That was the beginning of the White House’s spectacular foolishness, which is now not only shaking up the entire U.S. policy of hostility toward Cuba, but also directly threatening Bush’s very reelection.

No one should be in any doubt: the recent announcement of a series of restrictions cruelly punishing Cuban families is not some sudden inspiration of the White House or its think tanks. It is the direct result of a conspiracy that took capos from the CLC – the breakaway group of Miami’s most fanatical extremists, all of them linked to terrorism against Cuba –to the Rose Garden. It is a small Mafiosi group – sort of a Bacardí-style Klu Klux Klan – that has managed to penetrate and pressure the highest levels of the U.S. administration, even proposing the military destruction of Cuba.

That May 2003 press release read as follows: "The delegation, composed of members of the CLC’s board of directors – Elpidio Nuñez, Horacio García, Luis Zuñiga and Angel Garrido – met at the State Department with Dan Fisk, undersecretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, and Otto Reich, the administration’s special envoy for the Western Hemisphere. They also had meetings at the White House with members of the National Security Council, putting forth their arguments on four points that had previously been submitted. They were: suspending remittances to Cuba; suspending all travel to Cuba; imposing multilateral sanctions and issuing a preventative warning in the event of a mass exodus of Cubans to the United States.

"The CLC delegation also had the opportunity to meet with congress members and senators who were present at the swearing-in of Roger Noriega, recently named undersecretary of State for Latin America."

That is the origin of the measures that are currently provoking such a large wave of discontent in the émigré community, causing Bush himself to tremble on realizing that the strategic Miami-Dade vote is slipping out of his hands, perhaps for good. Because of a gang of Mafiosos, he might find himself obliged to go into retirement on his Texas ranch.

That same May 2 of last year, the CLC capos headed back to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on US Airways Flight 207, drinking champagne with the conviction that they had won the lottery when they pushed the president into what is known in Cuban slang as tremendo embarque – a serious jam.

Nevertheless, this CLC press release also communicates some eloquent omissions. The CLC "delegation" that went to Washington with their demands to destroy family ties between Cubans in the United States and on the island did not just include the four individuals named in the press release. They were accompanied by the Mafiosi committee of Alberto M. Hernández, Feliciano Foyo, Ricardo Mayo and Ignacio Sánchez.

Even more interesting, there are certain "disappearances" in the photo taken by Edgar Becerra in the protocol room of the State Department. Appearing in it are Angel Garrido, Luis Zuñiga, Roger Noriega himself, Horacio García, Ricardo Mayo and Feliciano Foyo. But not Alberto M. Hernández, Elipidio Nuñez and Ignacio Sánchez, who preferred to stay behind the curtain.

Also absent from the photo is another CLC accomplice in Washington – Mel Martínez, secretary of housing and urban development, with whom, however, Luis Zuñiga had a "private meeting" that same day in which he insisted on the need to impose the CLC’s disastrous anti-family measures.

And why the hide-and-seek games? Mafioso stuff. Terrorist stuff.

All of these characters have ties, one way or another, with the anti-Cuban terrorism that has been directed from Miami since the triumph of the Revolution, leaving hundreds of victims in its wake.

The most "famous" cases are those of Zuñiga, Hernández, García, Foyo and Sánchez.

Briefly – a book could be written on the subject – Zuñiga, who has always been an active CIA agent, left Cuba in 1970 through the Guantánamo Naval Base, and was captured in 1974 as part of a terrorist infiltration on the island. Released in 1988, he returned to Miami. During the 1990s, he belonged to the "Security Commission," the Cuban-American National Foundation’s paramilitary committee, responsible for its terrorist activities. At the time, he recruited Cubans visiting the United States to engage in acts of sabotage on their return. He was the same sinister person who recruited Guatemalan Percy Alvarado Godoy to carry out acts of terrorism in Cuba. Alvarado turned out to be Agent Frayle from Cuban State Security.

Hernández was also a member the CANF Security Commission, which he directed after the death of its founder, CIA agent Jorge Mas Canosa. He traveled to El Salvador during the first week of August 2000, to meet with international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and propose the execution of a plan to assassinate President Fidel Castro during the Ibero-American Summit in Panama. He offered to cover all the costs, such as purchasing explosives and weapons, trips, communications, housing, and payments to the executors. Posada was arrested a few weeks later while he was preparing the attack that was intended to destroy the University of Panama’s amphitheater. One of his accomplices, assassin Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, who is also in jail in Panama, was his bodyguard.

García is a Miami millionaire, the owner of a number of McDonald’s restaurants, who has been associated with art smuggling. He was one of the capos of the CANF Security Commission and directly financed terrorist operations. He participated in the trafficking of counterfeit dollars into Cuba.

Regarding Foyo, Posada himself is quoted in a series of articles in The New York Times published July 11-13, 1998, as saying that Foyo was the man who procured him tens of thousands of dollars for his "operations" against Cuba.

As far as Sánchez is concerned, suffice it to say that he is the lawyer for the anti-Cuban rum company Bacardí, whose defunct czar, José Pepín Bosch, dreamed of bombing nationalized Cuban oil refineries, and who created the terrorist RECE group, with its military chief none other than Posada. Sánchez’ contribution to the murderous Helms-Burton Act was such that one senator ironically commented that it should be called the "Helms-Bacardí Protection Act."

Regarding Nuñez, he is said to be an associate of Orlando Bosch and Posada, carrying out various tasks for them many occasions; Mayo is also associated with the terrorist Bacardí, and Garrido picks up checks for "dissidents" from the Lawton Foundation, pockets the money and sends a few miserable bucks to his mercenaries.

At one time or another, all of them have called for the release of Orlando Bosch, the most dangerous terrorist on the continent, according to the FBI. All of them hysterically opposed the return of the child Elián to his father in Cuba. All of them are currently participating, together with terrorist Santiago Alvarez, in fundraising efforts for Posada and his accomplices, who are in jail in Panama.

All of them are demanding that Cuba become a "second Iraq."

None of them have family on the island.

And that sums up the nature of those who are imposing on the U.S. people a Cuba policy that Larry Wilkerson, Secretary of State Chief of Staff himself, recently called the stupidest thing on the face of the earth.

It is a policy, of course, that Bush will have to pay for dearly at voting time.