Cuban Accountability
John Lowery —
February 10, 2015 | Printer Friendly
This column was originally published at www.aim.org
Whatever one thinks of President
Barack Obama’s overtures to Cuba and the
accompanying prisoner exchange, an
important consideration in need of
immediate attention is an accounting of
our servicemen captured in the Vietnam
War and imprisoned in Cuban-operated POW
camps. Of utmost importance is an
accounting of the 17 American airmen
captured in North Vietnam and then taken
to Cuba for medical experiments in
torture techniques.
Most
Americans are unaware that Cuba was
deeply involved in the Vietnam War.
In fact they had
an engineering battalion called the
“Girón Brigade,” that was maintaining
Route Nine, a major enemy supply line
into South Vietnam. Their facilities
included a POW camp and field hospital
very near the DMZ, just inside North
Vietnam. Meanwhile Cuban interrogators
worked in Hanoi at a prison known as the
Zoo. We know of these operations and
some of what happened to our servicemen
after so managed to survive and be
repatriated in the winter of 1973,
during Operation Homecoming.
Following his release Major Jack
Bomar, a Zoo survivor, described the
brutal beating of Captain Earl G.
Cobeil, an F-105F electronics warfare
officer, by Cuban Major Fernando Vecino
Alegret, known by the POWs as “Fidel.”
Regarding Captain Cobeil, Bomar related,
“he was completely catatonic. … His body
was ripped and torn everywhere…Hell
cuffs appeared almost to have severed
his wrists…Slivers of bamboo were
imbedded in his bloodied shins, he was
bleeding from everywhere, terribly
swollen, a dirty yellowish black and
purple [countenance] from head to toe.”
In an effort to force Cobeil to talk
“Fidel smashed a fist into the man’s
face, driving him against the wall. Then
he was brought to the center of the room
and made to get down onto his knees.
Screaming in rage, Fidel took a length
of rubber hose from a guard and lashed
it as hard as he could into the man’s
face. The prisoner did not react; he did
not cry out or even blink an eye. Again
and again, a dozen times, [Fidel]
smashed the man’s face with the hose.”
Because of his grotesque physical
condition Captain Cobeil was not
repatriated but instead was listed as
“died in captivity,” with his remains
returned in 1974. (Miami Herald, August,
22 1999, and Benge, Michael D. “The
Cuban Torture Program, Testimony before
the House International Relations
Committee, Chaired by the Honorable
Benjamin A. Gilman, November 4, 1999.)
Incredibly, Fidel’s torture of Major
James Kasler is well known as he somehow
managed to survive the Cuban’s torture.
Much less is known about our 17
captured airmen taken to Cuba for
“experimentation in torture techniques.”
They were held in Havana’s Los Maristas,
a secret Cuban prison run by Castro’s
G-2 Intelligence service. A few were
held in the Mazorra (Psychiatric)
Hospital and served as human guinea pigs
used to develop improved methods of
extracting information through “torture
and drugs to induce [American] prisoners
to cooperate.”
After being shot down in April of
1972, U.S. Navy F-4 pilot, Lt. Clemmie
McKinney, an African-American, was
imprisoned near the Cuban compound
called Work Site Five. His capture
occurred while then-Cuban president
Fidel Castro was visiting the nearby
Cuban field hospital. Although listed as
killed in the crash by DOD, his
photograph standing with Castro, was
later published in a classified CIA
document.
More than 13 years later, on August
14, 1985, the North Vietnamese returned
Lt. McKinney’s remains, reporting that
he died in November 1972. However, a
U.S, Army forensic anthropologist
established the “time of death as not
earlier than 1975 and probably several
years later.” The report speculated that
he had been a guest at Havana’s Los
Maristas prison, with his remains
returned to Vietnam for repatriation.
(We also paid big money for the
remains—delivered in stacks of green
dollars to Hanoi aboard an AF C-141 from
Travis AFB, California.) Unfortunately,
our servicemen held in the Cuban POW
camp near Work Site Five (Cong Truong
Five), along with those in two other
Cuban run camps were never acknowledged
nor accounted for and the prisoners
simply disappeared.
If our honor code of “Duty, Honor,
Country,” and our national policy of “No
man left behind,” are more than
meaningless slogans, then before our
relations with Cuba can be normalized,
their murderous leadership must account
for our POWs—especially the 17 airmen
taken to Cuba. The civilized world and
American veterans demand it.#
Additional
research on this topic, by John
Lowery, is below:
Cuba’s
Vietnam War Involvement
Research by John Lowery
References:
- “Torture of American Prisoners by Cuban Agents,” Juan O. Tamayo, Miami Herald, August 22, 1999.
- “ Cuban War Crimes Against American POWs,” Michael D. Benge, Cuba Program Research Paper, October 4, 1999. www.vvof.org/cuba_res.htm
- “The Cuban Torture Program …Torture
of American Prisoners by Cuban
Agents,” Testimony of Michael D.
Benge, before the House International
Relations Committee Chaired by the
Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman. November
4, 1999. www.aiipowmia.com/testimony/
cuba_benge.html.
- “Cuban War Crimes Against American
POWs During the Vietnam War,” Mike
Benge, National Alliance of Families,
www.nationalalliance.org/cuba/
benge2.htm (Undated)
- “The Evidence is Clear,” POW/MIA Freedom Fighters, www.powmiaff.org/evidence.htm, May 23, 2006.
- “ Benge, Michael Dennis, Bio” Loss/Capture report, 31 January 1968.
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