Rubio calls out rapper Jay-Z: He needs to educate himself (+ video)

The President, Department of State and Congress are wasting millions trying to expalin how Jay-Z and his wife Beyonce were given permission to visit Cuba, which violated the Cuban Democracy Act. Not to mention the money spent by the US government on setting up the trip. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been most outspoken about the trip calling it “hypocritical”.

Tom Tillison from BizPac Review writes:

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, got involved in the story when he asked the Obama administration to explain how the trip was approved by the Treasury Department as a “cultural” visit, and now, in response to comments Jay-Z made upon returning to the United States, the junior senator from Florida weighs in again to say Jay-Z needs to get informed.

“Jay-Z needs to get informed,” Rubio said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” as reported by Politico.

“One of his heroes is Che Guevara,” Rubio continued. “Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a racist that wrote extensively about the superiority of white Europeans over people of African descent, so he should inform himself on the guy that he’s propping up.”

Read more.

On October 9th, 1967, Ernesto “Che” Guevara was put to death by Bolivian soldiers, trained, equipped and guided by U.S. Green Berets from the 7th Special Forces Group and CIA operatives. His execution remains a historic and controversial event; and forty six years later, the circumstances of his guerrilla foray into Bolivia, his capture, killing, and burial are still the subject of intense public interest and discussion around the world.

The rapper Pitbull has weighed in with this song titled “Cuba”:

Below are related declassified documents from the period dealing with Guevara. They are provided so you and Jay Z may educate yourselves on this racist who murdered many of his own countrymen, women and children:

 CIA, The Fall of Che Guevara and the Changing Face of the Cuban Revolution, October 18, 1965

This intelligence memorandum, written by a young CIA analyst, Brian Latell, presents an assessment that Guevara’s preeminence as a leader of the Cuban revolution has waned, and his internal and international policies have been abandoned. In domestic policy, his economic strategy of rapid industrialization has “brought the economy to its lowest point since Castro came to power,” the paper argues. In foreign policy, he “never wavered from his firm revolutionary stand, even as other Cuban leaders began to devote most of their attention to the internal problems of the revolution.” With Guevara no longer in Cuba, the CIA’s assessment concludes, “there is no doubt that Castro’s more cautious position on exporting revolution, as well as his different economic approach, led to Che’s downfall.”

 U.S. Army, Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Activation, Organization and Training of the 2d Battalion – Bolivian Army, April 28, 1967

This memorandum of understanding, written by the head of the U.S. MILGP (Military Group) in Bolivia and signed by the commander of the Bolivian armed forces, created the Second Ranger Battalion to pursue Che Guevara’s guerrilla band. The agreement specifies the mission of a sixteen-member Green Beret team of U.S. special forces, drawn from the 8th Special Forces division of the U.S. Army Forces at Southcom in Panama, to “produce a rapid reaction force capable of counterinsurgency operations and skilled to the degree that four months of intensive training can be absorbed by the personnel presented by the Bolivian Armed Forces.” In October, the 2nd Battalion, aided by U.S. military and CIA personnel, did engage and capture Che Guevara’s small band of rebels.

 White House Memorandum, May 11, 1967

This short memo to President Lyndon Johnson records U.S. efforts to track Guevara’s movements, and keep the President informed of his whereabouts. Written by presidential advisor, Walt Rostow, the memo reports that Guevara may be “operational” and not dead as the CIA apparently believed after his disappearance from Cuba.

 CIA, Intelligence Information Cable, October 17, 1967

This CIA cable summarizes intelligence, gathered from September 1966 through June 1967, on the disagreement between the Soviet Union and Cuba over Che Guevara’s mission to Bolivia. The cable provides specific information on Leonid Brezhnev’s objections to “the dispatch of Ernesto Che Guevara to Bolivia” and Brezhnev’s decision to send the Soviet Premier Aleksey Kosygin’s visit to Cuba in June, 1967 to discuss the Kremlin’s opposition with Castro. CIA sources reported that Kosygin accused Castro of “harming the communist cause through his sponsorship of guerrilla activity…and through providing support to various anti-government groups, which although they claimed to be ‘socialist’ or communist, were engaged in disputes with the ‘legitimate’ Latin American communist parties…favored by the USSR.” In replying Castro stated that Cuba would support the “right of every Latin American to contribute to the liberation of his country.” Castro also “accused the USSR of having turned its back upon its own revolutionary tradition and of having moved to a point where it would refuse to support any revolutionary movement unless the actions of the latter contributed to the achievement of Soviet objectives….”

 White House Memorandum, October 9, 1967

Walt Rostow reports in this memorandum to President Johnson that unconfirmed information suggests that the Bolivian battalion–“the one we have been training”–“got Che Guevara.”

 White House Memorandum, October 10, 1967

In a short update to Walt Rostow, William Bowdler reports there is still uncertainty about whether Che Guevara was “among the casualties of the October 8 engagement.”

 White House Memorandum, October 11, 1967

In another daily update, Walt Rostow reports to President Johnson that “we are 99% sure that ‘Che’ Guevara is dead.” Rostow believes the decision to execute Guevara “is stupid,” but he also points out his death “shows the soundness of our ‘preventive medicine’ assistance to countries facing incipient insurgency–it was the Bolivian 2nd Ranger Battalion, trained by our Green Berets from June-September of this year, that cornered him and got him.”

 White House Memorandum, October 13, 1967

In a final update, Walt Rostow informs Lyndon Johnson that the White House has intelligence information–still censored–that “removes any doubt that ‘Che’ Guevara is dead.”

CIA Debriefing of Félix Rodríguez, June 3, 1975

When Che Guevara was executed in La Higuera, one CIA official was present–a Cuban-American operative named Félix Rodríguez. Rodríguez, who used the codename “Félix Ramos” in Bolivia and posed as a Bolivian military officer, was secretly debriefed on his role by the CIA’s office of the Inspector General in June, 1975. (At the time the CIA was the focus of a major Congressional investigation into its assassination operations against foreign leaders.) In this debriefing–discovered in a declassified file marked ‘Félix Rodríguez’ by journalist David Corn–Rodríguez recounts the details of his mission to Bolivia where the CIA sent him, and another Cuban-American agent, Gustavo Villoldo, to assist the capture of Guevara and destruction of his guerrilla band. Rodríguez and Villoldo became part of a CIA task force in Bolivia that included the case officer for the operation, “Jim”, another Cuban American, Mario Osiris Riveron, and two agents in charge of communications in Santa Clara. Rodríguez emerged as the most important member of the group; after a lengthy interrogation of one captured guerrilla, he was instrumental in focusing the efforts to the 2nd Ranger Battalion focus on the Villagrande region where he believed Guevara’s rebels were operating. Although he apparently was under CIA instructions to “do everything possible to keep him alive,” Rodríguez transmitted the order to execute Guevara from the Bolivian High Command to the soldiers at La Higueras–he also directed them not to shoot Guevara in the face so that his wounds would appear to be combat-related–and personally informed Che that he would be killed. After the execution, Rodríguez took Che’s Rolex watch, often proudly showing it to reporters during the ensuing years.

 State Department Cable, Official Confirmation of Death of Che Guevara, October 18, 1967

Ten days after his capture, U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Douglas Henderson, transmitted confirmation of Guevara’s death to Washington. The evidence included autopsy reports, and fingerprint analysis conducted by Argentine police officials on Che’s amputated hands. (Che’s hands were cut off to provide proof that he was actually dead; under the supervision of CIA agent Gustavo Villoldo, his body was then secretly buried by at a desolate airstrip at Villagrande where it was only discovered in June 1997.) The various death documents, notes Ambassador Henderson, leave “unsaid the time of death”–“an attempt to bridge the difference between a series of earlier divergent statements from Armed Forces sources, ranging from assertions that he died during or shortly after battle to those suggesting he survived at least twenty-four hours.”

Southern Command, Activities of the 2nd Ranger Battalion and Death of Che Guevara

The U.S. Special Forces Group, which trained the Bolivan military units that captured Che Guevara, conducted an extensive debriefing of members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion. This report, based on interviews by a member of the U.S. Mobile Training Team in Bolivia with key Bolivian commanders, documents the military movements, and engagement with Che Guevara’s guerrilla band. The sources also provide key details and descriptions of his capture, interrogation and execution, although it makes no mention of the CIA official, Félix Rodríguez, who was present. Guevara’s last words to the soldier who shot him are reported as: “Know this now, you are killing a man.”

 Department of State, Guevara’s Death–The Meaning for Latin America, October 12, 1967

In this interpretive report for Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Thomas Hughes, the Latin America specialist at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, summarizes the importance of “the defeat of the foremost tactician of the Cuban revolutionary strategy.” The analyst predicts that Guevara “will be eulogized as the model revolutionary who met a heroic death.” The circumstances of his failure in Bolivia, however, will strengthen the position of “peaceful line” communist party groups in the Hemisphere. Castro, he argues, will be subject to “we told you so” criticism from older leftist parties, but his “spell on the more youthful elements in the hemisphere will not be broken.” The analysis fails to incorporate evidence of the disagreement between Castro and Guevara on the prospects for revolution in Latin America, or the Soviet pressure on Cuba to reduce support for insurgent movements in the Hemisphere.

 CIA, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Fidel Castro Delivers Eulogy on Che Guevara, October 19, 1967

On October 18, 1967, the third day of national mourning, Fidel Castro delivered a eulogy to a crowd of almost one million at the Plaza de La Revolución in Havana. The next day, the speech is transcribed and distributed by FBIS, a CIA transcription agency that records, and translates news and television from around the world. Calling Guevara “an artist of revolutionary warfare,” Castro warns that “they who sing victory” over his death–a reference to the U.S.–” are mistaken. They are mistaken who believe that his death is the defeat of his ideas, the defeat of his tactics, the defeat of his guerrilla concepts.” This speech contributes immeasurably to the making of the revolutionary icon that Che Guevara became in the ensuing years. “If we want to know how we want our children to be,” Castro concludes, “we should say, with all our revolutionary mind and heart: We want them to be like Che.”

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