BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD —Special for Granma International—

                   U.S. Senate candidate Mel Martínez – George W. Bush’s former secretary for
                   housing and urban development – maintains close ties with the Cuban Liberty
                   Council (CLC), the Cuban-American group that most encourages terrorism,
                   with several of its leaders who have histories of terrorism, while he has openly
                   taken part in this organization’s activities.

                   Last October 10, when the leader of the White House, accompanied by his
                   Secretary of State Colin Powell, effusively embraced terrorist Luis
                   Zúñiga Rey in the Rose Garden, Mel Martínez could not restrain a huge smile.

                   Zúñiga is a founder member of the CLC, along with 24 other former directors of the
                   Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), who were all expelled from
                   that organization after a fight with Jorge “El Niño” Mas Santos, shortly
                   before the events of September 11. All those CANF “dissidents” share the
                   characteristic of being identified with the “hard line” of the
                   terrorism-supporting Miami mafia.

                   On October 10, 2001 Zúñiga had been recruited as a “special guest” at the
                   press conference convened to publicly announce the founding of the CLC at
                   the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.

                   Following this public event, the founder members went up to the ninth floor,
                   escorted by U.S. Secret Service agents, to have lunch and plan their mafia
                   activities in peace.

                   Amongst the CLC capos present with the then federal secretary for housing
                   and urban development were:

                   • Alberto Hernández (Jorge Mas Canosa’s successor in CANF), whose links
                   with two of the international terrorists imprisoned in Panama, Luis Posada
                   Carriles and Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, are well-known in Miami. He joined
                   this organization’s paramilitary group together with Feliciano Foyo.

                   • Ninoska Lucrecia Pérez Castellón, wife of terrorist Roberto Martín Pérez,
                   who openly supports the terrorists detained in Panama on her Miami mafia
                   radio station show.

                   • Feliciano M. Foyo, former CANF treasurer, contributed to funding Luis
                   Posada Carriles’ campaign of terrorist attacks on Cuban tourism facilities in
                   1997, including the explosion that killed Italian Fabio di Celmo. He was also
                   implicated in the failed assassination attempt on the Cuban president at the
                   7th Ibero-American Summit on the Isle of Margarita that resulted in the
                   arrest in Puerto Rico of several individuals linked to the CANF.

                   • Horacio García Sr., linked to the CANF paramilitary wing; he also has close
                   ties with Roberto Martín Pérez and Alberto Hernández, who were CANF
                   executives involved with the organization’s paramilitary group.

                   • Elpidio Nuñez, linked to the terrorist networks of international terrorists
                   Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch.

                   • José Antonio Llamas, an individual publicly linked by the FBI to terrorist
                   activities.

                   • Lawyer Ignacio Sánchez, advisor of Bacardí’s “special services”.

                   As for Luis Manuel de la Caridad Zúñiga Rey – Luis Zúñiga Rey for short –
                   Mel Martínez must be aware that this CIA confidante played an active role in
                   the CANF during the 1990s as head of subversive activities.

                   On several different occasions, he contacted, recruited and supplied Cubans
                   traveling from the United States to engage in acts of terrorism on economic
                   targets in Cuba. He then occupied a post for some years within the
                   Nicaraguan delegation to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva on behalf
                   of the CANF as well as directing this extremist organization’s activities in
                   Madrid.

                   On October 10, 2002, when the CLC decided to celebrate its first anniversary
                   with a banquet at the Renaissance Hotel in Biscayne Bay, Zúñiga and
                   Pérez-Castellon invited their buddy Mel Martínez as the special guest to deliver
                   a speech during the ceremony.

                   AMERICANIZED BY OPERATION PETER PAN

                   Martínez, aged 57, was born in Sagua La Grande, Cuba but taken to the
                   United States in the lamentably notorious Operation Peter Pan – a cynical
                   operation provoked by the United States that forced more than 14,000
                   children into exile with the concealed intention of overthrowing the
                   Revolution.

                   Forced to assimilate and abandon a large part of their identity, the Peter Pan
                   children became “the most Americanized of all Cubans”, Martínez confided
                   years later.

                   Martínez practiced law in central Florida before being appointed as head of the
                   body responsible for housing in Orlando, a post that subsequently led to a
                   promotion to the executive of Orange County.

                   His appointment as secretary of housing – a federal institution frequently
                   charged with lax morality in terms of real estate corruption – cam as no
                   surprise to anyone in the Florida mafia.

                   IN THE WINGS, ARMANDO CODINA

                   Martínez’ aspiration to join the Senate has caused disagreements between
                   Republican supporters in Florida, as Congress members Lincoln and Mario
                   Díaz-Balart are committed to supporting Representative Bill McCollum.

                   But apart from terrorists and fascists, Martínez’ friends include licentious
                   representatives of high finance and real estate such as multimillionaire
                   Armando Codina, also a “Peter Pan” child¼.

                   In 1985, this other “grand figure” of Miami’s financial world encouraged his
                   big buddy Jeb Bush – who then possessed no other talent but his daddy’s
                   protection – to obtain a loan of some $4.56 million from the Broward Federal
                   Savings & Loan Association, in Sunrise, Florida, in order to purchase a
                   property in Miami.

                   Months later, after realizing that the business was a disaster, Bush and Codina
                   managed to reduce their loan repayments to $505,000 thanks to an active,
                   but concealed, intervention by the federal organization responsible that
                   immediately reduced the value of the property they had purchased. A
                   straightforward operation.

                   Thanks to Codina and the Miami-Cuban clique, Jeb then met other
                   businesspersons of a similar ilk with whom he experienced many adventures
                   and misadventures. They included Leonel Martínez who, besides being a
                   speculator has the special characteristic of being a known drug trafficker;
                   Mario Castejón, who made the most of the war illegally-waged by the CIA
                   with their Nicaraguan Contra forces to provide “medical services” for the
                   mercenaries; Miguel Recarey, another “successful” Cuban-American,
                   currently wanted by the FBI; and Camilo Padreda, a former officer in Cuban
                   dictator Fulgencio Batista’s counterintelligence services.

                   Corrupt speculator Codina invested in both real estate and politics. He was
                   CANF director until 1992 and was known as a supporter of the most extremist
                   nucleus. These days he’s so close to the Bush family that, during a recent visit
                   by his Spanish buddy José María Aznar, he was given the responsibility for
                   singing the praises of the distinguished neo-Falangist. Without so much as a
                   titter, Codina compared the mustachioed Spaniard to Winston Churchill.

                   These days, Codina is a grand voter in Florida and both he and Mel Martínez
                   contributed to George W. Bush’s election to the presidency – with the
                   interruption of the vote recount and harassment by Vigilia Mambisa’s fascist
                   hordes.

                   Today he and many other conspirators can be relied on to reach the Senate
                   and defend the interests of the Miami terrorist mafia and the most underhand
                   representatives of the Florida peninsula’s establishment, ridiculing the silent
                   majority of the U.S. public.

                   Whilst this buddy of Miami’s terrorist capos is preparing to enter the national
                   Senate, five Cuban patriots imprisoned in this country as a result of an explicit
                   decision by the White House, are coming under increased pressure in the form
                   of punishment measures in their respective jails and cruel restrictions on visits
                   from their relatives.

                   Not to mention the disgraceful silence about the case from the so-called “free
                   press”, one that submits itself to the dictates of a mafia that is ready to actively
                   collaborate in November 2004 in the election and reelection of its most
                   illustrious servants.