Full Disclosure, Please, CBS and HuffPo

Full Disclosure, Please, CBS and HuffPo
By Humberto Fontova
7/22/2011

Say The New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch) hired Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's daughter to denounce several U.S. legislators and a former U.S. President as "insane"---but described this apparatchik for a terror-sponsor innocently as a "columnist" and "Teheran-based news analyst." Might the disclosure of her employment and pedigree merit media mention?

But the Huffington Post just hired the daughter of the president of a terrorist-sponsor's "parliament," for this very task and nobody bats an eye--mostly, of course, because few people know the details. As a service to Townhall readers, here’s the details: the HuffPo columnist is named Margarita Alarcon and her terror-sponsoring employer is Stalinist Cuba. Margarita’s father is Ricardo Alarcon, who has functioned as Castro's Foreign Minister, ambassador to the UN and today functions as the president of Stalinist Cuba's "Parliament." In 2000, during a major crackdown by the Bush Administration against Cuban spying, Margarita's father was denied a U.S. visa.

So shameless and relentless has been Ricardo Alarcon's a**kissing over the decades that, upon Fidel's frequently-predicted retirements, Alarcon was usually named the likely heir to Cuba's Stalinist throne.

Unsurprisingly, Marco Rubio (son of Cuban refugees) heads the list of legislators denounced in the Huffington Post by the loyal daughter of Fidel Castro's most slavish cabin-boy. Margarita Alarcon also functions as a "Havana-based" columnist for Castro's Pravda-founded and trained media. In fact, her columns appear just to the left of Fidel and Raul Castro's official pronouncements. So in running her articles, the Huffington Post is essentially transcribing (and translating) a Stalinist regime's propaganda for the benefit of English readers.

From Margarita's HuffPo bio we do learn that: "raised in New York City, Margarita has spent most of her adult life in Cuba. She has been traveling to the United States since her return home in the early 1980s."

"Awwww, well isn't that nice," might react the typical Huff-Po reader. "She's a worldly traveler, probably with a backpack, eager to expand her cultural horizons, like so much of her generation...Awwww."

In fact her "raising" in New York occurred during her father's lengthy stint as Fidel Castro's Ambassador to the U.N. "Virtually every member of Cuba's U.N mission is an intelligence agent," revealed Alcibiades Hidalgo, who defected to the U.S. in 2002 after serving as Raul Castro's Chief of Staff and Cuba's ambassador to the U.N.. In 2003, 14 of those U.N.-stationed Cuban spies were rooted out and booted from the U.S.

Interestingly, The Huffington Post's bio on Margarita Alarcon informs that, "she has not been back (to the U.S.) since 2003."

No reason to single-out the Huff-Po, however. CBS has also run Margarita Alarcon’s articles, describing her innocently as a writer for Havana’s Casa de las Americas. Well, in 1983 a high ranking Cuban Intelligence officer named Jesus Perez Mendez defected to the U.S. and spilled his guts to the FBI. Among his spillings we encounter the following: "The Cuban DGI (Directorio General de Intelligencia, Castro's KGB/STASI trained Secret service) controls the Casa de las Americas."

Castro's Intelligence services are touted as among the world's best. So Margarita Alarcon is probably good at her job. But the Huffington Post and CBS (those noisy proponents of "full-disclosure!" by Republicans) could be more forthcoming about what that job is.

Norman Bailey, a high official in the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence might help with Alarcon's job-description: "For Cuba, being able to influence U.S. policy and elite opinion-makers is equally important--possibly even more important-- than recruiting spies with access to U.S. intelligence information," he explained in 2007.

Lately those in Margarita Alarcon's line of work (the few in Cuba, the multitudes in the U.S.) have been hopping. To wit: subsidies from Hugo Chavez provide the Castro regime's main lifeline. And this week we learned that doctors give the cancer-stricken Chavez' a 50/50 chance of making it past another 18 months. But almost neck to neck with Hugo Chavez subsidies, Castro's Stalinist regime lives off cash-flow from the U.S.

"WHAT?!" you say. "How 'bout that embargo I'm always reading and hearing about?”

It's been loopholed to death during Obama's term. "We have seen Raul Castro's comments and we welcome this overture," gushed Sec. of State Hillary Clinton at the Latin American Summit in April 2009. "We view the present (Pres. Bush's) policy as having failed. We view engagement (with Cuba) is a useful tool to advance our national interests."

Deeds quickly followed words. In executive order after executive order, Pres. Obama abolished Pres. Bush’s travel and remittance restrictions to Castro’s terrorist-sponsoring fiefdom and opened the pipeline to a point where the cash-flow from the U.S. to Cuba today is estimated at $4 billion a year. While a proud Soviet satrapy Cuba received $3-5 billion annually from the Soviets. Some "embargo."

"There is no reason for the United States to help enrich state sponsors of terrorism," explained Marco Rubio while filing his first amendment back in February to limit Cuba travel. Now Senator Rubio champions another bill introduced by fellow Cuban-American legislator Mario Diaz-Balart to restore President Bush’s policy and thus begin choking Castro’s U.S. lifeline. The legislation, shrewdly attached to an appropriations bill, has a good chance of passing.

So the Castro regime is quaking. So (keeping in mind Norman Bailey's observation) prepare for a barrage of MSM pieces on the marvels and magnanimity of Cuba's healthcare, the beneficence of her “doctor-diplomacy,” her unparalleled charms as a tourist Mecca-- and the beastliness and lunacy of U.S. travel sanctions against the poor little island.

Elementary, my dear Watson.
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To read another article by Humberto Fontova, click here.