery
polemics from congressional critics. This White
House-sponsored, massive, terrorist jailbreak was a flagrant and visceral
broadside against America’s national
security. But the full significance of this move in its broadest ramifications,
particularly in light of the transfer of the
Panama Canal and other Caribbean and Latin American developments, has not
even begun to register.
The American public and Congress have yet to come to grips with the incredible
treachery of President Clinton’s
terrorism policies and the lethal threat they pose to our nation. In September
1996, Mr. Clinton warned terrorists: "You
have no place to run, you have no place to hide." He declared that his
administration would show "zero tolerance for
aggression, terrorism, and lawless behavior." Patterns of Global Terrorism
1998, published by the Clinton State
Department in April 1999, says on its first page, under the heading, "US
Policy": "First, make no concessions to
terrorists and strike no deals"; and, "Second, bring terrorists to justice
for their crimes."
The release of the FALN terrorists not only makes a total mockery of these
claims and signals a complete lack of
resolve on the part of the U.S. to oppose terrorism, but virtually guarantees
a resumption of the FALN’s murderous
bombing campaign, and an escalation of the Cuban-directed operations by
the FALN’s adjuncts and allies to evict U.S.
military facilities in Puerto Rico. Even as the pardoned terrorists walked
out of prison, Fidel Castro was stepping up his
decades-old propaganda campaign to drive the U.S. Navy out of its critically
important Vieques Island bombing range
and amphibious training base off the coast of Puerto Rico. Bill Clinton,
Al Gore, and the usual radical suspects in the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus are all on board this subversive train.
In an interview with the Washington Times on September 14th, Dr. Miriam
Ramirez, a conservative candidate for the
Senate in Puerto Rico, said Clinton’s action has emboldened the underground
Boricua Popular Army, better known as
"Los Macheteros" (The Machete Wielders), in its unrelenting war against
the U.S. Navy. "They have made it into an
issue of getting the Navy out of Puerto Rico," Dr. Ramirez told the Times.
"They all feel like they’re on a roll."
Among the most infamous actions of Los Macheteros, one of several terrorist
groups working with the FALN, was the
murder of police officer Julio Rodriguez Rivera in August 1978, and its
ambush of a bus carrying unarmed U.S. Navy
communications personnel near Sabana Seca, Puerto Rico, in 1979. John R.
Ball and Emil E. White were killed in that
murderous attack and ten other American sailors on the bus were wounded.
On September 13th, The San Juan Star published a statement by Filiberto
Ojeda Rios, leader of the FALN and Los
Macheteros, proclaiming that Puerto Rico should take advantage of this
historic moment and battle against the
"reactionary offenses" of the U.S. government. But you won’t find much
mention of Comrade Ojeda in the
Establishment press; it might throw sand into the greased skids Mr. Clinton
and his media allies have been preparing
for normalizing relations with Castro.
Communist Origins
Filiberto Ojeda Rios is a Puerto Rican agent of Fidel Castro’s intelligence
service, the General Intelligence Directorate
(DGI), which has always been subservient to the Soviet KGB. In 1967, under
DGI direction, Ojeda organized the
terrorist group MIRA (Independent Armed Revolutionary Movement). Arrested
in 1970 by Puerto Rican police for
bombing five San Juan hotels, Ojeda fled to the United States, after gaining
his freedom on reduced bail. In New York,
he was given diplomatic cover at the United Nations, from which safe position
he organized the FALN (Armed Forces
of National Liberation).
The FALN inaugurated its "armed struggle" with a bombing at Damrosch Park
outside Lincoln Center in New York City
on August 31, 1974. This was followed on September 28th with bombings at
Police Headquarters and City Hall in
Newark, New Jersey. It did not publicly take credit for these explosions,
however, until October 26th, when it detonated
a series of early morning explosions in New York City’s financial district.
On December 11th, New York City Police
Officer Angel Poggi, age 22, was maimed and blinded by a booby-trap explosive
device after being lured to an
abandoned tenement building by a false report of a dead body on the premises.
On January 24, 1975, the FALN struck its most deadly blow, bombing the
historic Fraunces Tavern in New York City’s
financial district, site of George Washington’s farewell to his troops.
The attack on the civilian lunch-hour crowd killed
four and wounded 60. Bombings continued throughout 1975 in New York, Chicago,
and Puerto Rico, culminating in a
coordinated multiple-bombing attack on October 27th, on ten sites — mostly
banks and government buildings — in
New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Over the next several years, dozens
more bombings targeted department
stores, police stations, military recruitment offices, government buildings,
monuments, commercial office buildings,
financial institutions, train stations, and post offices.
In all, the FALN has been connected to around 150 bombings, attempted bombings,
bomb threats, shootings,
kidnappings, bank robberies, and other criminal acts. It is not a "nationalist"
or "independence" group, as the
pro-Clinton media are wont to describe the killers. The FALN is a violent,
Communist terrorist organization.
The October 21st Los Angeles Times, for example, refers to the FALN merely
as "radical Puerto Rican separatists,"
and a "Puerto Rican independence group … which was blamed for 130 bombings
in the late 1970s and early 1980," as
if the FALN might be totally innocent of the charges. Similarly, the New
York Times, on the same day, calls the brutal
FALN thugs "Puerto Rican nationalists" and a "Puerto Rican independence
group."
The ideologically blindered media mavens who are quick to see a terrorist
in every pro-life activist, gun-rights advocate,
or UN opponent refuse to see the obvious terrorist record of the FALN prisoners
freed by Mr. Clinton. Associated Press
reporter Shannon McCaffrey, for instance, like the rest of the Clintonite
Washington press corps, dutifully regurgitated
the White House line in a November 10th story which claimed that "none
of those offered clemency participated in
attacks that killed or wounded anyone."
Such stories shamelessly retail the lie enunciated by President Clinton
when he said of the FALN: "They had served
very long sentences for offenses that did not involve bodily harm to other
people." By the same logic, the Clinton
Justice Department would have to remove Osama bin Laden from its "top most
wanted" terrorist list, since no one is
suggesting that bin Laden personally planted the bombs in our Kenyan and
Tanzanian embassies. Likewise, Terry
Nichols would be released from prison because he was not with Tim McVeigh
in Oklahoma City on the day of the
bombing, and was not shown to have been directly involved in manufacturing
the Ryder truck bomb that prosecutors
say caused the death and destruction at the Murrah Building. Similarly,
Mafia don John Gotti would be pardoned
because it was never proved that he actually pulled the trigger in any
of the multiple murders to which he has been tied.
And narco-dictator General Manuel Noriega would be released because he
was not caught selling drugs on the streets
of Panama.
The Victims’ Unheard Pleas
"Every day of the week all across the country, we arrest, prosecute, convict
and incarcerate criminals on conspiracy
charges," New York Police Department Detective Anthony Senft points out.
"I think everyone knows that under the law,
if you are driving the getaway car you are considered just as culpable
as the guys who actually do the holdup. If you
pay to have someone killed, you are just as culpable as the hit-man who
pulls the trigger." "These FALN terrorists
Clinton has released were not caught detonating a bomb — that almost never
happens — but they were caught
red-handed, with bombs and with bomb-making components and paraphernalia,
and some of them actually were
caught on videotape making bombs," Senft reminded THE NEW AMERICAN. "They
were not convicted of many of the
bombings that we think they perpetrated, but it is wrong for the media
to state as fact that they are innocent of these
crimes. The fact is that these people were a major core of the FALN bombing
apparatus and when we locked them up
the bombings largely stopped. I hate to say this, but I think we will see
them start their bombing campaign again."
This is a very personal matter, as well as a professional one, for Detective
Senft. On New Year’s Eve, 1982 Detective
Senft and his partner, Detective Richard Pastorella, responded to a bomb
call. They were junior members of the bomb
squad at the time. Three bombs had already gone off successively with devastating
impact in various locations when
they were called to the Federal Building in St. Andrews Square to disarm
two bombs. They had just left the Manhattan
Police Station, the site of a devastating blast where a gravely wounded
Officer Rocco Pascarella had heroically
struggled to describe to them the type of bomb that had detonated. "Here
was this incredibly, incredibly courageous
man, his leg blown off and his body all torn apart, and he was dragging
himself on his elbows, trying to warn us that the
bomb had been 4 sticks of dynamite planted in a Kentucky Fried Chicken
box."
When Senft and his partner arrived at the Federal Building they found two
similar packages next to two columns of the
building canopy. This was a fairly busy pedestrian thoroughfare for the
largely Chinese community, many of whom did
not speak English. "We had to physically carry some of the Chinese people
away because they didn’t understand what
we were trying to tell them," recalls Detective Senft. Finally a Chinese
man who understood English arrived and
shooed the other pedestrians away. Senft put on his bomb suit and looked
inside the box. "You can imagine how that
Superman sign on my chest shrunk to nothing as I saw the four sticks of
dynamite, blasting cap and watch inside." As
Senft and Pastorella prepared to disarm the first bomb, it detonated. "Witnesses
say Rich was blown about 25 feet
back, while I was blown about 15-18 feet into the air," Senft recalled.
"I lost my right eye and a finger, broke my hip, had
to have my whole face reconstructed, they cut my ears down, laid them down,
gave me new ear drums. I lost sixty
percent of the hearing on my right side and forty percent on my left, I
have severe vertigo, and, of course,
post-traumatic stress disorder, which comes with those kinds of injuries.
Richard lost both his eyes, most of his
hearing, and the fingers on his right hand."
What does Detective Senft think of President Clinton’s subsequent posing
with uniformed officers on October 21st to
promote his federal COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) program?
"It’s a terrible insult," he says. "Clinton’s
actions tell would-be terrorists around the world that terrorism against
the United States, its people, and its police
officers is an acceptable form of demonstrating their political ideology.
Richard, Rocco, and I, and our families, don’t
get any clemency from the pain and suffering these guys inflicted on us.
There’s no clemency for Joe and Tom
Connor, whose dad was killed at Fraunces Tavern, or for any of the others
who lost loved ones."
His partner, Richard Pastorella, is also harshly critical of Clinton’s
clemency ploy. "President Clinton has sent terrorists
a message that the law enforcement community is expendable, and terrorists
will not be pursued to the ends of the
earth," Pastorella told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September.
His is a view shared by many in law enforcement. Jim Ingram, Commissioner
of Public Safety for the State of
Mississippi, commanded the FBI/NYPD task force in charge of investigating
the FALN bombings in New York in the
mid 1970s. "Those of us who serve in law enforcement in this country, and
especially those who were involved in
trying to bring these terrorists to justice are sickened and very concerned
when we see the release of these
individuals. From what I have seen, they are still committed to the overthrow
of this country and have shown no
remorse or reform whatsoever," Ingram told THE NEW AMERICAN. "There is
no excuse for that. I am convinced they
will kill again, and [Clinton] can offer no credible assurance that they
will not do so."
Joseph Occhipinti, a highly decorated law enforcement veteran and executive
director of the 100,000-member National
Police Defense Foundation, told this magazine: "The law enforcement community
is both saddened and outraged that
President Clinton saw fit to grant clemency to terrorists who have attempted
to kill police officers, while there are
presently dedicated police officers imprisoned in federal jails for doing
their sworn duty." His organization is currently
working on 36 cases across the country, he says, where police officers,
many with sterling records, have been unfairly
prosecuted and imprisoned. "Don’t our police officers deserve at least
the same consideration as terrorists?" he asks.
Gilbert Gallegos, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, representing
more than 283,000 members, is not about to
pardon Clinton’s clemency gambit. In an August 18th letter to President
Clinton, Gallegos said he was writing "to
express our vehement opposition to your offer of clemency to sixteen convicted
felons involved with a wave of terrorist
bomb attacks on U.S. soil from 1974-83." "I would also like to express
my own personal confusion and anger at your
decision," Gallegos wrote. "As an Hispanic-American myself, I can assure
you that releasing violent convicted felons
before they have served their full sentences and to waive tens of thousands
of dollars in criminal fines, is no way to
appeal to racial pride."
When President Clinton carried through with the FALN prisoner release,
Gallegos, who had previously supported
Clinton’s COPS program, joined FALN victims and other law enforcement officials
at a press conference condemning
the action. "We should make no mistake," said Gallegos. "The president
has used his constitutional power to release
convicted terrorists, despite the opposition of federal law enforcement
officials, despite objections from the law
enforcement community and despite the pleas of the victims and families
of the dead — killed in their wave of bomb
attacks."
Lieutenant Commander Raul A. Velez, who commands the Naval and Marine reserves
in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
believes his views reflect those of far more Puerto Ricans than the press
reports indicate. "I am outraged," Velez told
THE NEW AMERICAN, "by media coverage which presents stories about the FALN
prison release, for instance,
showing crowds of Puerto Ricans celebrating, as if this represents the
consensus of Puerto Ricans. In truth, every
time it has been put to a vote, we have rejected independence overwhelmingly.
At most, about 2.5 percent have
supported independence, and only a very small portion of that tiny percentage
actually support the FALN, Macheteros,
etc. in the use of terrorism to achieve it. These criminals are murdering
terrorists, not heroes, and as a Puerto Rican
and a man who wears the uniform of the U.S. military service, I am deeply
offended by President Clinton’s clemency
for these people. That should never have happened."
How and Why?
Just how and why this travesty did happen is still the subject of ongoing
congressional investigations. But Mr. Clinton
has weathered plenty of those already and is, no doubt, supremely confident
that his professional cabal of
spinmeisters, stonewallers, and obstructionists will pull him through another
scrape. Conventional wisdom has it that
Mr. Clinton grabbed the clemency straw to boost Hillary’s and Al’s election
chances with New York’s large Puerto
Rican community.
Although Mr. Clinton has (once again) claimed executive privilege and refused
to release records sought by House and
Senate committees looking into the matter and blocked the testimony of
Justice Department and federal law
enforcement personnel, some revealing documents have slipped out. One is
a March 6, 1999 e-mail memo from
Jeffrey Farrow, chairman of Clinton’s interagency group on Puerto Rico.
"The VP’s Puerto Rican position would be
helped" by the clemency, said Farrow, who noted that the issue was important
to Representatives Nydia Velázquez
(D-NY), José Serrano (D-NY), and Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), three of
the staunchest leftists in the Hispanic Caucus.
The next day, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste relayed
Farrow’s ideas to White House Counsel
Charles Ruff, who was handling the clemency question. "Chuck — Jeff’s right
about this — very hot issue," her e-mail
said. A "very hot issue" indeed, it seems. Apparently Chuck, Jeff, Maria,
et al, soon had this issue on Bill’s front burner.
In fact, Team Clinton was soon breaking all the rules to spring the FALN
darlings from jail. There were some minor
obstacles to overcome, of course: The Justice Department, the federal Pardon
Attorney, the FBI, and the Federal
Bureau of Prisons had all advised against pardoning the terrorists. In
her September 1999 report on terrorist activities,
Attorney General Janet Reno even called the FALN an "ongoing threat to
national security." Moreover, said the Reno
report: "Factors which increase the present threat from these groups include
… the impending release from prison of
members of these groups jailed for prior violence." Apparently it was written
for her by one of the few sensible, patriotic
souls who still survive (or did at that time, at least) at Clinton/Reno
Justice. No one, of course, expected Reno to stand
by these words with anything remotely resembling conviction, much less
to resign in protest over her boss’ despicable
course of action, as if her oath of office really meant something to her.
Ditto for Louis Freeh at the FBI.
"The Justice department took extraordinary steps to enhance the chances
for clemency," the New York Times
reported on October 21st. Documents show, said the Times, that the terrorists
"did not apply for clemency personally,
as is usually required, but department officials processed an application
anyway. Under department regulations, a
personal application is usually required to start the process, because
such a move is taken as a sign of remorse for
the criminal act."
"Department officials acknowledged in internal memorandums," reported the
Times, "that it was highly unusual even to
consider clemency in cases in which the prisoners themselves declined to
file their own applications." Running this
"highly unusual" operation at Justice, it seems, were Deputy Attorney General
Eric Holder and the new Pardon Attorney
Roger C. Adams (who replaced Margaret C. Love, the Pardon Attorney who
had recommended against clemency).
The Times reported:
On April 9, 1998, according to Mr. Adams’ notes, he contacted a staff aide
to Rep. Gutierrez and said the
department had not received any statement of remorse. The notes show that
Mr. Adams counseled the
staff aide as to how the statement should be worded for maximum effect.
In the end, the prisoners
provided a long ambiguous statement, with no explicit statement of regret.
FALN’s Remorseless Plea
The FALN statement said "innocent victims were on all sides." That’s as
close as the defiant FALN cadres ever came
to contrition. In fact, FALN clemency recipients Luis Rosa and Alicia Rodriguez,
together with Carlos Torres, who is
still in jail, told the Chicago Tribune in October 1995 that they "have
nothing to be sorry for and have no intention of
renouncing armed revolution." Ricardo Jiminez threatened the judge in his
case, "We’re going to fight; revolutionary
justice will take care of you and everybody else." The Senate Judiciary
Committee released the transcript of a prison
phone conversation in which Adolfo Matos said he reveled in the memory
of his 1970s activism because he had the
chance "to give my life for something I believe in … for the justice of
my people. In this manner I get involved. And my
desire has gotten stronger."
The folks at Clinton/Reno Justice not only accepted the remorseless plea,
but have also allowed the released felons to
violate the usual conditions of probation and parole that permit no fraternization
with other criminals. "We plan to be
together, all of us," Ida Luz Rodriguez said outside the courthouse in
San Juan. "Being in jail has not broken my spirit."
"According to news and intelligence reports," says Detective Anthony Senft,
"the FALN are socializing, meeting, having
a good time — they have special privileges." That certainly appears to
be the case, even before they got out of prison.
"They were allowed to have an unprecedented 16-way phone hookup between
all the prisoners at the different prisons,
so they could come to agreement on their statement," says Senft. "The terrorists
and their lawyers had regular
sit-down meetings with the Clinton people, but those of us who are the
victims of their crimes had been writing to the
White House and Justice for two years on this matter and have never even
received the courtesy of a response."
Although we have not confirmed at this point that the released FALN convicts
personally have been involved in the
illegal demonstrations at Vieques Island, their independentista compadres
definitely are involved. The Senate has
released the July 21st letter Mr. Clinton had received from Ruben Berrios
Martinez, the president of the separatist
Partido Independentista Puertorriqueña. Martinez made clear that
his letter was being sent from the beach of the
Vieques live-fire range — where he and others were then engaged in criminal
trespass. His letter read:
As you know, we have successfully interrupted the Navy’s bombing and I
have pledged to remain here until
the Navy formally declares its intention to leave Vieques, or until I am
arrested. By now I have spent
roughly the same amount of time on this beach as I spent in prison in 1971.
[I also want to] bring to your attention once more the plight of Puerto
Ricans who have languished in U.S.
prisons during almost two decades, for activities related to their struggle
for Puerto Rico’s
independence.... The international community views them as political prisoners,
not common criminals,
who deserve the exercise of your constitutional powers of executive clemency
without delay.
Incredibly, instead of ordering military police to arrest the criminal
violators, and despite the advice of all his top military
advisors on the importance of Vieques to U.S. national security, President
Clinton sent the following note to his
National Security Advisor, Samuel "Sandy" Berger:
Sandy
1) I agree with this — this is wrong. I think they don’t want us there.
That’s the main point. The Navy can
find a way to work around it —
2) What about the prisoners
Need Reply
No reply from Sandy Berger has been produced yet, but about three weeks
after this inquiry, on August 11th, Clinton
announced his clemency decision.
Throughout his first six years in the White House, Bill Clinton had been
presented with over 3,000 clemency requests.
He had granted only three. Why the sudden clemency rush for a bunch of
terrorists who hadn’t even applied for the
favor? Unfortunately, there is a far more sinister motive at work here
than merely buying Puerto Rican votes for Hillary
and Al. It concerns the full-scale Clintonista undermining of U.S. national
security in general, and its attack on our
Caribbean and hemispheric security in particular.
The FALN terrorist release, keep in mind, has taken place concomitantly
with the administration’s push to turn over the
Panama Canal to Red China, normalize relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba,
and abandon our military bases on Puerto
Rico. The current campaign against our base at Vieques is a continuation
of a decades-old campaign by the
Castro-backed FALN and its allies. Previously, the comrades focused their
demonstrations at the Navy gunnery range
on Culebra Island. But when Richard Nixon gave them Culebra, they were
not appeased; the radicals switched their
focus to Vieques. Having already given up our bases in Panama, surrendering
Vieques will be another major step
toward turning the Caribbean into a Red Sea dominated by Russia, China,
and Cuba.