Word: havana
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Miami lawyer married to Hugh Rodham, the First Lady's brother; and wealthy businessman Paul Cejas, who occasionally stays overnight at the White House. Arias telephones Hillary frequently and often sends Clinton clippings from Florida newspapers. In regular meetings at the Colonnade Hotel in Coral Gables or at Little Havana's Versailles Restaurant, the core group plans strategy and prepares appeals, which are sent by way of private notes to Clinton's top political aides. "When an issue comes up, we try to get a consensus and present a united front," says core-group member Simon Ferro, a Miami Democratic...
...bureaucratic battles between Administration hard-liners and moderates. In 1994 Castro allowed 33,000 Cubans to flee to South Florida, and the Administration began discouraging more escapees by detaining the rafters indefinitely at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The core group urged Clinton to punish Havana by halting airline flights to Cuba, but State Department moderates lobbied to maintain informal exchanges, including charter flights. Morton Halperin, the National Security Council's point man on Cuba, circulated a draft presidential speech offering carrots to Castro if he adopted reforms. Hard-liners, led by the Deputy Assistant Secretary...
...January 1995 the U.S. Atlantic Command chief, General John Sheehan, who had pressed to ease tensions with Havana, began badgering the White House to clear out the 20,000 Cubans at Guantanamo. Riots were possible, he warned, and by his staff's estimate, a permanent refugee camp would cost some $2 billion. Three months later, partly with that figure as ammunition, Administration moderates staged a policy coup. Under Secretary of State Peter Tarnoff began secretly talking to Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's legislature. The Guantanamo refugees would be sent to Florida. To stanch any new exodus, U.S. Coast Guard...
Meanwhile, hard-liners in Havana and Miami were edging both countries toward a crisis. Planes from Brothers to the Rescue, based in Miami, began buzzing Havana, dropping propaganda leaflets. Castro fired off angry notes to Washington warning "deadly force" would be used unless the flights stopped. In January, U.S. intelligence agencies spotted Cuban MiGs test-firing air-to-air missiles and practicing maneuvers to attack slow-moving aircraft similar to the Brothers' planes. The State Department, however, did not believe Castro would attack...
...grilled the Joint Chiefs Chairman, General John Shalikashvili, on whether the U.S. should punish Cuba with a cruise-missile attack or air strikes. The general argued against any military action, and Clinton eventually abandoned the idea. But five days after that, the White House sent a secret note warning Havana that the U.S. would react militarily if more planes were shot down. The following week a belligerent U.S. Congress passed the conservative Helms-Burton bill, imposing even more draconian sanctions than the 34-year-old U.S. embargo. Foreign-policy aides opposed the bill, which punishes foreign companies that trade with...