State Department not turning over documents as legally required

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A new chapter has opened and we need your support in our legal work exposing the corruption of justice in the case of the Cuban Five.

We have just filed and are fighting a major FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. State Department which has illegally refused to release documents from 1998 to 2002 related to the large scale, covert propaganda operation run by the U.S. government that secretly paid Miami-based journalists who conducted an inflammatory campaign in the media against the Cuban Five.

Please make an urgently needed, tax-deductible donation to support this major truth-telling lawsuit by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) that aims to expose how the trial of the Cuban Five was a complete corruption of justice.

Attorneys from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) have carried out painstaking work pro bono for the past four years that has exposed a covert domestic propaganda operation by the U.S. government that violates U.S. law and essential Due Process rights.

Please show your support for this ongoing work of the PCJF. We can do this work with you but not without you.

The thousands of pages of documents that we have already uncovered expose that the U.S. government kept on the government payroll a stable of “independent” journalists who provided hostile, inflammatory and false stories about the Cuban Five before, during and after trial – and while the non-sequestered jury was deliberating.

The documents that were secured through PCJF's detailed government transparency effort became a basis for Habeas Corpus Appeals that were filed for the Cuban Five.

The new lawsuit against the State Department is of immense importance because the State Dept. is withholding documents about the secret payments to journalists at a critical time period for the Cuban Five – during their arrest and prosecution. If the State Department has nothing to hide, why would they be refusing to release documents that they are legally required to produce in response to the FOIA demand filed two and half years ago?

With your help we are aggressively pursuing the truth. We will fight tooth and nail to remedy this injustice. The Cuban Five were denied a fair trial. By forcefully acting together we can right this terrible wrong.

 

Background

A multi-year effort by the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and Liberation newspaper has uncovered thousands of pages of previously unreleased materials that reveal that the U.S. government was paying Miami-based journalists who saturated the Miami media with reports that were highly inflammatory and prejudicial to the Cuban Five at the same time as the government conducted its prosecution of the men.

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 prohibits the U.S. government from funding activities to influence and propagandize domestic public opinion (see 22 U.S.C. § 1461).

More than 2,200 pages of contracts between Miami journalists and Radio and TV Martí have been released thus far to Liberation newspaper through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition. The Broadcasting Board of Governors—an official U.S. government agency—and its Office of Cuba Broadcasting have operated Radio Martí since 1985 and TV Martí since 1990.

The U.S. government has funneled nearly half a billion dollars into the Office of Cuba Broadcasting in Miami. With an annual budget nearing $35 million, the OCB and BBG put on their payroll domestic journalists to broadcast the same message inside and outside the United States on Cuba-related issues, effectively violating the law against domestic dissemination of U.S. propaganda.

These contracts evidence the U.S. government’s payments to journalists in Miami whose reports constituted a sustained effort to create an atmosphere of hysteria and bias against Cuba and the Cuban Five. Three of the Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero and Ramón Labañino—have filed habeas corpus appeals arguing that their constitutional rights to due process were grossly undermined by the government’s media operation in Miami and payments to the Miami reporters.

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