Corrupt ex-director of Radio-TV Martí offers cheap course on Cuban regime

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD

The Institute of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami, headed by a former CIA analyst and funded by USAID, is announcing a special course: Fidel Castro and the Political Process in Cuba, taught by Pedro Roig, Mafiosi ex-director of Radio-TV Martí.

It is a fact that Roig has a MA in Arts from the University of Miami and a degree in Law from Saint Thomas University. His credentials as a supporter of terrorism and an annexationist are also equivalent to a doctorate.

Roig was a hard-line buddy of the deceased Jorge Mas Canosa, CIA agent and creator of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), the organization whose secret paramilitary committee directed and financed international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Mas Canosa and Roig share the dubious honor of having been together in CIA terrorist training camps with this "star" of the local mafia, the old killer who was Commissar Basilio with the DISIP, the secret police of Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez, and then became a trafficker of drugs and arms in Central America, before acting as security advisor to a number of repressive regimes in the hemisphere.

Pedro Roig is a big buddy of Herminio San Román, another ex-director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) who, with Roberto Rodríguez-Tejera, Julio Estorino, Frank Díaz-Pou and other disinformation mercenaries, initiated the station’s conversion into a den of obsessive conspirators and other extremist capos.

The aim of the ICCAS course, according to its publicity, is to analyze – among other things – "the cult of violence, the pedagogical and political training of Fidel Castro, his arrival in power and the destruction of Cuban institutions." This was stated by a man who trained for Operation 40, a plot to exterminate Castro supporters, which was to have gone ahead in parallel with the 1961 mercenary Bay of Pigs invasion.

The cost of Roig’s course is $50 for the two classes. Free with the lectures comes Pedro Roig’s book The Death of a Dream: A History of Cuba (unavailable in Spanish) and an ICCAS diploma. The ICCAS is managed by former CIA analyst Jaime Suchlicki who, incidentally, was Roig’s professor – in what circumstances it is not exactly known.

According to Carlos Alberto Montaner, the CIA intellectual, "Pedro Roig is a prime source of the history of Cuba, not only as a historian and spending his life reflecting on the problem of this country, but also because of his revolutionary efforts as an adolescent." On expressing this opinion, Montaner did not specify that, in his youth, Roig placed explosive devices in Havana movie theaters and stores, which he did.

Radio and TV Martí are nothing less than a den of nepotism and favoritism, where only the privileged members of the executive’s circle of friends survive, according to a wide-ranging report on the English-language website of Poder 360°, an important business magazine circulating in various Latin American countries.

A report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations revealed that Alberto Mascaró, the nephew of Pedro Roig’s wife, was appointed director of the Latin American service of Voice of America – thanks to Roig.

The report also details how in February of 2007, the former program director of TV Martí, jointly confessed in a federal court, with a (non-identified) relative of a Congress member, to having received close to $112,000 in legal commissions on the part of an OCB contractor.

To enroll for the course, call the Institute. "Capacity is limited," they are saying.

Taken from Granma International