Thanks Linda for the articles below. It should come as no surprise in retrospect. I
a so sick of the Elian story. It is quite clear that this is a politically motivated
deal. The anti-Castro community of exiles in Miami are trying to make this into a
wedge to help their cause, as are the various other political groups, and Castro too.
My tae is that Elian should be with his Dad, period, even if he goes to live in a pig
sty with no food. Does anyone here want to have their child taken from them? The
Father has the responsibility, and quite frankly even if Elian REALLY DOES want to
stay here it is irrelevant. Having said that it is also patently obvious that a lot
of the political power that the exiles have could be done away with if relations with
Cuba were normalized, which is long overdue in my opinion. Nothing we've done for
almost 40 years has hindered Castro, since the goal of the Inteligence Community has
always been revenge for Casto's making them look bad, they have utterly failed. We
should establish normal relations with the country, especially now, because the next
thing you know Red China will be establishing bases there.
On Thu, 13 April 2000, Linda Minor wrote:
>
> Interesting about the connections between Basulto and Recarey and between
> Recarey and Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida.
>
> Linda Minor
>
> http://www.newsmakingnews.com/
>
> Date: 28 FEB 1996 06:35:24 GMT
> From: Lisa Pease [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Newgroups: misc.activism.progressive
> Subject: Massive US Government Hypocrisy on Cuba
>
> Neither the Government nor the corporate press are giving you the truth
> about the planes the Cubans downed, and what their leader really represents.
> Here is some background on Brothers to the Rescue founder, Jose Basulto
> Leon.
>
> JOSE BASULTO LEON: BACKGROUND BY PETER DALE SCOTT
> ...
> Felix Rodriguez told the Kerry Committee that he met Contra leaders Enrique
> Bermudez and Adolfo Calero in Miami at Jose Basulto�s home (Kerry Hearings,
> 340-41). He later wrote in his book Shadow Warrior that he and Basulto "have
> been like brothers" since their training together in Guatemala for the Bay
> of Pigs. He added that Basulto had "been to contra camps in Central America,
> helping to dispense humanitarian aid" (p. 109).
>
> Basulto and Felix Rodriguez together appear to have been part of a plan for
> treating wounded Contras in Miami, worked out under the direction of Oliver
> North. A note in North�s diary reads "22-Jan-85 Medical Support System for
> wounded FDN [Contras] in Miami�HMO in Miami as oked to help all WIA [wounded
> in action]... Felix Rodriguez." This HMO was International Medical Centers
> (IMC), whose head (Cuban-American Miguel Recarey) fled the U.S. after being
> indicted in what Mother Jones called "the largest HMO Medicare fraud in U.S.
> history." Jose Basulto told the Wall Street Journal in 1987 that he had
> attended meetings at IMC with Felix Rodriguez and Adolfo Calero. A former
> agent of the Department of Health and Human Services told Stephen Pizzo of
> Mother Jones that Recarey used part of the $30 million a month he received
> to treat Medicare patients "to set up field hospitals for the contras"
> (Mother Jones, Sept./Oct. 1992, 31-33).
>
> +++++++
> http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/SO92/pizzo.html
>
> Jeb and Miguel Recarey
> With Miami awash in empty office space in 1986, it was no small event when
> bagged International Medical Centers as a key tenant for Padreda's
> HUD-financed building. IMC, which leased nearly all the space in Padreda's
> vacant building, was at the time one of the nation's fastest-growing
> health-maintenance organizations (HMO) and had become the largest recipient
> of federal Medicare funds.
>
> IMC was run by Cuban-American Miguel Recarey, a character with a host of
> idiosyncrasies. He carried a 9-mm Heckler & Koch semiautomatic pistol under
> his suit coat and kept a small arsenal of AR-15 and Uzi assault rifles at
> his Miami estate, where his bedroom was protected by bullet-proof windows
> and a steel door. It apparently wasn't his enemies Recarey feared so much as
> his friends. He had a long-standing relationship with Miami Mafia godfather
> Santo Trafficante, Jr., and had participated in the illfated, CIA-inspired
> mob assassination plot against Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. (Associates
> of Recarey add that Trafficante was the money behind Recarey's business
> ventures.)
>
> Recarey's brother, Jorge, also had ties to the CIA. So it was no surprise
> that IMC crawled with former spooks. Employee r�sum�s were studded with
> references to the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Cuban
> Intelligence agency; there was even a fellow who claimed to have been a KGB
> agent, An agent with the U.S. Office of Labor Racketeering in Miami would
> later describe IMC as a company in which "a criminal enterprise interfaced
> with intelligence operations."
>
> Recarey also surrounded himself with those who could influence the political
> system. He hired Jeb Bush as IMC's "real-estate consultant." Though Jeb
> would never close a single real-estate deal, his contract called for him to
> earn up to $250,000 (he actually received $75,000). Jeb's real value to
> Recarey was not in real estate but in his help in facilitating the largest
> HMO Medicare fraud in U.S. history.
>
> Jeb phoned top Health and Human Services officials in Washington in 1985 to
> lobby for a special exemption from HHS rules for IMC. This highly unusual
> waiver was critical to Recarey's scam. Without it, the company would have
> been limited to a Medicare patient load of 50 percent. The balance of IMC's
> patients would have had to be private�that is, paying�customers. Recarey
> preferred the steady flow of federal Medicare money to the thought of
> actually running a real HMO. Former HHS chief of staff McClain Haddow (who
> later became a paid consultant to IMC) testified in 1987 Jeb that directly
> phoned then-HHS secretary Margaret Heckler and that it was that call that
> swung the decision to approve IMCs waiver.
>
> Jeb admits lobbying HHS for the waiver, but denies talking to Secretary
> Heckler�and denies as well the charge that his call won the HHS exemption.
> "I just asked that IMC get a fair hearing," said later. After the IMC
> scandal broke in 1987, Heckler left the country, having been appointed U.S.
> ambassador to Ireland, a post she held until 1989. (Heckler is now a private
> citizen living in Virginia. We left a detailed message with her secretary,
> outlining our questions, but she declined to respond.)
>
> In any case, the highly unusual waiver by federal officials allowed IMCs
> Medicare patient load to swell�to 80 percent�and the money poured in. At its
> height in 1986, IMC was collecting over $30 million a month in Medicare
> payments; in all, the company would collect $1 billion from Medicare. (Jeb
> would not discuss the IMC affair with Mother Jones. But in an opinion piece
> he wrote for the Miami Herald last May, he insisted that he had worked hard
> for IMC, looking for real-estate deals, and had earned his $75,000 in
> commissions. While acknowledging making a telephone call to one of Heckler's
> assistants on IMC Is behalf, he claimed the waiver was not granted on his
> account. The allegation of a connection, Jeb wrote, "is unfair and untrue.")
>
> Despite Jeb's involvement, trouble began brewing for IMC when a low-level
> HHS special agent in Miami, Leon Weinstein, discovered that Recarey was
> defrauding Medicare through overcharges, false invoicing, and outright
> embezzlement. Weinstein had been following Recarey's activities since 1977,
> and as early as 1983 he believed he had enough information to put together a
> case. However, he found his HHS superiors less than receptive; they took no
> action on Weinstein's information.
>
> But Weinstein kept digging and in 1986 renewed his investigation of Recarey
> and IMC�and again his HHS superiors blocked the probe. "Washington just
> refused to pursue my evidence," Weinstein, now retired, told Mother Jones
> last spring. "And they made it perfectly clear that I was not to pursue IMC.
> When I did, they threatened me and threatened my job."
>
> Weinstein dug in his heels. "I had them this time. I told my superiors I
> would fight this time because I had nothing to fear. I had just reached
> retirement age. They immediately backtracked," he says. Weinstein was
> allowed to continue his investigation�though HHS still took no formal action
> against Recarey. Eventually Weinstein turned to Congressmen Barney Frank
> (D-NY) and Pete Stark (D-CA) with his information, sparking congressional
> hearings into the scandal.
>
> Had it been up to HHS, Recarey would still be running his Medicare racket.
> But by chance, the now-disbanded U.S. Miami Organized Crime Strike Force was
> also investigating Recarey. (Recarey was bribing union officials in order to
> get them to sign workers up as patients at IMC, apparently so that IMC could
> meet its reduced non-Medicare patient requirements of 20 percent.) "We
> didn't know anything about the HHS investigation," former Organized Crime
> Strike Force special attorney Joe DeMaria says. "Recarey was bribing union
> officials.... But HHS never contacted us or told us anything."
>
> Before Recarey's trial on bribery charges began, DeMaria's investigators
> also caught Recarey using his former spooks to wiretap IMC employees in an
> effort to discover who was talking to federal agents. DeMaria had Recarey
> indicted a second time, for the illegal listening devices. During Recarey's
> trial on the bribery charge, a lawyer who handled the bribe money testified
> that the money IMC gave him was not bribe money but "commissions" he had
> earned while doing work for the company. "See, that commission thing was
> Recarey's MO. They didn't call them bribes, they called them commissions,"
> DeMaria explains.
>
> After he was convicted, Recarey resigned from IMC and was immediately
> replaced by John Ward. (Ward had been law partner to Reagan-Bush campaign
> manager John Sears. And Sears had also been a lobbyist for IMC.) But
> Recarey's Medicare scam would never get to a public courtroom airing. Before
> his trial on the wiretap charge, Recarey skipped the country. His getaway
> was remarkable: just in time for his flight, the normally tight-fisted IRS
> expedited a $2.2 million income-tax refund, which Recarey claimed he had
> coming.
>
> The tax refund was a windfall for Recarey. "Yeah, that was his getaway
> money," says a former IRS investigator who worked in the Miami office at the
> time but asked not to be named. "Though there is a special IRS procedure to
> expedite tax refunds for companies in financial distress, I don't think you
> can overlook the possibility that there was influence from the
> administration."
>
> Recarey's last act before becoming a fugitive was an attempt to wire $30,000
> into the bank account of Washington consultant and lobbyist Nick
> Panuzio�whose partner was then managing George Bush's 1988 presidential
> campaign. (The wire transfer failed only because, in his haste, Recarey had
> gotten Panuzio's account number wrong.) It was only after Recarey was safely
> out of the country that the U.S. attorney in Miami�a political
> appointee�filed formal charges of Medicare fraud against him.
>
> Whistle-blower Leon Weinstein retired in disgust from HHS and tried to get
> the IMC case before a judge by filing a Qui Tam suit. Such suits allow a
> private citizen to sue to recover money for the government in return for a
> share of any settlement. In his case, Weinstein named IMC and Recarey as
> defendants. But HHS continued to fight Weinstein, first challenging his
> right to bring such a suit and later accusing him of stealing HHS documents
> before leaving his job. When the courts supported Weinstein, HHS then
> stepped in, took over his lawsuit, and shouldered him out. The case remains
> in the courts and is still unresolved.
>
> HHS officials now pursuing the litigation claim that Recarey defrauded the
> Medicare system of at least $12 million. Leon Weinstein says the government
> is lowballing the loss and that Recarey's take from his IMC scam could
> easily be many times that figure.
>
> Since skipping Miami in 1987, Recarey has been living comfortably in
> Caracas, Venezuela. Thomas Holladay, the consul general of the U.S. Embassy
> in Caracas, told Mother Jones that officials there were aware of Recarey's
> presence and had formally requested his extradition. "We made a formal
> request for his extradition," Consul General Holladay says. "But we can't do
> anything until the Venezuelans turn him over to us, and they have not done
> that." The conversation then ended abruptly. "You know, I'm really not
> supposed to be talking to you about this," Holladay says.
>
> In May, following inquiries from Mother Jones, Congressman Pete Stark, who
> sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, wrote to both the
> Department of Justice and the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, demanding
> an explanation for six years of inaction on the Recarey case.
>
> Jeb and the Contras
> The fact that Recarey is living free in Caracas rather than in shackles at
> Fort Leavenworth could well be a result of the role IMC may have played in
> Oliver North's secret contra-supply network. Though members of the House
> Intelligence Committee claimed they found no reason to believe that Recarey
> was using IMC's Medicare facilities and funds to aid the contras, the
> evidence that IMC was involved remains compelling. In 1985, the same year
> that Jeb Bush was dialing for dollars to HHS officials for IMC, Jeb also
> hand-carried a letter from Guatemalan physician Dr. Mario Castejon to the
> White House�directly to his father's office in the Executive Office
> Building. Dr. Castejon's letter to Vice President Bush requested U.S.
> medical aid for the contras. George Bush penned a note back to the doctor,
> referring him to Lt. Col. Oliver North�whose pro-contra activities the
> president now claims he knew little about.
> ...
>
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